“Do you think we’ll see stars tonight?” I said. “If the sky is clear,” Zaid replied, promising nothing. I smiled and said a furtive prayer to banish the wispy clouds looming above us as he pressed down on the accelerator and led us into Wadi Rum, a vast expanse of desert in southern Jordan. The Jeep sailed through the ocean of sand, between an undulating sweep of clay red cliffs, bronzed in the sunlight. Mystified by the terrain, I wondered how long it would take to learn to navigate this landscape – to recognise the hue of each rock or discover which canyons offered water and which led nowhere. Until recently, Wadi Rum had been inhabited by nomadic Bedouin, who now live in the village on the edge of the desert, running tours and overnight camps to give tourists a taste of the Bedouin lifestyle. I wanted to witness a culture that is nomadic by design, rather than by default. My upbringing as the child of immigrant parents has left me with an unfixed sense of home that has become more and more difficult to define. I’ve always carried a sense of inner displacement that I can’t seem to shed, aware that my family’s past is located far away from our present life in London. I hoped to learn what it means to carry home. * At lunchtime, Zaid arranged a square of cushions for our group in the shade of a cliff. Behind us, he crouched in front of a charcoal stove from a similarly formed square of bricks, delicately chopping onions, tomatoes and cucumber before scraping them into steaming pan. Although the Bedouin are known for their hospitality, I was not expecting a handmade lunch; nor was I expecting Zaid’s gallayeh, a smoky tomato based dish that’s a staple across Jordan, to transport me back to my family’s kitchen table, burning my tongue with the flavour of my mum’s golden red, ambiguously named ‘stew’ – the default meal in any Nigerian household. He was already back in the Jeep before I could explain, so I kept this to myself, wiping my plate clean with flatbread before diving in for seconds. * I thought I'd found another moment of kinship later on when, perched on a pile of rubble, Zaid reluctantly reflected on the history of Jordan. A few, sudden words jumped outL “It’s strange. When Jordan became its own country, we the Bedouin here became Jordanian too,” he said. “Just like that, once they created these borders, your Bedouin cousin became a Jordanian Arab, or a Palestinian Arab, an Israeli Arab. You’re part of the same family but now there’s a border between you...” His tone was deadpan but his words crystallised a truth I wanted to hold onto - how political boundaries fail to represent the reality of people’s intimate lives. All day, I had been desperate to find some connection between the Bedouin way of life and my worldview. This moment, among the ruins of a broken home, felt symbolic - a chance to reflect on how we find a shared sense of place. “Anyway, I don’t really believe in politics,” he said, before I could find the words. * At our final stop, the crevices of the rock were carved like a Gaudi dream with dense, dramatic patterns. There were no other tourists around and the light cast a purple glow on the ground as we clambered towards the sunset. I slowed down to hear the silence, so unfamiliar it seemed to beat against my eardrums. My boyfriend and I dumped our sandy rucksacks aside so they wouldn’t ruin our photos. I laughed at the sight of them, a pair of bags looking out over the rocks, as though we’d positioned them deliberately, silhouettes against the sun. I don’t know how long we waited there, watching the sun dip beneath the horizon in a peach and purple haze. There was something sacred about this place. It made you want to rest, let go of your baggage, and listen, if only for a moment. I looked back and realised this was the only point of the tour Zaid had chosen personally. For the first time all day, he looked utterly at home.