A camel grumbles and mutters as it kneels on the ground. It has been hobbled, its back feet tied together, to stop it straying far from the camp where the small tribe of Bedu have set up for the night.
Around a fire, men sit cross-legged and talk, the dust of their journey washed from their faces and beards. A woman, dark as a shadow, slips out from underneath the draped coverings that make up their home for the evening. She is carrying a smoke-black, heavy iron pot with a long, curved pourer. She fills little cups with aromatic but bitter coffee, and hands one to each man. As they sip, some men look deep into the glowing embers of the fire, others chat about the day’s journey and what may lie ahead on the long trip through the desert to the next oasis. One looks at the sky and sees a map in the darkness, pinpricked by thousands upon thousands of bright stars. From stories that have been passed down through generations, this man, like the others, can read the map and make his way safely through the oceans of red sand.
And the ocean is vast. For all he can see in any direction around him is the blackness of the desert, flat and stretching away to the horizon. As the stars move in a slow, wheeling circle in the darkness above, this man is aware of how small and insignificant he is amongst all this vastness.
Yet he is not afraid because he knows exactly where he is. A point, unique to himself alone, that is directly above him becomes the highest point in the sky. He names it the ‘zenith’. Then he imagines a straight line passing through his body and plunging deep into the earth to reach the lowest point, exactly below where he is sitting. This point he calls the ‘nadir’.
As he looks into the glowing embers of the dying fire he smiles, for he knows he is at the centre of the universe.