On our third day, we headed toward the Libyan border, entering the cusp of the Western Desert that branches out into the Sahara. An immense wilderness unfolded and held me captive. We discovered a plain with no visible limits. Only our jeep tracks indicated any signs of life, carving deep incisions in the chocolate brown sand. This time Badri found a fabulous campsite. We scaled the ridge of a long dune and inched down into a hollow depression flanked by boulders as if they were curtains.
It was still mid afternoon. After we set up camp, I went exploring and felt as if I was getting drunk on light and space, the headiness of just being able to breathe, just being alive. I started playing a little game, walking backward in the sand just to watch my feet leave their imprints. As I kept moving, I sensed my borders shrinking, getting smaller and smaller until my mind dissolved all its rationales, theories, prejudices, and fears, leaving behind an emptiness, which was not a void, but a type of wholeness I had never experienced before.
Later in the evening after dinner, Badri and I took a long walk together, barefoot in the cold sand. His shadow roved next to mine and we walked without talking much. I only asked him how he managed never to get lost in that vastness. He simply said, "Learn to read the stars, the language of the sky." I threw my head back at the black dome sown with tiny silver sequins that appeared permanent and ageless. As I continued staring at the stars, I began to see my journey as a process rather than a destination. The prattling need for structure to give it a necessary weight faded into oblivion, replaced by a more sure-fire desire to trust in the unknown, to travel as a nomad whose only compass is intuition. A line from the Quran chimed in my head. Everywhere you turn is the face of God.
On my last night in the desert, I slept on top of a cold sand dune. There was no trace of any other human being. Not even the slightest wind, just a great stillness as if time itself was suspended. I was totally exposed and vulnerable to the infinite space around me. A space without walls, furniture, or restrictions, a space studded with hundreds of self-reflecting mirrors, with nowhere to run or hide from myself. Everywhere I looked, there was only me. The sound of my breathing and the soft thuds of my beating heart compelled me to fully absorb my solitude and revel in it.