Driving under pressure

The blackness of the desert sky and the way dimmer stars wink into vision until the whole dome is covered with lights is as wonderful as ever. But to get to this point we had a day of minor efforts. First to pick up the hire car; no big deal, really, but delivered with an empty fuel tank, which I suppose is the way. That and having to spring for an extra 1700 dirhams cash that I wasn’t expecting to. The thing about an empty tank is that one doesn’t know how empty is empty. Did the light just come on? Or has the owner been tootling around town for a while? So that creates pressure to find a petrol station and fill up. But there’s also pressure to find the right road out of town, and unfamiliar drivers and all that. But we made it, without incident.