The sun has already dropped behind the wall when I find the camels, all lined up next to each other like soldiers on parade in a dusty corner of the store. Tiny wooden camels, each no more than a few inches tall – a whole shelf of them. It is love at first sight.
My hand shoots out of its own volition and grabs a camel off the shelf. It isn’t just any old camel – they are all wonderful, but this is the perfect camel, carved with loving precision in a caramel wood. One side is unblemished gold, while the other is decorated with streaks of a darker color. The two carved saddlebags seem to hold all the treasures of the Orient. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
We have been in Jerusalem for the better part of a month, my mother and my sister and I, having boarded a jet and flown across the ocean to be with my father.  I love the city: a beautiful mix of past and present like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  Stone buildings as old as time run up and down gently rolling hills, along cobbled streets and staircases of cracked rock.  Everywhere you look is another monument – from the window of our fourth-floor hotel room, we can see the Dome of the Rock rising like a golden sun in the distance and the great block of pale stone known as the Wailing Wall stretching beyond that. But running through this ancient city is a thriving vein of modernity – apartment buildings shoot up everywhere, monoliths rising to touch the heavens; bumper-to-bumper traffic winds below.  Old dusty market stalls huddling under super-modern high-rises are just part of the background, nothing to be gawked at or marveled over. People hold doors for my mother and offer me free drinks and smiles everywhere I go. They love me and I love them and we get along fine.
The streets are nearly empty – an anomaly I am far too young to appreciate. The streets are never empty in Jerusalem.  During the day, the ever-present throngs of people keep me close by my mother’s side, terrified of being lost in a crowd of tourists – Americans, every one of them, overweight and clamoring for a look at this strange land – or locals – Palestinian or Israeli, and far less terrifying – and never seen again.  Even in the Old City, there is always someone around. But on this night, the streets are nearly deserted, and I am free to roam.
The camel I have found is clutched between damp fingers as I go skipping into the night. Fairy lights in the nearby stores illuminate the street, casting a golden pallor over all they touch and deepening the shadows on the roadsides. I dance up and down the narrow streets, and suddenly I am no longer in the Old City.  The empty expanses of the Sahara Desert are calling me and I answer, my trusty camel at my side. Two intrepid explorers, we sway across the dunes, battling sandstorms – and the occasional rogue lion. Grit is in my hair and eyes, but it doesn’t bother my camel and it doesn’t bother me.
But we grow tired of the Sahara soon enough – there’s too much sand, and it’s just boring. Luckily, the jungles of India are right next door to the desert, and I am an Indian princess, riding her trusty steed through the deepest jungle. Eyes, yellow-gold-green and predatory, watch us from the trees. I shake my fist at them and they slink away, a low rumbling sound building in their throats.
The jungles of India become rugged mountain ranges become green hills become the ocean floor, and then the cobblestones beneath my feet become slick ice floes and I find myself in Antarctica. Still clutching tight to my beloved camel, I slip and slide my way past a streetlamp to speak to the penguins on the corner. They have never seen a camel before, so I laugh at them a little, and then we have a nice long conversation about nothing in particular – nothing in particular is very important at my age.
I am focused on the conversation, and so I am startled when the penguins squeal in fear and dive away, disappearing from my sight as quickly as they appeared. I spin around to see a tiger – a polar bear – a dragon – a horrible something advancing towards me, a something that changes forms as quickly as my imagination can create them. Others might be fooled by its benign disguise – a street sweeper, how clever, I think – but I am wiser than them. My camel and I share a glance. We are no mere penguins to be frightened off by the thing before us. No, we are warriors, battle-hardened and tough, refusing to cower in fear of such a monster.  Yelling like banshees, we attack. The battle is fierce, and for a moment it looks like we might lose. We are forced into a corner – defeat before surrender, I remind myself – but the monster turns tail and flees, slinking off down another street where we cannot follow it. Flush with victory and giggling like mad, I go skipping back to the store, my fellow warrior swinging from one sticky fist.
My parents are still in the store when I return, in almost the same position as they were when I left. They have been speaking to the owner of the shop, a man I know as Abu Ali.  I like Abu Ali – he lets me play in the store and doesn’t yell at me, and once he gave me a hairclip decorated with a colorful pattern of dried flowers.  I will learn many years later that he had been a terrorist in Lebanon before he became a shopkeeper, but the fact won’t seem so important in retrospect. At the time, I wouldn’t have cared if he was in the Russian mob – to me, he is simply a kindly man, one of my favorite people.
I play with my camel all evening long, darting in and out of the shop, having horrible battles with the street sweeper that always ends with it fleeing in terror, and visiting all the wonders of the world. Eventually, my sister finds a camel of her own, and we have grand adventures all over the street. There are kings and queens and snowcapped peaks and once, briefly, an obstreperous kangaroo. And when we finally board the plane to fly back home, I am still holding tight to my camel.