He left Jeddah before the sun climbed. The city still yawned, its stone alleys quiet, its sea resting against the shore. He carried a canvas pack, a flask of water, a notebook with nothing in it. His father had told him the desert was not empty, only silent. The man believed him now.
Past the edge of the Red Sea’s salt air, the land became bone. It rolled — not in hills, but in waves of light and heat and stone. There were no signs. Only wind. Only sand that shifted like thought.
He moved east. Some days on foot. Some days beside an old Bedouin in a pickup with a cracked dashboard and prayer beads swinging from the mirror. The man spoke of stars and camels, of silence so complete you could hear God, if you dared listen.
Mecca rose from the horizon like a mirage made real. It was not what he expected. It was more. The city pulsed with devotion, with purpose. He walked with the crowd, but alone, barefoot on marble, watching men weep without shame. He did not speak. He watched. He listened. He tried to understand the shape of faith.
Then east again. The road to Riyadh was dry, but not dead. Villages passed like thoughts — sudden, quiet, gone. In one, a child gave him coffee without asking. In another, an old man recited a line of poetry as though it were prayer.
Riyadh shimmered on the plain, all steel and glass, but underneath, the same dust. The same wind. The same earth. He met a writer who showed him old books and new grief. They sat on a rooftop, watching the call to prayer rise between the towers.
He did not find what he was looking for. Not exactly. But he found voices, and stories, and men with hands like stone and hearts like fire. He wrote nothing in the notebook until he returned to Jeddah.
Then he began.
And the wind came in from the desert.
Broken Author 