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’.