French Foreign Legion Commandant: Men come here to accept the hardships of the desert and the wasteland. To be without food, without water, and to laugh at it all. Ha, ha, ha…
-Beau Hunks (1931), starring Laurel and Hardy, made seven years before Beau Geste with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland from the same novel
What would KhairAllah have made of Ollie and Stanley in the desert? What did he make of Luwees and Daoud? Yes there was plenty of laughter around the night fires, but not because we went without aseeda and shai. The drovers laughed, incredulously, because Luwees and Daoud chose to ride on the Darb not out of necessity like themselves but rather in search of Adventure, Mughaamara, a word I now understand why is related to the meaning that Lane gives for Mughaamir, One Who Throws Himself into Difficulties, Troubles, or Distresses, and Makes Others To Do So.