There is, after Herodotus, little interest by the Western World towards the desert for hundreds of years. From 425 B.C. until the beginning of the twentieth century there is an averting of eyes. Silence…And then in the 1920s there is a sweet postscript history of this pocket of earth…made mostly by privately funded expeditions and followed by modest lectures…by sunburned, exhausted men.
-The English Patient, Michael Odaantje
Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem apellant
-Tacitus
Now the Sahara belongs to the geologists. Some prospect for uranium and oil and fossil water there. For NASA they model it on the lunar surface and practice moon landings. Some study its soil to see if they can make it bloom. They asphalt its tracks and hope they’re not covered by moving dunes. When this happens, they stop their drill rig trucks and hope to skirt off piste without getting stuck. Greeks called it erēmíā, which gives us hermit, and Romans called it solitudo, solitudinis. Now we build satellite cities, pumping stations and secret airbases. Better that we leave the desert alone, a hermitage, in solitude, and call it pax, pacis.