Three Minutes of Desert

At sunset in Wadi Rum, the sandstone cliffs held the light long after the valley floor had begun to cool. Their high faces glowed orange above red sand, and violet shadows stretched from their bases into the open spaces between them. Leila stood beside the tour vehicle, shaking a little sand from her shoe, and felt the pleasure of being somewhere she had wanted to see since childhood. Nothing in the pictures had prepared her for the size of it, or for how small an engine sounded after it had been switched off.

She was forty that day. Her sister had offered a party, her friends a weekend away, and her mother a list of people who really ought to be invited if she had either. Leila had chosen a week in Jordan. She had spent the afternoon with a small guided group, listening, looking, and enjoying the unusual liberty of having nobody know that they should make a fuss over her.

The man in the pale blue shirt was holding an hourglass.

It fitted in his palm, with a wooden frame and clear bulbs full of white sand. Leila had noticed him turn it over at the previous stop, then again when their guide led them to this low, level patch of rock. Now he set it beside his boot and watched the landscape with such deliberate attention that she wondered whether he was carrying out an experiment. Everyone else had a phone or a camera. He had brought a way of measuring eggs.

He caught her looking and smiled. They had exchanged names in the vehicle: Simon, forty-two, from Bristol. She remembered because he had asked how she preferred to pronounce hers and then got it right. When she asked about the hourglass, he told her it was meant to run for three minutes. He wasn't sure that it did. Out here, it seemed considerably longer.

Leila crouched to look without touching it. A thin stream fell between the bulbs. Nothing appeared wrong with it, although Simon's puzzled expression made her want to investigate. She offered to time it on her phone. He asked whether she would mind waiting until after the sunset. There was no urgency, he said, and the sand wasn't going anywhere they couldn't find it.

She sat down on the rock beside him. Their guide had shown the group where they could stay for the view and would call them back to the vehicle when it was time to leave. A few people stood farther along the same ledge. Nearby, a sultry woman with sea-green eyes and a wine-red scarf adjusted the strap of her bag before joining her companion. Then Leila's attention returned to the great slope across the valley, where a narrow strip of sunlight was climbing toward the top.

Simon handed her the closed bottle of water she'd left beside the vehicle. He had picked it up when their guide pointed them toward the viewpoint. The gesture was ordinary, but she liked that he hadn't interrupted her looking to make her acknowledge it. She drank, passed him the hourglass when he reached for it, and felt the brief contact of their fingers around the small wooden frame.

They talked about why they had come. Simon worked as a hospital pharmacist and had a particular enthusiasm for places where his familiar sense of scale became useless. He had traveled through mountains and along coasts, but this was his first desert. Leila told him about a school atlas with a loose page that had made Jordan fall out whenever she opened it. She'd kept the page in her bedroom for years. Coming here had been less a sudden decision than the eventual fulfillment of a very patient one.

She didn't mention her birthday. For now she enjoyed being a woman beside him on a rock, without another fact changing how he behaved.

He asked what had surprised her. She considered the question properly. The colors, she said, and how much she liked being unable to arrange the whole view into a single picture. At home she worked as a restaurant manager; she could look around a room and know almost at once what needed doing. Here her eyes kept traveling outward without reaching a manageable conclusion. Simon said he liked the way she'd put that, and the warmth of his attention made her look down at the hourglass again.

The upper bulb was still partly full. Leila was sure more than three minutes had passed. She pointed at it, and he looked almost relieved. He had been wondering whether he was imagining the same thing. He turned it gently, and the little mound remained where it was for a moment before collapsing.

There was a fine crack near the wooden cap. He had washed the frame at home after finding it in a cupboard, he admitted, and might have got water inside. Some of the sand had clumped together. When he tilted it, the stream resumed, briefly swift and then slow again. The supposed experiment was a broken kitchen timer, brought halfway across the world before either of them thought to inspect it closely.

Leila began to laugh. Simon did too, although he looked a little embarrassed. He had bought it years ago for a board game whose turns always became arguments. Lately he'd used it for something else: choosing one place on a walk, staying still for the full three minutes, and seeing what he would notice after the first obvious thing. He'd packed it for the trip because he liked the habit. It appeared he had been taking unusually generous turns.

“Did you notice anything after the first obvious thing?” she asked.

His eyes moved from the bright cliff to her face. He didn't answer immediately, and the pause changed the question. Leila could feel her own smile becoming less playful. She had noticed the line of his shoulder beneath his shirt, the thoughtful space he left before replying, and how often she hoped his next question would be about her.

“Yes,” he said. “But I was trying not to stare.”

She shifted closer until their sleeves touched. For a while they said nothing. Across the valley, the sunlight withdrew from one fold of rock after another. The quiet contained small sounds: a shoe against stone, the soft movement of a jacket, their guide speaking to someone behind them. Simon laid his hand between them, and Leila placed hers over it. He turned his palm upward to receive her fingers.

When the guide called them back, they returned with the group. Simon packed the hourglass carefully into his bag, and in the vehicle Leila chose the place beside him. They were staying at the same camp; she'd heard him tell the driver earlier. There would be supper there, other people, a whole evening with an ordinary beginning. The thought pleased her more than any extravagant promise could have done.

At camp, lamps glowed around the seating area. Leila paused beside a low wall overlooking the darkening sand, still within the settled bustle of arriving guests. Simon stopped with her. She finally told him it was her birthday, and he looked briefly dismayed that he hadn't known. She assured him that he had already helped her celebrate it exactly as she wanted.

He asked if she would let him buy her a drink after supper. She agreed, then asked for something sooner. When he understood, his expression softened. He touched her cheek and kissed her, gently at first, and she held his hand against her face as she kissed him back. The warmth of him, after the cooling desert air, made her reluctant to move away.

Eventually a burst of laughter from the dining area brought them back to the evening. Simon offered her his arm. Leila took it and glanced at the bag holding the damaged timer. They could test it properly later, she said. He agreed, with an unconvincing seriousness that made her smile. Neither of them looked at a watch as they went inside.