THE WISDOM OF THE DESERT

When Timothée Chalamet wore Cartier for the Dune: Part Two World Premiere in London, it was a magnificent confluence of savoir-faire and the desert world of Arrakis.

- SUFFIAN HAKIM

LONGTIME FANS and ardent readers of Frank Herbert’s masterpiece Dune will know how he drew from British author Lesley Blanch’s sweeping biography of 19th-century Chechnyan leader Imam Shamyl, The Sabres of Paradise, as the basis for a lot of the in-universe linguistics and philosophies in Dune. This will become more apparent in Dune: Part Two, as we see Paul Atreides rally the Fremen against the tyranny of House Harkonnen, a struggle inspired by The Sabres of Paradise, which sees Imam Shamyl lead the Caucasian (as in, from the region of the Caucases, not the modern term for white ethnicity) resistance against Russian Tsarist encroachment.

One of the most famous quotes in Dune is a Fremen mantra: “Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert”. This was drawn almost verbatim from a line from The Sabres of Paradise: “Polish comes from the city, wisdom from the hills”, which of course referred to the mountains of Chechnya and Dagestan from which Imam Shamyl hailed.