ABSTRACT
WRITING of the events between Novenlber 1936 and April 1938, when I went on leave, has given me the feeling of living them all over again, and the speed at which I have written brings back the speed at which I lived them. As I look back I seeln to have been continually 011 the move, on ship or boat, on camel or donkey, in an aeroplane or in a car-once even in a palanquin. Weary of mind and body, footsore, never getting away from eternal politics, dashing to stop one trouble, with another starting. On the road I would be stopped constantly with requests to settle disputes over a camel, a goat or a piece of land. In houses where I stayed the same would happen though the disputes were usually more serious. Never being off duty, night or day, sleeping hard and eating anything, I acquired when travelling a power of more or less immobilising my body, so that I grew unaware of it though my thoughts were seldom at rest. Some sort of discipline like this was essential if one was to endure the hot endless journeys up and down the wadis and the Al Kaf road. These journeys were rarely uneventful. Accidents usually happened on the long dry stretch between Heru and Tarim: once it was two burst tyres and a cut head as I was flung against the roof: once it was only six punctures: and once when Sir Bernard came up the road some of the cars broke down and the occupants were reduced to drinking radiator water. On New Year's Eve my car dried up at eleven-fifteen at night, twenty-three miles from Tarim. I walked it thinking that most people I knew had probably chosen more pleasant ways of welcoming the New Year, though D. was having a seasick passage in a dhow to Aden. Every now and then I lay down exhausted on the roadside and slept till the cold drove me on. I got to Tarim at eight-fifteen in the morning; and now whenever I get to the top of the aqaba and the first sight ofthe city I remember the quotation: "Tarim
and then thou desirest no more." Often D. came with me, but often she was tied to the office at Mukalla. She, too, had a fair share of mishaps. Once she and Zahra, of whom more later, made a-forced landing in an aeroplane between Aden and Mukalla. I got her message by a fisherman at four in the afternoon, having waited hours for her on the landing-ground, and by means ofcar and donkey reached the party at 2 a.nl. on a barren piece of coast where they were sleeping under the wings of the machine. We returned in the morning to Mukalla by a small fishing-boat.
