A Nomad by Choice

Wilfred Patrick Thesiger was a man I admire, because not only he reinforces my thoughts that freedom is found in empty deserts, I could see myself as a shadow walking word onto next word underneath his lines in one of his travel memoirs ‘Arabian Sands’. Amongst many unbeatable moments in this book; the penultimate para (in verbatim below, since, is easy to locate), knuckled a soft blow on my balls.

After a long trip in timeless waterless deserts for nothing material, it is the final goodbye time with his tribal friends cum guides in one of the British barracks:

On the last evening, as bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha were tying up the few things they had bought, Codrai said, looking at the two small bundles, ‘It is rather pathetic that this is all they have.’ I understood what he meant; I had often felt the same. Yet I knew that for them the danger lay, not in the hardship of their lives, but in the boredom and frustration they would feel when they renounced it. The tragedy was that the choice would not be theirs; economic forces beyond their control would eventually drive them into the towns to hang about street-corners as ‘unskilled labour’.