Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.

The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.

There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

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

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