middle east

In this slender book Thesiger recounts several of his journeys though the Peninsula including the two crossings of the vast deserts of the Rub-al-Kahli. A fascinating tale, this book not only manages to skillfully capture our attention about a bleak and desolate region of the world, but it also brings our attention to the people who live in these lands. Inhabited by fierce, fanatical, and aggressive war-like tribes, the feat that Thesiger managed to achieve -- that of cris-crossing this bleak region -- is further accented by the fact the he was Christian traveling through a fundamentally lawless region ruled by a series of very suspicious and ruthless sheiks. Add to this that Thesiger was a Christian, and you can appreciate the great efforts he took to disguise himself and use elaborate cover stories. Thesiger spent many months travelling with the Bedu and over time became accepted as one of them among the tribes. Along with Marsh Arabs and the first part of his autobiography, My Life, My Choice, he paints what is best described as a human but often sterotypical picture of the Arab world. While he is quick to dismiss many of the myths associated with the Arabs, he still uses the harshness of the desert to keep impressing upon you the hardships and the bleakness of the terrain and how he still manages to survive it all despite terrible and grating thrist.

An extraordinary book, by an extraordinary man, about an extraordinary people - the desert arabs (Bedu) - before the outside world encroached on their way of life. Thesiger travelled through that inhospitable desert between the Yemen, Oman and the south of Saudi Arabia ('The Empty Quarter') in the 1940s, most of it then unmapped.

He account of exploring this unknown hostile territory, against a background of tribal raids and blood feuds and tensions where many tribes would have considered it an act of merit to kill the foreigner 'infidel', gives these travels an additional level of drama beyond the excitement of new exploration.

The harshness of the Bedu life amid the driven sands with its intense cold, heat, and blinding glare in a land without shade or cloud is the everpresent backdrop to these travels and adventures between scant and bitter wells. Sometimes travelling for up to 16 days between wells, death was often a palpable presence at the very edge of the camel's endurance.

The book is also a valuable anthropological log of these tribes, and their differing customs. The men is his party come alive in the sparse prose and a narrative pace as steady as the unfolding days. Thesiger's companions live in the anecdotes and black and white photographs. Listening to their talk the reader comes to love and admire those 'ships of the desert' (camels) for their patience and endurance and individuality, and to marvel at the simplicity and standards of honour of the Bedu tribes.

This is one of the truly great books of exploration. It is even more significant however as a journal of human encounter, and a unique and tenderly perceptive record of a people whose way of life, which had endured unchanged for 4000 years, was to become irrevocable changed by roads and the impact of oil exploration.

A book that educated Arabs give to Westeners to help them understand the Arabs. (That's where my copy came from). Contains a comprehensive index.

If you like true adventure (not fiction), have a spot in your heart for nature, different cultures and personal hardships and challenges with a goal of self improvement and introspection, then this book should be in your personal library. If you don't have the above, you will probably find the text slow and boring, and put the book down before the half way mark.

The author goes into some detail that is minutia, irrelevant, and tedious, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself re-reading the same few sentences several times in order to fully grasp the magnitude of what he just said. Amongst all the sand that he describes in the book, he'll also provide golden nuggets of insight into the human soul and spirit, and done so very elequently, just like an Oasis in the midst of a bleak desert. That is to say, it's worth the effort to get there.

This is not a book with a "plot". It's a personal account of an individuals travels with the Bedu. You can read into it Protagonists and Antagonists, but again, this is not a fictional work. Nonethless, you find yourself rooting for "Umbarak", as the author is called, and worrying about other Arabs who would kill him given the chance, and there are many chances and near misses.

Surprisingly, there are also bits and pieces of insight into the Arab world that help put into perspective some of the tensions we see today in the Middle East. While that is certainly not his intentions, he does touch on some things that are relevant today in respect to the Muslim attitudes towards Christians and Jews.

This is not a book that can be glossed over and read during TV commercials, on the bus, or while the kids are screaming up and down the hallways... you need to focus and concentrate, and if your heart yearns for nature and adventure, you'll find it well worth the effort.