When Mustafa comes back to himself he’s on top of a big pile of sand, one dune among many, a sea of sand extending to the horizon. He doesn’t know which desert this is. The Sahara is the obvious guess, but it could just as well be the Rub al Khali, or the Nafud, or something completely new.
He is kneeling as if to pray, and indeed it is about that time: When he looks up, the sun is directly overhead. But instead of prostrating himself, he stands, brushing sand from the robe he has somehow come to be wearing. The hem of the robe hikes up and he sees that his feet are clad in leather sandals, a good pair, nicely broken in.
Straightening, he continues to take inventory. Things he has: A robe. Comfortable shoes. The first hint of a beard. Things he does not have: Pockets. A wallet. A watch. A map. Food. Water. That last could be a problem, though he’s not thirsty yet. Supposing that he will be soon enough, he turns around, to see whether perhaps there’s an oasis behind him. There isn’t; just more dunes. He has all the sand he could wish for.
Continuing to turn, he spots something else, sticking up out of the dune a few meters away from him: a boot. He goes over and pulls it up, pours out the sand, and turns it over in his hands. It’s a tall boot, tan leather and nylon with a thick rubber sole. There are no markings on it, inside or out, but it looks military.
Well, Mustafa thinks, now I have a boot. But it’s the wrong size for him—he can see this, even before he measures it against the bottom of his sandals—and its mate is nowhere to be found, so after a few moments he tosses it, and watches it roll and bounce down the dune face.
As the boot comes to rest, he detects more motion in his peripheral vision: Amal and Samir, climbing up opposite sides of the dune. Amal is wearing a blue abaya that shimmers brightly in the sunlight. Samir is dressed in city clothes: socks and loafers, khakis, a cotton shirt that is already stained with sweat.
Mustafa nods hello to them and they nod back, everybody affecting a casual attitude, as if meeting in the middle of nowhere like this were a natural occurrence. As maybe, in this world, it is. They stand side by side at the top of the dune and look out over the high and rolling sands stretching far away.
Samir is the first to speak. “Well,” he says, “here we all are in the desert.” Looking down at his empty hands: “With nothing.”
“We are alive at least,” Amal offers.
“That is one theory,” says Mustafa. But he says it good-naturedly, feeling not so much optimistic as philosophicaclass="underline" If this is the same world he woke up in yesterday, then he hasn’t lost anything he hadn’t already lost. If it is a new world, it is as apt to contain good surprises as bad ones. He supposes he should consider the possibility that they are in hell, but the fact that he can still smile, however faintly, makes that seem unlikely. And in any case, whining will change nothing. “I guess we should start walking.”
“OK,” Samir says. “Which way?”
Three Muslims adrift in the desert could do worse than follow the Qibla direction. Of course Mustafa has no idea which direction that is, but he remembers the direction he was kneeling in, so they strike out that way. At first they try to travel in a straight line, but after trekking up and down a few dune faces in the noonday sun, they decide to zigzag instead, following the troughs between dunes.
They’ve only gone two or three kilometers when they come upon the jeep. It is buried nose-down in the sand, its front hood and most of its windshield covered, its tailgate and right rear wheel sticking up at an angle. Like Mustafa’s boot, it is unmarked but looks military. Its green paint job has been scoured by the sand.
Under a green canvas tarp in the tail bed they find several plastic jugs full of water. Mustafa cracks one open and drinks. The water is very warm but tastes fine. He passes the jug around.
After they’ve all drunk their fill, they investigate the front of the jeep. Amal, the smallest of them, crawls in through the open passenger window. She finds the ignition and tries it, but there’s not even the click of a solenoid in response. She has better luck with the glove box: Inside is a small pistol, .25-caliber with a nine-round clip. The clip is fully loaded and the barrel is clean; the slide moves easily. Mustafa is mildly troubled by this discovery but Amal takes it as a good omen. “It never hurts to be prepared,” she says, slipping the gun into her abaya.
Samir takes another look in the tail bed and finds a leather pouch with tobacco and some rolling papers. “Are there matches, too?” Amal inquires, and Samir produces a lighter from his back pocket.
Mustafa would love a smoke, but there’s something else he needs to take care of first. He grabs one of the water jugs and goes to find a private spot around the nearest dune. He washes his face, his hands, and his feet. He still doesn’t know the Qibla direction, but there’s a workaround for that: He says the required prayers, not once, but four times, each time turning himself by ninety degrees.
He’s finishing up the last set when a light breeze comes over the dune, carrying the sound of Amal’s voice saying her own prayers. Careful not to disturb her, Mustafa makes his way back to the jeep.
Samir has torn a long strip from the tarp and fashioned a turban for himself. It looks comical but will protect his scalp. Mustafa rolls a cigarette and they pass it back and forth until Amal returns.
They should probably use what’s left of the tarp to make some shade and sit out the hottest part of the day, but they are all impatient now to get somewhere, to find out where somewhere is, and so without even discussing it they each take a water jug and start walking again.
They walk for several hours, zigzagging between the dunes, using the position of the sun to maintain a more or less steady course. In the middle of the afternoon they find another military vehicle, a canvas-top troop truck, lying on its side. Samir crawls in the back, looking for more goodies. This time there’s no water or tobacco, but when he digs in the sand that’s drifted up inside, he finds a big tin can filled with something heavy.
Mustafa studies the length of the shadow cast by the truck, does a mental calculation, and goes off to pray again. When he gets back, Samir and Amal have found a can opener. “Figs,” Amal says. They sit in the back of the truck and eat fruit, lick syrup from their fingers. Then they get sleepy.
Mustafa naps for about an hour. When he wakes up, Samir is snoring like a buzz saw and Amal is gone. He steps outside and finds her standing up on the truck cab, balanced precariously on the passenger door. She is shading her eyes. “I see a city,” she says. Mustafa looks where she is looking but his view is blocked by a dune, so he climbs up beside her.
Now he can see it: out on the horizon, wavering and indistinct, its distance impossible to guess. “I see towers,” Amal says. “Do you see towers?”
“I see something,” says Mustafa.
They wake up Samir. He sees it too. “I hope it’s real,” he says. “I hope the people who live there speak Arabic.”
“If they speak English,” says Mustafa, “I’ll translate.”
“And if they speak Farsi,” says Amal, “I’ll tell you what not to say.”
They set out. The dunes no longer seem so steep, so they begin to travel in a straight line again, and as they climb up and down, they play a game to pass the time. When they are on top of the dunes and the city is visible, they describe what they think they can see. When they are down in the troughs and the city is hidden, they talk about what they would like to see, what they hope they will find when they get there.
“I hope prohibition is over,” Samir says. “I’d like to get a cold beer.”
“I hope there are more women in Congress,” Amal says. “A woman president would be nice.”
“I hope there is a Congress,” says Mustafa. “A republic—a real republic—of some kind.”