Here are some of my favorite passages from "The English Patient":
"There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the
aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the
africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The
alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The
arifi, also christened
aref or
rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.
There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down a horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The
bist roz leaps into Afganistan for 170 days, - burying villages. There is the hot, dry
ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The
haboob, - a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The
harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic.
Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The
khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for "fifty", blooming for fifty days - the ninth plague of Egypt. The
datoo out the Gibraltar, which carries fragrance.
There is also the -, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son dies within it. And the
nafhat - a blast out of Arabia. The
mezzar-ifoullousen - a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as "that which plucks the fowls. " The
beshabar, a black and dry north-easterly out of the Caucasus, "black wind." The
Samiel from Turkey, poison and wind," used often in battle. As well as the other "poison winds," the
simoom, of North Africa, and the
solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing guiddiness". "
"There is, after Herodotus, little interest by the Western world towards the desert for hundreds of years. From 425 B.C. to the beginning of the twentieth century there is an averting of eyes. Silence. The nineteenth century was an age of river seekers. And then in the 1920s there is a sweet postscript history on this pocket of earth, made mostly by privately funded expeditions and followed by modest lectures given at the Geographic Society in London at Kensington Gore. These lectures are given by sunburned, exhausted men who, like Conrad's sailors, are not too comfortable with the etiquette of taxis, the quick, flat wit of bus conductors.
When they travel by local trains from the suburbs towards Knightsbridge on their way to Society meetings, they are often lost, tickets misplaced, clinging only to their old maps and carrying their lecture notes - which were slowly and painfully written - in their ever present knapsacks which will always be a part of their bodies. These men of all nations travel at that early evening hour, sick o'clock, when there is the light of the solitary. It is an anonymous time, most of the city is going home. The explorers arrive too early at Kensington Gore, eat at the Lyons Corner House and then enter the Geographical Society, where they sit in the upstairs hall next to the large Maori canoe, going over their notes. At eight o'clock the talks begin. "
Pure poetry. Please share your favorite passages with us all.
