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.