Only a moderately intriguing adventurer
Saul Kelly
THE SECRET LIFE OF LAZIO ALMASY: THE REAL ENGLISH PATIENT by John Bierman VikinglPenguin, £16.99, pp. 288, ISBN 0670914177 John Bierman, the co-author of a recent book on Alamein. had doubts about writing this biography of Lazio Almasy, the Hungarian-born explorer of the Libyan desert, whose exploits were 'immortalised' in Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, and the subsequent Oscar-winning film by Anthony Minghella. Bierman did not want to be seen to be taking 'a ride on the coat-tails' of the novel and the film (in which case a change of subtitle might have been advisable). He was also, rather puzzlingly, concerned that he might find 'something nasty in the woodshed' with regard to Almasy's alleged Nazi past. Lastly, and more tellingly, he was unsure whether Almasy was an important enough historical figure to warrant 'a full treatment' and, related to this, he was worried whether he could find 'enough primary source material to justify a new biography'. Although Bierman decided to go ahead with his 'project' he might have been better advised to have listened to his doubts.
Denied access to the Almasy family papers at Burg Bernstein in Austria, Bierman has had to rely, to a large extent, on the work and generosity of other writers and researchers in order to retell the story of this minor and moderately intriguing Hungarian adventurer who played a bit part in the desert war. Far from uncovering the real story of the man whom an old bedouin rather flatteringly called Abu Ramieh, 'Father of the Dunes', Bierman seems intent on whipping up a sandstorm and obscuring and even burying Almasy's reputation in the Great Sand Sea, along with the lost army of King Cambyses, so that it too achieves a mythical status. Bierman does this through the questionable technique of playing up the allegedly 'contradictory and confusing' nature of the available evidence on Almasy's inclinations and actions. Thus, he casts sufficient doubt on the accusations that Almasy was a Nazi sympathiser to make us believe that he was just an old Hungarian conservative royalist. Bierman omits to mention that Almasy was a great fan of Mussolini and the Italian Fascists and that the Hungarian minister of defence (and later prime minister), Gyula Gombos, the prototype Fascist, instructed Lazio to give all help possible to Italy' at a time when the latter power was seeking to expand its dominion in North-East Africa at the expense of Britain. This he duly did in the early 1930s, secretly passing on to Italian representatives in Cairo and Libya reports and maps (compiled during his various expeditions in search of the legendary oasis of Zerzura) which showed the routes and wells across the Libyan desert. These could be used by any Italian motorised column desiring to strike at the Nile barrage at Aswan or the steamer and rail transit port at Wadi Haifa, both vital to Britain's hold on Egypt and the Sudan in the event of war. It is no accident that Almasy's British rival and the greatest of the desert explorers, Major Ralph Bagnold, took this threat seriously enough to persuade General Wavell to allow him to found the Long Range Desert Group in 1940 to guard against such a move. And it is no coincidence that Almasy's discovery of the Aqaba Pass, the short cut through the Gilf Kebir in south-western Egypt, was made known in map form to the Italians and later used by the Hungarian himself to elude LRDG patrols and place two German spies on the Nile in 1942 as Rommel advanced towards Alamein.
As for Almasy's motivation in undertaking such work for the Abwehr, German military intelligence, during the desert war it is rather stretching the bounds of credulity to have us believe that Lazio saw it simply as an opportunity to continue his desert explorations, including his search for the lost army of King Cambyses. It was not only Almasy's knowledge of the desert routes which made him invaluable to the Abwehr, but his intimate knowledge of and contacts (stemming from 1930s) with both the pro-German members of the TurcoEgyptian governing class, such as Taher Pasha, and the anti-British nationalists, such as Aziz el-Masri. The Abwehes failure to exploit these contacts to the full was due to their own incompetence and that of their Egyptian accomplices, rather than any lack of willingness or ability on Almasy's part.
Despite Bierman's best, and perhaps unwitting, attempts to bolster the popular, fictionalised image of Almasy as the romantic, enigmatic desert explorer. the Hungarian still comes across as a louche adventurer, whose love of intrigue led him to take unnecessary risks both in the desert and back home in Hungary, where the end of the war found him desperately trying to change sides, only to end up being tortured by the communists. Aided by his Hungarian and Egyptian friends, and perhaps even by MI6, he escaped to Egypt to eke out his few remaining years as a desert tour guide for wealthy Americans. His luck finally ran out in 1951 when, having just been appointed the first head of the Desert Institute in Cairo. he contracted amoebic dysentery and died soon after in a sanatorium in Austria.
In the postscript Bierman paraphrases Robert Louis Stevenson, when he says:
In my search for the real English Patient I have travelled both hopefully and sceptically. Readers may feel that I have not fully arrived — although that may not be so important. As Stevenson suggested, the journey itself is the reward.
The trouble with Bierman's journey is that it has brought no real discoveries which significantly add to our knowledge of Almasy. This reader is left wondering how rewarding Bierman found his quest.
Saul Kelly is the author of The Hunt for Zerzura: The Lost Oasis and the Desert War (John Murray, 2002).
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