Petra, Jordan

I am sitting in Rose’s rooftop apartment in the light of one candle and a nearly full moon, a continuous breeze dancing the sheers that soften the window bars giving onto a flat creamscape of other stone rooftops going up and up the surrounding hillsides, satellite dishes as plentiful as plankton in a healthy sea.

The curtains are so pleasing, their movement soft and graceful as they pull the welcome coolness inside. They billow, rakishly flipping their corners with a flourish that brings to mind photos of T E Lawrence. It's 3 AM and soon we will rise and go to Petra and I am imagining myself festooned in traditional Bedouin robes astride my camel, Desert Wind, riding through the rose colored stone passage alive to a history older than Christ. Desert Wind and I a blur of grace as we race down the corridors of time, Bedouins nodding approval at my unexpected skill.

Rose has been to Petra. She said one of the camels was named Joan. Crush me now.

Hard to believe I am here. Rose and I Skype frequently, I have heard the sounds from the street below, had a visual tour of the apartment, seen her photos, yet there is something so surprisingly unfamiliar here. I find myself, quite lost in a world both modern and ancient. The other cultures I am familiar with, primarily European, have ancient sites that afford a glimpse into their distant past but the feel of those countries is essentially of a modern people with a lengthy, cherished and well loved history. This feels different to me. Rose’s friend, Mazan, who is Palestinian, said, “Arabs remember that which went before, it’s in their blood”. And that you can feel; it’s almost palpable like the heat. Maybe I am responding to the difference in costume, that might account for how steeped I feel in this world. Ancient alongside almost current; a juxtaposition of cultural threads that feel ill at ease to be woven together. Or so it feels to me at this point. I want to experience both, however this trip will afford only small vignettes, as I am here such a short time.
Rose is a collector of people, she makes deep connections wherever she lives and Jordan is no exception. Driving me into Amman from the airport, Mazan shared a lesson of Jordanian history out of his wallet recounting the reigns of the kings from the currency. It was fascinating to hear his depiction of events that I had studied in grade school from someone whose family has lived it. Mazan tracks current events through a lens of historical political tribal intrigues which keeps the past forever influential on today. To hear him describe tribal customs by which policies were swayed was fascinating and I drank it all in unable to discern his opinions from facts. In the end, I enjoyed the stories as folklore, which contains elements of both.

My last observation for today is that there are men who drive trucks selling watermelons or pumpkins through neighborhoods day and night some with haunting jingles softly entering the windows of sleepy people. I love this! It’s like a lullaby or the prelude to a mystery show. There are also trucks with men shouting wildly in Arabic as though the insurgency has begun but a quick once over revealed that the melons were unarmed so I am going back to bed.

Sorry the photo is so horribly grainy. Those are people at the bottom of the photo.