He learned to navigate in the desert by the stars at night and by the position of the sun during the day; to always know where he was by distinguishing a thousand tiny landmarks in the almost featureless desert, until he could do it as unthinkingly as a westerner driving a car across town. He learned to see across the immense emptiness, so that he could tell by a barely visible puff of dust on the horizon who or what it was, how many riders and from what tribe, friend or foe. He learned to find his way to distant wells hidden in the sands.

When the Mutayr broke camp and moved to find a new well or grazing, they could never be sure that they would find it or that it hadn’t run dry since the last time. And if they made a mistake, there was no second chance: the desert never forgave.

“In the desert the penalty for a mistake is death,” Sheikh Zaid would say. And yet, they never really feared. Everything was in Allah’s hands anyway. Almost every statement was accompanied by the phrase “Inshallah”—“God willing.”

He learned to track and hunt with the rifle and the falcon. A Bedu had to know the tracks of every desert animal and of every horse and camel. After a time, Nick could tell by the track of a camel whether it was wild or tame, male or female, whether it was carrying a rider, where it came from, how tired it was and even whose camel it was. Camels from the sandy Nefud had soft soles; those from the rocky plains of the Najd left smooth tracks, their soles polished by friction with the ground. From the droppings you could tell how old the track was, what the camel had been grazing on and when it had been watered last, and from these signs deduce where it came from and where it was going. And the dried droppings could be used for fuel. Nothing was ever wasted.

The desert gave little. It forced a man back upon himself simply in order to survive. Sheikh Zaid said that it was no accident that Allah had revealed himself in the desert. It was the desert’s very emptiness, its nothingness of stone and sand and sky, which mirrored the perfection of the Creator. Once Nick asked Sheikh Zaid how he knew there was a God. Zaid reined in his camel and outstretched an arm at the vast empty plain and burning sky.

“No defect canst thou see in the creation of the God of mercy,” Zaid declared harshly in the words of the Holy Koran. “Repeat the gaze; seest thou a single flaw?”

By then, Nick had grown conversant in Arabic. At first, he translated everything into English. Later, he simply thought in Arabic without ever translating. He realized he was fluent when he found himself dreaming in Arabic.