Arabian Sands [Paperback]

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.

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.

Wilfred Thesiger was born in more fortunate circumstances for an exploring life. His father was not a small businessman in New England, but the British ambassador to Ethiopia in the days when all parts of that country had not been visited by Westerners. The first part of ARABIAN SANDS describes the author's adventures travelling in wilder parts of Ethiopia. After Middle Eastern service in Sudan and elsewhere during WW II, Thesiger signed on as a locust hunter in the Arabian Peninsula, trying to locate the then unknown breeding grounds for the dreaded insect. He did it purely to be able to travel through the most unknown parts of the region, the Rub al-Khali or "the Sands"; Oman, the Hadhramaut, and the southern reaches of Saudi Arabia. He travelled with small groups of Bedu (Bedouin) on camelback, always barefoot and dressed in Arab clothing. He faced thirst, hunger, cold, the risk of serious accident, arrest by Saudi and Omani authorities, and death at the hands of raiding tribesmen. With no available maps, Thesiger relied completely on the guiding skills of various Bedu whom he hired. He had no radio, no global positioning whatevers, and no chance of a helicopter rescue.

ARABIAN SANDS tells the story of Thesiger's travels in the Arabian deserts in the years 1945-1950, before Big Oil changed the lives of everybody there. An interesting pair of books to read to get an idea of the old world and how it changed would be this one plus Abdelrahman Munif's novel "Cities of Salt". Thesiger hated modernization and cities and would have preferred that the Bedu remain in their poverty, but in a state of desert purity. I feel that he romanticized the Bedu and the desert environment to an extreme because of his own character. Nevertheless his descriptions of Bedu life, their culture, and behavior are fascinating, as are many of the events that took place over the course of his long travels. If you are at all interested in that part of the world or in adventurous travels before the world became entrapped in visas and metal detectors, you must read this one !