In Chapter Two, I told you about Reema the camel. About the coffee poured with the left hand. About the feeling of sitting beneath a sky so thick with stars it felt like looking into infinity.
But as I drove back to Abu Dhabi that night, watching the city lights creep back onto the horizon, one question kept tugging at the edge of my thoughts:
Who will remember all of these fifty years from now?
The glass towers will still stand. The roads will still be flawless. The malls will still gleam. But the sound of coffee boiling over an open fire? The names of the camels? The stories told in the shadows of palm trees?
Will anyone still be listening?
I returned to The Ezba the following week with that question heavy in my chest. And what I found there surprised me more than anything I’d seen so far.
The Smallest Hands
It was late afternoon when I arrived. The sun was beginning its slow descent, painting the farm in shades of honey and rust. But something was different today.
There were children everywhere.
A boy of about six was chasing a chicken near the date palms, his laughter carrying across the compound like music. Two little girls sat near the camel enclosure, braiding palm fronds into something I couldn’t yet recognize. A teenager—maybe fourteen—stood beside Abdulazeez near the fire pit, watching intently as coffee beans were measured and crushed.
This wasn’t a tour. This was family.
“Today is Friday,” Naser explained, appearing beside me with a smile. “Friday is for family. Every week, we come here. All of us. Brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, children. This is not just our work. This is our life.”
He gestured toward the scene before us.
“The children grow up in the city now. Schools. Screens. Football on grass, not sand. They don’t know the desert the way we knew it.
” His voice softened. “So we bring them here. Every week. Not to teach them—not with books or lessons. Just to let them be here. The desert teaches. We just make sure they show up.”
The Lesson of the Palm
I walked toward the two little girls near the camel enclosure. They couldn’t have been older than seven and nine—sisters, I guessed, from the way they moved around each other without speaking.
The older one looked up as I approached. Her name was Mariam.
“Salam Alaikum,” she said, without a trace of shyness.
“Salam Alaikum,” I replied. “What are you making?”
She held up her creation—a small, intricate basket woven from strips of dried palm frond. It was far from perfect. The weave was uneven in places, the edges rough. But there was something beautiful about its imperfection. Something honest.
“My grandmother taught me,” Mariam said, pointing toward an older woman sitting in the shade of a ghaf tree. “She says in the old days, we made everything from palm. Baskets. Ropes. Mats. Roofs. Even walls.”
Her younger sister—Aisha, I learned—held up her own attempt. It was more of a tangle than a basket. A few strips of palm twisted hopefully together, going nowhere in particular.
“Mine is not good yet,” Aisha said, with the devastating honesty only young children possess.
I knelt down beside her. “Can I tell you a secret?”
She nodded, eyes wide.
“The first time I tried to write my name, it looked like a chicken walked across the paper. But I kept trying. And now?” I shrugged. “It still looks like a chicken sometimes. But it’s my chicken.”
Aisha giggled. Then she picked up another palm strip and went back to work, determined.
Mariam watched her for a moment, then turned back to me.
“She will learn,” she said simply. “Grandmother says we have time. The desert is patient.”
The Camel Boy
Near the enclosure, I found the teenager I’d noticed earlier. He was no longer with Abdulazeez—now he stood alone beside Reema, his hand resting on her neck the same way I’d seen Abdulazeez do a week earlier.
His name was Khalid. He was fourteen.
“She remembers me,” Khalid said, not looking away from the camel. “I was born the same year she came to this farm. We grew up together.”
I didn’t ask how he knew she remembered. Some things you just feel.
“When I was small, I was afraid of her,” he continued. “She was so big. So tall. I thought she could step on me and not even notice.”
“What changed?”
He was quiet for a moment. Reema turned her head slightly, as if listening.
“One day, I was maybe five years old. I was playing near the well—too close. My uncle yelled at me to move, and I tripped. Fell right in front of her feet.” He smiled at the memory. “She could have stepped anywhere. She could have crushed me without meaning to. But she didn’t move at all. She just stood there, perfectly still, until my uncle picked me up. Like she knew. Like she was protecting me.”
Reema made a soft sound—a rumble, almost a purr.
“She is my sister,” Khalid said. And he didn’t mean it as poetry. He meant it as fact.
The Passing of the Flame
As the sun began to set, everyone gathered near the main fire pit. The adults arranged themselves on woven mats while the children sat on the sand, closer to the flames. A elderly man—the grandfather, I learned, father of Abdulazeez and Naser—lowered himself slowly onto a cushion.
His name was Saeed. He was eighty-three years old.
For a long moment, he simply looked at the fire. Then he began to speak—in Arabic, softly, the words flowing like water over stones.
Naser translated for me, whispering:
“He is telling the story of our great-grandfather. How he walked from the Liwa desert to the coast with nothing but three camels and the stars. How he knew where water was by the flight of birds. How he could read the sand like we read books.”
The children listened. Even the youngest—the chicken-chaser from earlier—sat still, mesmerized by the sound of his great-grandfather’s voice.
“When he finishes,” Naser whispered, “he will ask one of the children to add wood to the fire. And that child will be the storyteller next week.”
The passing of the flame. Literally.
Saeed finished his story. Silence settled over the group—the same silence I’d felt on my first night here. Not empty. Full.
Then he looked around the circle, his ancient eyes scanning the faces of his grandchildren.
“Khalid,” he said.
The teenager rose, walked to the woodpile, selected a single branch, and placed it carefully on the fire. Sparks flew upward toward the stars.
Next week, Khalid would tell a story.
What the Children See
Later, as dinner was being prepared, I sat with Naser away from the group.
“The children surprise me sometimes,” he admitted. “Khalid, he wants to be a doctor. He studies science, biology, all of that. I thought maybe he would grow away from this place. From the camels, from the old ways.”
“But?”
“But last month, he came to me with a question. He asked why Reema’s milk changes taste depending on what she eats. He wanted to know if the plants here—the ones the camels graze on—have medicinal properties. He wanted to study it. To understand it with his science.”
Naser smiled—the smile of a father whose heart is full.
“He is not walking away from the desert. He is walking toward it. Just with different shoes.”
I thought about Mariam and her imperfect basket. About Aisha, determined to try again. About the children who sat in silence, listening to stories in a language they understood with their hearts if not yet fully with their minds.
They weren’t being taught the old ways. They were being trusted with them.
And trust, I realized, is a far better teacher than instruction.
Why the Future Depends on Them
Before I left that night, I found myself standing alone near the edge of the farm, looking out at the endless dunes. The city was out there somewhere, beyond the darkness. But here, in this moment, it felt impossibly far away.
Khalid appeared beside me.
“You’re thinking about what happens when they’re gone,” he said. Not a question.
I nodded.
He was quiet for a long time. Then:
“My grandfather taught my father. My father taught me. I will teach my children. And they will teach theirs.” He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw something I hadn’t expected: absolute certainty. “The desert doesn’t die, mister. It just waits. It waited for my great-grandfather. It waited for me. It will wait for my children too.”
He turned and walked back toward the fire, toward his family, toward the voices raised in laughter and the smell of dinner cooking.
I stayed there a moment longer, looking at the stars.
The desert doesn’t die. It waits.
And in the hands of children like Khalid, Mariam, and Aisha—children who chase chickens and braid palm fronds and rest their hands on the necks of camels who remember them—the waiting is in good hands.
What the Desert Teaches the Young
That night, driving back toward the glittering lights of the city, I thought about what I’d witnessed.
The children at The Ezba aren’t learning dates and facts. They’re learning something far more valuable:
- Patience— from palm fronds that won’t be woven perfectly on the first try.
- Trust— from camels who remember them, who protected them before they could walk.
- Story— from elders who speak not to be recorded, but to be remembered.
- Presence— from a fire that needs tending, from a family that gathers every Friday without fail.
- Identity— from knowing exactly where they come from, and therefore, who they are.
In a world that tells young people to look forward, to move fast, to chase the new—the children of The Ezba are being given something radical.
Permission to look back.
And in looking back, they’re finding their way forward.
Coming Up in Chapter Four:
Stargazing in Abu Dhabi: An Enchanting Evening Tour at Ezba Desert Sanctuary
We’ve walked with camels. We’ve tasted coffee poured with the left hand. We’ve watched children receive the flame of storytelling. Now, in our final chapter, we look up. Way up. To the stars that guided the Bedouin across these sands for millennia—and discover why the night sky over The Ezba is the most enchanting show of all.