The morning was a blade of cold, clean light, slicing across the eastern escarpment. It illuminated not a beginning, but a departure. The camp was set up, a quiet, shaking congregation in the pre-dawn chill. They were on the edge of the tents, the division between their own world of dust and religious devotion and the vast, empty dunes stretching back to the old one.
Dawud carried a small backpack on his back. It held little: water, dried dates, his ledger. None of the equipment of his old life was any use to him. His real preparation was spiritual, the toughening of his heart.
Sarah stood beside him, her nurse’s bag exchanged for a traveler’s pack. Her decision had been made without drama, a simple, unshakeable declaration the night before: “You’ll need a witness they can’t intimidate.
