A mountain breathing dust through Giza’s patient desert, I met my doppelgängers waiting in the hinterlands Blinkered by a mist of complicity, footfalls echoed what we could not name. We circled what remained until the sand knew us, sediment waiting for ablution to betray it We kept our sea of clarity on standby, adjourned briefly for morning dew, for the fragile mercy of not knowing. In due course the duel returned, recovering its fiery conviction We left in a daze, choosing instead the softer haze our final form of grace, and called our stoicism endurance.