Chapter 23: 23
The Judean Wilderness. In the Bible, this is a place associated with evil, with madness, with death. It is here that Elijah, hiding out from a persecuting king, hears the voice of God; it is here, according to the Synoptic Gospels, that Satan tempts Jesus Christ. And you can see why it got such a bad rep. The sun here is fiercer than anything you've ever experienced, and your shirt is plastered with unceasing sweat. The baked, lifeless sandstone expanse around you shimmers in waves of intense heat. With the exception of the ever-circling vultures and the occasional scurrying lizards, there is no sign of life anywhere.
You have been riding for four days now, and Jerusalem is a memory far back over the horizon. You are east of the Dead Sea (you can just make out a distant shimmer to the west) but still close enough to mean that the dense miasma of salt in the atmosphere crusts on your skin and hair. Your camel sways beneath your numb, saddle-sored body; for the hundredth time in an hour, you lick your cracked, parched lips and urge your beast onward.
Suddenly you are no longer alone. Esme has ridden up alongside you, leaving Abdul, Sam, and your Bedouin guide, Mehedi, riding three abreast behind. Esme seems even more alive than she did in Jerusalem. Wearing male Bedouin clothing—a flowing long embroidered shirt over loose cotton pants with a kufiya headdress over her blond curls—she looks born to the saddle, immersed in a place which most people would see as a hell on earth but which she loves with every piece of her being.
"So, what's he called?" she asks. She gestures at your camel. "You must have thought of a name by now, surely? Mine's Lancelot. Who's yours?"
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