When the knock came, Jason was lying in bed next to a sleeping Darlene, staring up at the yellow gecko on the ceiling. He had tracked the creature since first light, as it climbed their wall and traversed the ceiling. Now it rested directly above them, motionless, terrified.

Jason had awakened to the morning call to prayer, not blared over grainy loudspeakers like in Cairo, but bellowed from a nearby minaret by the muezzin. The weathered voice carried out across the village the strain of the man’s vocation: five daily calls to prayer, every day, without fail. It sounded both plaintive, perfunctory, and ordinary in this place. This—this tired voice and slow gathering of the faithful—is what we fear?

 

When he’d phoned his parents about this journey, his father set down the phone and switched on the television news. He never heard his father again, just the occasional cough. He must have been on the couch as usual, smoking cigarettes. This was the indelible image of Jason’s childhood, of his father in profile, speaking out of the side of his mouth so he wouldn’t miss anything on television.

His mother then peppered him many versions of a singular, worried question:  But is it dangerous? And an insistent reply to her own question: Yes. Yes, it is.

The impotent frustration Jason had experienced as an adolescent washed over him. Standing at his bedroom window late at night when he was unable to rest, he would think about climbing out the window, walking down the dark street, disappearing into a different life. What would such a life hold?

What do you think? he said.

TV says yes.

Jason had seen the images of screaming, bearded men marching down the streets of Middle Eastern cities. He had seen the flag on fire. He saw Jihadi John and the work he did, stayed up late at night watching the videos. The white men, resolved to their fates, looked calm. Jason almost understood the fear of his parents. It was their instinctive response to any kind of danger, real or imagined.

They thought like this, he knew:

Their son would travel to this place of his own free will, to face the flag burners, the terrorists, the America haters. His face would appear on their screens one night, a victim, a hostage, finally a head without a body. And what would they have left? Nothing. No child. No body. Not even a story of valor to explain his absence.

 

Jason remembered the winter evening as a boy when his mother drove the family car off an icy road. The landscape was familiar: the bald, ice-tipped trees, the barns groaning under piles of snow, the low, gray clouds. Everything seemed exactly normal for a December afternoon until the car lost its grip on the road. They glided sideways and off the road. As the ditch approached, Jason felt no fear. They would land somewhere, and when a thick web of branches broke their fall, it had seemed preordained. He was entitled to survive.

He thought about sharing this with his mother on the phone, but he could not make the words. The connection he saw, that he would be okay out there, would be lost on her. She might lash out in embarrassment at the one time she had placed her children in peril. Anyway, what was the point? He was a grown man. He was newly married. They were seekers. That is what had brought them together, that is what animated their nighttime conversations.

No, he said. It’s no more dangerous than driving.

 

The microbus out of Cairo had carried them deep into the scorching interior of the Sahara, the sand dunes whipping past as if drifting at high speed. They were sequestered in the back, Darlene in the far corner, Jason between her and the Arab men who kept talking to one another and staring at them. They would light cigarettes and offer them to Jason. One of the men offered his cigarette to Darlene, and when she declined, still looking out the window, the men guffawed like boys at a schoolyard.

A row of palm trees emerged from the sand and stone, heralding access to Bawiti. After hours of monochrome, the green fronds, powdered with fine dust from a nearby brick factory, were a miracle. Darlene stared out at the approaching grove, and, noticing, Jason grasped her waist discreetly. This was the kind of moment he had envisioned: the two of them, far from home, gaping at a foreign landscape in a distant corner of the planet. Answers awaited.

She had wriggled away from him with an uncomfortable smile, one you might give to an acquaintance who has made an inappropriate pass. The man sitting next to them appeared to notice, and offered Jason a cigarette. Then the vehicle had lurched and the cigarette toppled from the man’s extended fingers.

 

Soon after the call to prayer ended, donkeys started braying as they pulled carts on reluctant wheels. Then came the whistling crackle of whips, the catcalls of boys, and the nervous, chattering laughter of girls. Jason heard intimate greetings as ancient men tapped their canes on the pockmarked road just outside their room. He smelled the smoke from a nearby sheesha cafe, carried among the fine brick dust that entered between the faltering slats of their patio door.

Darlene stirred. The gecko made a move, then stopped again, sensing danger. Jason eased himself out of bed, headed for the bathroom, eyes on the terrified gecko. He didn’t want to frighten it. He wasn’t here for that sort of thing.

 

The access road, lined with trees, carried them into the oasis depression; grass rose improbably from the desert floor. They passed small squares of the deepest green, where men bent over at their waists, harvesting. Those wielding scythes paused mid-swing and stood erect to watch the microbus pass. A single man waved, his tarnished blade glinting against the sun, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He smiled.

Samir had been awaiting them at the front steps of the hotel, a four-story square abutting a road just off Bawiti’s main drag. He opened his arms, embraced Jason as if he knew him, nodded politely at Darlene, and welcomed them into the cool lobby for hot tea. Inside, a group of men talked in low voices on couches, gesticulating, leaning in close to one another. They smiled sweetly at Jason, nodding; their eyes lingered over Darlene, mouths agape as they spoke again, lower than before. Jason patted her shoulder. She frowned back at him.

This wasn’t her choice. She didn’t want the dusty, unknown interior. She liked the places where they served Egyptian beer in large green bottles. What if they had gone to Dahab or Sharm and drank the beer in a private cabana on a beach overlooking the Red Sea? What if they were there now, and not here? His instinct had told him: the interior. That’s why they were here and not there.

It was so damned hot here.

 

There came a knock at the door, jolting Jason as he stood over the toilet. He quickly finished and headed for the door. He didn’t notice Darlene standing on the bed, whacking at the gecko with her travel purse, until he opened the door and saw Samir’s face, first full of eagerness to please, then, as he looked behind Jason, ashen. He was holding a tray with two cups of tea, a sugar tin, and many spoons. It all fell to the floor with a tremendous chatter that filled the empty hallway. “No, anissa,” he said. “It’s normal here!”

Darlene looked nuts to Jason, wild eyed, swinging the brand name travel purse, mortally injuring the yellow body. The ceiling was streaked with red. The gecko was on their bed, where it writhed for a moment, twisted and broken open, before stopping. Jason approached just as the heaving chest cavity stopped moving. Darlene was still standing on the bed.

Nobody moved.

“Allah,” Samir whispered. My God, Jason thought, if my parents were here.

Samir had entered the room, but backed out when Jason noticed. He heard Samir cleaning up the mess outside, muttering in Arabic.

“Why did you do that?” Jason asked as Darlene came down off the bed. A swell of anger washed over him. He didn’t believe in symbols or karma, but this wasn’t good.

Together, they looked at the deceased gecko, which lay across the same warm bed where they had both been resting moments earlier. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Imagine I’m sleeping. You’re gone. I open my eyes and this thing is literally right above me, lurching up and down like a fucking leprechaun’s pet, looking down with those black eyes.” She shrugged. Something in it bothered Jason. “I freaked.”

“You didn’t have it do that. It was harmless.” He thought about telling her the gecko had been on the walls and ceiling since daybreak, but decided against it. He gathered together the sheets holding the dead gecko, and took it all outside. Samir was beginning to mop. He was smoking. He looked up at Jason, and there was no denying it. Samir was angry. Then he remembered himself, and the anger fell instantly away from his face. “More tea,” Samir said, collecting the sheets, “coming right up!”

 

The hotel was being remodeled, they noticed on arrival. The floor tiles in the lobby and hallways—except on their floor—were being replaced. Some tiles were gone, others were still in place. Still others looked like they had been battered with a pickaxe and forgotten. Stacks of new tile hung about at odd locations, like forlorn statues. In the dining room. On a landing. Next to the reception desk. The floor above theirs was completely gutted, as was the roof.

Samir had shown all of this to them with pride on the day of their arrival. He had described the transformation of the roof into a patio and bar for the travelers that would come, but all Jason could see were stacks of tiles, bags of cement mix, and a few thousand red clay bricks. Then Samir had taken them to their room and assured them of its four-star comfort. “Like Hilton,” he had said, smiling as he opened the door, “Bawiti style.”

 

After breakfast, they went in the jeep with Samir and the driver, Mahmoud, on a day’s safari into the desert. Their route, according to Samir, would take them through Bawiti and the oasis to “the famed White Desert.” The excursion would end with dinner on a sand dune under the stars. “We will cook for you,” Samir said, “in a Bedouin way. Then you will dance!”

On their way through town, they passed a café where, the night before, the proprietor had served them rice and chicken. The old man had held Darlene’s hand when they posed together for a photograph. His face had glowed with pride. On the main street, stocky women wearing hijabs and abayas trolled the local souk. Their severe faces studied the items for sale as they tested the elasticity of undergarments. Their vehicle then rumbled past a row of sheesha cafes, where men sat together in the tiled, open-air rooms and sucked on filthy mouthpieces affixed to hookahs. Some of the men played backgammon, others read the newspaper; they all drank hot tea from glasses with no handles. They stared as the jeep passed. One of the men blew Darlene a kiss. When she turned to glare at the man, the wind sucked a strand of her hair out the window. Another man reached out his hand as if to grasp the strand, and his friends laughed.

“No, no,” Samir said. His weary eyes filled the rearview mirror. “Ignore those men. They are monsters!”

They soon left the village behind. The road was deserted and without any lanes Jason could see. They veered from one side of the road to the other for no discernible reason. They passed a salt lake and a mountain in the vague shape of a pyramid, drove through a grove of date palms. Samir plucked dates from the palms and shared them with Mahmoud. “In Egypt,” Samir said, “we have always had dates. We have made wine from dates. Do you like wine, Mr. Jason, yes?”

“Sometimes,” Jason said. “It depends upon the grape.”

“No, Mr. Jason. Dates. That is the true wine, the Egyptian wine. For you and the missus, we will find date wine and you will see.” Jason understood there was no stopping Samir once he got going. Like it or not, Samir was going to serve them date wine, and regardless of its taste, they would drink. But he wanted to drink. He wanted it to taste good.

Beyond the palm grove, Mahmoud slowed the jeep so that he and Samir could talk to two Bedouin who were herding recalcitrant camels along the roadside. These men, dressed in pastel gallabeyas, smacked the haunches of the camels fiercely and repeatedly with switches, even as they smiled and laughed and exchanged friendly banter in staccato Arabic with Samir and Mahmoud. When Samir introduced these men to Jason and Darlene, the men waved and peered into the back seat. “Welcome in Egypt,” one of them said, smiling, as the other man whipped a camel across its front leg until it cried out.

 

They accelerated quickly as the road straightened and they rose from the oasis depression. Jason’s body pressed against the seat cushion as Darlene’s hand slid into his, a ritual typically reserved for takeoffs and landings.

They drove down the center of the road through a long, featureless stretch of desert. Another jeep appeared on the horizon, also in the center of the road. Both jeeps began blinking their headlights, honking their horns. Mahmoud lit a cigarette. Samir reached for a box of tissues affixed to a console near the overhead light. He extracted one tissue, two. He blew his nose with one of the tissues and wiped sweat from his brow with the other. He studied the damp circles of sweat in the tissues, then balled them up and tossed them. Jason watched them blur past his window.

“Did you see that?” Jason said.

Darlene’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead. “Look at that.”

The other jeep was only a few hundred yards away now. Mahmoud sucked on his cigarette, then flashed the headlights again. The other jeep flashed in reply. Both jeeps honked again. Perhaps, Jason thought, Mahmoud and the other driver would continue signaling to one another, misunderstanding, until the vehicles collided. It was a possibility. He thought about the collision, the sickening smack.

 

Their bus had stopped at a gas station a few hours outside Cairo; its driver mumbled a few words in Arabic, got out, and began to fill the vehicle. The engine, already grumbling, coughed as it took on the new fuel. Two Arab men stood at the adjacent pump, filling an open container with a dribbling stream of gasoline. Jason watched, detached at first, as one of the men lit a cigarette and let it burn in his mouth until it sprouted a half-inch of crumbling ash. This ash hovered over the open container. The other man was talking on his mobile phone, and laughing, his arm thrown upon the shoulder of his friend.

Jason remembered the cinch of his seat belt around his waist, the gasoline smell in the air. He remembered a sandlot across the street, where two boys rolled a tire, laughing as they tried to keep it going. This is it, he thought. Those happy faces are the last image I will ever see. I will explode now. They will see the shape of my body flailing against the window as the fire consumes me. Their happy faces will melt into confusion, then horror. I will be in their nightmares, the burning man, the screaming man.

Jason turned his attention again to the hovering ash, the red tip beneath, and waited for it to happen.

Mahmoud cut the wheel sharply. Their vehicle lurched as the other jeep swept past. Jason saw the driver’s face, his toothless smile, his arm out the window in salutation. Both cars were still honking at one another. Jason heard the other jeep’s honking recede behind them and, at long last, stop. Jason looked at the empty road ahead, felt the jeep’s vibrations, Darlene’s clammy hand in his—sweet confirmation that his life would continue for now.

Samir looked over his shoulder. He grinned at them. “No worries,” he said. “It’s okay! This is how we do things here!”

 

The windswept formations in the White Desert looked like nascent clouds rising from the earth, their birthing secrets exposed. Darlene squeezed Jason’s hand as they wandered through this upturned world. They said nothing and there was not a sound. Then Samir whistled at them; it was getting late, almost time for dinner. His whistle seemed to travel from a great distance; when they turned around, Samir and Mahmoud looked like miniatures against the tiny jeep. How far had they walked?

 

After sundown, they went off-road searching for a sand dune for dinner and dancing. Jason tried telling Samir that he didn’t want them to dance. They could cook dinner together, he said. Samir acted like he didn’t understand and kept talking about the deliciousness of the chicken dinner to come.

They bounded over one dune after another, headlights off; at the apex of each dune, Samir would shake his head, peer out at the soft lumps illuminated by the rising moon, and point to another one. “For you, Mr. Jason,” he shouted over his shoulder, “the perfect dune!” Then they would drive down the slope. When they hit flat, firm ground, Mahmoud would crank the gears and floor the gas pedal. The jeep roared and shook as it gathered speed, exploding into the base of the next dune. The wheels would sink into the sand. Jason heard Mahmoud mutter and urge the car upward, bringing the jeep to a perfect rest at the top. Then Samir would reject the dune as unsuitable, and the process would begin again.

Jason was holding on to the back of Samir’s seat as the world of illuminated sand dunes bobbed around them like choppy ocean. The moonlight shone through a sky clearer than anything he had seen before, filled with shimmering dots, a thick sliver of the waxing moon. A gauzy white swath of galaxy’s light shone down on them. Perhaps they could drive like this all night, searching for but never finding the mythical perfect dune.

He reached for Darlene, grazing her fingertips as Mahmoud overshot a steep dune and flipped the jeep. They seemed to fall straight from a high distance. The front grill slammed into the sand. The hood crumpled, and the vehicle toppled to one side. Samir cried out in Arabic as everyone tumbled. Jason heard a crunching noise and as part of the jeep collapsed around his calf, pinning him. He was aware of, but did not yet feel, the pain. The jeep came to an abrupt rest against another dune, angled like a lean-to. Jason was stuck in place, his waist hanging in open space, his face pressed against the busted seat where Darlene had been sitting.

Darlene.

He couldn’t quite turn his body, so he twisted his neck for a look out her window, broken now. She had fallen through the opening. He could just make out her crumpled form against the sand, coming now to rest. He reached but could not touch her.

“Where are we, Billy?” came her voice. He thought he saw her mouth working through the words from the shadows. Jason had heard this name, that of a boy she had dated in high school who had been killed in one of the wars. Sometimes she spoke to him in her sleep, surprised and relieved to find him still alive.

Mahmoud and Samir clambered out of the vehicle, unharmed. They leaned in close to each other. Their voices became animated. Jason heard the wind picking up grains of sand. When that passed, he heard the men again, whispering now.

A moment later, Jason saw Mahmoud run along the bottom of the sand dune. He disappeared quickly into a black shadow.

“Where is he going?” Jason asked. “What’s happening?”

“Mr. Jason, do not worry,” Samir said. He approached the vehicle, and looked down through the busted window at Jason. “Everything is okay.”

“Where did he go?” Jason twisted his body trying to look up at Samir, but he couldn’t manage it. He saw the man moving at the periphery of his vision.

“We need help to turn the jeep. Then we will have dinner on the sand dune. This one! This one is the perfect dune.”

“I’m stuck here, Samir. Darlene might be seriously injured. We need a hospital.”

“There is no mustashfaa in Bahariya. Shhh—don’t tell your friends that. Tell them we have a hospital with mummies!” he chortled, dragged from his cigarette, and hacked. “We will be careful, Mr. Jason. Perhaps you will not even notice. We are so gentle. Do not worry.”

Jason twisted for a look at Darlene. Her splayed hair had caught the moonlight. “Honey,” he said. “Honey. Are you okay? It’s me. Are you fine?”

“She is fine,” said Samir.

“I am fine,” Darlene said. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again. Can you come into the light?”

“It’s me. It’s Jason.”

She laughed sharply. “You don’t fool me.”

Jason felt a welling in his chest. He swallowed it back. “Stay awake,” he said after a moment. He tried to modulate his voice so that he sounded both firm and soft. “Don’t fall asleep. You may have a concussion.”

Samir struck a match. “Cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“Quit smoking?”

“Long time ago.”

Samir seemed puzzled. He took one drag, two. “The missus, she is Mrs. Jason?”

“Fuck that shit,” came her voice from the sand.

“It’s okay, honey,” Jason said. Then, to Samir: “She is my girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

“We are very serious. We have been together for many years. We live together. We have a nice place together. We had a great life.” He started to feel thick and hot in his head, as though he had caught a fever. His calf began thudding.

Samir was quite animated now. He leaned against the car, making it groan and lurch more deeply into the sand.

“Samir!” Jason shouted. “Darlene is down there.”

“Of course, of course, Mr. Jason,” Samir said, and released his weight. It was silent for a moment. “Live together? As though you are married? But you are not married.”

“God damn it, Samir.” He tried to sound brave, resolute, but he sounded weak and afraid and he knew it.

Samir was silent again. He finished the cigarette and flicked it into the sand. “Does anissa have a sister?”

“Only two brothers. Marines.”

“Marines?”

“Soldiers. With guns, and knives.”

“So many guns!”

Jason reached down as if to nudge Darlene, whose breathing had become deep and regular. It took him a moment to find the words. His head was thick and hot as it filled with his blood. “Stay awake,” he whispered finally, after great effort. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Where are we?” she asked, stirring, in her sand-caked voice. “What time is it?”

“We’re in the desert. They flipped the jeep. We’re waiting for Mahmoud to return with some help. Listen to me now. We’re going to get out of here. Everything will be okay. We’re going to go home. I promise.”

“You don’t know that,” Darlene said. “You don’t know shit.”

“Look, Mr. Jason,” Samir said. Jason twisted again, saw Samir’s arm extend toward the sky. “This is the moon. It is beautiful here. More beautiful than in al-Qahira. You will tell your friends, yes?”

Jason could not see the moon, but he was aware of its luminescence. He was struck by the vastness revealed by this light, the upturned world rendered through his leaden head, which went on forever around him and offered something more than a respite ever could. His pulse pounded in the blinking light of the moon and stars. He was tempted by this feeling of oneness with everything around him, as though he would be fine right here as he was, Darlene below, Samir above, indefinitely.

Darlene breathed below him. He focused on that to stay alert. She snorted.

“She is funny,” Samir said.

“That’s true,” Jason said. “It was always one of my favorite things about her.”

“Maybe I will have a funny wife someday, yes?”

“Hopefully, Samir.”

They heard voices in the darkness. There was no way to know how many people Mahmoud had gathered, how far away they were, or from what direction they had come. Their chatter grew closer, then further away, then closer again—practically inside the upturned vehicle.

Jason craned his blood-logged head and saw through the windshield the men materializing from the shadow of a nearby dune into a moonlight gloaming. Their cloaks skirted the desert floor, kicking up sand, their keffiyehs cloaking heads, faces, necks. They were coming fast, Mahmoud in the lead. Jason was so, so glad to see them. He felt renewed, alive and hopeful, heart thumping at the thought of their deliverance.

Samir peered into the window and down the length of Jason’s body. He squinted down at his injured client for a moment, smoking.

At last he spoke:

“They are here. Relax. There is nothing to fear. We will save you now, Mr. Jason. And we will save anissa, too.”