The night the dune ate my shoe

It was the second night in the desert. I had walked up the dune behind camp to watch the stars — Oman's sky is, genuinely, the densest I have ever seen — and on the way down one of my chappals stayed behind. I went back at sunrise. The dune had moved. The shoe was gone. Three weeks later, unpacking back in Bangalore, I found it in my friend Rohan's suitcase. He had picked it up thinking it was his. Neither of us remembers when.