While the Sands Whisper

Having received a government grant to photograph the Sinai Bedouin, Ayishah, a freelance American-Israeli documentary photographer, embarks on a captivating seven-month adventure.

From her mafia-influenced childhood to her globetrotting photography career, Ayishah is no stranger to mischief. And when she meets her Bedouin guide Hakim, her attraction to his roguish charisma draws them into a taboo love affair. She is thirty years his elder, but their age difference means little in a rugged landscape hiding so many secrets.

In an impoverished Sinai, Hakim is led to deal in opium and human trafficking to Israel’s frontier, poor victims targeted for prostitution by a Russian crime syndicate. When Ayishah befriends two of these women, she becomes determined to understand the powers compelling Hakim to such crimes.

But Ayishah’s own secret lies hidden behind her camera: a painful abandonment of her family that needs to heal. It becomes her challenge to reveal, using the terrible beauty of the Sinai mountains and its people, how we can overcome the borders that divide us.