The morning was still only a gray line above the hills of Hebron when tightened the knot of the wooden girth. The mount, an old gray donkey worn thin by the packsaddle, twitched its ears at the passing of the strap. Hajar approached, carrying Ismaʿīl wrapped in her rough wool cloak. Around her waist she had tied her long linen belt, the mintaq, whose trailing end drifted over her ankles, dragging in the dust of the path. 's red wool ribbon, bound tight at her left wrist, cast a dark mark in the faint light of dawn, while the two hammered gold rings in her pierced ears rang softly against her neck.
took up the hemp halter. Without a word, he led the animal out of the camp. stood on the threshold of her tent, arms crossed beneath her gray veil, her still figure blending into the oaks of Mamre. did not look back.
At the first stone basin, where the path began its descent toward the dry lands of the south, stopped. He unfastened the small leather flask hanging from his saddle and held it out to Hajar.
"Drink a little," he said.
Hajar took the flask, drank a few long swallows of fresh water, then handed it back. fastened it again against the wood of the saddle. That was the last word he spoke.
no longer counted. He no longer watched the sky for the phases of the moon.
The white limestone of Hebron, with its shaded valleys and its wind that held the scent of oak leaves and damp earth, faded behind them within a few steps. They entered the Negev desert, a flat expanse of gray marl and white stones where the heat began to rise from the tail end of the previous night. The wind changed. As they pressed on southward, all he could feel was a dry dust seeping beneath the veils and clinging to the eyelids.
The villages grew rarer, then ceased altogether. The last wells they passed bore markings from tribes did not recognize, angular gouges cut into the stone by hands foreign to Canaan. He avoided these wells as he had avoided the caravans.
walked in front, head low, eyes fixed on the trace of the path. From time to time his fingers slid along the rope to press his thumb slowly against the index finger of his left hand, as if searching for the distant sensation of the warm milk of his childhood in the cave of Ur. He avoided the frequented wells and the tracks of the great merchants heading up toward Egypt or the Sea of Salt. When they spotted the dust of a caravan in the distance, he veered toward the clay hills, skirting the encampments to press deeper into the desert of Paran. He sought no well for the night, pitched no shelter of wool. He would halt the mount beneath the meager shade of a rock, share a handful of dried dates and a few drops of water from the skin, then sit apart, his back against the warm stone, watching the sand.
Hajar watched him from her seat on the mount. At first, she had searched with her eyes for shepherds' tents or stone pens where they might shelter. But 's silence was like a wall. His step grew heavier with each day, his shoulders bowed beneath his dusty tunic, and his eyes stayed stubbornly fixed south, as though he were following an invisible line traced in the rubble. Worry rose in her, slow and mute. She held Ismaʿīl tighter against her chest, feeling the infant's warm body stir beneath the linen. Behind the mount, the trailing end of her belt dragged without pause, erasing the groove of the animal's hooves in the yellow dust.
Another moon rose.
At night, the sky changed. stayed motionless for long hours, his head raised toward the constellations. The familiar stars of Canaan — those that had watched over his childhood and kept vigil over Hebron — slipped each night lower toward the ridge of the northern hills, sinking into the horizon like dying fires. In their place, new constellations, brighter and whiter, rose in the southern sky, ruling over the bare steppe. They were changing worlds.
The stones changed color.
The land of Paran gave way to the first foothills of the Hijaz. The yellow sandstone hills gave ground before vast plateaus of black lava, the harrah, where blocks of basalt sharp as glass littered the ground. The donkey's hooves slipped on the dark rock, forcing to slow his pace, seeking out the rare patches of compact earth between the volcanic stones. The heat grew stifling, trapped in the narrow valleys flanked by walls of gray granite. Even the wind seemed to burn, carrying a scent of heated stone that parched the throat.
Ismaʿīl's body grew darker beneath the sun, his skin taking on the hue of the southern earth. He nursed longer, his lips pulling with impatience at his mother's breast. Hajar closed her eyes with fatigue, feeling her chest run dry as the days passed beneath the vertical heat. The infant grew restless, released the nipple crying, his small dry mouth searching in vain for the milk that no longer came. Hajar passed her hand over her sweat-damp brow, wiping the salt from her temples with the back of her sleeve. She said nothing. She watched 's rigid back as he continued to guide the animal across the black basalt.
They climbed a final steep path, a narrow gap in the black rock of the Hijaz, and reached the crest of the northern pass.
Hajar narrowed her eyes beneath the noon sun, the gold rings in her ears gleaming in the harsh light. She looked beyond the ridge, but saw nothing but a basin of stone. It was a barren hollow, sunk between bald mountains of gray granite and black basalt rising toward the white sky.
They descended the stony path. The valley opened beneath their feet, vast and empty.
No sound rose from the floor of the basin. No hearth smoke drifted in the still air. No flock of goats moved across the rocky slopes. No man stood upon the dusty tracks.
The valley was a bowl of stones heated by the sun. At the center of the depression, where the clay ground lay cracked by drought, stood a single wild tree, a dawhah with thorned, twisted branches whose gray leaves fell into the dust. A few steps from the tree, the ground rose into a small mound of red earth and packed sand, the rabiyah. The dry beds of winter torrents skirted this rise to left and right, marking the earth with wide white ravines that had never once worn down the summit of the red mound.
halted the mount beneath the thin shade of the dawhah. His movements were slow, precise. He took the leather sack holding a handful of dried dates and the nearly empty leather waterskin, and set them at the foot of the tree. He came to Hajar and helped her down from the animal. His hands, when they brushed her arms, were dry and warm as the desert stone. He did not raise his eyes to her.
took up the hemp halter again. He turned the mount around and began climbing back up the stony path toward the northern pass.
Hajar stood still for a moment beneath the tree, Ismaʿīl held tight against her chest. She watched 's figure move away up the granite slope, his stride steady, his head straight. She took three quick steps, the linen of her tunic sweeping the stones, the gold rings in her ears striking her shoulders as she began to run after him. The trailing end of her mintaq dragged through the dust, smoothing the ground behind her, erasing their own tracks in the rubble.
"O ," she said, reaching him.
did not stop. He kept climbing, his eyes fixed on the rocky ridge.
"Where are you going, leaving us in this valley?" she said, her voice echoing against the granite walls. "There are no men to keep us company, nor anything to live on."
kept walking. His shoulders stayed tense beneath his tunic, his rigid neck refusing to turn his face toward her. His fingers gripped the hemp rope until his knuckles whitened.
Hajar followed him still, her pace quick, the infant stirring in her arms. She repeated her question twice more, but 's silence remained whole, heavy as the heat of the valley.
She stopped on the path of black stones. She fixed her eyes on his back.
"Is it Allah who commanded you to do this?" she asked.
stopped. He stood motionless on the slope, his back to her, his figure cut against the white sky of the pass. He did not turn around. His right hand came to rest flat on his chest, feeling the dull beat of his heart beneath his tunic, his left hand staying still at his side, pressed against his thigh. He drew a slow breath, his ribs rising beneath the linen cloth.
"Yes," he said.
His voice was only a dry murmur, carried off by the hot wind of the valley.
Hajar looked at him for a long moment. Her hands tightened around Ismaʿīl's sides. Her chest fell.
"Then," she said, "He will not abandon us."
She turned back. Her pace was slow, measured. She descended the slope again toward the basin of stones, returning to the thin shade of the dawhah. She sat down on the cracked earth, arranged her cloak around her, and took the child onto her lap.
crossed the ridge of the pass of Thaniyyah.
As soon as the path descended on the other side and the basin of Bakka was entirely hidden by the black granite cliffs, he stopped. He let the halter slip from his fingers. His knees bent and he sat down on a flat rock, his back turned north.
He turned toward the direction of the unseen valley. He raised both hands before his face, palms open toward the white sky, fingers spread wide, as though to hold in the empty air the shape of what he was giving up. His lips moved, letting fall low words that the hot wind of the south scattered at once over the rubble:
"O our Lord, I have settled some of my descendants in a valley without cultivation, near Your sacred House, O our Lord, that they may establish prayer. So make the hearts of some men incline toward them, and provide them with fruits. Perhaps they will be grateful."
His hands stayed raised for long minutes, motionless in the burning air, as large drops of sweat fell from his brow onto the gray stone.
Beneath the wild tree, Hajar opened the sack of dates. She took a dried date, dusted with fine sand, and pressed it between her teeth to draw out the sweet pulp. She passed her moistened finger over Ismaʿīl's lips, and he stopped crying to suck at the sweetness.
The south wind rose, blowing in hot gusts between the granite cliffs. Hajar lifted her eyes to the black ridges. The sun slid behind the volcanic peaks of the Hijaz, its dying rays making the gold of her earrings gleam once more. The shadow of the dawhah lengthened. The basalt turned black. She could no longer see the ridges. She heard only the wind.
Beneath the faintly cooling wind, the dust rose in fine gray swirls, sweeping across the slopes of the red mound that stood, solitary and bare, beneath the watch of the starry sky.