I swayed back and forth, my eyes closed so tightly I saw stars. “You are faithful beyond measure.” I sang the lines again and looked over the desert. The night’s velvet darkness had retreated, taking with it the fleeting dew, leaving the air so dry it felt fiery in my lungs. Each morning after the mournful cry of the call to prayer jarred me out of sleep, I silently crept out of my sweaty sheets and went up to the rooftop of the B’nos Sarah dorm to gaze out at the pink and yellow panorama of the desert. The morning mist made the sand merge into the sky. I’d signed up for a school trip to Massada and for a night hike, the way Aviva had suggested, but I really wanted to walk alone down the hill and be surrounded by all that space. I’d never seen a landscape without buildings or trees. I imagined the desert as a vast nothingness, yet I knew it would be different up close. The landscape would flatten and change as I walked. There’d be hills and gullies and wild cacti. From here, the land seemed beautiful, endless and terrifying.
