The view of the Arab as a hospitable, honest, wild yet noble camel herder living the simple unfettered life in his black tent has been nurtured so strongly in our own culture that the myth has continued to outshine the reality. Michael Asher first encountered the reality of the Bedu during his work as a teacher in Saudi Arabia - they bore little resemblance to the myth of the noble camel herder of popular Western legend. This book is his search for the Bedu of the past and his description of the Bedu of the present throughout the whole of the Arab world.