Arabian Sands: Revised Edition (Travel Library) | Wilfred Thesiger

Arabian Sands: Revised Edition (Travel Library) | Wilfred Thesiger | A remarkable work by a remarkable man

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	Arabian Sands: Revised Edition (Travel Library) Wilfred Thesiger Penguin (Non-Classics), 1985 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The author recounts his travels in the Empty Quarter of Arabia between 1945 and 1950, and describes the vanishing way of life of the Bedouins.

Desert Life

Excellent travelogue by Thesiger. Thesiger was one of those 'desert-loving English' guys. He traveled across the Empty Quarter (southern Saudi Arabia, northern Yemen, Oman) with members of several different Beduoin tribes. You get a great feel for how the Bedu lived and survived in such a harch environment, and you'll have a different perspective on the origins of today's conflicts with extreme muslim fundamentalists when you're through. Thesiger wasn't out for glory; he loved the Bedu way of life and the desert, and it shines clearly through in his writing. Interesting from beginning to end.

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A remarkable work by a remarkable man

Arabian Sands is an intriguing, extremely well written work that chronicles a journey across the Arabian desert with the Bedu (Bedouin) tribes who inhabit it. Wilfred Thesiger describes in fascinating detail his arduous journeys into and across the Empty Quarter - a parched and for the most part lifeless area of the desert. As the reader travels with him he describes the interactions amongst the Bedu, their culture, habits and beliefs with intimate knowledge and honesty. He crossed the desert at a time when Saudi Arabia was literally on the brink of drilling for oil and deplores the inevitable loss of the traditional way of life in the name of greed. Anyone remotely interested in the Arabian world, the Bedu, or the trials and tribulations overcome by a man whose sole passion was to conquer the Empty Quarter will find this book compelling.

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Kahunas. Of. Solid. Rock

This book, correctly available in the Penguin classics range is a non scientific, not overly academic telling of one British chaps journeys with local Arabic people in the `Empty Quarter' of the Arabian Peninsula. Ostensibly financed to increase biological and scientific knowledge of the area these journeys seem to have been undertaken by Thesiger for vastly different reasons. And it's these cross purposes that inform much of the conversational style of this dry yet at the same time engaging display of man against nature and the rich and varied experiences Thesiger converys.

And indeed it must be said that Thesiger is a keen albeit haphazard chronicler. One minute he is imparting explanations of local attitudes and throwing in anecdotes to illustrate them and the next he is giving precise information regarding some feature of the local flora and fauna. While he is busy describing the grinding nature of the journey he is to be found digressing to present some moment of idle whimsy. And all at the same time he is actual giving you a chronological description of his time `mucking in' with the locals, getting involved in their everyday lives and sparing himself no hardship - in fact he seems to court it like it's a beast to be fought at the most base level. This guy seriously missed his time, he should have been born a couple of thousand years ago in Sparta. I came away not so much beguiled by the writing style or even the physical part of the world this journal portrays but for the all consuming experience the author quite obviously had. Not to mention his stoic and inspiring indestructibility both physical and mental and the reader is forced to consider their own fortitude in the face of descriptions of soul sapping hunger, endless deserts, infinite hardships and debilitating remoteness.

Wilfred Thesiger was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went through Eton etc and is in many respects an anachronistic throwback to a very different time, as are his attitudes to a great many things. But it's important to remember that being born in 1910 he IS from a very different time. And it would be churlish of the reader to expect his writings of over half a century ago to conform to our ideas of political correctness. Not to mention that when it comes to attitude/anecdotes and his conclusions derived therefrom he is perfectly entitled to his opinion, informed as it is by direct experience rather than a preconceived philosophical standpoint.

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No try to fill the Empty Quarter

What a challenge! Living for years among the Arabs of old. Thesiger was one of the few westerners who made the experience. And he seems to be the last one who can claim to have lived as an Arabian nomadic tribesman. In our days it is difficult to find an opportunity to repeat such a feat as there are hardly any nomads left who give you the unspoiled experience. What kind of difficulties the author must have faced when travelling through the ever hot endless sand dunes of the Empty Quarter, can be very well suspected by anybody who travel on a camels back for just a few days through a sand desert and got exhausted by it.
The narrative is much more than just a travel report. It contains many anecdotes of a real nomad`s life in the deserts. But much more than this it is an ode about and to the Arabs, it is indeed all about the Arabs, the Sand is nothing more than a staffage.
No doubt the author is an adventurer par excellence but I have a problem with him which other readers might share. He is just relating what he lives for, he is an observer, interesting enough, but where are the more sophisticated observations? It is not fair to claim from all great voyagers to be an Alexander von Humboldt who puts travel in and gets a depiction of cosmos out. But going through an "Empty Quarter" of southern Arabian sand deserts without emptying to a remarkable extent the never filling quarters of the human mind, is -sometimes - tiring on the long run.
No, Thesiger is not a philosopher, he has no "wisdom" to offer, except to let the peoples live their traditional lives, whether they include killing out of revenge or insult or treating women in the Allah`s angel given method or whatever.
Thesiger is not very critical with the Arabs; he admired them. "I knew the essential decency which was the bed-rock of their character, their humour, stubbornness, and self-reliance. I knew that if called upon they could adapt themselves to any kind of life, in the desert, in the jungle, in mountains, or on the sea, and that in many respects no race in the world was equal." Which is true for any race. So Thesiger was a racist? No, he is not constantly over-stressing romanticism. He is of the kind, I presume, who would have emphasised the preferences of any human tribe.
Thesiger seemed to have himself such qualities he praised of his chosen customers, no wonder that he got along with the Arabs. He was just lucky not to fall victim of any representative of Arabs who assault, kill and forget to ask afterwards for the merits. Of course Thesiger is not blind to this: "Always reserved in front of strangers and accustomed on formal occasions to sit for hours motionless and in silence, they are a garrulous. Light hearted race. But at the instigation of religious zealots, they can become uncompromisingly puritanical, quick to frown on all amusement, regarding song and music as a sin and laughter as unseemly. Probably no other people, either as a race or as individuals, combine so many conflicting qualities in such an extreme degree."
Everybody who wants to get acquainted with the real Arabs, as we would like to have them, should read this book. And sweep the sand away with an iced drink!

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A certain type of British travel writer (Revised rating to 4 stars by the end)

I like giving my first impressions in these Amazon reviews. Often I'll post a review before I've finished reading it. Such was the case with this book.

An Englishman persuades the British colonial government to permit him to travel in dangerous Arabian hinterlands. Britain, it seemed, had no shortage of eccentric colonial adventurers, at least before the second World War. During his travels, he encounters threats of assassination, fevers, and bears all with charming aplomb. (Exhibit A, this passage from p. 27: "While we were in Bahdu I stayed for several days in the village of a young chief called Hamdu Uga. He had a charming smile and a gentle manner and I enjoyed his company. Though little more than a boy, he had lately murdered three men on the borders of French Somaliland and was celebrating his achievement with a feast when I arrived at the village.")

The point of view seemed very dated: nostalgia for a brave and fearless people, the Bedu. I felt it romanticized them, though I must admit Thesiger writes beautifully.

His prose and the vivid descriptions, however, kept me reading to the very end. I initially gave this book three stars, now I would give it four.

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