A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen

I was thrilled when my book club chose this one, as it had been on my list since I read a biography of the fascinating Ms. Stark years ago. Ms. Stark was one of the first Europeans to travel through southern Arabia, exploring, conducting archaeological and anthropological surveys, and writing extensively for publication, and for the Royal Geographical Society. I didn't love the book as I had hoped I would -- bits of it were rather tedious, but her detailed descriptions of the land, the people, and their customs was an intimate look at a place so unfamiliar it could have been another planet. Ms. Stark writes with obvious affection and respect for Arabs and especially for the many and surprisingly diverse Bedouin tribes she encounters show more throughout her travels. She speaks their languages, she understands their customs, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the pre-Islamic and ancient writing and artifacts scattered throughout this desolate terrain. That she freely travels there are all is remarkable for any time, but as a woman largely on her own in the 1930s, with many villages hostile and inaccessible except by camel or donkey, and with food, water and other resources incredibly scarce, her travels are impressive.

I marked a few passages that I found memorable:
"The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveller finds his level there simply as a human being: the people's directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues; and the pleasantness of being liked for oneself might, I think, be added to the five reasons for travel given to me by Sayyid Abdulla, the watch-maker: 'to leave one's troubles behind one; to earn a living; to acquire learning; to practice good manners; and to meet honorable men.'"

On nomads:
"There are, I sometimes think, only two sorts of people in this world -- the settled, and the nomad -- and there is a natural antipathy between them, whatever the land to which they belong. Perhaps this is because we are comparatively recently barbarians, because the stone age lingered longer among us than along the Mediterranean coasts that the English have remained so frequently nomadic at heart. It is the more imaginative attitude in an transitory world, where a man who tries to feel settled must appear to the eyes of eternity very like someone pretending to sit in comfort on an ant-hill. And the nomads are without doubt the more amusing. With a mind receptive to the unexpected they acquire a Social Sense. The roughest bedu has it, and it is this that so happily distinguishes him from a peasant like Ahmed or even from a Banker, people who walk through landscapes with their heads down, thinking out sums. The nomad, moving from place to place in mind as well as body, is ready to take an interest in any odd thing that meets him; this makes him pleasant and I am inclined -- especially after last winter -- to think it is better to be pleasant than be virtuous, if the two must be looked upon as mutually exclusive."

On a stealthy night-time caravan through unstable and dangerous territory:
"The caravan was gathered already when we joined it at two o'clock, waiting dimly under a moon that scudded through pale clouds. We were supposed to be quiet and show no lights, for the country of Al Dhiyaib lay close at hand, but there is something beyond mere human unobtrusiveness in the silence of a camel caravan with its soft padded feet in the night. Among the waiting shadows Nasir came up to ask me how I felt, and bent to take a drink of milk from my naga (she camel) whose foal ran loose beside her, in and out among the head-ropes like a dog. The Old Wolf had started; word was passed from one to another; the caravan like a snake uncoiling shook out its silhouette against the moonlit sand, and every camel-man tied his rope to the tail of the animal before him, like one of those long lines of fishing boats you see ploughing up the straits of Euboea into the early dawn." show less

Excellent vignettes of the Hadhramaut and its people. Stark was very candid and wrote snarky caricatures of her British/non-middle eastern travelling companions. She was very respectful of local culture and of the people, however.
Some of Stark's narrative is a bit hard to follow in the sense of logistics and her apparent acceptance by the native people. Perhaps it was different 'in those days'? Or perhaps her perceptions were skewed by her own objectives. Nonetheless, she was so intrepid and it was admirable how well Stark managed in such a non-European and very isolated circumstance. I enjoyed the travelogue but realize that the book may be unlikely to be a widely-appealing narrative.

I found this book hard to begin and then did not want it to end. Freya's philosophical ending is brilliant - I just wish I could remember it.