The Noon Shadow

They set off at sunrise.

Grandpa rode Muzna, and Malik and Jana rode with Dr Ruba in her little car with the big wheels, which made strange noises whenever it climbed a dune: creak... creak... pfff. Muzna walked calmly ahead of them, choosing the way between the dunes without anybody guiding her, as if she knew exactly where they were going.

"Your grandpa's camel is better than my car's satnav!" laughed Dr Ruba.

In the morning the desert was beautiful in a way Malik hadn't expected. The dunes weren't just yellow, as he'd always thought. They were gold, orange, pink and red, and violet in their shadows. The wind had drawn fine wavy lines across their surface, like the fingerprints of a giant. Malik saw tiny tracks in the sand: a beetle's tracks, a lizard's tracks, and the tracks of a bird that had hopped three times and then flown away.

"The sand is a book, Malik," said Grandpa, seeing him looking. "Everyone who walks on it writes something. And every night the wind wipes the page clean, so we can write again."