Lire/Ecrire l’Histoire dans le Désert – Alain Nadaud, Charif Majdalani

Abstract

In Désert physique (1987) by Alain Nadaud, an archaeologist discovers traces of the first human library while war (Iran vs Iraq, never named) threatens to erase them forever. In Dernière oasis (2021) by Charif Majdalani, a specialist in oriental archaeology must examine ancient mosaics in an oasis in the middle of the desert, caught between Kurdish forces and the predictable onslaught of Daech. These two novels of expectation are reminiscent of Dino Buzzati’s Le désert des Tartares (1940) and Julien Gracq’s Le Rivage des Syrtes (1951), but, characteristic of a change in the regime of historicity (François Hartog), they invert the perspective: it is no longer the event to come that guides the narrative, but the experience of the desert, the traces it conceals of the past and what may come of it. Engraved clay tablets and mosaics are witnesses to ancient times, trafficked and destroyed by the powers that be. By anchoring their respective works in the Middle Eastern desert, the cradle of civilizations, the two writers invite their readers to reflect on the writing of history: its uncertainty, its precariousness, the strange paths it takes according to those—victors or vanquished, new or vanished civilizations, ideologists or archaeologists—who are responsible for constructing its narrative. This paper will highlight the historiographical questioning that literature has based on its reading—or fictionalization—of immemorial deserts.