Travel Writers

"After all, many people feel today that it is morally indefensible to hang a man, even if he has raped and killed a child, but I could not forget how easily we ourselves had taken to killing during the war. Some of the most civilized people I had known had been the most proficient."

"It is not hunger nor thirst that frightens the Bedu; they maintain that riding they can survive in cold weather for seven days without food or water. It is the possible collapse of their camels which haunts them. If this happens, death is certain."

"But we seldom spoke of sex, for starving men dream of food, not women, and our bodies were generally too tired to lust."

"There is always trouble if meat is not divided by lot. Someone immediately says that he has been given more than his share, and tries to hand a piece to someone else. Then there is much arguing and swearing by God, with everyone insisting that he has been given too much, and finally a deadlock ensues which can only be settled by casting lots for the meat – as should have been done in the first place. I have never heard a man grumble that he has received less than his share. Such behaviour would be inconceivable to the Bedu, for they are careful never to appear greedy, and quick to notice anyone who is."

"All that is best in the Arabs has come to them from the desert: their deep religious instinct, which has found expression in Islam; their sense of fellowship, which binds them as members of one faith; their pride of race; their generosity and sense of hospitality; their dignity and the regard which they have for the dignity of others as fellow human beings; their humour, their courage and patience, the language which they speak and their passionate love of poetry. But the Arabs are a race which produces its best only under conditions of extreme hardship and deteriorates progressively as living conditions become easier."

"I had yet to learn that no Bedu thinks it shameful to beg, and that often he will look at the gift which he has received and say, ‘Is this all that you are going to give me?’ I was seeing the worst side of their character, and was disillusioned and resentful, and irritated by their assumption of superiority. In consequence I was assertive and unreasonable."

"At first glance they [his Bedu companions] seemed to be little better than savages, as primitive as the Danakil, but I was soon disconcerted to discover that, while they were prepared to tolerate me as a source of very welcome revenue, they never doubted my inferiority. They were Muslims and Bedu and I was neither. They had never heard of the English, for all Europeans were known to them simply as Christians, or more probably infidels, and nationality had no meaning to them. They had heard vaguely of the war as a war between the Christians, and of the Aden government as a Christian government. Their world was the desert and they had little if any interest in events that happened outside it."

"They were Bedu, and these empty spaces where there was neither shade nor shelter were their homelands. Any of them could have worked in the gardens around Salala; all of them would have scorned this easier life of lesser men. Among the Bedu only the broken are stranded among the cultivations on the desert’s shore."

"The rifles with which they fought were all that they accepted from the outside world, the only modern invention which interested them."

"My first night in camp, as I sat eating sardines out of a tin and watching my Somalis driving the camels up from the river to couch them by the tent, I knew that I would not have been anywhere else for all the money in the world. For a month I travelled in an arid, hostile land. I was alone; there was no one whom I could consult; if I met with trouble from the tribes I could get no help; if I were sick there was no one to doctor me. Men trusted me and obeyed my orders; I was responsible for their safety. I was often tired and thirsty, sometimes frightened and lonely, but I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall."

"I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future."

"For this was the real desert where differences of race and colour, of wealth and social standing, are almost meaningless; where coverings of pretence are stripped away and basic truths emerge."

"The Empty Quarter offered me the chance to win distinction as a traveller; but I believed that it could give me more than this, that in those empty wastes I could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world. Many who venture into dangerous places have found this comradeship among members of their own race; a few find it more easily among people from other lands, the very differences which separate them binding them ever more closely. I found it among the Bedu. Without it these journeys would have been a meaningless penance."

"The harder the life the finer the type and there’s no doubt about that; the easier you make life the lower goes your standards."

"We parted before I went to Abu Dhabi, which I found an Arabian Nightmare, the final disillusionment. For me this book remains a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people."

"In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn."

"A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live; the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die. In the deserts of southern Arabia there is no rhythm of the seasons, no rise and fall of sap, but empty wastes where only the changing temperature marks the passage of the years. It is a bitter, desiccated land which knows nothing of gentleness or ease…..No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match."

"The biggest misfortune in human history is the invention of the combustion engine. Cars and airplanes diminish the world, rob it of all its diversity. Young men who meet me want to know how they could do what I've done. But all they can be is tourists now."

"Arabs rule but they do not administer. Their government is intensely individualistic, and is successful or unsuccessful according to the degree of fear and respect which the ruler commands, and his skill in dealing with individual men. Founded on an individual life, their government is impermanent and liable to end in chaos at any moment. To Arab tribesmen this system is comprehensible and acceptable, and its success of failure should not be measured in terms of efficiency and justice as judged by Western standards. To these tribesmen security can be bought too dearly by the loss of individual freedom."

"Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame."

"I might have been homosexual if I was born in a different age but as it was I remained asexual."

"God, you must be a couple of pansies."

"They [the Middle East Anti Locust Unit] were the golden key that unlocked Arabia for me. To somebody who was interested in desert exploration the Empty Quarter offered the, sort of, ultimate challenge."

"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."

"I think the harder the life, the finer the type, yes, and I certainly felt this about the Bedu. When I went there, I felt that the difficulty was going to be living up physically to the hardships of their life. But, on the contrary, it was the difficulty of meeting their high standards: their generosity, their patience, their loyalty, their courage and all these things. And they had a quality of nobility."

"Première étape : petite étape », disent les caravaniers persans qui savent bien que, le soir du départ, chacun s'aperçoit qu'il a oublié quelque chose à la maison. D'ordinaire, on ne fait qu'un pharsar. Il faut que les étourdis puissent encore aller et revenir avant le lever du soleil. Cette part faite à la distraction m'est une raison de plus d'aimer la Perse. Je ne crois pas qu'il existe dans ce pays une seule disposition pratique qui néglige l'irréductible imperfection de l'homme."

"Die Wolken gehören zur Erde, nicht zum Himmel."

"Was dich die Liebe nicht lehrt, das sollst du nicht wissen."

"In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on an ancient sensibility, for tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good so much as triumph of one good over another that causes suffering. Awareness of that fact leads to a sturdy morality grounded in fear as well as in hope. The moral benefits of fear bring us to two English philosophers who, like Machiavelli, have for centuries disturbed people of goodwill: Hobbes and Malthus."

"Simon Wiesenthal told me that any political party in a democracy that uses the word 'freedom' in its name is either Nazi or Communist."

"Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

"Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism."

"Kaplan became one of the principal intellectual boosters for US power in the world through the tried-and-true "American way of war." This is the way of war dating to the British-colonial period that military historian John Grenier called a combination of "unlimited war and irregular war," a military tradition "that accepted, legitimized, and encouraged attacks upon and the destruction of noncombatants, villages and agricultural resources . . . in shockingly violent campaigns to achieve their goals of conquest." Kaplan sums up his thesis in the prologue to Imperial Grunts, which he subtitles "Injun Country": "By the turn of the twenty-first century the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment's notice. The Pentagon divided the planet into five area commands-similar to the way that the Indian Country of the American West had been divided in the mid-nineteenth century by the U.S. Army.... [A]ccording to the soldiers and marines I met on the ground in far-flung corners of the earth, the comparison with the nineteenth century was apt. "Welcome to Injun Country" was the refrain I heard from troops from Colombia to the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq. To be sure, the problem for the American military was less [Islamic] fundamentalism than anarchy. The War on Terrorism was really about taming the frontier.” Kaplan goes on to ridicule "elites in New York and Washington" who debate imperialism in "grand, historical terms," while individuals from all the armed services interpret policy according to the particular circumstances they face and are indifferent to or unaware of the fact that they are part of an imperialist project. This book shows how colonialism and imperialism work."

"This was the greatest invasion in this war so far – probably the greatest in human history – and the sea was crowded to the horizon with uncountable ships, but we were as lost and ineffective as babes in the wood."

"To my surprise, definite occupation was found for me on my last visit to HQ: to investigate the motives of a clandestine political party operating in this area... Some are regarded as more purposeful and sinister including the one to be investigated, called Forza Italia!, which is suspected of Neo-Fascist leanings. My contacts in Benevento dismiss it with scorn as just another maniac right-wing movement backed by the landlords and the rural Mafia, run in this case by a half-demented latifundista who proclaims himself a reincarnation of Garibaldi."

"There is an inherent Mediterranean austerity much in evidence in the Naples area, in Sorrento and Capri, which seems to come from the sea, since it is hardly to be found inland."

"If it is a fact that in Naples everything is for sale, how much more true must this be in Poggio Reale?"

"All things in Naples are arranged with as much civility as possible."

"Naples is extraordinary in every way."

"There are no police to deal with the thousands of squalid little crimes like this committed every day in the city."

"[...]since humanity is above partisanship, the Italians are no doubt equally kind to Germans who come to them for help in similar circumstances, and I find it deplorable that we should show anger and vindictiveness when cases of Italians showing even ordinary compassion to their one-time allies come to our notice."

"The Italians of the South live, just as Africans do, on bread dipped in olive oil."

"The facts are, as every Italian will admit, that the South is virtually a colony of the industrialised North."

"[...]everybody used the polite form of address lei instead of the Fascists’ forthright Roman voi."

"A problem has arisen. Although I handed in my army rations to the cook, with the intention of living on these, nobody has taken me seriously, nor believed that any human being in his right mind and able to eat pasta would refrain from doing so."

"In this country there are fifty lawyers to every one policeman, and the lawyers expect to win."

"A year ago we liberated them from the Fascist Monster, and they still sit doing their best to smile politely at us, as hungry as ever, more disease-ridden than ever before, in the ruins of their beautiful city where law and order have ceased to exist. And what is the prize that is to be eventually won? The rebirth of democracy. The glorious prospect of being able one day to choose their rulers from a list of powerful men, most of whose corruptions are generally known and accepted with weary resignation. The days of Benito Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared with this."

"Inexplicably no boats are allowed out, but nothing is said in the proclamation about rafts. Everyone improvises and adapts."

"[...]he addresses all and sundry with old-fashioned politeness as lei."

"He proved to be one of the four thousand lawyers of Naples, ninety per cent of whom – surplus to the needs of the courts – had never practised, and who for the most part lived in extreme penury."