"Wait. What do you mean, a buried plane?" Caravaggio asks.

"Madox had an old plane in the early days, which he had shaved down to the essentials—the only “extra” was the closed bubble of cockpit, crucial for desert flights. During our times in the desert he had taught me to fly,( the two of us walking around the guy-roped creature theorizing on how it hung or veered in the wind. )

When Clifton’s plane—Rupert—flew into our midst, the aging plane of Madox’s was left where it was, covered with a tarpaulin, pegged down in one of the northeast alcoves of Uweinat. Sand collected over it gradually for the next few years. None of us thought we would see it again. (It was another victim of the desert. Within a few months we would pass the northeast gully and see no contour of it. By now Clifton’s plane, ten years younger, had flown into our story. ) 

"So you were walking towards it?" Caravaggio says.

Yes. Four nights of walking. (I had left the man in Cairo and turned back into the desert.) Everywhere there was war. (Suddenly there were “teams.” The Bermanns, the Bagnolds, the Slatin Pashas—who had at various times saved each other’s lives—had now split up into camps. )I walked towards Uweinat. I got there about noon and climbed up into the caves of the plateau.