(New photos in Petra album. hope you like them)
Took the early morning plane to Amman, arrived at 9 to get a car and drive to Petra - ended up waiting in the airport for an hour and more for the spare they forgot to include. "We thought you were only driving to Amman," "No, Petra." OK, so we wait take coffee, wake up, try and heal our tired Syrian bellies and get ready. When the tire comes we're ready and drive 230 km south, toward Aqaba and the Saudi boarder, looking for things to talk about other than the situation in our tired brains and bellies, and what will happen in Lebanon.
The Jordan desert is not the Syrian desert, redder sand, fewer signs of a government. this is Bedouin country, small roadside villages and a lot of open space. What few buildings there are are separated by space. We learn later that 90% of Jordanian land is privately owned, so people building tend to build on their property, which means house and buildings are further apart. And we learn more about the "40 year Project," the Jordanian government's attempt to settle the Bedouin people, promising them land (and all that comes with it, like taxes for electricity and roads), education, healthcare, and generally a "better" life. Consequently, there are villages in the hills that look new, roads and buildings where the Bedouin have been settled. Now they have some land and grow okra and olives and almonds, and herd cows as well as sheep and goats. But when I asked someone if they're happy I was told no, they'd rather wander. And some still do, though they use big trucks to sleep their sheep from place to place. And they still have big parties evidently. We've heard a lot of fireworks and singing, and were told these are big Bedouin weddings.
So we get to Petra and checked into Taybet Zayman, a rebuilt "village" home in the foothills overlooking the canyons of Petra. Beautiful and sculpted to look like a cross between New Mexico and Tuscany, the rooms are sweet, stone floored, multi-chambered cave like places that surround the gardened courtyards. Really unreal, and almost empty, because it's not high season. But we''re close to a couple of mosques, and prayers are called live five times a day, so we don't forget where we really are, in the middle of the desert, in Jordan. We rest awhile, bathe and eat, then do the "Petra by Night" tour. Meet at the gate, walk down the Sik (the very narrow gorge that leads to the site) in the path lit by hundred of luminaries, 1200 meters down until we come out into the square of the treasury. In the courtyard we drink spiced tea and listen to first an old man playing a single stringed violin and singing, then a young Bedouin man playing a flute emerges from the ruins , magic and echoes through what we can only guess is there.
And today we go back to Petra, 45 km of rambling Nebathean and Roman and Muslim ruins, spread out, and up, and down across the desert like nothing I've ever seen. And I keep wondering what it must have been like when all these cobbled streets were finished, when these buildings and tombs weren't dilapidated from history and weather. I mean, Jesus, this stuff is over two thousand years old and the unsettled Bedouin people are still sleeping in it, and making stuff they're trying to sell us, and husbanding camels and horses and donkeys they are trying to get us to ride. And we do, rent donkeys, to help Elise and Leslie get up the last of the steep steep 900 steps to the "Monastery," a gigantic carving in the side of the hill way up there. Past more donkeys and Bedouin people selling stuff, and then it's late and we're exhausted, dust and sweat everywhere, we wind our way back to the Sik, up the last mile to the car and then home, where we lounge for awhile then take dinner in a courtyard. Sunset, starlight, calls to prayer and we enjoy our company as best we can. We sit through dinner watching others, Europeans, Americans, Arabs, all eating and drinking and sharing tales. But none are as rich as ours. And we think about returning to Lebanon, where last night Israeli forces bombed Hezbollah in Sidon, 50 miles south of Beirut. "Let's not worry," I say, "Beirut will be fine," and try and change the subject. Tomorrow we go to the Dead Sea, to relax and regroup.
More tomorrow - We are now at the Dead Sea, in a nice place, relaxing, as I said we would, and regrouping. The drive today was something, listening to Isreali radio traversing the Jordanian desert. Took what we thought would be a shorcut, through small villages, on the Muslim Sunday, saw remarkablly womanless celebrations throughout, got caught on a dead end street in the wrong part of a smalltown, lots of young kids grabbing at the white girls in the back... More on today tomorrow.
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