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For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

Tahir Shah

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Tahir Shah
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 16
Author
Comedian
Explorer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
History
Hunts
Ends
Layers
Search
Treasure
Amazing
Travel
Damascus
Beginning
Slice
Journey
Hunt

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Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
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To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.
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The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.
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In India everything has a use and a value.
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The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.
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The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
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The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.
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It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
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In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
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Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.
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Foras Road has a sordid reputation (…) Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution.
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There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.
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There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.
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In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
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Real travel is not about the highlights with which you dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart.
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Stories are not like the real world they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
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I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.
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There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
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One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
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I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.
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