The sheikh was very interested in the fact that I was keeping a diary and one evening, when Adam and his wife were visiting and could translate, he asked me if he could take it to look at overnight. I said, “Of course.” since I thought it was only fair that, as my “spiritual guide” he should see my inmost thoughts as I recorded them and also take a look at the other interesting stuff; tickets, receipts and things, I had collected during my trip and pasted into my diary.
The next day he thanked me for allowing him to look over the diary but asked me why I had a couple of “pin-up” girl photos from a magazine pasted in the book. I said it was because I liked to look at beautiful women and he warned me against that kind of thing. He used one of his only English words to describe their effect on a viewer: “Fire!” he said. I guess he meant that viewing such stuff could only make one burn with desire or burn in hell, perhaps-- so I tore the offending pages from the diary, threw them away and he was satisfied..
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