It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi.
-Joan Didion
The drovers thought it remarkable but not admirable that I was making my second trip on the Darb. The first could be forgiven as the mistake I had made in ignorance, but to ride a second time, knowing full well…? Jāhil, Ignorant, which gives the concept of Al-Jāhiliyya, Time of Ignorance, and more pertinent to my case, Majhal, as Lane gives, A Desert in Which There are No Signs of the Way, or, A Habit that Induces a Man to Believe Something to be Different from What It Is.