Narrating the Desert: The Sublime and Desert Experiences in V. Muzafer Ahamed’s Camels in the Sky

Abstract

Abstract This essay studies the travel narrative Camels in the Sky: Travels in Arabia by V. Muzafer Ahamed. The book narrativizes the author’s extensive explorations of the desert spaces in Saudi Arabia where he worked as a newspaper reporter for 13 years. This desert writing, arguably the first of its kind by a writer from the southern Indian state of Kerala, registers a wide range of emotions including desire, excitement, wonder, and fear as the author traverses the unfamiliar terrain. The desert, in Ahamed’s narrative, is not an essentialized ecological enclosure, but rather a politicized naturecultural space infected by human interventionist presences. The sublime is a visceral experience in Ahamed’s text as he negotiates the imbrication of beauty and precarity in the desert. In the concluding section, the essay argues that sublime feelings have the potential to evoke environmental humility and foster non-anthropocentric awareness, both of which are crucial for the sustainability of our endangered planet. Considering the critical decline in interest in the sublime, as contended by Emily Brady, this essay seeks to re-engage with the trope to make a case for its continued relevance.