Wilfred Thesiger

Quotes

1. Strike a Bedu and he will kill you either then or later.  It is easy for strangers to give offence without meaning to do so.  I once put my hand on the back of bin Kabina’s neck and he turned on me and asked furiously if I took him for a slave.  I had no idea that I had done anything wrong.

   p. 148

2. 

   In the deserts, however arid, I have never felt homesick for green fields and woods in spring, but now that I was in England I longed with an ache that was almost physical to be back in Arabia.

   p. 187

3. 

   Now I had crossed it [the Empty Quarter].  To others my journey would have little importance.  It would produce nothing except a rather inaccurate map which no one was ever likely to use.  It was a personal experience, and the reward had been a drink of clean, nearly tasteless water.  I was content with that.

   p. 138

4. 

   As I listened I thought once again how precarious was the existence of the Bedu.  Their way of life naturally made them fatalists; so much was beyond their control.  It was impossible for them to provide for a morrow when everything depended on a chance fall of rain or when raiders, sickness, or any one of a hundred chance happenings might at any time leave them destitute, or end their lives. They did what they could, and no people were more self-reliant, but if things went wrong they accepted their fate without bitterness, and with dignity as the will of God.

   p. 209

5. 

   All my life I had hated machines.  I could remember how bitterly at school I had resented reading the news that someone had flown across the Atlantic or travelled through the Sahara in a car. I had realized even then that the speed and ease of mechanical transport must rob the world of all diversity.

   p. 259

6. 

   As the plane climbed over the town and swung above the sea I knew how it felt to go into exile.

   p. 310

7. 

   My own tastes went, perhaps, too far to the other extreme. I loathed cars, aeroplanes, wireless and television, in fact most of our civilization's manifestations in the past fifty years, and was always happy, in Iraq or elsewhere, to share a smoke-filled hovel with a shepherd, his family and beasts. In such a household, everything was strange and different, their self-reliance put me at ease, and I was fascinated by the feeling of continuity with the past. I envied them a contentment rare in the world today and a mastery of skills, however simple, that I myself could never hope to attain.

   p. 50

8. 

   These [RAF] airmen were my fellow countrymen, and I was proud to be of their race.  I knew the essential decency which was the bedrock of their character, their humour, stubbornness, and self-reliance.  I knew that if called upon they could adapt themselves to any kind of life, in the desert, in the jungle, in mountains or on the sea, and that in many respects no race in the world was their equal.  But the things that interested them bored me. They belonged to an age of machines; they were fascinated by cars and aeroplanes, and found their relaxation in the cinema and the wireless.  I knew that I stood apart from them and would never find contentment among them, whereas I could find it among the Bedu, although I should never be one of them.

   p. 168

9. 

   The desert Arabs had always been a people born to hardship. For them there was no ease or comfort, only the weariness of long marches and toil at well-heads. 'We are Bedu,' they boasted, and asked only the freedom that was theirs. Stoical in pain, and often very brave, they lived for the raid and the counter-raid, which were conducted according to set rules and usually with great chivalry. They took a fierce pride in danger and suffering, and never doubted their superiority over villager and townsman.

   p. 93

10. 

    This incident impressed upon me the Bedu’s indifference to human life.  The man was sick and if God ordered it he would die.  He was a stranger who came from a tribe unrelated to theirs.  None of them felt an interest because he was a human being like themselves.  His death would in no way affect them.  Yet their code demanded that, however unwanted he might be, they should fight in his defence if he were attacked whilst with them.

    p. 177

11. 

    …I had learnt that the most effective way to spread a story was to tell it to one or two Arabs under a pledge of secrecy.

    p. 255

12. 

    They strolled with me through the streets hand in hand, as is usual with Arab friends, but I was lightly uncomfortable, having re-acquired my inhibitions with my trousers.

    p. 185