I nudged the camel with my boots to encourage him to move more quickly, but he ignored me with an indifferent snort. We ambled along for quite some time until I saw a group of tents and human activity. My camel, for reasons known only to himself, began to trot. My pith helmet flew off my head. I clung to the saddle as I was jolted most unpleasantly (and painfully), and was relieved when we reached the Bedouin camp. Based on the number of tents, I inferred that the tribe was composed of thirty or forty men and their multiple wives and children. A large number of them had congregated to stare at me. I was not apprehensive; Emerson and I were acquainted with several sheikhs, and Ramses (at his own insistence) had spent a long while living among a particular tribe in order to learn their survival skills. I had worried that he had also learned some manly skills, but it was a topic that both of us had avoided.

“As-salaam-alaykum!” I called in a friendly fashion.

“Wa ’alaykum-salam wa rehmat-allah wa barakat ahu!” responded several of the men. The women, of course, said nothing, but their kohl-ringed eyes were rounded with astonishment. It was likely that I was the first fair-skinned person they had ever seen, as well as being an unescorted woman—and astride a camel in my divided skirt.

“Sitt Hakim,” a young man said with a gasp. The other men gathered around him and pelted him with questions. I was unable to understand their Bedouin dialect, but their gestures and glances at me suggested my reputation was not unknown to even the most remote tribes. A woman in a red robe and scarf approached cautiously and took the camel’s reins. The beast thudded to his knees, propelling me forward, and then dropped its haunches, propelling me backward. I had learned long ago to grab the saddle and hope for the best.

An octogenarian with a white beard that hung to his waist beckoned to me. “Sitt Hakim?” he said, his voice imbued with awe.

“Aywa,” I murmured modestly to the sheikh, then turned to smile at the giggling women and children. Had Emerson appeared in my stead, the women would have been flattening tents and gathering up cookware. The men would have been too petrified to meet his steely glare. “I am looking for a traveler, a gray-haired German. Have you seen him?” I said this in Arabic, but their perplexed frowns intimated that they did not understand me. My Arabic is passable, so I could only assume the tribe had its unique dialect and little contact with the rest of the world.

“May I be of help to you?” said a youth with a nascent wisp of a beard. “I speak English.”

“I am delighted by your kind offer. Where did you learn English?”