Arabian Sands

Arabian Sands

They prefer to ride kneeling, especially if they mean to gallop. It is an extraordinary feat of balance, for riding a galloping camel, especially over rough ground, is like sitting on a bucking horse. A Bedu usually carries his rifle slung under his arm and parallel...
Wind, Sand and Stars

Wind, Sand and Stars

They are not searching for us yet, or, to be more precise, they are searching elsewhere for us. Probably in Arabia. And in fact we shall hear no plane until tomorrow, after abandoning our own. And that single distant flight will mean nothing to us. Black specks...
Arabian Sands

Arabian Sands

I arrived back in Salala on 16 October 1946. I planned to cross the Empty Quarter from Mughshin to the Trucial Coast, and to return to Salala across the gravel steppes at the back of Oman, but I realized that if a hint of my plans reached the Wali he would forbid the...
Arabian Sands

Arabian Sands

From Abyssinia I was sent to Syria, where I served in Jabal al Druze and later worked for a year among the tribes. The deserts in which I had travelled had been blanks in time as well as space. They had no intelligible history, the nomads who inhabited them had no...
The Madonna of the Sea

The Madonna of the Sea

There is a Madonna at the bottom of the crystalline waters off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, standing guard near a gap where two rocks curve in an unfinished embrace. Dead leaves and fish float above her like drifting feathers, shimmering in the swatch of sunlight...