Note
I started reading TE Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and I identified with the opening paragraph. I'm not sure how much of an authority he is on Arab culture, but the dude used to sport a howlie, so he must know something.
"Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all of our strength, a hope so transcendant that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare."
I come back with all these fantastic, otherworldly tales of oppressive heat and constant sun, sand everywhere and in everything, spiky trees, houses made of mud that melt in the rain, black people, terrible food*, four hour siestas, being marrooned by my government in the shael with one other guy, huge families, isolation, desolation. It sounds like complaining, but it's not that exactly. It's a completely foriegn culture and an extreme environment, but so far I have enjoyed being there.
I leave tomorrow morning to head back to Mauritania.
* Ok, so I really am complaining about the food. I think it's really gross, and I can't imagine how it could be at all nutritious.
"Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all of our strength, a hope so transcendant that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare."
I come back with all these fantastic, otherworldly tales of oppressive heat and constant sun, sand everywhere and in everything, spiky trees, houses made of mud that melt in the rain, black people, terrible food*, four hour siestas, being marrooned by my government in the shael with one other guy, huge families, isolation, desolation. It sounds like complaining, but it's not that exactly. It's a completely foriegn culture and an extreme environment, but so far I have enjoyed being there.
I leave tomorrow morning to head back to Mauritania.
* Ok, so I really am complaining about the food. I think it's really gross, and I can't imagine how it could be at all nutritious.