John Bierman: The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy: The Real English Patient

By NIGEL GEARING

To say that Laszlo Almasy remains an enigma even today is both frustrating and how it perhaps should be. So sums up his biographer.

John Bierman was invited to try to shed light on the man who inspired both the book and movie The English Patient. Bierman had recently completed his acclaimed account of the 1940-43 desert war, War Without Hate, and was initially reluctant to be seen to be riding on the wave of the movie's success.

Almost the only thing Bierman is categoric about is that Almasy followed the protocol of Rommel's campaign, where the rules of the Geneva Convention were obeyed in a hostile environment with few civilians to complicate things.

Yet Almasy was a civilian in a hostile environment. By choice. Perhaps. He was born into a highly dysfunctional Hungarian family. Despite its ancient lineage, this was a family without a title. A loner from the word go and with a passion for technology, this aristocrat without a title headed for, and became an expert in exploring, the Egyptian desert.

In Michael Ondaatje's 1992 Booker award-winning book Almasy is both protagonist and the only character to keep his real name. A biographer hasn't got such artistic licence to play with. About the only thing the two Almasys — fictional and non-fictional — have in common is that they were both enigmatic.

Almasy was at the least bisexual and in all probability almost exclusively homosexual. Which in part explains his attraction to a life of extraordinary forays by car and plane in an obsessive search for a legendary lost oasis.

As the storm clouds of World War II gathered, Almasy, with his unique understanding of how to negotiate territory that would kill most others, became an invaluable tool to those who sought expansion or defence by force.

When war did break out the British did not want him in Egypt, which they controlled. For several years they had suspected this man, who took German tourists on desert excursions, of spying for the Italians. The Italians suspected Almasy of spying for the British.

Almasy found himself in the service of Rommel's Afrika Korps, all the while being monitored by Britain's Bletchley Park. His brother Janos had a relationship with the notorious Unity Mitford, one of Hitler's biggest fans in England.

This book chronicles Almasy's efforts to save Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust, through to his time as a double agent. He was acquitted by a Communist People's Court in Hungary- — the worst offence it could find was two admiring references to Rommel.

Almasy felt the desert was the closest a person could come to true spirituality.

Perhaps this complex story is very simple. In his native Hungary, where homosexuality is still a taboo subject, a desert besieged with warring ideologies, adventures and constantly shifting sands, no matter how dangerous, might have provided the perfect camouflage for a gay man seeking true love. Yes, he did find that. But as with everything to do with Laszlo Almasy, the story would prove to be complicated.

* Penguin, $55

* Nigel Gearing is an ESOL teacher and freelance writer