Oman

I explored Oman for 7 years, from 2004 till 2011. I was editor of Oman Today, the premier adventure magazine in the country. It was started in 1980, the year I was born, and shut down with my departure. Muscat, the capital, was base camp, while I drove up to 1,000km a month, looking for stories that I would write and shoot. My work took me across Oman's mountains, deserts, coast and inner city streets. I met its Bedouin, mountain tribes, expatriates, film stars, prostitutes and secret service. Much of my work was rubbish, having been filtered through an unbearable combination of local press standards, government control, lack of competition and my own inexperience. I have scraped bits of it together, here, and junked the rest.



Legends of the Bedouin

We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time./ Through the unknown, unremembered gate/ When the last of earth left to discover/ Is that which was the beginning;/ At the source of the longest river/ The voice of the hidden waterfall/ And the children in the apple-tree/ Not known, because not looked for/ But heard, half-heard, in the stillness/ Between two waves of the sea./ Quick now, here, now, always—/ A condition of complete simplicity/ (Costing not less than everything)/ And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ When the tongues of flame are in-folded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one.
T S Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets

Mountain Tracks and Tribes

You can fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomise it, pulverise it and wipe it clean of life. But if you decide to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilisation you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.
T R Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

Secrets of Muscat

Look how wonderfully the peasants tell a story. Everything is simple. Few words, but much feeling. True wisdom needs few words — like 'God have mercy.'
Lev Tolstoy

The Way We Live Now

I went to southern Arabia only just in time. Others will go there to study geology and archaeology... even to study the Arabs themselves, but they will move about in cars and will keep in touch with the outside world by wireless. They will bring back results far more interesting than mine, but they will never know the spirit of the land nor the greatness of the Arabs
Wilfred Thesiger

The Frontier Coasts

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, / And the silence of the city when it pauses, / And the silence of a man and a maid, / And the silence for which music alone finds the word, / And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin, / And the silence of the sick / When their eyes roam about the room.
Edgar Lee Masters, Silence

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