Sinai Peninsula, Egypt Driving on the narrow road toward the imposing mountains of the Sinai Peninsula, the wind is cold, but the sun is warm and clean air rushes into my lungs. I take out my driver’s license in preparation for the upcoming military checkpoint. “Where are you heading?” comes the usual question. “St. Katherine,” I respond, referring to the St. Katherine Protectorate, an Egyptian national park that is home to the Bedouins. The officer looks skeptical. I can almost hear his thoughts, which I presume to be along the lines of this: Bedouin women don’t drive, and they don’t wear pants.

I first came to this sparsely populated desert region, situated between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, 15 years ago. I was a teenager