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| Andre Prevot (left) and Saint Ex before the long Flight to Saigon |
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| Simoun crashed on Wadi Natrum December 1935 |
In December 1935 Saint Exupery's attempt to break the Paris-Saigon flight record of 99 hours and after so many hours
of flight and searching for the lights of Cairo in Egypt, ended up with a disastrous crash in Wadi Natrun, in the Lybian desert.
Strugling during four long days in the desert without water and food, the pilot and his mechanic survived the harsh of
the desert; and in the sands Saint Exupery had a facinating encounter with a fennec, a desert fox with long
ears original animal from the arabian deserts. Later this little fox would become an important character
in the philosofical book of The Little Prince...
And The Fox said to The Little Prince: "Only with the heart you can see fully. What is essential is invisible to the eyes".
In chapter "Prisioner of the Sands" in the book Wind, Sand and Stars Antoine
narrates his accident, where we find a very interesting narrative in regards to a fennec and this could give us
a clue about the Fox in
The Little Prince.
... The tracks led me to the hole in which he lived, doubtles my fennec crouched below, listening to me and startled
by the crunching of my footsteps. I said to him: "Fox, my little fox, I'm done for, but somehow that doesn't prevent me
from laking an interest in your mood" And there I stayed a bit, ruminating and telling myself that a man
was able to adapt himself to anything? ...
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