Writing

I never asked his name.

I can still see the hard light around him – white, softly shared. He didn't call out; he didn't wave. Just sat, still as the land itself.

A small nod. Not the kind that reaches out, but the kind that quietly makes room. I had been walking alone for days, heading south through the highlands east of the Jordan Valley, following a track that was more memory than road. By the third day, I'd stopped counting distance; the trail had faded into loose earth.

The air carried the faint sweetness of wild thyme. Heat shimmered on the horizon. Each step sent up a fine dust that clung to skin and boot leather.

It's a strange thing to need – to feel your strength fall silent and realise you have nothing to offer back but hope. I measured the day by the shrinking stripe of shade at my feet.

My water was gone, and the sun was still unforgiving. My tongue, rough and heavy, lay like a stone in my mouth – and I realised I was closer to needing someone than I cared to admit.

I had braced for suspicion, forgetting how trust still lingers.

And then – him.

He sat cross-legged beneath a stunted acacia tree. The shade was a frail gift in that heat.

His clothes were the colour of the land ahead. His face carried years of sun, and a readiness to welcome.

He cupped his hands, shaping emptiness into an offering, a dark oval of shadow in his palms. A moment. Then – water, cupped and offered.

He moved with the unhurried ease of someone for whom giving is a habit, not a decision. He lifted it gently, the way a child shelters a candle.

No words, just a nod – that quiet Bedouin act of ḍiyāfa, that duty to give. The silence between us settled into something almost like company.

I bent to fill my bottle. "Shukran," I said – a simple thank you. The first sip stung like truth; the second steadied me; the third reminded me what it meant to feel alive. His gaze stayed on the horizon, as if generosity needed no witness.

We sat, mirrored in quiet, bound not by words but by being seen. For a while, I watched the space between us waver, the slow drift of dust motes in the light.

There was no language to bridge that silence, yet I felt something pass between us – as if gratitude itself had shape and weight.

In that stillness, I understood that travel isn't only movement through the landscape but movement towards others – the fragile, generous space where trust begins. In a land of scarcity, his small gift was enough.

The way ahead was the same – bare, bright, unending – yet it no longer felt empty.

My bottle was full, but more than that, so was I – certain that even in the harshest places, compassion can appear, unmeasured and inexhaustible.

Even now, what stays with me is the simple, steady reminder that we survive through one another.

Every journey, however solitary, depends on unseen hands – the stranger who points the way, the one who shares what little they have, the one who offers shade.

Because of him, what lay before me didn't feel mine alone. It was stitched together by moments of trust – small, quiet acts binding the world closer, one gesture at a time.

The light softened. The heat eased a little.

The path still wound through the same hard hills, but something in me had made room for it. I walked on, carrying the memory of water from empty hands – a silent testament to all we owe each other.