[Priest and author Carlo Carretto left Italy in 1954 for the desert of Algeria, breaking with the past and redefining the notion of detachment. To truly leave his old life behind, he burned his notebook containing the addresses of thousands of friends and family, information that had once seemed indispensable. Another of his notes reads: ‘The emptiness of the desert makes it possible to learn the almost impossible: the joyful acceptance of our uselessness.’]

Detached[Carlo Carretto]

‘Burning an address is not the same thing as destroying a friendship, for that I never intended to do; on the contrary, I have never loved nor prayed so much for my old friends as in the solitude of the desert.’