Camping with Bedouins*

The next morning we took a cab to Wadi Rum.  A wadi is a valley carved by flood waters; Wadi Rum is one of the most famous.  Lawrence of Arabia lived here and coordinated the Arab revolt while today Bedouins live in the area with their goats.  We (myself, Mary Ann, and another Australian, John, we met on the ferry) found a bedouin guide and was invited to his house where we had sage tea--golden brown and earthy, like drinking the smell of the canyons in the afternoon, of course with the obligatory hefty Arab dose of sugar.  Conversation moved toward Islam--Sunni v. Shiite--because John had studied this, and with a Mother born Shiite who married a Christian in America I felt the vibe go cold.  Then the Aussies asked our guide about Iraq (damnit) and I got to hear about American oil ambitions and the virtues of Osama bin Laden's attacks against U.S. soldiers in the region (though the attacks against civilians on 9/11 were condemned).  All in all it was uncomfortable in a way only an American could appreciate.

Then we took off with the guide's brother and had a beautiful day.  We drove to Lawrence's spring, where Lawrence of Arabia bathed, and came down to find four blackened kettles in embers, filled with more hot sage tea, and we drank and listened to our guide play the Ud (a bedouin lute) and sing Bedouin songs, and we fell asleep under the goat-hair cloths hanging up to prevent the sun from beating down on us directly.  Waking up I listened to a spirited Bedouin teenage conversation about M16s and Berettas, used because the Saudis are sometimes troublesome, and to hunt the endangered Gazelle because it tastes good, and to fire at mountains during weddings in celebration (the tradition of the tragicomic runs deep in some countries--why when celebrating do bullets need to fall, stampedes need to crush, fireworks need to burn faces off?), and thus refreshed moved on to see the towering walls of the Wadi--carved and etched in swirls and loops--and Lawrence's house (a wall still stands) and to run down red sand dunes and climb natural rock bridges.  The rock bridges are scary--maybe forty feet up and twenty feet long, somehow the wind and water created bridges you can climb over with naught but the desert air beneath.  All of it's sandstone and so there's always sand underfoot, and coming down from one I jumped, rolled my ankle badly, and it's still sprained.  Walking after sitting for a while requires two Motrin and a stretch.  Four days out and I'm slowly on the mend.

*With Berettas

In the evening we tucked up against a towering cliff at a Bedouin campsite--vertical stakes supporting a woven blanket roof--it's flat, not sloped, which is interesting.  Dinner was chicken, potatoes, and onions cooked in embers, the whole thing buried under the sand, and served with yogurt, cucumbers, and tomatoes; it was delicious. Chicken fat on my face and hands I fell asleep under a blanket of magnificent stars, a fire burning close by, it crackling occasionally as if keeping time with the shooting stars that would streak the sky between the stars and planets that stretched down to the horizon.  If you do visit Jordan, I'd highly recommend Wadi Rum.