After black spots on dun-coloured spiky-looking fur flashed past me, the hyena stopped in the vegetation bordering the track I was running along.

Above the factories stood "slender chimneys, rising above black or dun-coloured masses of machinery, vomiting out smoke, white vaporous steam issuing from the boilers beneath".

Across the far northern Afghan plain, a hot wind blows the dun-coloured dust into blinding clouds, and the women's burkas into blue billows.