The Negev, a few hours south of Jerusalem. Ben-Gurion said Israel would live or die in the desert. The first stop: Beersheba, where it all began. But there are two Beershebas. Tel Sheva has a four-horned altar—stone so sharp that to caress is to cut. All the stones are shaped in circles. Like the ones around the well where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob drank. If you look due west, you can see Be’er Sheva. A gray smudge in the sand. Silver skyscrapers, billowing smoke. Between them, only memory. That you can see one Beersheba from the other, but not vice versa, is important. When the wind presses against one side of your face, when sand crystals burrow into skin, when the sun shimmers cold air on emptiness, you might feel sorry for the people who live and work in that city, forgetting that whoever lived in these small square rooms—five thousand years ago—might have sometimes felt warm, safe, happy, or in love.

Isaac James Richards researches and writes about religious memory in the Middle East. He spent a semester abroad at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies and dug for a season with the Huqoq Excavation Project in Israel. His work has appeared in LIT, Amethyst Review, Constellations, Stoneboat, Red Ogre Review, El Portal, Minyan Magazine, Oxford Magazine, The Journal of American Culture, and several other venues. He is also a Pushcart Prize nominee and will begin a PhD program in the fall at the Pennsylvania State University. Find him online at https://www.isaacrichards.com/.