In fact the speaker had been describing some species of wildfowl

Once I told Thesiger of a cocktail party in London where in a momentary dead silence a voice went on loudly with the last words of a sentence "... and only copulate at two O'Clock in the morning, in running water." "Ah," said Thesiger, "Sabians"; but in fact the speaker had been describing some species of wildfowl.

G. Maxwell, A reed shaken by the wind (1957), 191

When I heard old men round the fire telling legendary tales of courage and generosity, it was ... of tattered herdsmen in the deserts of Arabia

Alexander too had passed this way, and in Central Asia the magic of his name still lingers in the mountain valleys where men swear they are descended from his soldiers. In Iraq, however, he was forgotten. When I heard old men round the fire telling legendary tales of courage and generosity, it was never of two-horned Alexander that they spoke, nor of Caliphs who had ruled in splendour in Baghdad, but of tattered herdsmen in the deserts of Arabia.

W. Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs (1964), 97

As people are more important to me than places I decided to return to the Arabs

Besides, being fond of Arabs, it was probable that I could never really like Kurds, Although the landscape appealed to me the people did not. Admittedly I was hampered by not speaking their language, but even had I done so I felt I should still have not liked them. As people are more important to me than places I decided to return to the Arabs.

W. Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs (1964), 20-21

This is the kind of brutal introduction that I don't think you could publish anymore.

Subsisting on a handful of dates and occasional sip of camel's piss

The sort of man who will happily walk barefoot for months across a waterless desert, subsisting on a handful of dates and occasional sip of camel's piss, but when back of civilisation, cannot endure the most trivial discomfort. He becomes frantic even if his egg isn't boiled right for breakfast.

John Verney, cited in A. Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger (2007), 139

I thought it sounded a deadly, deadly dull country to live in

In his seventies he said: 'I imagined that England was like India. I was very disappointed when my father told me that, in England, there were none of the animals or birds I knew. No hyenas, no oryx, no kites. I thought it sounded a deadly, deadly dull country to live in.'

A. Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger (2007), 51