The Sahara

by Eamonn Gearon

  Lambert’s mission is ultimately successful, but not in the way one is led to expect. Displaying great humility-in noticeable contrast to the hubris of Lambert and the French authorities - Bou-Aziz resigns himself to his fate and the fate of his people in the face of the foreigners’ greater scientific knowledge, not to mention military strength, remarking of the French: “To conquer our enemies, we must first increase our obedience to God and to the Prophet. If we do, one day our faith will be so strong that the Christian world will be powerless against it and the infidels will pass forever from this land ... The passage of the French through our country is temporal: it will not last... Everything comes from God.”

  The Day of Creation (1987) by]. G. Ballard is typical of a number of the author’s other works in dealing with the fantastic in a commonplace setting. Dr. Mallory is the protagonist, a man determined to make the Sahara a fertile region, fed by an underground river he believes can be tapped. As he says of his presence in the imaginary zone in which the book is set, “Chance alone, I guessed, had not brought me to this war-locked nation, that lay between the borders of Chad, the Sudan and the Central African Republic in the dead heart of the African continent, a land as close to nowhere as the planet could provide.” His plans for irrigating the desert include “a new game reserve in the Sahara, populated by every living species - except one.” Men would be excluded.

  When a mechanical digger working on the construction of a runway uproots an ancient oak tree, it also breaks the earth and a trickle of water appears. The spring grows into a river, which Mallory sees as his creation in the desert, the fruition of his dream for greening the Sahara, although Mallory’s sanity by this stage is questionable: “I felt as if I had conjured up not just this miniature river that would irrigate the southern edge of the Sahara, but the entire consumer goods economy that would one day smother the landscape in high rises, hypermarkets and massage parlours.” A degree of sanity only returns once the water stops flowing, and the desert reclaims the temporarily wet land. The book concludes quietly with Mallory musing matter-of-factly on the failure of the plans of men with the words, “The desert is closer today.”

  Desert Espionage

  “Percy said, ‘People only go south if they have a purpose. You don’t go into the Sahara to hide. Are they looking for something?”‘

  Len Deighton, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy (1976)

  Espionage fiction was conceived as early as the 1820s; Sherlock Holmes was engaged in military-espionage plots in, for example, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans and The Naval Treaty, but the genre really came of age around the end of the nineteenth century. The fin-de-siecle paranoia that accompanied the period nurtured such amateurs-in-the-service-of the-Crown, defence-of-Empire tales as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901), The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Erskine Childers and Greenmantle (1916) by John Buchan.

  In the last of these, Buchan has First World War German villains fomenting a jihad in the Sahara and the wider Islamic world as far as British India - a plot once again in vogue and worth reading in light of contemporary events. It is not giving away too much to say that, against all odds, our heroes manage to prevent the German menace, saving the lives of countless British subjects in the process. For the British and French during the nineteenth century, if the enemy was not one of the European rival claimants for foreign lands, it was religiously inspired uprisings. In these, the Mahdi was first among equals, a prophetic figure in Islamic theology whose arrival signifies the advent of the end of times.

  At the start of the twentieth century, with the almost complete subjugation of the native populations achieved, the enemy in British tales of espionage was almost exclusively a Prussian agent who lurked behind any number of planned acts of mayhem, which readers would expect to be thwarted by some loyal servant of the British Empire. In the 1930s the villains were jack-booted Nazi thugs, and after the Second World War writers on both sides of the Atlantic turned their attention to Soviet agents and Cold War concerns, foremost of these worries being the prospect of a nuclear war. Since the end of the Cold War, and particularly since 2001, Islamic-inspired terrorists are again at the top of the list of bogeymen.

  Enormously successful in his lifetime, Dennis Wheatley wrote more than seventy novels and was one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century, best known for his multi-million-selling occult novels, notably The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil a Daughter. The Julian Day series of books are more straightforward thrillers, the eponymous hero himself a victim of a plot by an international gang of master-criminals, which shockingly counts a member of the British upper class among its number.

  Christened Julian Fernhurst, our hero is forced to quit a promising career in the Diplomatic Service and to change his name to Day, allowing him some degree of anonymity from social and professional disgrace. Fortunately, having a large inheritance, money is not a problem for Mr. Day, who is thus able to devote his life to wreaking his revenge on those responsible for his downfall, with the unofficial backing of a branch of the British secret service. Deriving great pleasure from his subject, Wheatley spatters his text with mini-lessons in Saharan history, folklore and exploration, covering everything from the required tyre pressure for driving over sand dunes to correct forms of hospitality when encountering a Bedouin caravan.

  In The Quest of Julian Day (1939), Wheatley includes the whole gamut of criminal concerns of the period. The plot involves a conglomerate of foreign agents who are not only involved in espionage against Britain, but also in more straightforward criminality, including drug trafficking and the euphemistically entitled white slave trade. Aside from sex trafficking and every racial stereotype one might expect in a 1930s thriller, the Saharan link is crucial to the story, which starts and finishes with the search for the remains of the army of Cambyses by an eminent British archaeologist who is murdered, and his daughter. She, with grim inevitability, becomes a hostage of the international criminal gang who are also, naturally, searching for the Persian army.

  At the beginning of the second book in the series, The Sword of Fate (1941), Day is again in Egypt. The Second World War has broken out, and Italy is about to join the German side. Day secures work in uniform as an army interpreter, having an acute ear for languages, and is sent to obtain information from Italian prisoners in the Western Desert. Unfortunately he is taken prisoner while on patrol south of Marsa Matruh. From there, the action moves to Fort Capuzzo just over the Egyptian border in Libya, which oscillated between Allied and Axis control several times during the North African campaign because of its strategic location. Day is not long a prisoner, allowing the plot and our hero to travel further afield, away from the Sahara to Europe.

  Most early spy novels and thrillers set in the Sahara were by British authors. But since the Second World War and the Middle East’s increasing importance as a source of American energy, this has changed. Although Americans entered the Sahara in the wake of the Europeans, they were quick to make up for lost time, with businessmen, energy prospectors and diplomats fanning out across the desert. American considerations in Saharan spy stories and thrillers can be divided into books concerned with energy resources, tales concerned with terrorism and stories that deal with both.

  In the Cold War thriller, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy, British author Len Deighton offers readers two heroes for the price of one in a joint Anglo-American mission that takes place in the Sahara. The story has many of the elements one might expect from a Deighton thriller. Although the action allows the two heroes to travel, Bond-like, back and forth across the globe, the action opens and ends in the heart of the Algerian Sahara. The opening is a typically sardonic exchange between the British and American spies and colleagues:

  “Smell that air,” said Major Mann. I sniffed. “I can’t smell anything,” I said. “That’s what I mean,” said Mann. He scratched himself and grinned. “Great, isn’t it?” There’s not much to smell when you are
one thousand miles into the Algerian Sahara; not much to smell, not much to do, not much to eat.

  This portrait of the Sahara, revelling in an appreciation of emptiness, is later developed by the British agent-narrator as he muses, “Men become mesmerised by the desert, just as others become obsessed with the sea; not because of any fondness for sand or water, but because oceans and deserts are the best places to observe the magical effect of ever-changing daylight. Small ridges, flattened by the high sun, become jagged mountains when the sunlight falls across them, and their shadows, pale gold at noontime, become black bottomless pools.”

  Technological advances in the real world did not take long to appear on the pages of spy fiction, but although agents in the Sahara may be issued with much gadgetry to help them in their work, fast cars rarely make an appearance, Saharan roads not generally being fit for fast driving. The 1973 Arab oil boycott sharpened more febrile imaginations, leading to a flurry of energy-related terrorism thrillers, which in various guises continue to the present day. The Arabian Peninsula is the main focus for these novels but they have also enveloped the Sahara.

  The Sahara is not only there to host spies, master criminals and terrorists. On the contrary, many thrillers take as their central premise the naive traveller, unwittingly caught up in an unwelcome adventure. One such story is Rommel’s Gold (1971) by Maggie Davis, which involves an innocent young American woman. Sharon Hoyt is one of a group of young people doing some voluntary work in different parts of Tunisia for The Foundation, an organization similar to, but explicitly not, the Peace Corps. At the same time, rumours surround a former German soldier, the General, and his friends who spend time each year in the Tunisian Sahara. Allegedly searching for a fabled cache of gold that Rommel buried before Hitler summoned him to Berlin, many have their suspicions that this is not the real story.

  Among the more unusual Saharan inspired thrillers is Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), by the pseudonymous Clarence J .L. Jackson. The narrator, Roger Allenby, explains that he is in the Sahara researching a history of camels: “Camels. That was the reason. I was writing a book on the history of camels, and Tamanrasset was in the very heart of Tuareg country, where the finest riding camels in the world are reputed to come from. On the other hand, I could have sat at home and looked at coffee-table books of the colourful Sahara and probably found out as much as I was liable to find out in four days in Tamanrasset.”

  When a man is found dead, kicked by a camel, Allenby becomes a suspect and must try to solve the mystery himself Complications and the apparent lack of motive befuddle and irritate him: “None of it fits together. It’s like having several unrelated crimes squeezed into a short space of time on an absurd little spot in the desert. And besides that, everyone here just happens to have a ridiculous amount of Saharan expertise. It can’t all be coincidence.” Nor is it. Apart from the several plot twists that follow in this delightful, old-fashioned crime thriller, the story also evokes the loneliness of Tamanrasset, the destination for an incongruous group of foreigners.

  Silver Screen Sahara

  ‘“Where would you go if you want to disappear completely and still have some excitement?”

  Beau Geste (1939)

  The Sahara has appealed to filmmakers since the earliest days of cinema. Its appeal lies in its foreignness, limitless space, unending horizons and seas of dunes - all of which are supported by a degree of ignorance. The combination of these factors has led to many spectacular films in which the Sahara has played a leading role, even if never credited as such. Indeed , there are two types of film where the Sahara plays a starring role: first are those about lands far-removed from North Africa but set in the Sahara; and the second are films about the Sahara shot in far-removed lands. One of the most famous examples of the former is Star Wars (1977), where the dramatic troglodyte dwellings of Matmata in the Tunisian Sahara stand in for Luke Skywalker’s childhood home on the planet Tatooine, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” This is not to be confused with the genuine Tunisian town of Tatouine, even though the director George Lucas did use the name for his imaginary planet. The place’s isolation is one important reason young Skywalker is keen to leave home and seek adventure.

  In contrast, many great films with supposedly Saharan settings never see a member of the cast or crew going further than the American West or West London. Usually the high cost involved in shooting in foreign countries, the often stultifying bureaucracy of many Saharan nations and the frequent lack of suitable infrastructure make many directors reluctant to work on location.

  The first major picture set in the Sahara was a silent film named Sahara and directed by C. Gardner Sullivan. One of the most prolific and accomplished early filmmakers, Sullivan was also responsible for the classic 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front. Sahara is a tragedy about love and betrayal in which a Parisian beauty marries an American engineer who goes to work in the desert with his wife and child. Unhappy with her life in the desert, his wife abandons the family and runs away to Cairo to live with a wealthy playboy. Years later, and still dissatisfied, the wife comes across her now blind, drug-addicted husband begging in the streets of Cairo with their child. The family are reunited and return to the desert and, surprisingly under the circumstances, live happily ever after. On its release in 1919, the New York Times described Sahara as “Desert sand and wind storms, picturesque Arabs, dashing horses, camels, beggars, turbans, flowing robes, bloomers and streets with the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights” - without mentioning the fact that it was filmed entirely in America.

  Likewise, when directing The Desert Song (1929) Roy Del Ruth decided a journey to North Africa was unnecessary to capture the desert on film. As the promotional material says, “From out of the desert wastes of Morocco appeared a sinister figure. Men whispered his name-’Red Shadow!’” (And whispered it with an exclamation mark, no less!) The title song talks of “a desert breeze whispering a lullaby,” as it happens a Californian rather than a Saharan breeze, the film’s exteriors being shot on the Buttercup Dunes, a location which sounds as contrived as the film looks. Based on an earlier Broadway operetta, the film was promoted as containing “Romance, Adventure, Spectacle, Comedy, [which] Have been woven into one magnificent production - that will cause you to gasp - and agree that you’ve never seen anything like it.” Starring John Boles as the Red Shadow, and Carlotta King as the love interest, Boles plays a handsome bandit leader whose domain is beyond the control of the authorities in French-occupied Morocco. The Red Shadow is, we are told, “Beloved by the Riffs whom he commanded - feared by the French - a mystery as deep as the desert silence.”

  Although it was the first colour film released by Warner Brothers, only a black and white print survives. Dated, it nonetheless remains important as Warner Brothers’ first all-talking, all-singing operetta that was, according to their publicity, “the greatest achievement of the modern motion picture”. However grand this claim, the subject matter demonstrates the early allure of the Sahara for filmmakers.

  Romance in the Sahara was also central to the plot of The Garden of Allah. So popular was the story that three film versions were made between 1916 and 1936. Based on a 1904 novel by Robert Smythe Hichens, the first, silent adaptation of this tale of star-crossed love was filmed in America’s Mojave Desert. The second, also silent, version, filmed in 1927, starred Alice Terry and Ivan Petrovich, and was at least partly shot in Algeria, in Touggourt and Biskra. Clearly understanding what the audience expects from a Saharan film, the trailer promises “A thousand thrilling moments, fiery steeds, burning sands, flaming love, and a desert sandstorm that forms one of the most spectacular climaxes.”

  The best-loved version of the film stars Marlene Dietrich as Domini Enfilden and Charles Boyer as Boris Androvsky, the renegade Trappist monk turned lover. This version, like The Desert Song, was partly filmed in Buttercup Valley, California. Mirroring the pitfalls inherent in the love affair o
f the romantic leads, the film portrays the desert as a dangerous environment where divine protection is required from the perils of nature, both environmental and of human passions. As Count Ferdinand Anteoni, played by Basil Rathbone in a pre-Sherlock Holmes guise, muses philosophically, ‘‘A man who refuses to acknowledge his god is unwise to set foot in the desert.”

  An unconventional love affair is the subject of Passion in the Desert, a 1997 film based on a story by Honore de Balzac set in the Egyptian Sahara in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion. In the heat of a battle against a force of Mamelukes, Augustin Robert, a French officer played by Ben Daniels, becomes detached from his company: “The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity, immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand, ever moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a clear day, with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.” Balzac likewise had never visited the Sahara but his description is real enough:

  ... the dark sand of the desert spread farther than sight could reach in every direction, and glittered like steel struck with a bright light. It might have been a sea of looking glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapour carried up in streaks made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land. The sky was lit with an Oriental splendour of insupportable purity, leaving naught for the imagination to desire. Heaven and earth were on fire.

  Although less contemplative than Passion in the Desert, The Four Feathers also takes place in the wake of the occupation of the eastern Sahara. Based on the 1902 story by A. E. W Mason, late nineteenth-century Sudan is the main location, both in the novel and the seven film versions, from 1915 to the most recent, in 2002. The adaptation that perhaps best captures the feel of the late Victorian period, when the sun never set on the British Empire, is that directed by Hungarian-born Zoltan Korda, known for his love of African settings. Korda’s 1939 film, filmed partly on location in Sudan, is outstandingly dramatic and made firmly in the empire stamp.