The Desert Trek – Part 1: Red Sand

"That is the Camel's Hump," said Faris. "And that is the Old Lady. And that one, I am sorry, is Gerald."

"Gerald?" said Imogen.

"A tourist named him. It stuck."

She laughed, shading her eyes against the blazing light. They stood in a great red valley in the Jordanian desert, with towering sandstone cliffs rising on every side, glowing orange and rose in the early sun. The sand was soft and deep, the colour of rust, rippled by the wind. The sky was a hard, perfect blue. Far away, a hawk circled.

She was thirty-three, a geologist from Leeds, in a wide hat and sturdy boots, with a rucksack and a notebook full of questions. Faris, thirty-six, the guide, was lean and tall, in a long cotton robe and a red-checked headscarf, with a thick black beard, a flash of white teeth and the loose, easy stride of a man who had walked these valleys since boyhood.

"You study rocks," he said.

"I do."

"Then you will tell me what they are."

"They're sandstone. Cambrian, I think. About five hundred million years."

"And the Old Lady?"

"She's the same."

"She will be insulted."

He walked at her side, leading a patient, bored camel. They walked all morning through red canyons and over pink dunes, past arches and pinnacles of rock. In the afternoon, they stopped at a tiny oasis, a shaded hollow with a spring and three palm trees, where Faris made tea on a small fire. It was strong and sweet, flavoured with sage.

"I come here at least a hundred times a year," he said. "I have never tired of it."

"Why?"

"The light is never the same."

She looked at the rocks, glowing in the lowering sun, shifting from orange to crimson to deep wine. She thought she had never seen anything so alive.

"Can I ask you something?" said Imogen.

"Yes."

"Do the rocks really have names?"

"Everything has a name," said Faris. "You only have to listen."

"Green?" she said, a palm, an oasis.

"Green," said Faris, with a slow smile. "Very green. Tonight, I show you the stars."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Stars of Rum.