I walked in a desert./And I cried,/"Ah, God, take me from this place!"/A voice said, "It is no desert."/I cried, "Well, But —/The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."/A voice said, "It is no desert."
-Stephen Crane
We walked in a desert on a Darb, as from Wehr, a Path, a Track, a Road. And glowing overhead on our night rides was another Darb, as Wehr gives, the Darb al-Tabbāna, the Way of the Straw Barn, our Milky Way, and when we reached the Way’s end in Egypt, we were met by Hajj Bashīr’s agent Ahmad Hassan abd al-Majīd at his own Tabbāna.