The border is close though he cannot see it. It is unlit and the men who guard it have become like the jackals who hunt by the moon.

He has driven without headlights a good part of the journey, one hundred and fifty miles. He follows the bare split of horizon, the rocks that climb into mountains. It is good, he thinks to himself, because this is the land itself giving him direction, sending him forward.

In the back of the truck, six people hold onto each other and pray.