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.

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.

In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.

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

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

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.

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.