Palestine

Palestine was never on the itinerary, it is not really a place I had ever considered going to, not for any reason, just that I had never seen a real reason to go. Although vaguely familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict and a harboured degree of empathy for Palestinians after the occupation of their land, I still never had that urge to explore there.

The decision came after scrutinising the map of Jordan. We had so far seen all the major sites except for one: the Dead Sea. We had to go back to Amman to see one of Molly’s friend’s who had just moved there and considering Amman was only an hour from the Dead Sea it seemed silly to miss it… after all it apparently won’t be there in ten years time. ‘So where to after the Dead Sea?’ we asked. Jordan was lovely, but after 10 days there we felt as though we’d covered this very small country.

Looking at the map the closest unexplored area for us was the West Bank. ‘Why not!’ we agreed.

We spent one night back in Amman with Molly’s friend Maddie where we trapsed the streets looking for a place that sold beer, feeling a lot like crack addicts looking for a hit. We would look for seedy back corner places and then larger ones that looked to cater for tourists. At the door we’d whisper “do you sell alcohol? Beer?” usually to be stared down and told “no! no! no!” We finally found a large roof top bar overlooking the city that sold beer. We stayed for two pints and the whole time we remained their only customers.

The next morning we headed in the direction of Palestine, first stop the Dead Sea.

We paid an extra few bucks to smother ourselves in a thick grey mud that smelled like the animal section at the Easter Show, waited for it to bake on our skin and then stiffly flopped into the water, as our skin had become tight with the baked on layer of mud.

It was bath temperature warm, almost sickly considering it was so hot outside. It was an interesting sensation; being so buoyant that your whole body sits atop the water surface. We took the obligatory photo snaps – holding a paper and pretending to read it with mud covered hands and face. The best feeling was attempting to turn around or even point your toes at the sea floor. The thick syrup-like water would propel the whole body throwing it quickly into another position.

I was trying to be careful not to get my face wet but the splash that did get in my eye burnt like it was a pepper seed. That wasn’t the only place the salt water burned. I tasted some of the salt and felt a hot sensation on my tongue for the next hour, and also it wasn’t a particularly nice feeling on my lady parts either… the burning down there eventually being the reason I had to get out. That and the fear that it would take a long time to cross the border into Israel, to get to Palestine by nightfall, so it was better to leave before lunch time.

Leaving Jordan was relatively hassle-free, our only real concern was not getting our passports stamped. I wanted to try and make it to Iran on this trip and if I had any evidence of visiting Israel on my passport then I would not be let into the country. Even a mark showing the border I exited on the Jordan side would be proof that I went to Israel.

It was getting into Israel that was the hassle.

The very first thing I noticed through the bus that took us through ‘No Man’s Land’ (the empty space between Jordan an Israel) were young Isreali men with guns. I assume they were soldiers, but they were in civilian clothes which I found even more off-putting. The guns were massive semi-automatics and they weren’t hung loosely by their side, they were already cocked and held in both hands, poised and ready to shoot. The carriers looked between the ages of 18 and 25 and each one had reflective sunglasses on, also a very discomforting image.

When we disembarked the bus on Israeli soil it was into a sea of pushing, demanding people. There was no order but a mass a bodies, each one with no sense of personal space. There was no such thing as a queue, no such thing as manners.

Eventually we managed to load our bags through security scanners and push our way to the border control window.

Molly was before me, she was asked a few questions that I couldn’t hear and was waved through with relatively little hassle.

I handed my passport over.

The man on the other side of the glass looked at my photo, looked at me, looked at my photo again and back at me.

I have a shaved head in my passport photo… in hindsight not smart to travel to the Middle East with. I was also standing before him in black clothes and a black headscarf… also perhaps not very smart.

The tattoos on my wrists and forearms were exposed and I saw him attempting to read them. He then called over his supervisor.

His supervisor looked at my passport photo, looked at me, looked at my passport photo again. He then said: “Excuse me ma’am, you will have to follow me”.

I followed him through the gates and through a metal detector. I was told I could pick up my bags later but that I had to follow him into a back room. Molly was told to sit and wait outside for me.

The Red Sea

We went scuba diving in the Red Sea and I decided that I prefer the world down there to the world up here. Down there are no wars, no politics, no broken hearts, no rent or debts to pay, no traffic, no paper work, no fluorescent lights, no walls that separate, no judging eyes, no weight to carry…

I love how slow I moved; gracefully gliding in a bubble of my own world and all the life around me was doing the same. From the numerous orange Nemo fish hiding in the coral, to the stagnant white blow fish staring back at me and the sea plants with tubular arms that danced gently in the ocean currents taking on an animated life of their own. Apart from the mystery of the ocean floor and all the beauty around me, my only focus was on my own breathing. I made sure I breathed slowly in and out at a rhythmic pace. I thought to myself: ‘If only my breathing was all that I had to focus on in my life up there.’

As soon as we surfaced and waddled out of the water, in our restrictive wet suits with a heavy oxygen tank on our back and masks still glued to our face, a young boy approached me speaking in Arabic. He was ruining my Zen, my solitude, the mystery of life… ‘La Arabia’ I tried to say ‘No Arabic’ he followed me up the beach and continued to talk at me. My ears were full of water and I couldn’t really hear him anyway. We loaded our gear in the Land Rover and climbed in, the boy stood beside us watching the whole time. Molly was engrossed in the retelling of events with the instructor… I saw for a second how happy she looked; clearly diving suited her. The boy agitated me; he was my comedown from the natural high I had felt for the last hour… the high of silence and reverence.

As we reversed out and away from the beach the young boy smacked his lips together and blew kisses… gross! Back to the reality of Jordan.

That night we got dressed up to hit the town. Me in my long, loose black plants, long black shirt and black headscarf, Molly in an ankle length skirt and a cardigan to hide her shoulders.

I sat up the front of the taxi and the driver turned to me and smiled: “so nice to see foreign girl in scarf, scarf is very beautiful. Not like girls in shorts or tight pants, you are a good girl, very nice, very beautiful!”

Aqaba is very close to the border of Saudi Arabia, and although women in Jordan no doubt enjoy more freedom than their sisters in Saudi, this part of the country is noticeably more conservative than in the north.

We decided to have a drink in the bar of a 5 star hotel… the fairy-tale like beer garden luring us in.

After our first beer a group of four women joined our table. Before even swapping names they asked us if they could take our photo. We dutifully posed for group photos and then individual ones with each woman. It was nice to be in the company of local females, the first time on this trip.

Shortly after the lights dimmed and the music grew louder. A performer dressed in bright coloured harem pants and a bikini top took over the centre of the garden. For a whole hour she shook her buttocks, rolled her bare stomach and performed sexually explicit dance moves that even made me blush. Local men and women cheered and clapped her on; they took photos and remarked to each other how beautiful she is and how wonderful her traditional Arabic dancing was.

I couldn’t understand it. On the one hand we were encouraged to cover our hair, while local women couldn’t show any of their hair. We were given the evil eye at the beach, even though we covered ourselves in sarongs and we just listened to a cab driver call me a ‘good girl’ for covering up. Yet here in front of us people adored this young woman for her near nudity and sexual hip shaking… I didn’t understand.

Our new group of friends pulled us up on the dance floor and attempted to show us Arabic dancing. They didn’t speak a word of English but we understood when they were laughing at us and harmlessly teasing us.

Even while dancing I tried to look modest, I copied their moves with an awkwardness that I hoped said “I am a Westerner but not a tramp!’ For some reason it was ok for the woman before me to dance half naked and completely seductively, and I still was not sure why. Was it some special allowance for professional dancers only? Did her father know what she wore to work and what did he say about it? I will probably not be able to make sense of this seeming hypocrisy, so for the time being I just danced like a robot wearing a bed sheet for fear of perpetuating the ‘Western Woman myth’.

Wadi Rum

So this brings me back to day 6 of my Middle Eastern adventure, back to Wadi Rum.

I briefly described the desert in my first blog:

“I am sitting in a vast, dry basin surrounded by scattered rocks, rocks disguised as cliffs with nearly flat, sheer faces extending as high as any city skyscraper. Flat except for a peculiar detail: up close it looks as though some heavenly body has dolloped runny icing sugar on top of these massive natural monuments and it has oozed and dribbled down the sides, all the way to the ground and hardened over time”.

We caught a taxi to Wadi Rum from Petra, following a beautiful winding road through the desert, past massive natural sculptures and quaint Bedouin villages… apparently. True to form I fell asleep the moment the car took off and I was woken up only once we reached our destination.

We had called and booked a guide for the desert just that morning, we thought we were very lucky to get one at such late notice. But then again we hadn’t had trouble getting in anywhere thus far; Jordan was practically devoid of tourists. The threat of the US strike on Syria and general unrest in the area seems to have scared the tourists away. Every news channel declares potential retaliation from Syria and its allies Iran and Russia stating that if the West gets involved than Israel, Turkey and Jordan will be targeted. Indeed, every one of those countries is on my itinerary for this trip.

For some reason though I am not scared or worried, what worries me more is how not worried I am about the whole thing. Jordan feels completely safe, and I catch myself gloating about the lack of foreigners I have to contend with, until I talk to local taxi driver’s, guest houses and even shop keepers and I feel their anxiety over the loss of business.

Mzied is the name of our guide for the next few days in the desert. He invited us into his family home, a large bare room except for a perimeter of cushions on the floor and a picture of Mecca on one of the walls. A large tin box rattled in the window: the ancient air-con unit sputtered out droplets of water, a relief from the dead heat outside.  Half a dozen children skipped around us excitedly and one of the older girls was told to go and fetch us some tea. That was the first of many cups of tea we shared with Mzied and his family. I ended up having anywhere between 8 and 16 cups of tea a day and it is only that number because I continuously said no to more.

It felt like a bit of an honour sharing that space with Mzied and the male members of his family. Over the next three days we ended up in that room four times, either to eat lunch and take a break from the desert heat or to plan the next leg of the desert tour.

Each time we stopped in we were joined by either his eldest two sons, his cousins or his nephews, never any women. Even his wife did not join us. She cooked our lunches and brewed our tea from somewhere out the back of the house, but it was sent to us via one of the younger girls. As Westerners and clients we were treated as male guests, allowed to sit with the men and share in their conversation, though usually they spoke to each other in Arabic and we were in fact excluded.

We asked him about his wife:

"She is a good wife" he told us "she even goes to the shop by herself".

I wondered if that meant that most other women would not.

"And you only have one wife?" I asked. "Yes, for me one wife is enough if she takes good care of you. Some women are not god wives and so a man must find another. Men can have four wives, but he must take care of each wife as equals. To have more than one wife is very expensive so for me one is enough..." he took a moment and then looked at me in a way that made me feel very self-conscious: "If I got another wife she would be thirty, and maybe a foreigner too."

He explained that the parents of boys had to provide the house for the son and his wife and that if he had more wives he would have more sons and that would be too expensive, already he had seven children, five of them boys.

One of his guests was his nephew from Saudi Arabia, a very gentle, attentive man who looked us in the eye and actually asked us about our life at home. I am glad that we had the honour of meeting this man, he is one of many Saudi men we have met so far on this trip and he is the only one who didn’t make me cringe.

 Although he wanted to ask a lot about Australia, we wanted to ask a lot about Saudi Arabia: ‘Can women travel alone there?’ No. ‘Can women travel to Mecca?’ Yes, but only with their husband or father. ‘Can women vote?’ Not yet.

I wanted to ask more, to probe deeper: ‘what is so wrong with women driving? What is your opinion of Western women? Does it make you sad that your daughter will not have the same opportunities as your son? Do you have compassion for the position of your wife?’

But I held my tongue.

Mzied introduced us to one of his son’s Rashid; apparently he was going to be our guide. He looked no older than 14, he was shorter than I am, completely lacking any fat or muscle and only had the slightest hint of fluff on his chin. When Mzied told us he was our driver and guide Molly laughed out loud assuming it was a joke, it wasn’t.

Despite the initial uncertainty, Rashid turned out to be a good host. He showed us natural bridges made out of rock, ancient rock carvings and ancient Bedouin games, organised a camel ride and climbed up sand dunes with a snow board so that I (Molly wouldn’t have a bar of it) could surf down again. He cooked us amazing tasting food and lit the fire at night for us to camp under the stars.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, it was listlessly calm and at night we would lie beside the fire and count falling stars… one night we got to 9 in under two hours.

A Night With The Bedouin

We met the Bedouin boys at 6pm, at Mohammed’s house in the Bedouin village. We had brought with us a 1litre bottle of vodka I had gotten duty free and two bottles of juice. When we got there Mohammad had told us that he was convinced we wouldn’t show up, he hugged and kissed Molly when she showed him the vodka. We sat around the table at Mohammed’s having a pre-drink when his older brother came in. His brother asked for a drink so without thinking I grabbed a cup and lifted the vodka from my backpack. It will take me a long time to forget the death-stare his brother gave me before he started shouting at Mohammed in Arabic and stormed out of the room.

Vodka and Muslims… of course! How stupid of me! Mohammed and Lost were so unapologetic about their drinking that I had forgotten where we were. I begged Mohammed to forgive me for outing his drinking habits to his now very angry brother. Mohammed said it was ok but he was silent and flushed and I knew that maybe now he was ok but that he would have more hostility to deal with later.

We got a ride to the local shop for supplies with Lost’s 14-year-old brother. When we piled in the back of his Ute I sat on something cold and hard but didn’t know what it was so I shrugged it off.

We waited out the front of the store for the keeper to return from the local Mosque: “He prayers all the time” Mohammed moaned “I don’t know what for!” We watched as the boys stormed around the tiny shop, picking up frozen chicken and a dozen potatoes and tomatoes from a very saggy, sad looking pile of vegetables. Lost’s brother waited outside to drop us back to Mohammed’s house but on the way back Lost and his brother had an argument. We sat quietly in the back having no idea what was going on.

When we got out of the Ute again, I saw that the cold, hard thing we had been sitting on was a semi-automatic and later Lost explained that they had a fight because his brother was off his head on drugs: pills.

We waited for another ride to take us out to the desert, this time we sat in the tray of the Ute and I allowed myself to get lost in the sensation of the wind in my hair as the sun set around us and we drove further and further away from the lights of the town into the dark wild.

Molly was getting nervous. I tried to absorb the still of the desert around us, to forget for a minute and allow the space to take me away. But my attempts to get lost were obstructed by the sharp pinching feeling of Molly’s claws digging into my arms. She was trying to communicate with her eyes and her claws. I knew what she was saying, but I wanted to ignore her. The longer we drove the further and further we got, not just from the noise of the city but also from safety. I knew that she was right to be apprehensive. I knew that what we were doing was stupid, reckless and dangerous. We didn’t have phones, we didn’t have weapons, no one knew where we were, and we didn’t even know where we were. But we had each other, and for me that was enough security.

When the driver eventually dropped us off the boys collected kindle and made a fire. They pulled blankets out of their bags and made beds for us to lie on. Molly and I peeled the potatoes “don’t let go of that knife” she ordered me. Molly poured the drinks for us, making herself and I very weak drinks so that we wouldn’t lose control if we found ourselves in trouble.

“I have Xanax in the backpack” she whispered to me “if we need to slip it in their drinks we can… two in each drink should knock them out!”

“We are not drugging them!” I protested, but secretly I thought about the logistics of it, how I could do it unnoticed and how long it would take for the effects to kick in.

The boys did everything to try to sit between us and then to try to separate us. It was clear they wanted sex. It was even clearer that Molly wanted to get out of there.

“Not everyone wants to rape you,” I told her, trying to reassure her and calm her down… though maybe these two boys did, I couldn’t be certain.

I told her we would eat dinner with them then demand that they call a car and take us back to town. I wanted to be the brave strong one, but really I had no idea if there was even phone reception out there. I didn’t have a plan B.

We clambered in the dark to the highest point and sat to look out at the desert around us while our dinner of chicken and potatoes slowly cooked on the fire. Despite the potential risk we were facing I managed to enjoy a moment of absolute calm.

We got ourselves in a bad situation, as women, losing complete control over the situation. We were in the middle of nowhere with men we knew were trying to sleep with us. I still believed that although sleazy the guys we were with were not violent and thus not dangerous… perhaps I was being naive.

Molly was getting visibly more agitated and continued to glare at me and pinch me when she had the chance. The boys could tell we wanted to leave: “If we wanted to rape you we’d just rape you” Mohammed came right out and said to her. He then got her in a headlock and pretended to strangle her. Although he was being playful his actions confirmed that he was ignorant to how vulnerable she was feeling. Either that or he did know and wanted to show us just how vulnerable we were.

“You think we are bad people! We are trying to show you a good time. Why don’t you trust us? We have done nothing bad to you, and yet you think we are bad people.”

I was torn. If they really did have the purest of intentions then we were being incredibly rude. But then, why did I care if we were being rude? We are women, and tourists and both make us naturally very vulnerable. But more so I felt a loyalty to Molly and a need to protect her. I am not anxious by nature, I am generally too trusting and so although I had no doubt we were in a less-than ideal situation I was not actually fearful for our safety. But I also knew that if something did happen to her it would be my fault for carelessly leading us out there.

We ate dinner and almost straight after I asked Mohammed to call us a lift. He said that he did. He had walked off at the end of the meal for five minutes, I assumed he was peeing but he told us that he had gone to a high point to call us a ride.

We waited impatiently and awkwardly for fifteen minutes.

“You didn’t really call did you?” I accused Mohammed. To prove me wrong he led me back up the hill. I hoped that Molly would be ok alone with Lost, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice but to leave her there. I also know how loud she screams and figured I’d hear her if he tried something.

Mohammed’s ride answered the phone, he asked him to speak in English and tell me when he’d be here to pick us up.

Although it is possible that Mohammed hadn’t called a ride before then I also felt a little bit guilty: ‘What if he was a really good guy and it was all innocent?’ I couldn’t help but continually ask myself.

After another fifteen minutes we saw the headlights on the horizon. Our ride was approaching. At first I felt relief, until the alternative struck me… I don’t know who or what is in that car! What if it was their friends? Or their high brother with his semi-automatic? The potential seriousness of the situation hit me deep in my stomach… ‘Anything could happen in the next hour… maybe my last hour’ I caught myself thinking.

Latino tunes boomed out from the car and the driver (alone and not ready to pounce on us) got out and helped us load the Ute. The boys wanted to dance. By this time Molly was not attempting to hide her disdain and told them in no uncertain terms that it was time to go.

I had felt relief as soon as the vehicle and the Latino music had found us, but I don’t think Molly calmed down until we were safe in the hotel room: “That was one of the worst nights of my life!”  she exclaimed!

I once again felt convinced that not everyone wanted to hurt or rape us, but I also made a silent pledge that night that I wouldn’t lead her into another dangerous situation. Getting myself in trouble is one thing, but getting someone else hurt would be unforgivable.

Captured by the Bedouin

It’s not that I don’t find ancient history interesting… I do! I just have a short attention span for it, and maybe that’s just because I don’t much about it. I don’t know who the Nebeteans were or the Byzantines or who the Corinthians were and although I know more about the Romans I am not really sure what they had to do with Petra but apparently something. Despite this I could almost comprehend how old Petra is and I could certainly feel its magnificence and by extension it’s significance.

Not long after entering the gates of Petra you walk through a kind of eerie narrow gorge about a kilometre long where I felt as if at any minute I would hear the ghosts of horses and shouts of men haunting the area from thousands of years ago. It was bustling with tourists, touts and begging children and echoing off the sides of the gorge was still the clomp clomp clomp of horse and carriage… It felt timeless. I imagined similar people, only in different dress 2’000 years ago all heading down the same path, in the same direction, to marvel at this powerful city.

At the end of the gorge is the most famous Petran monument, 40 meters high and towering over us with its grandeur: the Al Khazna. It is a majestic building, with decorative bands and figures, hand carved to impress pharaohs and kings. Mostly I marvelled at its resilience to stand the test of time in such a hostile environment.

Our guidebook told us that to really see Petra properly we would need to spend at least four days there. After seeing the grand Al Khazna in the first hour I felt content enough to leave. Molly did not.

She took her time studying the grand monument from various distances and angles while I spent a great deal of time looking at a camel. I decided that camels are a lot cuter than they are given credit for. I wondered what would happen if I tried to kiss the camel on the head. After much deliberation I decided not to try to kiss the camel.

When I was bored of the camel I found Molly, she was sitting on a bench facing the Al Khanza surrounded by some young attractive Bedouin men on horse/donkey.

Since entering Petra we had been relentlessly harassed by un-official Bedouin guides atop either a horse, donkey, mule or camel all offering to show us around. We had refused, partially wanting to walk, partially to spite them for their constant nagging. All of the ‘guides’ were men and all were a special type of Casanova: “Air conditioned ride in a Mercedes? (Referring to their horse?)”, “Lady you dropped something! My heart!”

Despite knowing that the attention they paid us and their cheeky humour was their clever way of getting what they want from us: either sex or money or both, we couldn’t help but get seduced by their charm. They followed us as we walked away from them and somehow within five minutes I was sitting on a mule and Molly was on top of a donkey. We unwittingly had allowed two young men to take complete control of us and lead us off on the back of their animals. Without pausing we passed the ancient theatre, the royal tombs, the colonnades and drifted away from all of the tourists and the touts and instead the boys led us up the side of a steep rocky mountain. I loved being on the back of an animal, even though at times I shared the mules back with Lost, my Bedouin guide, who I spent half the ride with my legs around and my breasts pressed into his back. There was nowhere on the saddle that I could grip onto when the ride got steep and so I was forced to wrap my arms around him. I liked that he was quiet and didn’t say much, he was rugged and hairy and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a week… his smell was over-powering and so strong I could taste it… I was surprised how much I liked his smell. I loved that the Bedouin men wore eyeliner and had long, thick and wavy dark hair.

Molly’s guide Mohammad talked a lot more, he had lived and studied in Russia and his English was flawless. Molly does not like riding on animals, she doesn’t like heights and she doesn’t like not having control, so for much of the ride she whined and protested… “Excuse me Madame” I heard him say in his thick Arabic accent “Will you please shut up!” And she did. For a whole two minutes.

I think being told to shut up went down well with her and by the end of the ride the two of them were getting along famously… I was still happy that my guide was quiet and I could take in the vast desert surroundings in relative peace.

At the top of the mountain we sat under a little hut and the boys made us tea. We all joked around and had a laugh. The boys were flirting outrageously, particularly Mohammad with Molly who clutched his heart when he saw her hair: “Oh my God why have you been hiding this from me!” he called her hunny-bunny and would grab her around the waist and pretend that he was going to throw her off the mountain. The boys made out that life was one big party, they were free and careless and they made sure to point out this in opposite to the stressful, restrictive life at home they assumed that we lived.

Of course the boys were overtly very sexual, Mohammed got a little too hands-on with Molly and they made homophobic comments and jokes, which was their undoing for us. After some time we got up and told them we wanted to part ways, making our own way down the mountain.

Without hesitation they let us be but before they rode off I tried to offer them money. I assumed after-all that is what they wanted from us.

Mohammad was offended, or at least made out that he was offended. He said: “Sometimes people do things because they like people not because they want money”. Then they rode off.

Molly was angry that I had offered them money and was worried I had offended them.

On the long walk back down the hill we turned a bend only to find the boys waiting there for us. I was not at all surprised.

Mohammed seemed pissed off; he told us that he was offended I had offered him money. They told us they liked us, wanted to be our friends and show us their home. They told us they didn’t want our money.

They offered us a ride back to the entrance; perhaps it was our guilt that caused us to accept the offer.

On the long way back to the entrance we stopped to see Lost’s home: his cave. It was about 4m long and 3m wide, had a rug on the floor, a few clothes and other possessions and nothing else. It fascinated me that he lived there. I romanticised such an existence, to be alone in the desert with nothing but the bare essentials and a permanent feeling of freedom.

I am still not sure what had possessed us, but we actually arranged to meet Lost and Mohammed the next night. They offered to take us out into the desert, in the middle of nowhere to eat a traditional meal over the fire, and we said yes. In hindsight it was probably me who accepted the invitation without hesitation, Molly being naturally more discerning and careful than I am didn’t actually say yes to going.

I was looking forward to it though, pretending for a night to live that romantic ideal I had felt in Lost’s home-cave. And I still don’t regret meeting up with them the next night, even if Molly later described it as one of the worst nights of her life.

After finding my feet in Jordan we decided to head straight to the ancient Nabetean city of Petra.

We checked into a fairly nice, fairly expensive hotel with a roof top swimming pool and a view over the modern city of Wadi Musa and down to the gates of the ancient city of Petra.

Like Amman and the villages we passed on the long road south, Wadi Musa was built down the slopes of hillsides. All of the identical houses camouflaged into the sandstone coloured surroundings, mostly decrepit buildings but in my opinion more beautiful than many at home in Sydney… I guess I just prefer natural building materials with a rustic feel. Mosques, universities and government buildings are something else altogether. Of course they are the same colour as the earth and all of the villages, but they are grand buildings, resembling palaces. Interesting geometrical shapes crowned with high domes and a decorative attention to detail that lacks in modern Western buildings. These majestic structures look built to last and built to inspire.

We spent the afternoon on the rooftop by the pool until a man claiming to be the manager of the hotel approached us. He said he wanted to take us somewhere, but he wouldn’t say where: “it is a surprise, if I tell you it will spoilt it. But I promise you, you will like it”.

I think Molly was a little apprehensive, but true to my form I saw no problem getting into a car with a strange man at night taking us off to God-knows-where.

We agreed to meet him in the lobby of the hotel just before sunset.

At sunset we loaded into the car and our host, Abdullah, drove us through the town and along a highway that passed hills and valleys that sheltered flickers of glimmering orange lights in the shadows of dusk… “Bedouin camps. In the caves in the hills” he told us.

As the car slowed down near our destination Abdullah told us to close our eyes.

When we opened them we were at the gates of Little Petra.

We walked through the sandstone arched entrance and looked around in the dark at some Roman style pillars and an open amphitheatre type construction. There was nobody else there except for two caretakers who lived there full time. Again we were asked to close our eyes and when it was time to open them we were surrounded by small yellow lights. Circling us were massive rock formations harbouring little caverns and natural tunnels that made the whole structure look like beehives or swiss cheese. In the entrance to these small caves were little yellow lights. Hundreds of them. It was like curtains of fairy lights or like Christmas time in the movies.

We sat on cushions laid out on a little wooden platform on the edge of the amphitheatre. One of the caretakers started up a fire in the pit and brought us over some sweet tea. Molly, Abdullah and I sat there in the quiet night, surrounded by little yellow lights and discussed the politics of Jordan, Syria and the rest of the region.

With America threatening to strike Jordan’s neighbour Syria, it is a topic Molly and I were dying to talk to locals about: “What will Jordan do with even more refugees? Will protests start up here? Will Iran get involved? Will Israel? What do the locals think: should the USA strike Syria? What would Iraq be like today if the US hadn’t invaded? What was Syria like before the civil war?”

We talked about cultural politics in Jordan. Abdullah told us how he often goes to Amman for one, two or even three nights to gamble, drink and God knows what else. He has to do it in Amman to hide from the condemning eyes of his community. “I mind my business they should mind theirs… even my wife”

As I had been during the days leading up to my departure we were glued to the TV in the hotel room, Aljazeera talked about the impending strike constantly.

Politics at home were just as bad… Tony Abbott was elected as Australia’s Liberal Prime Minister and I lay in bed that night baffled… what was happening to the world? There seems to be a conservative movement happening across the globe right now... how can this be?

With a Scarf of My Head

From the fist day, the moment I stepped out of the hotel I had a black scarf draped over my head. It hangs loosely with the front of my hair still visible, but it hides my undercut, stretched ears and the tattoo of flames that runs up the back of my neck. In essence I feel like it hides me; who I am, my rebelliousness and my diversion from the conservative gender norms that rule the country. In short that scarf is my security blanket and my shield. The security it has provided me, I am certain, is not in my own head: it is real.

I haven’t felt scared in Jordan at all, I feel physically very safe, regardless of the constant staring, giggles and comments from everyone around us. Every man we pass ogles and every woman stares. I certainly don’t get the impression that these stares are innocent and judgement free.

Molly hasn’t been covering her hair, though she has been dressing fairly conservatively out of respect for the local culture. I have been forced to cover up a lot more than she has. Because of my tattoos I wear long sleeves and because I am prone to dress in men’s clothes I had raced out to Kmart at 10pm the night before my flight and bought some feminine long shirts and some Aladdin style loose pants. So I dare say I look very respectable for the first time in my life. We joke around that men want to sleep with her but marry me. Every time I catch a glimpse of myself I am taken aback by how demure the scarf makes me look. Though I cant imagine how one bit of cloth can so drastically change a persons persona and so I put it down to the symbolism behind the scarf and everything I have learnt that it represents to people.

A Hammam in Amman

The last 4-hour leg of my journey to Jordan from Qatar I looked out the window and down below me was a whole lot of nothing! Faded orange coloured nothing.

As the plane landed in Amman, the capital city of Jordan, I looked out the window again and thought ‘there is still just a whole heap of faded orange coloured nothing’.

It was not hard to get into a cab from the airport, though in every country I’ve been to it never is hard. However this time it was a little bit more difficult getting out of the cab.

The driver insisted, and I mean persisted, in buying me a coffee. It was a sweet idea but I had left home 35 hours earlier, I had a terrible cold, period cramps and I was about to meet an ex I hadn’t really seen in 7 months, after a mildly tumultuous break-up. I wanted to get the meet and greet niceties over with and flop on a bed and sleep for at least 3 days.

Driver: Just one coffee. You are my guest to Jordan

Me: That is lovely, really, but I have a friend waiting.

Driver: Why is your hair cut like this? And your ears… why are they this size?

Me: (shifting awkwardly) Um… fashion?

Driver: I don’t know this word.

Silence.

Driver: One coffee, five minute. You are my guest.

Me: Thank you, really, but I really must meet my friend…

He pulled over beside a tin shed on the side of the road and put two fingers up. Shortly after a man appeared at my window with two coffees. The driver paid and we sat in mostly silence in his car on the side of the road while he chained smoked and I struggled to stay awake. The coffee was strong, way too sweet and was undoubtedly infused with cardamom. I really liked it.

I didn’t quite get three days sleep, but I got a full 11 hours, which was enough to get up and out of the room early and straight to a hammam.

Already feeling completely self-conscious and awkward in a completely new culture, maybe I was on a mission to throw all modesty to the wind and strip down bare in front of strangers who I didn’t doubt will be commenting disapprovingly on my tattoos and undercut.

I had never been to a bathhouse before… If Molly wasn’t with me there is no way that I would have gone in alone. I wasn’t at all comfortable stripping naked and sober in front of a room of women I don’t know from a culture that I do know is very conservative. After a lot of procrastinating, going to and from the toilet, folding and re-folding my clothes I finally stepped through the thick wooden doors and into the steam.

I was grateful to be engulfed by darkness, though the heavy hot air briefly took my breath away. Small coloured lights hung from the ceiling, a large stone bath bubbled away in the centre of the room and I could just make out the shadows of naked bodies lounging around the edges of the room. The smell of oils and soaps were promising.

We were directed to the shower and the woman stood watching us. I felt like I was in the army or a prison and about to be inspected for lice and rashes.

We were then hearded through a stone archway and into a room so hot my face burnt. I grabbed the white washer handed to me and wrapped it around my face gasping for air. Molly and I bumped into each other blinded as we clenched our face shut, shunning away from the steam that burned us. Strong hands pushed us down on a stone step and we sat giggling and gasping for air. I wasn’t sure how long I could sit there and stand that intense heat. It was quiet inside. We were alone to feel the weight of the heat and the stickiness of our skin.

Another woman wandered into our little steam room in and sat in front of us. Her entry was far more gracious then ours, she sat and was lost immediately in the dark less than a meter in front of us. Molly got up and left. It was so quiet in the room, still unbearably hot and heavy. All I could see was darkness around me except for the other woman’s legs right in front of me slowly opening and closing, quiet seductively, more so because I couldn’t see the rest of her.

I also couldn’t breathe anymore. So I got up and showered.

The shower was followed by a steam bath and more showers… I couldn’t handle the heat. It made me light headed and nauseous and I started to wish I could leave.

But then we were called for our scrub.

We lay on hard stone slabs and a woman threw buckets of cold water on me. She then put big black gloves on and scrubbed me down starting at my feet and briskly working all the way up and down my legs. There was no self-consciousness on her behalf. She rubbed her hands up my inner thighs, brushing my genitals, around my stomach, under and over my breasts. She kept asking about my tattoos and I kept wanting to get up and put clothes on.

I then moved on to another slab of stone and got an oiled massage. This one was less shocking. But of course I got more questions about my tattoos and my scars.

“I have to use strong hands. You are strong woman.,” she kept telling me.

We wandered up the street in what we quickly figured out was the trendy ‘Western’ part of town. We got some cheap falafel rolls and freshly squeezed juices and sat on the peak of a hill looking out across the city.

Amman is a maze of steep hills covered in identical buildings; each one a 2 – 4 stories tall yellowish sandstone colour, with no exceptions. The facades are bare and the windows glassless. The streets are narrow and littered with rubbish and the cars are stopped at every crossroads playing stand-offs with other cars facing every direction, horns blaring wildly. From a distance I find the grit and this chaos charming.

Jordan: Back at the Beginning

And here I find myself, in a scene from the film Lawrence of Arabia. I am literally sitting in the set of the 1962 film: I am in the desert Wadi Rum.

It is still early morning and so the rose coloured sand beneath my dry dusty feet is still cold from the chilly night, a woody smoke seeps from the remaining embers of the ash filled fire pit.

I am sitting in a vast, dry basin surrounded by scattered rocks, rocks disguised as cliffs with nearly flat, sheer faces extending as high as any city skyscraper. Flat except for a peculiar detail: up close it looks as though some heavenly body has dolloped runny icing sugar on top of these massive natural monuments and it has oozed and dribbled down the sides, all the way to the ground and hardened over time. 

The desert undoubtedly fills me with a sense of quiet. My usual storm of thoughts and murky pool of emotions are stilled, silenced, in a way that matches the silence that engulfs me here. That, or I am humbled by the magnificence that surrounds me, that dwarfs my comparatively small and meaningless life. I think about these rocks that have taken millions of years to become what they are today, and this overwhelming realisation that I am relatively meaningless fills me with a great sense of peace.

I stop writing for a minute to watch a large black Scarab beetle scuttle past me and I continue to stare at its criss-cross prints long after.

I strain to listen to the empty space around me… I can hear some birds off in the distance. Occasionally a breeze picks up that whips through the rocks and sounds like a fighter jet overhead. The fighter jet lands somewhere off in the distance behind me and again I am left in silence. It is so quiet and I am straining so hard to hear signs of life that my ears hum and buzz.

My silence is broken by male voices. Our father and son guides are up and are calling me over for tea…

This is day 6 of my trip in the Middle East; let me go back to day 1.

…On second thoughts I will go back even further and give you some insight into why I am here at all.

To be completely honest I think the number one reason I now find myself in the deserts of Jordan is because the alternative was job hunting. I HATE job hunting!

Work wise I had a huge 7 months. I’m not sure if I just need a break after my last job or if I am escaping the thought of starting any other job that will undoubtedly fail in comparison to the exciting work I just left, this realisation gives me a solid sinking feeling in my stomach. I can describe the last gig in three words: unpredictable, educational and life changing (does a hyphenated word count as one or two words?).

Can I really bring myself to work behind a desk in a city office after my last job?

So I found myself in August with no work, no house (I had sub-let it for my FIFO work), plenty of cash and a whole lot of shit at home that I wanted to avoid facing. So I figured I had one option left… travel.

Travelling seemed at first to be a flawless immediate solution to finding a life plan.

However this particular plan actually has a few small flaws: the first being that it takes a whole lot of energy to travel. Perhaps not if your holiday leads you to sipping cocktails in a private swim-up bar in Hamilton Island. But the sort of travel I seem to naturally fall in to is exhausting (refer to African travel blog www.abra-kuma.blogspot.com). I don’t have the energy to travel right now, not even enough to get excited. Before I left home I repeatedly convinced myself that as soon as I am on that plane the excitement will build. When I was on the plane and still felt nothing I insisted to myself that the excitement will build. 6 days into the trip I desperately search for that inner driving force, that persistence, that patience and that resilience required to travel… Or maybe my problem is that somewhere bubbling just below the surface I am too much of an Anarchist, too much of a feminist and too much of a gay activist to really get into the Middle East?

Time will tell. And so will this blog I suppose.

The alternative hasn't escaped me; the possibility that I am feeling more than relaxed about this trip because for the first time I am blessed with the relief of a travel companion, at least for the first part of my trip anyway. Daily I find myself ever so grateful to have someone with me who has cash when I don’t, who can halve the cost of cabs and hotels, who can pull out hang nails for me, and who can make good decisions when I so seamlessly make bad ones. In the past I have mostly travelled alone but right now I welcome the support and comfort of someone I know.

But don’t get me wrong, this travel buddy of mine does not come as a priceless gift… this travel buddy is my recent ex… enough said!