Table Of Content--------The---------
natives are
restless
by
iDtZtES SH A H
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In airports, in hotels and on beaches, an
Englishman stands out by reason of his dress,
his bearing, his speech and his immunity to
ridicule. As far as he is concerned, what an
Englishman does is right, and to hell with
everyone else.
JOHN RUSSELL
Portrait of the British:
New York Times Magazine, March 9, 1986
OTHER BOOKS BY IDRIES SHAH
Literature
The Hundred Tales of Wisdom
A Perfumed Scorpion
Caravan of Dreams
Wisdom of the Idiots
The Magic Monastery
World Tales
The Dermis Probe
Novel
Kara Kush
Informal Beliefs
Oriental Magic
The Secret Lore of Magic
Humour
The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin
The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin
Special Illumination
Travel
Destination Mecca
Human Thought
Learning how to Learn
The Elephant in the Dark
Thinkers of the East
Reflections
A Veiled Gazelle
Seeker After Truth
Sufi Studies
The Sufis
The Way of the Sufi
Tales of the Dervishes
The Book of the Book
Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study
Studies of the English
Darkest England
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Adventures among the English
- and Others . . .
--------- The----------
natives are
b y
tD tltE S S H A H
THE OCTAGON PRESS
LONDON
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Copyright © 1988 by Idries Shah
All rights reserved
Copyright throughout the world
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical or photographic, by recording or any
information storage or retrieval system or method now
known or to be invented or adapted, without prior
permission obtained in writing from the publishers, The
Octagon Press Limited, except by a reviewer quoting brief
passages in a review written for inclusion in a journal,
magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Requests for permission to reprint, reproduce, etc., to:
Permissions Department, The Octagon Press Ltd.,
P.O. Box 227, London N6 4EW, England
Photoset and printed by
Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
ISBN 0 863040 44 6
Published 1988
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Contents
1 See Worri Mean? 9
2 Up-Country 18
3 The Natives are Restless 29
4 It’s Those Damned Drums Again, Isa 35
5 Sloonjin Summf 45
6 Bringing an Afghan 50
7 I Never Give Them 56
8 Awfully Near Tibet 62
9 Jungle of the Holy Yahya 68
10 Dave 74
11 On the Telly 81
12 Going to a Mortimer 86
13 Mr Verloren Hoop 91
14 Ark Not Found as Recluse Leaves Thousands 100
15 Istabrandt 109
16 Treasure Beyond Belief 118
17 The Mortgaged Castle 123
18 Sammy’s Place 133
19 The Dove of Peace 142
20 How to Become an Imperial Presence 150
21 My Stubborn Insensitivity 156
22 Detrigent 164
23 Oil-Rich Prince and Man from Grim Fastness 172
24 Not Perfidious, but Lucky 178
25 Disinformation 184
26 The Mysterious Quaker 2QQ
27 Foxas Habbath Holu 206
28 Confidence Trick 215
7
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RESTLESS
Foster’s sweat-bathed face was agonised. ‘It’s those damned
drums, Carruthcrs’, he panted, weakly. He slumped back on the
makeshift brushwood bed.
‘Steady on, old chap.’ The Commissioner suppressed a shud
der as the compelling, primitive rhythm thudded in his brain.
‘You know our mission. Headquarters sent us to help these
people, no matter what it costs.’
He put the water-bottle to the trembling man’s lips. ‘Drink
this, old fellow. Remember, the natives think that they own this
jungle - them and the spirits.’
The drums continued their hellish pounding. The natives
were restless all right. What would tomorrow bring?
Empire’s Eve by John Stout
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1
See Worn Mean?
Character
A character is only an entire character when
its elements disagree, when it contradicts its
expected behaviour . . . that is the essence of
success of the English ... A character always
in character is no character at all.
Han Suyin: The Four Faces
I had been away from England for some months, and much of its
image seemed to have faded, even to the extent that I was
wondering whether some of my experiences there had really
happened.
The little grey man in the crumpled suit, sitting next to me in
the aircraft, soon put an end to all that.
‘If the River Thames’, he was saying, as the jumbo circled
London, ‘hadn’t been there, they could have made London
much bigger.’
‘But’, I said, ‘I thought that London only came into being
because of the river. Capital cities do: centre of trade and
transport routes, defensive line, and so on.’
He looked at me blankly; or, rather, with that English look
which I knew so well, and which meant that I hadn’t a chance.
But 1 don’t give up so easily. I tried again. ‘Berlin on the Spree,
Paris on the Seine, Cairo on the Nile, you know the idea.’
‘Oh, that old thing!’ He used the dismissive phrase which
marked him as an academic, and laughed, giving the short bark
of scholarly insouciance. I automatically read the clues, knew
what was coming now, and mimed the words of the next two
9
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10 The Natives are Restless
sentences as he spoke them. ‘Is that old theory still about?
Disposed of it myself, years ago. Paper before the Geopsycho-
logical Society, back in ’53.’
Luckily my confusion was covered by the bump of our land
ing. The Professor was impressed by the pilot’s skill, and
thought that the other passengers’ applause arose from a similar
cause. He had missed the irony, having only boarded the airliner
at Frankfurt. All the way from South-East Asia we had had
terrible moments whenever the kite took off or landed: shud-
derings, thumps, grinding noises. The economy-class passen
gers had even been issued with free glasses of Nigerian Riesling.
And our morale had not been raised by the pilot’s voice from the
public-address system. ‘This is your captain speaking. We shall
be taking off momentarily, and the next point we hit will be the
coast of . . .’ English is a tricky language if you don’t keep your
wits about you.
Still, we were now in good old England once again. The
Professor took my hand in his clammy one and pressed a card on
me. It read, ‘Professor Emeritus Xylophone Jaberish, M.A.,
PhD, FIGS: Founder-President, International Geopsychologi-
cal Society, London.’
I soon found that I was neither geographically nor psychologi
cally prepared for England; too much had taken place in my life
since I last saw it.
A man in overalls caught my arm and said, first in English and
then in Urdu, ‘Get moving, don’t block the gangway.’
That was more like it: recognition of my existence by the
terrestrial element. I made my way, pushed by eager tourists,
marching stolidly behind the skein of travellers, eventually to
arrive at a desk.
Everyone was standing docilely in line. They did not relish my
placing myself at the head of the queue: a habit I’d picked up
abroad, where Devil-take-the-hindmost is more current, and I
made my way to more congenial company at the back, amid
cries of ‘Cheek!’ and ‘I don’t know what things are coming to, do
you?’ invariably addressed by someone to someone else who did
not know what things were coming to, either.
I was wearing a large pair of aviator-style dark glasses and a
wide-brimmed hat as I shuffled up to the official and offered my
passport. He immediately asked me to remove them. Before I’d
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