When the water gushed into the car and started rising to our knees, I found myself completely paralysed. I had always prided myself on knowing what to do in any emergency, but now, as the flash flood suddenly hit our car, I could not move or think.

Mona got out of the driver’s seat, pushed her car door open and begged me to get out. The panic in her voice sent an alarm signal through the fog in my head, and I managed to push my door open against the gushing waves, and stepped into the flood waters.

I looked around, and saw torrents of rainwater tumbling down from the massive grey mountains on my right, and to my left, in the distance, a slew of cars had stopped by a hill to watch and film us drowning. No one attempted to help. In front of us, a cargo truck had toppled over to its side from the sheer force of the waters.

Suddenly, I saw a small boy, barely ten and thin boned, running through the knee-deep water towards me. Grinning cheerfully, his skin brown and his teeth crooked, he grabbed my arm and dragged me through the swelling current towards land on the other side. Looking behind me, I saw that Mona had slipped into the water, but another frail-looking boy with dark eyes reached her just in time before the current pulled her away, and he dragged her through the water towards us.

Suddenly, we were on land, in the middle of nowhere on thisdesert highway. The little boys silently escorted us into a shack on theroadside, made of salvaged wood and plastic bags. Rain leaked through theirpaltry ceiling.

We found five children and two elderly women gathered around a small fire in an oil barrel. They inspected our drenched clothes and panicked expressions with mild amusement, then smiled nonchalantly, as if our rescue was a frequent occurrence in their nomadic lives.

‘Come warm your hands,’ the eldest woman spoke in a heavy accent that told me I was in the company of Bedouins, mountain folk, who lived off-grid and had absolutely nothing. No government papers, no money, no electricity. The most destitute of people to live on this massive, unforgiving land.

She smiled at me, her teeth jagged and unruly, her eyes a fierce and stunning green, rimmed with black kohl and deep lines that betrayed the hardship in her life.

‘Here, eat this,’ she picked up a piece of stale, rock-hard pita bread from a small bowl. ‘You must be starving.’