"May Allah bless you." Or had she said: "May Allah burn you?" He was not sure which: the two Arabic words sounded so much alike. - Paul Bowles

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.

That was one of the troubles with the Istiqlal, with all politics: you talked about people as though they were not really people, as though they were only things, numbers, animals, perhaps, but not really people.

Ogniqualvolta si trovava in viaggio da un luogo all'altro, era in grado di valutare la propria vita con un po' più di obiettività del solito. Spesso, proprio durante un viaggio i suoi pensieri divenivano particolarmente lucidi, e prendeva decisioni cui non poteva arrivare quand'era fermo in un luogo.