The “spareness of the desert” – Count Almasy, Peter Fleming, T.E Lawrence

“Here [in the desert] nuance took you a hundred miles”

Count Almasy, the villain and hero in Michael Ondjaate’s “The English Patient”, writes of the “spareness of the desert”, where repetition (of words) was equal to flinging away precious water.

Peter Fleming wrote the same thing in his book “News from Tartary”, of the softness of the “oasis peoples” who dwelt in the oases on the fringes of the Takla Makan desert in the 1930’s. T.E Lawrence (admittedly in the film – I do not recall him writing this in “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”) said that England was a “fat country”.

And he was right, and even more so today. We are a fat people, a soft people. And I am a soft man at heart.