The "Heart" of the Desert

The "Heart" of the Desert

The “Heart” of the Desert Paul Bowle’s The Sheltering Sky follows American married couple Port and Kit and their friend Tunner on their travels through Algeria in the Sahara desert. As the three travelers move deeper into the desert, the towns get progressively more rustic, dirty, diseased and dangerous. This downward spiral of travel symbolizes the deteriorating of the travelers’ morality and sense of security, Port and Kit’s marriage, and eventually Port and Kit’s physical and mental (respectively) health.

The group travels through various towns in Algeria, namely Boussif, Ain Krorfa, Bou Noura, Messad, El Ga’a, and Sba. Bowles was not exaggerating when he portrayed these small Saharan towns – I was unable to find much information on any of them. Needless to say, these small Algerian towns are not common American tourist destinations. Port addresses the towns’ isolation at the very beginning of the novel: he chooses to travel to Algeria instead of Italy (his wife’s desire) because he considers himself a true traveler, “belonging no more to one place than to the next, [moving] slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another…[he] compares [his own civilization] with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking” (6). Port’s preoccupation with traveling deeper and deeper into the desert is akin to his tendency to dig himself deeper and deeper into emotional darkness with his intellectual philosophies. He claims a desire to deepen his relationship with Kit but is not willing to sacrifice his own desires for sex and adventure in order to compromise with his wife.

While reading the novel, I periodically asked myself: what is Bowles saying about Algeria and, more generally, Africa? The novel’s protagonists often describe the Saharan towns as derelict, shabby, dirty, and dangerous. But before we assume that Bowles is intending to blame these emotions on Africa, let us take a deeper look at what Bowles believes about his characters. Although Kit and Port grow more and more sick and miserable over the course of the novel, they are not truly happy to begin with. We know that one of the main reasons for their traveling is to rekindle their love for each other as well as a sense of excitement based in adventure. Unfortunately, they do not succeed. However, Bowles provides an important lesson with their story: traveling will not content us. It is not solely the place to which one goes, but the attitude and behavior one brings along that determines one’s experience.

More than anything, The Sheltering Sky depicts the dissolution of two lives. Bowles uses the sparse landscape of the desert as a metaphor for the emptiness and misery of his protagonists. Although Kit and Port look judgmentally upon the Algerian natives, Bowles does not give these prejudices credence, as his protagonists themselves act completely immorally. As the characters travel into the heart of the desert, they lose their own hearts.