Finally, we reach the top. Fawziyya and I stop and stare. We are young, fit, totally out of breath and drenched in sweat, and in front of us there is a hundred-year-old hunched-over lady who has chairs and tables set up and is selling sodas from under an umbrella.

“She must have a secret way up,” Fawziyya says as soon as she can catch her breath.

We drink warm Pepsis and stand before the actual Place of Sacrifice: a circle of mud raised among stones and covered with markers.

I look beyond it and see the rocks still go up higher. “Maybe there is something more,” I say, and Fawziyya follows me up, up, but it’s not steep like the steps; this time it is just a smooth slant of gray-black-purple rocks that look like nothing I have seen before. We are higher than anything else. We are looking down on the tops of the other mountains. My cousin suddenly holds me close to her hot body, perhaps thinking I am going to fall off the edge. We are in the sky so high that we are on the same level as the blue, and when we sit down, we see a lizard, as big as my arm and clear blue, the color of the sky.

“He wants to fit in,” Fawziyya says. We stare at it awhile, willing it to come closer, but it gets tired of us and goes between the rocks.

My shirt is drenched and sticky and it makes me feel sick and clammy. I look around and can see no one—so far that it seems we are the only living creatures, except for the lizard and for God. It is completely quiet, so we will hear if someone comes. I take off my shirt and bra and then my pants as well. Fawziyya just stares at me.

“What are you doing?” she practically shouts. “What if someone sees you?”

“Who is going to see me? Besides, it’s so quiet that we’ll hear if anyone comes this way.”

I don’t say anything else, but as I lay my clothes out flat on the rocks to dry, my cousin strips down to her underpants, bra, and undershirt, and lies back slowly on a rock, letting her skin get used to its heat. We let the sun tickle us for what seems like hours, but is probably five or ten minutes—long enough that our clothes dry. When we come back down again, my legs feel like rubber bands. We find Abu Salwan sitting in the shade with two Bedouin men.

“Thank God you are back safely. How was it?” Abu Salwan asks.

“I have never seen anything more beautiful,” I say. “And we saw the most incredible lizard!”