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I had a recurring nightmare that began months before my first international flight. In it, I was in the window seat, watching for my husband to come across the tarmac. The engines howled. Where was Larry? The plane pulled away from the gate. I woke in a sweaty panic, terrified of landing alone in a strange place where no one spoke my language. Thirty years later, I was bound for Chicago to join my friend Sophie for the trip of a lifetime. We’d been planning the journey to Jordan and Egypt for nearly a year. Beyond excited, I switched my phone off airplane mode the minute the wheels touched the runway. My screen immediately began scrolling a frenzied chain of missed texts and calls, all from Sophie. The old terror twanged through my body, numbing me to the bone. “Where are you?” “I’m still in Boston.” A winter storm was pelting the airport with small plugs of ice. Her flight had been cancelled. I was sure we could change our tickets. She could fly in the next morning. We could catch up with our tour group a day late. How could it not work out? Sophie and I spent two hours calling each other, the tour company, and customer service at Qatar Airways. The tour company wasn’t responding to either of us. The sympathetic gate agent did her best to help us as passengers shuffled and stamped impatiently in the line behind me. Then it was time to depart and Sophie had had enough. “I’m not going, but I want you to go,” she said firmly. “I’m not afraid to go alone,” I lied after a shocked silence. “But this trip is more than Jordan and Egypt. You are an important part of it.” I was eager to see her. It had been 20 years since we’d lived in the same town. I pressed Sophie to keep calling. There was still a chance that she could join me in Jordan. Clutching this thought like a cat clutches the hand of someone holding it over water, I boarded the plane and settled into a little cabin with a sliding partition that hid the seat Sophie would have occupied. Sophie had upgraded my usual mode of travel to an astonishing degree, from business-class cabin to private tour for two — although she hadn’t known the tour would be private. Sensing my fear, she’d assured me that I would find a friend on the bus. There was no bus, it was just me in the back seat of a grey Toyota sedan that sported a hotspot, a charging port, and a wide arm rest that Sufian, my tour escort, kept stocked with cookies and gooey figs. “Your friend isn’t coming?” His English was perfect. He had lived in California for years before returning to Jordan. “No,” I said, noting a troubled expression that vanished behind his quick smile. “We have a busy day,” he said stoutly as he opened the car door. Sufian passed me off to a tour guide at Citadel Hill, an engaging man who, Sufian assured me, was a “true” (native) Jordanian. And so it went, from Citadel Hill to Madaba to Mt. Nebo, to the Dead Sea, to Petra, to Wadi Rum, and back to Amman. Through long stretches of driving, Sufian’s friendly round face with its thick salt and pepper mustache regularly appeared in the rear view mirror. He talked about the wonder I would see next, the native Jordanian guide who would walk me through it, and his daughter. Had Sophie been in the other seat, I would have whispered, among many other things, that the local movement was a big thing in Jordan. Instead, I watched the landscape streaming past the window. With its coarse sand and jagged rock, fantastical sandstone formations, and stunted, tenacious brush, Jordan resembled the familiar landscape of the American West. In just two days with Sufian, my solo adventure had become as comfortable as a road trip with a genial uncle who knew all the right people. Thanks to Sufian, I boarded my flight for Egypt with only a bit of fear and a heart full of anticipation.