I also questioned whether it was right to try to impose on the Sudanese the conventions and values of our utterly alien civilization, and sometimes e… - Wilfred Thesiger

All that is best in the Arabs came from the desert....... From the desert too has come the Arabs' pride of race, their generosity and sense of hospitality; their dignity and the reagrd they have for the dignity of others; their humour; their courage and their patience; the language that they speak, and their passionate love of poetry. But they are a race who produce their best only under conditions of extreme hardship.

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.

It is characteristic of Bedu to do things by extremes, to be either wildly generous or unbelievably mean, very patient or almost hysterically excitable, to be incredibly brave or to panic for no apparent reason. Ascetic by nature, they derive satisfaction from the bare simplicity of their lives and scorn the amenities which others would judge essential.