Free The Hidden Oasis by Paul Sussman

speaking to the security men in fluent Arabic, Kiernan was allowed to accompany her through to the departures lounge, where she waited with her until her flight was called, neither of them saying very much. Only when they had started to board and Freya had joined the queue for the bus that would take her out to the plane, did she vocalize what had been tearing at her ever since she had received the news of her sister’s death:
    ‘I just can’t believe Alex would kill herself. I just can’t believe it. Not Alex.’
    If she was looking for an explanation she didn’t get it. Kiernan simply hugged her again, stroked a hand down her hair and, with a final ‘I’m so very sorry’, turned and walked away.

    Once airborne Freya stared distractedly down at the desert below, an endless expanse of dirty yellow dissolving into the haze of the far horizon. Here and there its surface was scored by the branching, scar-like courses of long-dried-upwadis, but for the most part it was wholly featureless. Blank, empty, desolate – just like she felt.
    Morphine overdose – that’s how Alex had done it. Freya didn’t know the precise details, didn’t really want to, it was just too painful to contemplate. She’d had multiple sclerosis, apparently, a particularly aggressive form of the disease, had already lost the use of both legs and one arm, part of her sight too – Christ, it was just so heartbreakingly cruel.
    ‘She couldn’t bear it any more,’ Molly Kiernan had told her when she’d called to break the news. ‘Couldn’t go on. Decided to act while she still could.’
    It didn’t sound like the Alex Freya knew, giving up hope like that, quitting without a fight. But then all she really had was a memory: the Alex of their childhood, with her notebooks and rock collection and old army compass from the battle of Iwo Jima. The Alex who had held her close at their parents’ funeral, and given up her career to look after her, loving and supporting her. A past Alex. A lost Alex. It was seven years since they had last spoken, and who could say how much her sister had changed in that time.
    True, she’d written to Freya, once a month, regular as clockwork, dozens of letters over the years, all in that curious handwriting of hers that somehow managed to be both wild and neat at the same time. The letters had steered clear of any personal stuff, however. As though the events of that last day in Markham had somehow slammed shut the door on any deeper level of involvement between the two of them. Dakhla, the desert, the work she was doing on dune movements and the geomorphology of the GilfKebir Plateau, whatever the hell that was – these were the things Alex wrote about. Surface stuff, external, never delving too deep. Only the last letter, the one Freya had received just a few days before news of her sister’s death, had been different, opening up again, allowing Freya back in. But by then it was too late.
    And of course Freya, convulsed with shame, had never replied to any of the letters. Not once, in seven years, had she made an attempt to reach out, to say how sorry she was, to try to repair the damage she had done.
    That’s what tormented her now, even more than Alex’s actual death. The fact that she had been suffering, terribly by all accounts, and that she, Freya, had not been there for her, as Alex had always been there for her. The wasp sting, the lumbar puncture, the day she had soloed the Nose on El Capitan – her sister had never let her down, always supported her. But she had not done the same for her sister – she had failed her. For a second time.
    Reaching into her pocket she pulled out the crumpled envelope with the Egypt postmark, gazing at it before again putting it away unread and staring back down at the desert below. Blank, empty, desolate. Just like she felt. Had felt for the last seven years. Would probably now always feel.

    As arranged, she was met at Dakhla airport – a remote huddle of orange