I could only remember snatches.

Getting on the airplane in Tel Aviv…that was clear enough. Where had I been going? Grandma had been there. Perhaps I’d been to visit her and was on my way back to the States…

After that…I remember shouting, and darkness. Sharp sounds, maybe rifle or handgun shots. I’ve only ever seen either in movies. There are snatches of oaths in three languages–Hebrew, Arabic, English–and maybe others as well. I think they were saying things that Grandma would have given me a swat for.

An engine. I remember the comforting hum of an automobile engine long after the higher yawl of jet turbines had faded away. Maybe there were helicopter blades in there somewhere, or that could have just been what little I could remember of my medivac from the wilderness after my appendix burst…the only other time there were patches of black in my memory.

Precious little to go on, especially when confronted by a wall of unbroken dunes with nothing but sand, sky, and wind.