The Sheltering Sky

Kit and Tunner make their way to Boussif more slowly on the train. They proceed to drink champagne—Tunner has brought half a dozen bottles—and become fairly intoxicated. Kit begins to get nervous as Tunner tries to move closer to her. She abruptly decides to leave their compartment, shrugging off Tunner’s offer to go with her. She ends up in the train car with the “fourth-class passengers, all native Berbers and Arabs” (80). She becomes anxious, worried that the “Moslem” men might smell the alcohol on her breath and be offended, not to mention that she feels overwhelmed and threatened by the “babble of voices” that she cannot understand. As the train comes to a platform, she jumps off into the rain to escape a horribly disfigured man and the chaos of the native car. She runs back to her car and jumps back onto the train before it pulls on to the next stop.

When Tunner sees her, he is aghast: She is drenched and panicked. He makes her undress while he waits outside their compartment, then rubs her cold feet with alcohol. He pulls her close and kisses her. All she can think is that she is no longer afraid.