The English Patient

After Herodotus’s time, the Western world had little interest in the desert until the 20th century. Starting in the 1920s, the Royal Geographical Society, based in London, began privately funding desert expeditions and lectures given by “sunburned, exhausted men” (133). These lectures, which happened twice per month, never covered the costs—human or financial—of the expeditions and only covered geographical observations. By the mid-1930s, an explorer named Ladislaus de Almásy discovered the lost oasis of Zerzura, and in 1939, the last decade of desert exploration ended when Libya became a theater of war.

At the villa, Hana sits next to the English patient’s bed and listens to his stories about the desert. In 1930, he began mapping the Gilf Kebir Plateau as part of his search for the lost city of Zerzura. He refers to himself and his fellow explorers as “desert Europeans” (135). The Gilf Kebir, located 400 miles west of the Nile, was where ancient Egyptians believed the world ended. There is little water in the area, but the explorers heard rumors of fertile lands in the middle of the desert.

In 1931, the English patient took his first journey to the desert, accompanied by an explorer named Madox.