“You’re welcome to come with me,” he offered, half joking. “I need a muse.”

I smiled. “Nah, I think I’ve had enough wilderness adventure for a while. I think I have more than enough good material to write my article, Alan.”

“Don’t make me out as a hero,” he warned. “I’m not.”

“I just write what I see, Alan. If that sounds heroic to some people, so be it.”

With that, I thanked him for the twentieth time for saving my life. “Salaam alaikum,” I added.

He shook my hand. “And peace upon you,” he replied.

Too bad that wouldn’t be the case, though. Nosiree.

By that afternoon, I was on a four-hour flight over the Red Sea and Persian Gulf to the United Arab Emirates and the city of Dubai, home of the world’s first cloned camel. The place is surreal, if you’ve never been. If you have, you know what I’m talking about. A few years back, I spent a week there visiting all its “tourist attractions” for a piece I called “ Disneyland on Drugs.” Needless to say, the Dubai tourism board wasn’t too keen on the title, but what did they expect? Their take on Space Mountain is an actual indoor ski mountain, Ski Dubai. Then there’s the man-made archipel-ago of three hundred islands created in the shape of a world map stretching thirty-five miles wide. It’s a small world after all, indeed.

But I was only passing through this time. In fact, after a quick nap at the adjacent Dubai International Hotel – by far the cleanest place you’ll ever stay that charges by the hour – I was back on a plane en route to Paris to interview one of the European directors of the Humanitarian Relief Corps, my final bit of research for the article I was writing.

At least, I thought I was on my way to Paris.

While I was literally on line to board the flight, I felt the vibration of my iridium phone. My editor, Courtney, was calling from New York.