From the desert to the city

Leaving Wadi Musa, I took the six a.m. bus to Wadi Rum. It's the only bus that travels between the two towns every day. After circling the town to pick up everyone, the bus climbed into the mountains around Petra, offering great views down into the valley. The sun was just rising, and the skies were a pale blue.

We drove to the Desert Highway and then headed south, finally turning east down the access road into Wadi Rum. In the small village, a guide met me and I jumped into his land cruiser to head out into the desert. The sun was still rising; its rays brightly lit the red sandstone mountains. Once ensconced in his bedouin tent, he offered me tea. His cell phone buzzed and he apologized, he had to go rescue a friend of his whose land rover had been stuck in the sand. I wandered around camp. The tent was nestled beside a large rock, which offered both shelter and shade. The sand was soft beneath my feet. In the distance I could see far off rock formations.

In the afternoon, my guide took us for a ride through the desert, stopping at naturally formed arches and bridges cut out of the rock by erosion. A group of travellers with me took the opportunity to practice rock climbing, running across rock bridges and jumping upon them to test their strength.

The sunset found me walking across the plains. A Japanese woman met me atop a small rise, and asked me how long I was staying in the Rum. I told her just that night. She was a tour guide working out of Isreal; she had lived there for the past six years. She was staying with Bedouin friends in a tent I had passed, pitched in a sand dune. She had come often in the past to Jordan with groups, but now tourists were few. She said that for the first time she had felt uncomfortable coming to Jordan as a result of the Isreal/Palestine tensions. She wishes they would remain one country, because it's easier to lead tourists. She told me she had extreme views, that Lebanon should be Christian, Syria Muslim, Isreal Jewish, then she laughed.

As the sun disappeared behind the far off mountains, the night grew suddenly cold. Venus hovered above the horizon. We walked back towards her tent and she asked me where I was staying. I pointed and she said she knew the people I was staying with. I mentioned that a group of Hungarians were due to arrive for dinner, and she told me that if things got too noisy I was welcome to share the tents of her friends. I thanked her.

Back at camp the Hungarian tourists had arrived. Their Bedouin guides entertained them, singing to the accompaniment of drums and oud. We joined them for dinner, a repast of chicken and potatoes cooked in a steel drum in the sand. Yogurt and salad rounded out the meal. An Arab driver from Aqaba told me that there were two groups that had come. They joined the two groups "so that we could enjoy together." Then he corrected himself. "No, they enjoy each other; I don't enjoy them." Someone asked Hussein, the owner of the camp, whether the Bedouins sing and carry on like they were for the tourists. "No," he said. "We like quiet. That's why we run from these groups."

After dinner all but two left. They had decided to stay in the desert, and the quiet returned to our space. A nargileh was brought forth and we all shared in the pipe. We chatted and listened to the space around us.

At eleven I dragged blankets and a mattress up a nearby sand dune, having decided to sleep under the stars. The sky was amazing. After a while I grew tired of counting the shooting stars and just gazed up at the heavens. I slept intermittently. Each time my eyes opened to the immense sight above me; I was unwilling to close them. The milky way rose out of the east and slowly followed the constellations. Once I woke to the weight of feet on my legs. I rose to find a desert fox before me. I could see its shape silhouetted on the dune; then it darted off.

In the morning I could see the paw prints surrounding our makeshift campsite. The night had proved cold, and I was coiled up in my blankets. The sky opened the palest of blues; the few clouds colored rose by the rising sun. There was a seven a.m. bus to catch to the main road, and so I quickly got ready and was soon back in the village.

The seven a.m. bus had left at six forty-five, and so those of us who had waited were stuck haggling with a driver to take us to the turn off. The trip was cold as we sat in the back of an open Land Rover. At the intersection, a large group of Arabs waited patiently for the bus. They said that it would be easier to go to Aqaba and catch a bus from there to Amman. We watched as an Aquaba bus stopped and pulled away, heading in the opposite direction.

A car pulled up, and an Arab man chatted with the driver. "He can take you to Aman," he told two of us. We thanked him and put our bags in the back.

The man pulled into a small town a few kilometers away. He pointed to a passing truck. "My brother," he told us. He honked and pulled up behind him. From the truck he took newspapers; returning to the car he passed two back. "English," he said, handing me the Jordan Times. "Arabic," he said, passing a newspaper to the man beside me. As we drove, he stopped at each police checkpoint, greeting the officers warmly and delivering their papers. Just outside of Amman he delivered his last paper. "Finished," he said. "No more police." He drove us to the edge of town and then passed us off to a local bus heading to Abdali station. From there it was a short taxi ride to my hotel. I have once again reached Amman, with time to spare. Posted by eku at May 16, 2004 2:42 PM