Dawn was breaking as we climbed a rough track through thickets of scrub. We rose with the hillside, the Nile we had crossed like saints falling away behind us, broad and still and unobtrusive, its banks lined with a thin strip of palms and indeterminate foliage. Just as we were beginning to pant, there, suddenly, was an opening in the slope’s rocky folds, scarcely large enough to let a grown man through, and in this opening, from within, fingers beckoned. So we bent and entered.

I had been expecting quiet, and the voices and blur of movement took me by surprise. When my eyes adjusted to the light I saw a large group seated on the ground, most of them women and children, and caught the scent of incense in the air. Overhead, the sun was rising shyly, preceded by its rays, which—an expertly placed spotlight—fell against a bright and almost blank white wall.

The singing began.

Praise songs for the Prophet, prayers, God’s names—all sounded echoless and somehow out of keeping in this ancient space—and then the women and children fell silent, though their chants and charms continued to tremble in the air. Everyone was staring at the wall, as though they were at the movies, and I stared with them.

Here was the cure for those who were denied visions, for those whose supplications fell flat: the wall was the secret these clustered hamlets never divulged. To strangers, this was nothing but a scored and pillaged ruin, but for these people, for the few minutes between dawn and sunup on those blessed mornings following the full moon nights, you could, if a true believer and full of love, see the one you sought.

Look closely, then, and pray hard to the prophets, and when your faith is brimming over then you’ll see them—the beloved dead. Clear as day or through a veil. Held by your eye or embodied in your mind. They will greet you or guide you or reassure you. Look at the wall until your eyes go white with it, till they blink and tear.

We began to hear muffled weeping around us, and the sound of the women murmuring names. As I sat there, cross-legged, a little boy crawled past my foot and I leaned forward to brush his hair—it startled me with its coarseness. Then I leaned back against the wall. I told myself that if these people were able to see their departed here, in this place, then surely so should I. And I stared until my eyes burned, and I saw.