Our friends the Bedu

The legendary desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger describes his experience of Bedouin culture in this wonderful quote from his book Arabian Sands. This is still the case today in South Sinai, where our Bedouin friends remain true to their tribal lore and continue to welcome us with their incredible hospitality:

“I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying ‘Enough! Enough!’, had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them”

04.02.2015