“These [RAF] airmen were my fellow countrymen, and I was proud to be of their race.  I knew the essential decency which was the bedrock 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 their equal.  But the things that interested them bored me. They belonged to an age of machines; they were fascinated by cars and aeroplanes, and found their relaxation in the cinema and the wireless.  I knew that I stood apart from them and would never find contentment among them, whereas I could find it among the Bedu, although I should never be one of them.”

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p.168.

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Wilfred Thesiger 55
British explorer 1910–2003

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