We reached the Sam desert camp at dusk. One of us sat a dromedary on footprint-scored dunes, the saddle wrapped in red cloth with white and yellow flowers and a thick blue border, a peace sign lifted toward a sky already pink at the horizon, small figures on a farther crest. On packed, tire-tracked sand a woman in a pale-yellow jacket and a mirror-worked, tasselled ghagra pressed a red tilak onto an older forehead in…
