There is no visible road, only sand blown hither and thither by the wind. You see hills of sand in one place, and after you see them moved to quite another place.
-The Travels, Ibn Battuta, on Crossing the Sahara, ed. H.A.R. Gibb
Our Darb, our Road, was quite visible, as thousands of camel prints converging into a single track, like a watershed converging into a river, maybe visible from a passing airplane, maybe even from an orbiting moon. The wind tried to erase our Way but could not, our destination…Um al-Dunya, Egypt, Mother of the World.