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It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

Tahir Shah

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Tahir Shah
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 16
Author
Comedian
Explorer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
East
Importance
Impossible
Middle
Overemphasize
Almost
Ancestry
Africa
North
Held

More quotes by Tahir Shah

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During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.
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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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Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
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I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
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In India everything has a use and a value.
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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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I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
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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 inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.
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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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Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
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Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.
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Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.
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For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
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My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
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The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.
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These days no one challenges us,' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.
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Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
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Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
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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.
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