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 … - Wilfred Thesiger

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.

..I was thankful that I had not gone there with members of my own race, as one of large, meticulously organised expedition. I should have hated, in those surroundings, to listen to the wireless, the news, sports commentaries and European music; it would have seemed utterly incongruous. All I ever want to bring with me from our civilisation are some books, and those that I had, though there had been little opportunity to read them. In Arabia I had learnt to move from one world to another as easily as changing clothes, but always tried to keep the worlds apart.

…I had learnt that the most effective way to spread a story was to tell it to one or two Arabs under a pledge of secrecy.