He lay down on his back and looked up at the stars, there were thousands upon thousands of them filling the vast bowl of the desert sky, immersing him in wonder and a sense of scale. How small and insignificant we are, he thought. There is nothing like being reminded of that when your troubles seem so large!
The dune behind him was a dim area of more solid black and its bulk cut out the lights of the camp and the nearby village. This must have been how the night sky has looked for millions of years, with no human light to detract from it.
The sand under his back still held an echo of the heat of the day in the desert and for while he thought of nothing at all.
But after a while his thoughts returned to the here and now, specifically to this evening when the bittersweet pleasure of a great evening with the woman he loved so much, but who would never be his, ran though his mind.
Timing he mused, the whole universe up there works like a vast clock, but down here we cannot get anything right. He had met this girl and fallen in love, he knew she could have been the one for him and the greatest love of his life; but the timing was wrong, he was with someone else when they met, and by the time he was not, she was!
It must happen all the time he thought, and we all follow the conventions of our tribe, our society or our religion to prevent us pursuing happiness by following our hearts.
He sighed. He was not a stupid man, he knew that you need rules and conventions for society to work, for children to have security, and for civilization to exist.
But on a night like this, where it is just you and the universe, it seemed a bloody shame that love could not be the only consideration, just for once.
That evening he had watched Carrie chatting to the local villagers. She was everything he would like to be, sociable, with a gift of being able to talk to strangers and make friends easily, and transparently honest and interested in others. For someone like him, awkward and a bit reserved it was revelation, and drew him like a magnet, in her company he too felt more at ease with others, and with himself.
Of course when the dancing started she was in the thick of it, and soon he was too. Letting go completely for once in his life. He managed to forget for a while that tomorrow they would be returning to their everyday lives.
When the local women, all smiles and laughter had dragged her off somewhere, he had continued to bask in the wonderful atmosphere of the place, the flickering fires and smoking candles and torches. The warm colours of the tent fabrics moving in the breeze, and rich carpets on the ground with the shadowed corners, and exotic scents of cinnamon and spices on the night breeze. The desert had its own smell, and his tiled kitchen with its fluorescent strip lights, frozen food, and television, seemed a lifetime ago and a universe away.
The music began again and Carrie reappeared with two other women, to his delight she was wearing a diaphanous outfit composed of many pieces of some floaty fabric that followed her movements as she danced, her belly was bare with a large jewel of some kind fixed to her belly button, and she was laughing to him as she tried to imitate the sensuous rhythms of the local dancers, a kind of shawl of small silver coins and trinkets circled her hips and flashed in the candle light as she swayed. Her outfit was red, gold, green and violet, a chaotic mix of warm colours that wove around each other and highlighted her white skin and teeth as she laughed and laughed.
Her belly dancing was, frankly, rubbish, but his eyes were glued to her, and he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful or full of life.
She smiled straight at him as she tried to copy a sort of grinding squatting motion that would have got her thrown out of polite society, and she added a bottom wiggle with an over the shoulder wink that soon had the others trying to copy her. His heart and trousers were both under considerable strain by now and it was almost a relief when the music ended, and the three ladies took a bow. The place was in uproar and he reckoned she had done more for international relations in half an hour than the UN had managed in ten years here.
Carrie dropped onto the huge cushions in a sprawl, "I am knackered" she said that belly stuff must be good for your waistline, I am glowing!"
