If I hadn’t served long in Afghanistan, and learned the speech and ways of the Central Asian tribes, I suppose I’d have imagined that I was in a cell with a couple of madmen. But I knew this trick that they have of reviling those they respect most, in banter, of their love of irony and formal imagery, which is strong in Pushtu and even stronger in Persian, the loveliest of all languages.
Flashman at the Charge, p.221, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, 
Flashman quotes,
Pushtu, 
Persian.
