The Desert

“The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East…. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.” (138-139)

Michael Ondaatje describes the desert as a place of neutral ground, where everyone is the same and there are no names. No property and no labels, just sand and wind. As a “piece of cloth carried by winds,” one person or country never permanently owns the desert. In the desert a person can be whoever they want to be, “disappear into landscape,” and “remove the clothing of [their] countries.” Ondaatje suggests that the desert is a place where labels and names become meaningless. The desert is personified as something that “could not be claimed or owned,” “never held down by stones.” The desert is never the same; no matter how many times a person enters it. Like the phrase “you can never step in the same river twice,” a person can never step into the same desert twice. The sand storms always changing the appearance and swallowing people up, make the desert a place that controls those who try and tame it. During the war, Madox and the rest of the group enter the desert many times, leaving changed in little ways. They enter the first time and the English Patient falls in love with Katherine. The last time the English Patient enters the desert he is burned badly and never returns.