PREFACE
IT seems to me there are two ways, generally speaking, to prepare a book, take a trip, or, for that matter, to live a life. One
may go at it dilettante fashion, as a tourist—nibbling at experience, titillating the emotions yet emotionally starved,
stimulating oneself with ambition yet forever tortured by
frustration. Circumstances and temperament, however, may
conspire together so that, with the freedom of a nomad, one
can escape the straightjacket of everyday boredom, hurdle
fences of space and time, and consume life at its sources. Properly directed, such an earthly life may give wing to one's
imagination, clarity to one's thinking, strength to one's convictions, and even bring one nearer to the simple, eternal truths of
God and spirit.
This book, I feel, belongs in the second category—the category of the primitive.
I left my country quite as uninformed, I am afraid, as are
most Americans with respect to other peoples and other shores.
But everywhere I went I sought to touch reality—always
honestly, and always at first hand. Everywhere I clung close to
the smells, the flora and fauna of native existence. In that
spirit I have written of the Arabs among whom I lived. I found
much good and much evil—evil acquired through a feudal
order that, in my opinion, remains the Arab's greatest enemy
and his greatest barrier to emergence from the dark ages. I am
grateful for Arab hospitality and the kindness I was shown, but
a reporter, like a physician, must not remain blind to the ills
plaguing his subject.
With no desire to attribute to myself or my writings any