Czech orientalist
Alois Musil photograph
The West knows nothing of the true Oriental. It
pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness and luxury and gorgeous dreams.
But it is all wrong. The Kâf he yearns for is an austere thing. It is the
austerity of the East that is its beauty and its terror … It always wants the
same things at the back of its head. The Turk and the Arab came out of big
spaces, and they have the desire of them in their bones. They settle down and
stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their
ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great
simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual
and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and
get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty
desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them—these, and the hot,
strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay … it isn’t
inhuman. It’s the humanity of one part of the human race. […] There are times
when it grips me so hard that I’m inclined to forswear the gods of my fathers!
BERTRAM THOMAS ARABIA
FELIX
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