8
CONNOR
Traveling from Cairo to the Sinai was like arriving on another planet. It was the most barren place on earth, desolate, much like photographs I had seen of the surface of Mars. The first thing I noticed about the desert was the brilliant white light that seemed to bleach out the horizon as it bounced off the quartz in the sand. Bushes bent in the wind as it blew across the ground. As far as I could see there was only barrenness: rocks, sand and mountains. As we traveled further into the interior, the only signs of life I could detect were the occasional black tents of the Bedouin camps amid jagged rocks, drifting sand and a wind-scoured landscape that seemed to stretch on forever.
No one would be looking for me there. I knew that with certainty.
It was a five-hour drive from C
