"The Little Prince" and Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Time in the Libyan Desert
Kenzy Fahmy
“What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well.” So said the little prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s heartwarming story about a pilot, a prince, and a flower. The Little Prince is one of the most loved children’s books of all time and the story itself is known to many. But what many don’t know is that the book was inspired by the life of its author, and even fewer know that the Libyan Desert played a monumental role in the creation of the story.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in 1900 to an aristocratic family in Lyon, but his father’s early death pushed the family into poverty and they ended up living with relatives between St. Tropez and Saint-Maurice-de-Remens. After a few failed academic attempts, Saint-Exupery joined the military. He took private flying lessons and was able to transfer to the French Air Force, but this didn’t last long and within a few years he had moved on to take a number of odd jobs before he started flying again in 1926. Funnily enough, he was stationed at one point in Cape Juby in Morocco, tasked with rescuing those whose planes had crashed in the vast Sahara, often dealing with nomadic North African tribes that would take the survivors hostage. Less than ten years later this work would prove to be more relevant than he could ever have known.
In 1935, Saint-Exupery and his co-pilot and mechanic Andre Prevot decided to make an attempt at breaking the speed record for a Paris-Saigon flight, an experience which he beautifully wrote about in his book “Wind, Sand and Stars” (Terre des Hommes), published 1939. Their plane was called The Simoun, aptly named, for Simoon (somoom, simoun) is the name of a fiercely hot desert wind that blows over the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant.
Saint-Exupery and Prevot were flying from Paris, over Marseille, Sardinia, Bizerte (Tunisia) and Benghazi, aiming to pass east between Alexandria and Cairo. They had been in the air almost 20 hours before they crashed. Heavy clouds had obstructed their view, and wanting to get a better sense of their bearings, they dropped down to a lower altitude. The two men thought they had spotted a lighthouse, a dim flickering light in the distance. Instead, they crashed right into a high plateau. Thankfully, and quite miraculously, both men survived, so did most of the plane, all saved by the terrain upon which they had so suddenly landed.
‘A pint of coffee in a battered thermos flask and half a pint of white wine’ some grapes, and an orange were all the two men had in terms of sustenance. They did not know where they were, only that they were surrounded on all sides by at least 250 km of harsh desert. Each day, they would walk north-east, despite the fact that they believed they had already crossed the Nile. This one decision is most definitely what led to their salvation.
At one point, Saint-Exupery, setting off on his own, spotted the tracks of a fennec fox. They led eventually to the fox’s den where the pilot stopped and pondered the life of desert foxes; a moment which made its way into the book and inspired one of its main characters. His trek that day brought no salvation though. Upon his return to Prevot and the plane, which they had turned into a huge bonfire the night before and once again that night, Saint-Exupery found two men standing with his co-pilot. He thought they were saved, but Prevot saw no men. They were just a hallucination, one of many they were to experience as the dehydration began to take effect.
After exhausting their supply of coffee, wine and the handful of fruit they had, the two men decided to finally abandon the plane, up until then a beacon in case anyone should fly overhead, and head off once and for all in an attempt to find water or people. Once again they walked north-east, pushing their bodies to the very limits of survival, both of them approaching death’s door. The two men spent one final waterless night in the desert, full of hallucinations and thoughts of their loved ones, preparing for what they saw as the inevitable. But fate had other plans for them. A passing Bedouin caravan caught sight of the two stranded pilots, so parched they could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
They were lifted onto the camels and taken to a nearby oasis where they were at last able to quench their horrific thirst. From there they were able to send a note to a nearby Swiss family, the Raccauds, who lived in Wadi Natroun and ran a factory that produced and sold nitron salt. Mrs. Raccaud, knowing exactly who Saint-Exupery was, immediately sent a car to pick up the two men and bring them back to her home. From there, her husband, Emile Raccaud, who had just returned from Alexandria, drove them down to Cairo. In no time at all, Saint-Exupery was back in France with his family and news of their desert adventure had made headlines around the world.
The experience, while harrowing, did not break him. Instead, out of it came one of the most beautiful and inspiring stories ever published. Saint-Exupery left for New York after the start of the Second World War, and there, he began creating the surreal illustrations that would later turn into the book. He drew inspiration from his life, from his time in the desert, his dog, his wife and more, finally completing and publishing The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) in the US in 1943. The book would not be published in France until after his death.
The Little Prince has since sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide and has been translated into hundreds of languages; it is one of the best-selling and most translated works of fiction of all time. The book has been adapted into everything from film and theater to music and opera performances, all carrying the beautiful lessons that Saint-Exupery imbued the original book with. It’s a story that’s close to so many hearts, one that has a left a mark on all who read it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s final flight took place July 31st, 1944. He was sent to collect intelligence on German troop movements in France. He never returned. Debris from his plane was finally found in 2000 off the coast of Marseille, a bracelet carrying his name along with that of his wife and publisher had been found in the same area two years earlier. It’s been said that he was intercepted and shot down by German fighters, but any theories that exist have yet to be confirmed. Regardless of how he died, we know he lived a full and adventurous life, and left behind a legacy that has touched the hearts of both children and adults alike, all over the world and across generations.