Eaters of the Dead

by Michael Crichton

Many times at night it rained, and we sought shelter beneath large trees, yet we arose drenched, and our sleeping skins drenched likewise. The Northmen did not grumble at this, for they are cheerful at all times; I alone grumbled, and mightily. They paid me no attention. Finally I said to Herger, “The rain is cold.” To this he laughed. “How can the rain be cold?” he said. “You are cold and you are unhappy. The rain is not cold or unhappy.” I saw that he believed this foolishness, and truly thought me foolish to think otherwise, and yet I did.

“No man is so good as to be free from all evil, nor so bad as to be worth nothing.

Yet I have discovered that if all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief, and so it was with me.

First, that the peoples of a particular land believe their customs to be fitting and proper and better than any other. Second, that any stranger, a man or also a woman, is accounted inferior in all ways save in the matter of generation.

“That is because you think upon what is to come, and imagine fearsome things that would stop the blood of any man. Do not think ahead, and be cheerful by knowing that no man lives forever.”

There is a Sufi story about a man who asked a sage: “Suppose I am traveling in the countryside and must make ablutions in the stream. Which direction do I face while performing the ritual?” To this the sage replies: “In the direction of your clothes, so they won’t be stolen.”