The English Patient

Despite the predominance of desert imagery, the novel uses water imagery for a number of symbolic purposes. It often denotes healing, nourishment, and the completion of rituals. As he remembers his rescue by the Bedouins, for example, Almásy recalls the role of water: “He could smell the oasis before he saw it. The liquid in the air” (6). Like the Bedouins, Hana uses water to try and heal, or at least soothe, Almásy’s burns: “Every four days she washes his black body, beginning with his destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile” (3). Kip also treats bathing as a symbolic act of purification, frequently washing his long hair and beard with a basin of rainwater “placed formally on top of a sundial” (72).

However, water also has associations with death and grief, particularly in its relationship to Katharine. Katharine, the novel says, was “always happier in rain, in bathrooms steaming with liquid air, in sleepy wetness” (170). This love for water becomes sadly ironic after she is left to die in the Cave of Swimmers. Almásy’s inability to return to the cave to save her mirrors his inability to find the oasis of Zerzura.