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 … - Wilfred Thesiger

I could now move without effort from one world to the other as easily as I could change my clothes, but I appreciated that I was in danger of belonging to neither. When I was among my own people, a shadowy figure was always at my side watching them with critical, intolerant eyes.

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.

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.