The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

First published: 1949

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: After World War II

Locale: Oran, Algeria; Sahara Desert; a remote Bedouin village

Principal characters

• Port Moresby, an American traveler
• Kit Moresby, his wife
• Tunner, their American companion
• Mrs. Lyle, an overbearing Englishwoman
• Eric Lyle, her adult son
• Belqassim, a Bedouin who takes Kit into his harem

The Story:

Port Moresby wakes up unable to remember his dream. Later he sits with his wife, Kit Moresby, and their traveling companion, Tunner. They are three New Yorkers who find that North Africa is one of the few places to which they can get boat passage since the end of the war.

Port explains the difference between tourists and travelers. He is a traveler, a person who belongs to no place, who is not ruled by time, and who questions his own civilization. His wife, Kit, does not share Port’s enthusiasm for maps and remote locations but is willing to accompany him.

Port then recalls his dream: He is on a speeding train, going ever faster. He is offered the chance to live his life over again, but he refuses. Kit leaves the table crying. Back at the hotel, Kit explains that the dream was too private to tell in front of Tunner, but Port feels that she is being too serious. He leaves on a walk.

He feels nervous, but he walks until the street lights are gone, and an Arab man asks what he wants. Port is offered a prostitute. The man leads him to a cliff and points to a tent in the valley. Port has sex with a beautiful young girl there, fantasizing that Kit looks on. When the girl attempts to steal his wallet, he pushes her and bolts from the tent. Several men pursue him.

That morning Kit reflects on her vanishing relationship with Port. Although she thinks Tunner is idiotic, she considers using him as an emotional tool that might force Port back to her. Tunner comes to wake her up. Then she notices that Port’s bed is still made. Port arrives and is angry to find Tunner with Kit. She is angry at being accused. Kit and Tunner leave. In the hotel bar, Port meets Eric Lyle, a revolting character, and Eric’s scolding mother. She is a travel writer, and they are touring Africa. Kit returns; she and Port argue briefly.

The argument over Port’s whereabouts continues in the morning. Then Eric invites them to ride in his motorcar to avoid the long train ride to Boussif. Kit refuses to travel with the Lyles or to leave Tunner behind. She and Tunner will take the train. That evening, Tunner woos Kit over champagne.

Tunner and Kit get drunk in the compartment, riding toward Boussif. Kit leaves the train momentarily and boards a fourth-class carriage. She is frightened and soaked by rain when she makes it back. She misses having Port to lean on. Tunner takes this opportunity to seduce her. By lunchtime the three are reunited at a hotel in Boussif.

Kit and Port, somewhat reconciled, ride rented bikes out toward a cliff. They are finally relaxed and happy together. They climb and find themselves above the desert. Kit reflects sadly that although alike in feelings, they are hopelessly opposed in their aims. Port, gazing at the sky, says that he has the strange sensation that it is a solid thing protecting them from what lay behind. Kit shudders and begs him not to talk about it.

Port insists that they both are barely hanging on to life. Kit says that neither of them ever got into life. Kit feels guilty about Tunner, and she thinks that Port knows. After dinner, Port rents a bicycle and rides alone back to the gap. He can never tell Kit that he went there again.

Days later, their bus arrives in Ain Krorfa, accompanied by thousands of flies. Tunner, horrified, chooses to head to Messad. Afternoon tea leaves the couple snapping rather than amused, as Port had hoped. To make matters worse, he feels increasingly nervous, and Kit loses patience with the squalid hotel and the food. She vows that Port should have to work at getting them back together. Port comes to believe that the right time will present itself. Since they both regard time as nonexistent, they feel eventually everything will happen.

In Bou Noura, Port discovers that he lost his passport, and he blames Eric. Port grows even more distant. The next day Port and Kit leave for El Ga’a. On the bus Kit sees that Port is very ill. He is unable to move. The next day at El Ga’a, the hotel proprietor refuses to open the door when Kit screams that her husband is ill. They get a truck out of El Ga’a, a city infected with meningitis.

In Sbâ, a man named Captain Broussard gives Kit something for Port’s fever. One can only wait with typhoid. They have a mattress in a small room. Port is unconscious. Once Port says blankly that he does not know whether he will come back. Back from a walk, Kit finds Port’s fever higher and his speech fantastic. He insists that he always lived for her. Kit is revolted by his state; she is moved to violent sobs. He says that she is going away; she shouts that she is not. Kit runs outside into the star-filled landscape just as Port is approaching his death. Captain Broussard attends him and curses Kit’s absence.

Then Kit finds herself reunited with Tunner, who tracked them from Bou Noura. He consoles her, until she feels guilty for leaving Port alone. Tunner scoffs at her concern. Back in the room, Port is alone with one image to accompany his final agony: spots of bright blood on the earth. He also feels the sensation of reaching out to pierce the sheltering sky. Kit tells Tunner that they can meet at eight that night; she then hastily returns. When she finds Port dead, she is calm. She kisses his forehead and packs her small valise.

Kit locks Port’s body inside the room, then she escapes from the fort. She eludes the French soldiers. In the morning, when a caravan approaches her, she raises her arms to Belqassim, the younger of the two men in charge. He pulls her onto his camel. Kit travels with the caravan south into the desert. Each afternoon she submits to the sexual demands of Belqassim and his older companion. She grows feverishly attached to Belqassim.

At his village, Belqassim dresses her in boys’ clothing, then he locks her inside a tiny room within his labyrinthine house. Each afternoon, he visits her for lovemaking.

The household women discover the deception. When Belqassim is away, the three wives descend on Kit and tear off her clothes. Belqassim arrives, shouting. The next day he holds a wedding ceremony. As his three humiliated wives look on, he drapes Kit with their gold jewelry. Kit cries and makes Belqassim angry. Then she is confined to the room again.

Kit is sentient only during her husband’s fiery visits. She loses track of time. When he stops coming, she becomes desperate. She escapes the room and convinces the startled wives (with lipstick bribes and all of her gold jewelry) that they should let her outside. They agree. In the village, Kit tries to buy food with thousand-franc notes and draws a delighted crowd. A man who speaks French takes her to send a telegraph that says, “CANNOT GET BACK.”

At a convent, Kit is prepared for a trip. She is flown, refusing food, hardly speaking, and with her arms tied down, north to the coast. Her caretakers agree that she is mad. The hotel people call Tunner to let him know that she will be there, awaiting passage to the United States. When the cab arrives at the hotel, she seems frozen into the seat. The proprietress runs for help, but before they return, Kit leaves. A crowded streetcar pulls past up the hill.

Bibliography

Bertens, Johannes. The Fiction of Paul Bowles: The Soul Is the Weariest Part of the Body. New York: Rodopi, 1979. Examines the work in light of Bowles’s nihilism and attempts to connect the writer to a Calvinist tradition in American literature.

Bowles, Paul. Conversations with Paul Bowles. Edited by Gena Dagel Caponi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. Bowles discusses the genesis of The Sheltering Sky. Interesting background information for a study of the novel.

Caponi, Gena Dagel. Paul Bowles. New York: Twayne, 1998. Introductory overview of Bowles’s life and work. Caponi analyzes all of his novels, describing The Sheltering Sky as the first American novel to express an existential philosophy. She also examines Bowles’s other writings and musical compositions, interspersing her comments throughout the book with excerpts from her interviews with Bowles.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. Interpretive biography examining the parts of Bowles’s life that provide insight into his work. A section on The Sheltering Sky examines its influences, its critical reception, and the central characters’ relationships. Includes bibliography and index.

Patteson, Richard F. A World Outside: The Fiction of Paul Bowles. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Examines this novel and others through formal and thematic architectural concepts: the story as shelter, both necessary and fragile. Considered the most comprehensive of the full-length studies. Includes bibliography.

Pounds, Wayne. Paul Bowles: The Inner Geography. New York: Lang, 1985. Using psychological theories, the author compares The Sheltering Sky to Bowles’s other works and to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838).

Rawa, J. M. “The Sheltering Sky: Double Turns and Tea in the Sahara.” In The Imperial Quest and Modern Memory from Conrad to Greene. New York: Routledge, 2005. A postcolonial analysis of the quest theme in several novels, including The Sheltering Sky. Demonstrates how Bowles’s novel subverts Western ideas of imperialism.