The Tour Bus to Petra

The itinerary was laminated, and Elias was very proud of it.

Six days. Amman to Petra and back. Every stop, every meal, every toilet break, typed in a clean font on two sides of a sheet of card and sealed in plastic so that nothing, not spilled coffee or desert dust or a sudden shower, could ever change it. Day One: Arrivals, Queen Alia Airport, 14:20. Transfer to hotel. Welcome dinner, 19:30. Elias had laminated seven copies, one for each passenger, plus three spares, plus one for the driver, plus one for himself, which was now slightly damp from being held so tightly.

It was a quarter to seven in the morning, in the ground-floor office of Basalt and Rose Travel, in a side street off Rainbow Street in Amman, and Elias's first tour as a tour leader began in seven and a half hours.

"Laminated," said Samer, holding one up to the light. "Very nice. Very professional." He was the ground-agent manager, forties, in a pressed shirt and a lanyard, with a phone in one hand and a cup of cardamom coffee in the other, and the slightly haunted look of a man who has worked in tourism for twenty years and has seen everything at least twice. "You know nothing will go like this."

"I know," said Elias.

"No, you don't," said Samer kindly. "But you will." He set the itinerary down on his desk, next to a computer showing a spreadsheet so large and so colourful that it looked like a stained-glass window. "Your group. Seven passengers. One family. Grandmother's seventieth birthday. Booked through Wayfarer Lane in England." He scrolled. "They booked the Classic King's Highway, six days, private coach. Very good. Simple." He scrolled further, and paused, and frowned at something. Then he scrolled back up again quickly, as if he had not seen it.

"What?" said Elias.

"Nothing," said Samer. "A note. From the other office. I'll check." He put the phone to his ear. "Go and meet your driver. She's outside. Rania." He paused. "Be polite."

"I'm always polite."

"Be very polite," said Samer, and turned away to shout cheerfully at somebody on the phone.

Elias stood for a moment in the doorway of the office, looking out at the street. Amman was waking up. A man was hosing down the pavement in front of a juice shop, the water running in a bright stream down the steep hill. A bakery on the corner had its doors open, and the smell of fresh bread and za'atar drifted up the street, and a queue of people in work clothes were buying bags of warm round loaves. A boy on a scooter went past with a tower of flat boxes on the back. Somewhere a radio was playing the news. And over all of it, the hills of the city, pale gold in the early light, rising one behind another, covered in houses like sugar cubes.

It had been years since Elias had lived here, as a student, in a rented room with a landlady who corrected his Arabic at breakfast. Elias had forgotten how the light looked at this hour. Had forgotten the smell. Had not, it turned out, forgotten anything at all.

The coach was parked half on the pavement outside, white with a stripe of turquoise down the side, twenty-two seats, spotless, gleaming in the early sun as if it had been polished by hand, which, Elias would later learn, it had. A small string of blue beads hung from the mirror. A box of tissues sat on the dashboard, and a thermos, and a tin of dates, and a pair of sunglasses, and a notebook with a pencil tucked into its spiral.

Leaning against the front wheel, drinking tea from a small glass, was a woman of about fifty-five, in a navy jacket and a patterned headscarf, with reading glasses pushed up on top of it, watching Elias come down the steps with an expression of polite, total assessment.

"Marhaba," said Elias. "Good morning. I'm the tour leader."

"Ahlan," said Rania. She did not move from the wheel. She looked at Elias's face, and Elias's shoes, and Elias's bag, and lastly at the laminated itinerary in Elias's hand. "First tour?"

Up close, the coach was even cleaner than it had looked from the steps. The windows had been washed that morning; there were still drops of water drying in the corners. The seats had covers in a pattern of small turquoise diamonds, and every one of them was straight. Somebody had hoovered the aisle, recently and with feeling.

"Is it that obvious?"

"You laminated," said Rania. She held out her free hand. "Give."

Elias gave her one. Rania read it, slowly, both sides, sipping her tea. Then she took the pencil out of her notebook's spiral and made a small mark in the margin. Then another. Then she turned it over and made three more.

"You can't write on it," said Elias. "It's laminated."

"Pencil," said Rania, as if explaining something to a child. "It wipes." She handed it back. Beside Day Two, 13:00, lunch, Madaba, restaurant TBC, she had written Nour. Beside Day Three, Wadi Mujib viewpoint, 15 min, she had written no, 40. Beside Day Three, 13:30, lunch on the road, she had written, in small careful capitals, MY MOTHER.

"Who's Nour?" said Elias.

"My niece," said Rania. "In Madaba. Mosaics. Best lunch in Madaba, upstairs from the workshop. Her husband's mother cooks." She finished her tea. "Restaurant TBC is no good. Restaurant TBC means a big place with forty coaches and soup from a packet."

"And your mother?"

"Lives on the King's Highway," said Rania. "We go past her door. Thirty years, I never go past her door." She looked at Elias over the tea glass. "She makes maqluba on Wednesdays."

"Day Three is a Wednesday," said Elias slowly.

"Yes," said Rania. "It is."