Le Petit Prince

Once, when I was a boy, I drew a magnificent picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But the grown-ups, they could only see a hat. They told me to give up drawing and focus on geography and history, so I learned to talk of "reasonable" things with them, things of "consequence." I grew up and became a pilot, and it was in the vast, unforgiving expanse of the Sahara Desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation, that my plane broke down. It was there, amidst the silence and the sand, that I first met him.

He appeared as if from nowhere, a small, extraordinary person with golden hair, who looked at me with great seriousness. "Please," he said, "draw me a sheep." I was astonished, stranded and alone, yet this child asked for a sheep. I drew him the boa constrictor with the elephant inside, and to my utter amazement, he saw it. "No, no! I don't want an elephant inside a boa constrictor," he declared. "What I need is a sheep." After several attempts, I drew a simple box, telling him the sheep he desired was inside. He gazed at it, satisfied, and said, "That is exactly the way I wanted him."

Over the next few days, as I struggled with my broken engine, the little prince began to tell me about his tiny home, an asteroid he called B-612, no bigger than a house, and about the single, unique rose he had left behind. She was a beautiful, but vain and demanding flower, whose thorns she claimed were for protection. He loved her deeply, but her coquettish ways and his own youthful misunderstanding led him to believe she was lying to him, and so he decided to leave. He told me of how he would spend his time pulling up baobab seedlings, lest they grow too large and split his small planet apart, and how he would move his chair to watch forty-three sunsets in a single day, finding beauty in the melancholy.

His journey took him across several asteroids, each inhabited by a single adult, each consumed by their own peculiar logic. There was a king who believed he ruled the stars but had no subjects, a conceited man who craved only applause, a drunkard who drank to forget his shame, a businessman who counted stars believing he owned them, and a lamplighter who endlessly extinguished and relit his lamp every minute, following an absurd order on his tiny, rapidly spinning planet. The little prince found them all quite strange, their concerns so far removed from the essential things of life.

He eventually landed on Earth, in the very desert where I found him. Here, he first met a snake, who spoke in riddles and hinted at a power to return him to where he came from. Later, he stumbled upon a garden full of roses, thousands of them, all just like his own. This sight filled him with despair, for his rose had made him believe she was unique in the entire universe. It was then he met the fox, a creature who patiently taught him the profound secret of "taming" – of establishing ties, of creating connections that make one being unique in the world. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye," the fox told him.

This lesson made him understand. His rose was indeed unique, not because of her appearance, but because of the time and love he had invested in her. He was responsible for her. As our water dwindled and my plane remained stubborn, we searched for a well, and found it. The water tasted sweet, not just because of our thirst, but because of the journey we had shared. He spoke of his longing to return to his planet, to his rose, and how the stars would forever hold his laughter for me.

On the eighth day of my breakdown, the little prince found his way back to the snake. He explained to me that the snake's bite would be like an old shell left behind, allowing him to return home, to his flower. I tried to stop him, but his determination was quiet and firm. He vanished as silently as he had arrived, leaving behind only the desert wind and the memory of his golden hair. I eventually repaired my plane and flew away, but the desert, the stars, and the memory of a small prince and his unique rose, they remain. And sometimes, when I look up at the night sky, I still wonder if his sheep has eaten his flower.