Leila, Rachel, Eric, Kelly, Rhea and I spent the first two days of our spring break in Aqaba, at a hostel right across from the beach. It took about four hours on a bus, and it was a pretty enlightening four hours—when you’re living in swanky West Amman, it’s easy to forget that you’re living in a third-world country. The landscape on the drive south to the Red Sea was completely different from the malls and restaurants and traffic of Amman: one, mostly empty, road through a desert. Scattered crumbling cement houses in clusters of eight or ten. Flickering fluorescent signs. Once, a shiny plastic motel with a deserted parking lot. I went through my first roadside security checkpoint, which doubled as a cigarette break for the bus driver, who smoked outside while soldiers checked the ID of everyone on the bus. So while the drive was not beautiful it was impressive: impressively barren, impressively broken, impressively different from the Jordan I am familiar with in Amman.
The landscape was so empty that we could see the lights of Aqaba from miles, and once we were there it was all high-rises and Marriotts again. There’s not really much to say about the part of Aqaba I that saw, at least not in terms of brilliant cultural observation, anyway—it’s pretty touristy, which is to say, culturally deficient, or at least really good at hiding the culture pretty deep underneath the kitsch. We pretty much divided our time between restaurants and the beach. On the first night, the six of us lay on the sand in a row and looked at the stars and tried to comprehend that we’d just had our toes in the Red Sea, that the lights across the way were quite possibly the lights of Egypt.
I got beautiful sunburn, and my hair turned golden. Oh, I could swim in the ocean forever—I get that from my mother. Floating in the Red Sea in the sunshine in this water that was just the clearest, most perfect water I’ve ever seen, which was of course the perfect temperature—very refreshing. We got to eat a wonderful dinner, too, on a restaurant balcony where we could watch the sunset, every minute of it (though of course it would be blown out of the sky by the sunset the following night, in Wadi Rum). And of course the best part of Aqaba was a phone call at 1 a.m. and pulling myself up through layers of sleep and dreams to hear my father’s voice telling me: “You have a niece! 8 pounds, her name is Ellen Josephine.”
The next morning we went to the beach for a last time and I found the sea dollar. We showered, packed, and piled into a taxi for the drive up to Wadi Rum.
I need to pause for a minute and say that the most common question I’ve gotten about spring break so far is about Petra. You went to Petra? Was it incredible? And the answer is yes. But I mean it when I say that for me Petra was nothing compared to Wadi Rum. I could have stayed there forever.
According to Salem, who was our guide, Wadi Rum spans 725 km. It is a valley cut into the granite and sandstone rock by, I guess, wind and water over the course of the existence of the planet. To say it is impressive is a vast understatement. It is wild and raw and wind torn and beautiful, and it’s home to the Bedouin tribes of Jordan, who navigate it in 4WDs and on camels and horses. It is home to so much and is still so free, so untouched the troubles of the world. Everything that there is to worry about just seemed very far away and unimportant. It is apart—I think that’s what I liked about it. The air tasted better there. I don’t know—I can’t explain it. I don’t really know how to talk about God, but if there were a place that I would try to do it, it would be in Wadi Rum.
Salem met us in Rum Village, a tiny cluster of houses, and drove us off the road into the desert. We camped in a tiny enclave in one of the rocks, and spent the afternoon scrambling up and down and all around, sitting in the sand, looking at the tiny purple flowers that turn the desert into a meadow. For the sunset, we climbed up to the top of the rock we were camping under. Can’t really describe it. You had to be there. But like I said: God and all that other stuff. Could’ve stayed forever.
We had dinner with Salem and his brother Ibrahim, sitting on the mattresses they had brought out for us. Oh, that’s the other thing about Wadi Rum—food tasted better. We drank sage tea and sat around the campfire with them and smoked sheesha and I played the mandolin. While we were staring contentedly at the stars Salem said: “This is my life.”
I could go for that.
We slept in a heap of mattresses and blankets (and lots and lots of layers of clothing) under the open sky. I have a distinct memory of waking up in the middle of the night, opening my eyes to thousands and thousands of stars, more stars than I’ve ever seen before in my entire life.
The next morning there was breakfast and more tea, and then we rode camels for six hours. This was less fun. God seemed a lot farther away. This is because there is nothing less spiritual than riding a camel for six hours. We saw some beautiful stuff, Seven Pillars, carvings, etc., etc.. But man, were those camels tough to handle. I was lucky; my camel mostly ignored me. Leila, however, had a really stubborn camel who had pretty much the opposite idea of what would be fun to do than Leila did. Leila wanted the camel to walk in a straight line with the rest of the camels and our guide. The camel wanted to stand in the same place and eat and poop.
(It’s worth mentioning that when I told my brother John about this his response was, “sounds like Ellie!”)
The best part of the camel trek was probably when my camel decided to run the last 100 meters into Rum Village. Did you know that a camel can run a mile in 5 minutes? Do you have any idea what this feels like on one’s inner thighs? Anyway—camel trek: check.
We hobbled into Rum Village, paid Salem and Ibrahim, drank one more cup of tea, and got into our taxi for the trip to Petra and the last leg of spring break.
The best part of traveling in Jordan is that once you make the initial plan and put it in to action, the rest of the trip falls into place without much planning. This is because traveling around Jordan is much like getting a job: it’s all about who you know. Every time we needed something we asked a Jordanian around us and he or she would say: “Oh! I know a guy who can do that for you,” and the next minute we had a fantastic price for a ride to Petra or a hotel or whatever. I am a pretty obsessive planner, and even I felt confident in Jordanian culture’s ability to get me wherever I needed to be. In this way, we scored two taxis to Petra with some nice guys and didn’t have to worry about getting cheated or finding a bus station or hitchhiking (which is what the Lonely Planet suggests as a way to get from Wadi Rum to Petra.)
We got to Petra, ate some kabobs, and collapsed. We woke up sore and freezing, to hobble around Petra.
Okay, Petra was pretty magnificent. The Treasury alone did it for me. And what a brilliant place to build a city! Into the face of a mountain? Easily defensible, sturdy as all get out, sheltered and—I guess this is the main thing—damn does it allow you to build to last. I couldn’t help thinking about Urban Political Economy and the life expectancy of a house in the United States compared to the fact that the houses at Petra are still there. So that was incredible. And it was a climactic finish to spring break.
Back to business here for the last leg of the semester--lot's left to do and not much time to do it in. Couple of things are going on in the blogosphere of Anna this week. First, I have begun a second blog, which will serve as my final project for Contemporary Art and Culture. We've been visiting art museums every week and taking notes and pictures and we have to compile a portfolio. The class has been pretty disorganized and the assignment is to have a sort of "journal with commentary and reflections on particular pieces, the gallery layout, medium and it's significance, comparison with other visits, reflections on broader social and political issues that you find embedded in the art and comments on idioms, themes or motifs that you find carrying over from older Middle East Art" and I'm telling you this so that I'll actually get it done. Anyway, that blog, if you're interested, can be found at artaroundamman.blogspot.com.
The second thing is a project that I have for this blog, which will involve interviews with my fellow Earlhamites here in Amman. Each of them will have their own post and will feature the photography of the lovely Leila Hunter. So be on the lookout!
Thanks for sharing these fantastic pics! What a great experience.
ReplyDeleteDarlene