'Arabian Sands'

I am re-reading, for the nth time, Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, a book which described the author's travels across the deserts of the Arabian peninsula in the 1940s and 50s, at a time when the only way to do it was by....

....camel and with the help of some of the indigenous people, in his case particularly the Rashid. This is only possible because Thesiger is a fluent Arab speaker with a profound understanding of and sympathy for their way of life, so he dresses and lives and suffers like his companions. The conditions he describes on the crossings of the Empty Quarter are brutal: many of the stages in their journeys would last for ten or more days and would involve reducing their food intake to starvation levels and their water, in temperatures over 40C, to a pint a day while, at the same time, they had to travel across endless drifting sands.

His Bedu companions took these privations in their stride - they knew nothing else - but grieved when their most valuable possession, without which such life was impossible, lay down and died. What I so like about Thesiger's book is that, at no time is he sorry for himself but, rather, is full of admiration for the Bedu.

This is bin Kabina, the young man for whom Thesiger had a particular affection. He hotly denies any romantic attachment. More it was the cheerful support and encouragement he received from the boy - Kabina was sixteen when Thesiger first met him - which helped him survive when, at times, he found the responsibility he felt for his companions almost intolerable. This went beyond any worries about the physical conditions. A Rashid might meet his death at any minute if he met a member of a tribe with whom they had a blood feud. Thesiger himself is arrested during his second crossing of the Empty Quarter by Ibn Saud's officials, and is only released at the entreaty of another great Arabist, Kim Philby.

One of the things I find deeply moving about the book is Thesiger's constant awareness that the culture he is witnessing is reaching an end. At one point, just south of Abu Dhabi, he hears that another Englishman is nearby, a man who is persuading the local sheiks to sign away their rights to any minerals on their land - specifically oil - so Thesiger avoids him. What he envies in the Bedu way of life is its simplicity and rigid code of conduct, and compares it unfavourably with the wealth and possessions which the future holds for them.

This is a book about an adventure of the sort which, sadly, in our interconnected world, would be impossible today.