“They were a melancholy people, those Iranians. Their melancholy was reflected even in the Iranian landscape — in the endless stretches of fallow land, the lonely mountain paths and highways, the widely scattered villages of mud houses, the flocks of sheep which were driven in the evening in grey-brown waves to the well. In the cities life dripped in slow, incessant drops, without industry or gaiety; everything seemed to be shrouded in dreamy veils, and each face had a look of indolent waiting…A terror of sadness, but of a willingly, almost greedily accepted sadness, seemed to lie over these people.” - Muhammad Asad, The Road to Mecca (via touba)
See original: "They were a melancholy people, those Iranians. Their melancholy was reflected even in the Iranian..."
