...of geography

The sun, continuing its course brought back the daylight. The Moors were quiet. Those that ventured as far as the Spanish fort gesticulated and handled their guns like toys. This was the Sahara viewed from the wings of the stage: the untamed tribes were stripped of their mystery and became bit-part players.

Thus we lived opposite each other, victims of our own distorting images. And it was why in this desert we felt no isolation; to appreciate the distance of our banishment we would have had to return home and to see it in perspective.

Captives of the Moors and of ourselves, we seldom ventured more than five hundred yards, there where the lawless wilderness began. Our nearest neighbours, at Cisneros and Port-Etienne, were five to six hundred miles away, also trapped by the Sahara, like flies in amber. We knew them by their surnames and their foibles, but between us there lay a silence as thick as interplanetary space.

[Southern Mail, Saint-Exupery, A. d.]