Aoyama Cemetery, Tokyo, March 2013

‘I am not enjoying myself very much.’

Winston Churchill, Cromer, 1885

“What is this? A curfew?” “No, it’s just autumn, the time of year,” Irimiás noted sadly: “People sit by their stoves and don’t get up till spring. They spend hours by the window until it grows dark. They eat, they drink, they cling to each other in bed under the eiderdown. There are moments when they feel everything is going wrong for them, so they give their kids a good beating or kick the cat, and in this way they get by a while longer. That’s how it goes, you idiot.”

Quietly, continually, the rain fell and the inconsolable wind that died then was forever resurrected ruffled the still surfaces of puddles so lightly it failed to disturb the delicate dead skin that had covered them during the night so that instead of recovering the previous day’s tired glitter they increasingly and remorselessly absorbed the light that swam slowly out of the east.

Satantango, by László Krasznahorkai, translated by George Szirtes

Saturday afternoon in the old port of Batavia.

Taj Mahal, September 2012

After we had finished our coffee, I retired to the edge of my bed and attended to what little toilet I could while the beduin squatted in the smoke of the fire. Sa’id II sprawled in a corner, playing with his cartridge belt, loose over his hips. It had a purse in front with nothing inside it but matches and an address ; in its first cartridge compartment it held, instead of a cartridge, a little pot of kohl to decorate his eyes.

Presently he pulled out his dagger and began to breathe on it, turning to the company with a delighted smile when the steam disappeared off its shiny surface. He caught sight of me as I spread face cream over my face. He handed the dagger to little Muhammad and told him to ask me for a little of that duhn to grease it with.

Rather regretfully–for it was very precious–I put a lump on the blade, and wondered what Miss Lethbridge in Bond Street would think if she could see. Muhammad carried it gingerly into the firelight, where it was greeted with exclamations of joy.

“ Yasmin,” said Sa’id II, smelling it. All the daggers were handed up to him for a share ; a little was left over, and this he spread over his legs, remarking that it was “ better than oil.”

Freya Stark
The Southern Gates of Arabia

When the evening came, and the sweet shrill cry of the kites, that fills the daylight, stopped, ‘Awiz appeared with three paraffin lanterns, which he dotted about the floor in various places, and, having given me my supper, departed to his home. The compound with its dim walls, its squares of moist earth planted with vegetables and few trees, grew infinite and lovely under the silence of the moon.

The gate of the city was closed now ; a dim glow showed where the sentries beguiled their watch with a hookah in the guard house ; at more or less hourly intervals they struck a gong suspended between poles, and so proclaimed the hour. And when I felt tired, I would withdraw from my verandah, collect and blow out the superfluous lanterns, and retire to my room. None of the doors shut easily, so I did not bother to lock them ; I had refused the offer of a guard to sleep at my threshold, the precaution was so obviously unnecessary.

As I closed my eyes in this security and silence, I thought of the Arabian coasts stretching on either hand :–three hundred miles to Aden ; how many hundred to Muscat in the other direction ? the Indian Ocean in front of me, the inland deserts behind : within these titanic barriers I was the only European at that moment.

A dim little feeling came curling up through my sleepy senses ; I wondered for a second what it might be before I recognised it : it was Happiness, pure and immaterial ; independent of affections and emotions, the aetherial essence of happiness, a delight so rare and so impersonal that it seems scarcely terrestrial when it comes.

Freya Stark
The Southern Gates of Arabia

The camel is an ugly animal, but, like some plain women, has lovely eyes, brown and soft with long lashes–often the only gentle things to look at in its sun-hardened world : but this one beauty is little noticed, for–though the adored is often compared to a gazelle–who has ever heard anyone say of her that she has eyes like a camel?

Freya Stark
The Southern Gates of Arabia

The cook was an Indian, engaged by the hospitable al-Kafs to make British travellers feel at home with their own familiar dishes : he had been brought to Tarim with the news of my coming, and I realised what a responsibility we undertook when, together with our Empire, we allowed things like anchovy sauce and tapioca puddings to run uncontrolled over the continents of the world. If Dupleix had triumphed and Clive had failed, one might be eating delicious omlettes in Africa and Asia to-day. And if missionaries allowed more goodness to overflow from prayers into cookery classes, it might, in the long run, be better for the salvation of the average man, who, as any wife can tell, is frequently inclined to sin by indigestion and very rarely rescued from it by piety.

Freya Stark
The Southern Gates of Arabia

There is a cheerful quality in the neat brisk sound of trotting donkey feet on hard ground. And it is pleasant too, to sit on a donkey pack, when you know how to do it, without rigidity, meeting the jolts and caprices of your companion with an elastic temper and a capacity for balance, riding, in fact, as one rides through life, with a calm eye for accidents and a taste for enjoyment in the meantime.

My own donkey was called Suwaidi and was a stalwart little animal with hairy ears and a thick neck and grey like a dappled sky. When I asked his name, they told me he had none, he was just donkey–“ himar. ” “ That is impossible, ” said I. “ He must have a name, or how can you tell him from the other himars ? ”

Whereupon the small Muhammad, loping along with a stick beside me, gave me one of his smiles and told me the name, which his elders had evidently considered beneath my notice.

Freya Stark
The Southern Gates of Arabia