“What I wanted to tell was the story of what the desert can do to us. That was all.”
-Paul Bowles, discussing The Sheltering Sky and “A Distant Episode”
What has done, what can do, the desert to us? It makes some see burning bushes and sand devils, and others see the Devil himself. It makes some feel clean and others feel lost, and some feel like they’ve become somebody else. I never asked KhairAllah about this, but if he were to consult Wehr for the triliteral root B-D-W, and find its various cognates for Desert- Baydā’, Bādiya, Badw- I bet he would most remark upon the Form VI verb Tabādā, He Posed as a Person of the Desert, and then ask himself, By God, What has the Desert done to Luwīs?