Petra

November 20th was election day in Jordan. Seeing that I'm not Jordanian and can't vote, I decided to make the best of the day off by going to Petra. The thing that had stopped me from going earlier was the cost: 21 JD per person for foreigners. Given that my children and I are four foreigners, I wasn't willing to pay 84 JD to see some rocks. After all, I could google images of Petra and insert our pictures into the background to make it look like we went. I really wanted to go, though, so I asked the people JETT, a bus line in Jordan that does trips to Petra. They told me that I had to pay 21 JD per person, even though I had a yearly residency. Someone told me to call the Ministry of Tourism. They told me that, according to the law, people with an annual residency had to be treated like nationals, so it would be 1 JD for me and every child 13 years of age or older.

We started our trip by taking the JETT bus from Abdali at 6:30 AM the next day. By the time we reached Petra, toured the facilities, and waited for my oldest daughter to clean the effects of her obligatory travel sickness off herself, it was 10:30 AM. (I really have to buy her a sticker that says, "Barfing on trips since 1996.") It turns out that children under 15 are free. (Actually, I'm not sure if it's all children, or just children with an annual residency.) I ended up paying a whopping 1 JD. So, JETT misinformed me even though it was to there benefit to find out the truth. Furthermore, even the Ministry of Tourism didn't have the facts quite straight, as they told me I'd have to pay for my son, who is thirteen, whereas I didn't have to.

We walked on the wide dirt road towards the Siq. Bedouins would keep asking me to ride their carriages and horses. Finally, we reached the Siq (which was cold because it gets very little sun) and walked through the long, narrow, winding valley until we reached the Khazneh, pictured above. From this point on, bedouins are everywhere, trying to sell you a camel ride, overpriced refreshments, postcards, trinkets and trash. There are bedouins who speak German, Spanish, and English. There are even old bedouin women who speak English. While the young bedouin women would ask passing Europeans if they wanted to buy something, they wouldn't ask me. I hate to boast, but people who don't know me think I'm a part of the religious police and seem to be intimidated of me.

After the Khazneh, we walked through the main stretch, passing by the houses carved into the mountains. It reminded me of verses in Surah Al-Hijr:

و لقد كذب أصحاب الحجر المرسلين و آتيناهم آياتنا فكانوا عنها معرضين و كانوا ينحتون من الجبال بيوتا آمنين فأخذتهم الصيحة مصبحين فما أغنى عنهم ما كانوا يكسبون

meaning (approximately):

Truly, the inhabitants of the tract denied the Messengers. We sent them Our signs but they would turn away from them. And they would carve homes from the mountains in safety. So, the alarm took them by morning and what they used to do availed them not.

Qur'anic commentators mention that these verses refer to the land of the ancient Arabic tribe of Thamud, the people of the Prophet Salih (peace be upon him) who lived between Medina and the Levant. However, it is unlikely that they were actually inhabitants of Petra: the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) passed by the land of Thamud on the way from Medina to Tabuk, which is south of Jordan. Rather, Thamud probably resided in Madain Saleh. It seems possible that the believers from Thamud who escaped from the punishment that befell their tribe may have taken refuge in nearby Jordan and built homes in the same style that they were used to. Of course, this is mere speculation.

The residential area was in direct sunlight. When the wind wasn't blowing, it would get fairly warm. When we reached the end of the residential area, a couple bedouins asked us if we wanted to ride their donkeys up to the Deir. By this point, both pairs of Energizer batteries that I bought for the trip had died out. I bought some Kodak batteries from one of the bedouin merchants. They were so weak that they couldn't even power on my camera. (Yes, they were new and they expired 2010.) The four of us (my wife was too busy voting that day, so she didn't come) rode donkeys up with the bedouins for 12 JD. Because my batteries were dead, I didn't take pictures on the beautiful ride up the mountain.

During the ride, I made small talk with one of the bedouins. I wanted to see how much they still preserved their culture. I asked Atallah, my guide, if they owned sheep and goats. I had seen horses, donkeys, and camels, but no goats or sheep. "Of course;", he said, "don't think we're peasants (Ar. fallaheen). We're bedouins." I remember my brother-in-law, who had lived among the Arab tribes of Egypt during his drug-busting operations with the Egyptian police, tell me that if you ever want to royally annoy a bedouin, ask him which peasant community he's from. The bedouins see themselves as humans par excellence: they are undomesticated. They are truly free, uncorrupted by social pressure and unintimidated by the fear of losing their homes. In fact, they have no homes. They live in camel-hair tents that they roll up and take with them. Just like wild animals, bedouins are essentially wild humans: if shot, they will not surrender; rather, they will flee or fight until death. The bedouins see peasants as domesticated humans: a weak people who could historically be bullied into paying khaweh (tribute) to the neighbouring bedouin tribes in exchange for them sparing them from being raided. This is the source behind bedouin pride. Of course, most of Jordan's bedouins have been settled and know no more about camels than I do, but traditional memes die hard.

I asked Atallah, "What's that plant called?" He told me. I asked him what it's good for and he said, "It produces flowers but the halal (a Jordanian word meaning sheep and goats) eat it while it's small." We approached another bush and I asked him, "What's that?" He told me, "It's diflah. It's too bitter for anything to eat." When I inquired whether camels eat it, he told me, "If they did, it wouldn't look untrimmed like that." I remembered how my wife would describe things that tasted bitter as being like diflah, and now I saw the proverbial plant. The reason I asked him what the plants were called is because it is one of the best ways to find out if people are still in tune with their traditional lifestyle. So far, he passed these tests. I asked him if they live in hair tents or in buildings. He said they have hair tents, but they live in brick buildings, like the ones in Wadi Musa. I then asked him how they pronounced the kaf when speaking to a woman, and provided an example. Basically, I wanted to find out if they pronounced it chaf, like the Northern Jordanians. He said, "No, that's city speak. We're bedouins." I told him that the bedouins of the north pronounced it that way. His cousin, Saleem (the other guide), assured him that there were also bedouins in the north. Alas, the honour and value of Northern Jordan was redeemed in Atallah's eyes.

On the way up the mountain, I soothed my screaming daughters with reassuring words as the donkeys teetered and jerked their way up. Because I spoke on impulse, I spoke in English. Atallah asked me how many languages I spoke. I told him two: Arabic and English. He told me that he spoke seven languages. During the course of the small talk, I told him I was originally from Egypt. On the way, he introduced me to a middle-aged European-looking woman and told me, "She's Egyptian." I asked her, with a puzzled look on my face, "You're Egyptian?" She explained that her husband was Egyptian and that she had lived a number of years in Alexandria. I asked her if she was American. She was Dutch. During the climb up the mountains, the donkeys made the decisions and we rode obediently. We passed by a bunch of pedestrians coming down the hillside on the steps. I apologized, explaining that I couldn't control the donkey, as it basically forced them off the steps onto the dirt. The man had no clue what I was saying and said something angrily in some language I didn't understand. Atallah spoke to him and later explained to me that he was speaking Spanish.

Finally, we reached the top of the mountain where we disembarked off the donkeys and walked the remaining distance to the Deir. Outside the Deir, a tiny bedouin girl named Tamam approached us to see where we were from. I told her from Amman and asked her age: she was eight. The wind was blowing hard that day and sand was flying in our faces. It would have been smart to wear a shimagh to wrap around one's face. Tamam explained that the winds were easterly that day. It was strange how such a little person knew this when most North American adults would probably have no clue. The Deir was too much of a site for me not to photograph, so I reinserted my Energizer batteries into my camera and squeezed out a little more life out of them. When Engergizer batteries run low, the camera turns off automatically. However, the Kodak batteries weren't even powerful enough to turn the camera on to begin with.

I bought myself another silver ring from the bedouins by the Deir. We inquired about the price of chips, but they were way, way overpriced, so we skipped them and started our descent. Time was running late: we had to catch the bus back at 4 PM. At what seemed like a snail's pace, we made our way down the mountain, through the residential area, past the Khazneh, and through the Siq. My youngest daughter found it too much and cried occasionally. We'd stop and then continue the trek forward, while I panicked about missing the bus. Finally, when we got out of the Siq, I was approached by some bedouins who asked if we wanted to ride horses back to the main entrance. After a minor bit of haggling, we agreed that all four of us would ride for 10 JD. We rode the horses to visitor's centre, prayed, caught the bus, and then the kids passed out.