An American couple, Port and Kit Moresby, travel through North Africa in the aftermath of World War II, seeking to repair their troubled marriage. As they encounter the harsh realities of the desert, their relationships unravel into psychological and existential crisis.
Notes
“Each man’s destiny is personal only insofar as it may happen to resemble what is already in his memory.”
He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.
another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.
I looked out the window at the trees and heard myself say: ‘Yes!’ Because I knew I’d be willing to go through the whole thing again just to smell the spring the way it used to smell when I was a kid.
It was that moment of twilight when light objects seem unnaturally bright, and the others are restfully dark.
Port was mildly surprised to see sitting alone at the bar a heavy-looking youth with a formless face which was saved from complete non-existence by an undefined brown beard.
The dining room was unfriendly and formal to a degree which is acceptable only when the service is impeccable; this was not the case here.
The only way to travel, at least for us, is to go when you feel like going and stay where you feel like staying.”
Doubtless the principal reason why he had been so eager to accompany Port and Kit on this trip was that with them as with no one else he felt a definite resistance to his unceasing attempts at moral domination, at which he was forced, when with them, to work much harder; thus unconsciously he was giving his personality the exercise it required.
The novelty of the caricature was wearing off. Port was beginning to feel smothered sitting there between them; their obsessions depressed him.
Her life had been devoid of personal contacts, and she needed them. Thus she manufactured them as best she could; each fight was an abortive attempt at establishing some kind of human relationship.
They had the absorbed and vacant expression of the man who looks into his handkerchief after blowing his nose.
“Sunset is such a sad hour,” she said, presently. “If I watch the end of a day—any day—I always feel it’s the end of a whole epoch. And the autumn! It might as well be the end of everything,” he said. “That’s why I hate cold countries, and love the warm ones, where there’s no winter, and when night comes you feel an opening up of the life there, instead of a closing down. Don’t you feel that?” “Yes,” said Kit, “but I’m not sure I prefer the warm countries. I don’t know. I’m not sure I don’t feel that it’s wrong to try to escape the night and winter, and that if you do you’ll have to pay for it somehow.”
It made her sad to realize that in spite of their so often having the same reactions, the same feelings, they never would reach the same conclusions, because their respective aims in life were almost diametrically opposed.
Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. It was often on trips that he thought most clearly, and made the decisions that he could not reach when he was stationary.
“Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth—” She hesitated. Port laughed abruptly. “And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.”
“But you complain so all the time.” “Oh, not about life; only about human beings.” “The two can’t be considered separately.” “They certainly can. All it takes is a little effort.