... at times they are good and quiet company, the dead; they will not interrupt your musings, but when they speak, whether they be Jews or Turks or heathens, they will speak in a tongue all can understand. there are even countries where the moving, breathing people are less intelligible, dwell in a world further apart form you, than that silent population under the earth.
Gertrude Bell (2014). “Persian Pictures: From the Mountains to the Sea”, p.147, I.B.Tauris
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