The 1996 film The English Patient, based on Michael Ondaatje’s book, bears a rather loose resemblance to the life and times of the real-life László Almásy. Between the World Wars, this intrepid Hungarian desert explorer and, later, Axis collaborator, did indeed find a cave in southwest Egypt’s hyper-remote Gilf Kebir plateau. This is a corner of the Sahara that’s so arid and little-visited that the plateau itself had only been discovered a few years earlier. The cave, in a natural amphitheater called Wadi Surah, improbably depicts what could be interpreted as playful…
