And then off you go, perched atop the ever-moving camel as it plods along. You go along, go along, go along…Solitude follows solitude. You stretch your ears into the silence and hear nothing, not a birdsong, not the buzz of a fly.
-Pierre Loti, February 1894, The Desert
Loti rode from Cairo to the east exactly ninety years before Daoud and I rode up from the north. Maybe the Sinai is quiet, but the Darb was not. When the air was still we heard, could almost feel, the sloshing of our camels’ feet in the soft sand. When the wind was cold and high we heard it blow loudly in our ears, so loud we could hear nothing else, not even the plaintive muttering of the drover we called Muhammad the Miskīn, the Miserable, because of his torn and thin clothing, riding abreast of us.