The Desert Camp – Part 1: Red Sand

"He's looking at me," said Chris.

"He's a camel."

"He's judging me."

"He's chewing." Fatima patted the animal's neck, which was warm and woolly and smelled of dust. "Climb up. He knows what he's doing."

Chris climbed up, lurched, shouted and clung to the saddle as the camel rose to its full height in three alarming stages. Fatima laughed so hard she had to lean on the guide. Around them the desert unfurled in vast red waves, with great sandstone towers rising like islands from a sea of rose-coloured sand.

They had been married fifteen years. Fatima, forty, a civil engineer, had planned the trip for months, a surprise for their anniversary. Chris, forty-three, a history teacher, had arrived at the airport with a guidebook and a hat much too small. Their two children were with his sister in Amman.

"How did you find this?" he asked.

"The internet." She smiled. "I searched for very far away."

The guide led them through the desert at a gentle pace, humming something old. The sun slid slowly down, turning the sand from red to orange to gold, then pink. They rode in comfortable silence, sunk in the huge quiet, until at last they reached a small camp: a ring of black goat-hair tents around a fire, a carpet and a pot of sweet tea.

They ate lamb and rice from a shared dish under a sky that was already filling with stars, thousands of them, a dazzling river across the dark. Chris leaned back on a cushion and sighed.

"I've never seen so many."

"I wanted you to."

"Fatima." He took her hand. "I'd like to say thank you. And happy anniversary. And that I'd like to be alone with my wife very soon."

"I'd like that too," said Fatima.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Under the Stars.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Under the Stars.