The Thin Places

It’s been so long – too long – since I wrote. The reasons are many: crushing fatigue, busyness and unacknowledged dread. No – not unacknowledged – a dread I’ve been grappling with because it means accepting a world that does not contain my Dad.

Talking to him about it might help but this is the first ‘big’ thing we’ve been unable to discuss. No – that’s not precise either – we’ve never been able to have a frank discussion about death. Not when my Aunt Annie died, not when his own mother – to whom I was very close – died. Not when Piglet died. Death has always been taboo except as it appears in Gilbert and Sullivan or Carlyle’s French Revolution. Or as an abstraction – Death Be Not Proud; Every Man’s Death Diminishes Me; After the First Death There is No Other.

And now here we are, face to face with the hoary monster and his power grows, not because he’s so close but because we aren’t acknowledging his presence, his imminence. He’s come to call and we aren’t offering him tea. Muffins would strain both hospitality and human forbearance, not to mention general Dylan Thomas outrage, but this is a guest who should be offered a cup of fairly ordinary tea and some simple conversation. To look him coldly in the face and preserve the amenities, admit he’s a legitimate caller who’s going to take something precious with him when he goes but to offer some defiance, too: One short sleep past, we wake eternally/And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die.

After I returned from my visit to the Excited States to see Ellie, towards the end of May, I spent the weekend at my parents’ so my Mom could get away and rest. “To a place where I can sleep as long and as much as I like and eat meals I haven’t had to cook,” she said. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs would have paid for a respite worker but my Dad refused to have a stranger stay with him so I was ‘it.’

I arrived bearing strawberries and real cream, gourmet salmon patties, a proper pepper mill, and a little whirry machine – a sort of hand-held blender that purees things. Mom had told me Dad was eating very little and favoured ‘mushy’ offerings.

A surprisingly smooth two days ensued despite a couple of minor tragedies. Mom left two pages of closely-written instructions which I earnestly perused – repeatedly – trying to memorize such details as which cup the decaf coffee should go in and which small glass the juice. She forgot to include how much water to add to the micro-wave porridge (one quarter cup oatmeal sprinkled with a tablespoon of bran), but it turns out that wrongly mixed porridge peels fairly neatly off the walls of a microwave oven, almost like strips of two-sided tape. I forgot to chill the Ensure (a protein drink) and put jam on the toast when it was a marmalade morning but we successfully weathered these small squalls and even watched a bit of baseball and most of a movie, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

None of our conversations took off, though, which troubled me because ever since I can remember I’ve had long, deep discussions with my Dad and always learned something new or glimpsed an alternate viewpoint. No more. He doesn’t have the energy. Or maybe the looming presence of Mr. Death has to be acknowledged to free our thoughts and words and we’re spending our stamina pretending we don’t see him.

Caregivers came in morning and evening to help him get up, dressed and out of bed and then into pyjamas and ready for sleep. Although he rarely uses the walker to get himself from bedroom to living room and back again during the day anymore, he did manage it two or three times – with me walking behind him, heart in mouth – and didn’t fall, which had been my greatest fear.

Over the 48-hours of my constant attendance, even in such a short time, I noticed an infinitesimal downward slide, a diminution of faculties and powers by less than millimetres; not a progress registered by the eyes so much as by the heart. This heart that loves him and doesn’t want him to go any more than he wants to leave. The Blue Jays ball game, for example, we turned on and followed for less than ten minutes before Dad lost interest. That was Saturday. On Sunday, he lost interest after five minutes.

This process, I decided, is just as hard as having someone die suddenly the way Piglet did. It’s the difference between being swamped by a monster tsunami that crashes down out of a clear blue sky and standing on the beach, knowing the tsunami’s coming but being unable to move.

The following Saturday, I went for lunch – a lovely lunch featuring prawns wrapped in bacon and ribboned in lime aioli – with my old friend Dannie. We’ve known each other since 1970 and shared a spectacularly naughty and rebellious teenagehood so can talk about anything. Her husband died of brain cancer last October. How could we ever have imagined, at 14, that we’d both find ourselves widowed in our early 50s?

For once Nietzsche may have been right when he gave a nod to the dazzling realm of music and literature, ballet and drama: “We have art in order not to die of the truth.”

But no – I won’t believe that. The truth can also be beautiful if we can stand the awesome might of its flame. Is it not written, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free?

During lunch, I mentioned that one of the things both Tickles and I find difficult is that my Dad often cries. He cries if we express affection; he cries when we’re leaving. I have never in my life until now seen my Dad cry. It simultaneously puzzled and irritated me because I don’t know how to deal with it and lumped it in with the whole refusal to discuss death syndrome. Dannie suggested a very simple explanation – he cries because he doesn’t want to leave us – and I was grateful for the insight. Although I can’t say it makes things any easier.

One day less than two weeks ago – it seems much longer – Mom called me at work and said, “I think you should come over on your way home.” Needless to say, this threw me into a bit of a panic.

“Do you want me to come over right now?”

“No, I just think you should come over on your way home.”

To say Mom is a master of understatement and euphemism would be a vast understatement in itself. When Dad had his horrendous accident in 1962 and was lying at death’s door, she told me he had “a couple of sore legs.” Granted, she was attempting to project serenity and allay fears in my sensitive, six-year-old self; nevertheless, it’s vintage Mom and not all that much different from the way she describes catastrophes unto this very day.

When I was 19, she called me at work and chattered on about the price of hamburger and Tickles’ latest misadventures, then concluded the conversation by saying, “Oh, and by the way, Auntie Annie died last night,” and hanging up. I started crying and couldn’t stop. My alarmed supervisor sent me home. I didn’t ever tell Mom how much she’d shocked and upset me because I didn’t want to upset her.

And so it goes...

And so, on that day less than two weeks ago, dithering and worrying and repressing panic, I eventually left work 15 minutes early and sped over to the family home.

“Things have taken a turn,” said Mom. “I think Dad’s gotten very weak and I don’t like the sound of his breathing. I just wanted to see if you agree with me.”

I walked carefully into the bedroom where Dad was deeply asleep, his breathing uneven and shallow, interrupted now and then by a sort of hitch or gurgle.

“It doesn’t sound good,” I said to Mom, thinking to myself, His lungs are filling with fluid; this is a stage of congestive heart failure.

“And he’s hardly eating anything,” added Mom.

Since he’s had the appetite of a delicate five-year-old for the last several weeks, this was definitely another worrying sign.

“What does Dad think?” I asked. “Has he said anything?”

Mom paused, as if to gather strength. “He thinks he’s dying.”

Taken aback, it was my turn to pause. “Has he said anything else? Is he feeling more comfortable about it all yet?”

“I think so,” said Mom. “A bit anyway. But he doesn’t want to leave me.”

Of course he doesn’t, I thought, He’s been married to you for over 55 years and you haven’t spent more than a couple of weeks apart in all that time.

We sat and discussed our theories of heaven until we heard, unbelievably, the sound of walker wheels sliding across the carpet. Dad had gotten out of bed and was painfully navigating inch by inch, propelling himself by sheer will power to his chair in the living room. I had the feeling – humbling and poignant – that he was doing it for me; walking out to the living to sit and converse, to honour my visit.

Mom and I fell silent and watched his slow progress, aghast. I thought he’d miss the chair entirely and subside onto the floor but he managed, at last, to sit down at an awkward angle, pale and shaking, more exhausted than he’d been the night of the Healing Service and unable to speak.

We conferred, Mom and I, and decided that she’d call Toy and I’d call Wumbles. It was time.

We have arrived at a strange crossroads, a fearful junction where the unknowable seems strangely commonplace and the commonplace is imbued with mystery.

It is a place akin to those known as “thin places” in Celtic mythology...these are threshold bridges at the border between the real world and the other world, still points where the barrier between the human and the divine is stretched thin as a membrane that may finally be permeated and transcended.

Now I see that the opposite of knowledge may not be ignorance but mystery, that the opposite of truth may not be lies but something else again: a revelation so deeply imbedded in the thin places of reality that we cannot see it for looking: a reverence so clear and quiet and perfect that we have not yet begun to fathom it.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

-from Diane Schoemperlen’s Our Lady of the Lost and Found

Goslings and Cherry Blossoms

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I didn't think I'd see goslings this year. The property management people talked about addling the eggs to cut down the goose population. And of course, ice and snow threatened the nests late into what should have been spring.

As I drove towards my parking spot, though, mind swamped with Ellie and the bittersweet joys of grandparenthood, I had to slow for a small gaggle to cross the road.

Here they are, then - goslings and the long-awaited cherry blossoms.

Elation for Ellie

Finn chats to Uncle Tickles about his new cousin, then loses interest in the conversation.********************************************************
Life is truly an arena of contradictions, a blighted plain quickly eclipsed by a swirl of emotions and colours that can’t be contained. Or, as my mother says in her quiet Winnipeg way, “You never know from where you sit when the man in the gallery’s going to spit.”

We gathered today at the homestead for Dad’s 84th – and last – birthday. Tickles, Creature, Finn – now know as Super Grumples – and me. Wheelchairs, walkers, rolling meal trays and eject-em chairs litter the living space and a strong medicinal smell pervades the air. We milled about awkwardly, trying to summon cheery smiles and witty asides – festivity amongst the ruins, so to speak.

Tinny music burst forth suddenly from the car seat where Finn lay sleeping.

Creature’s cell phone, announcing its presence.

“Hello?” she said.

A pause.

“Wumb! Is your baby born?”

Tickles and Mom crowded around me, staring at Creature as if she held the key to the universe.

“Yes,” I told them.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked Creature.

“A girl,” I announced impatiently to my eager audience.

“When was she born?” Creature continued.

“Today, of course,” I said, “On Dad’s birthday.”

Since I couldn’t divine the name – and Creature was getting irritated at my foreknowledge of all the answers – I silenced myself. Briefly.

“What’s her name?” Creature went silent for a moment. “Helen Elizabeth? I like it.”

Mom gave a sort of ‘whump’ sound as all the air in her body – right down to her stomach – was ejected in a millisecond. She’s never had anyone named after her before.

And so we are joined by Helen Elizabeth, to be called Ellie, born at 3:30 a.m. on May 5th after 48 hours of labour. She has a headful of black hair and weights seven pounds.

What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?...
I see them showering like stars on to the world –
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images. They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched. They are walkers of air.

...it as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

Sylvia Plath

Side Trip

From the Canadian Street
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Back at the hotel, unable to sleep, I ventured into the bar for a beer. It was set up like a Bedouin tent, characteristic black and white hangings delineating the outer walls, the booths hung with red, brightly embroidered blankets. (An example of these can be seen behind Nazeeh in the picture of him seated in the tent where we smoked shisha.) Artfully placed brass coffee pots enlivened the floor space and two large cages held a collection of strange birds that whistled and shrieked at ear-splitting volume.

Striving to ignore the din, I ordered my beer and leafed through the lavishly illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Museum I picked up in Cairo. A young man approached and began feeding sunflower seeds to the birds in the cage just beside me.

“Excuse me,” he said suddenly, “Are you reading an Egyptian tour guide?”

“I nodded. “For the Egyptian Museum actually.”

“That’s wonderful! I am Egyptian,” he declared, and we exchanged a few pleasantries about the glorious Mother of the World.

Before I relate what happened next, I’m going to take a little detour, launch a discourse about the Canadian character, or What it Means to be Canadian, using three short tales.

The first comes from local history and concerns Victoria’s Empress Hotel, a turreted and ivy-covered edifice, standing proudly at the head of our harbour, named for Queen Victoria and long considered one of the final bastions of the British Empire. High Tea is still served amongst the potted palms in its hushed lobby and it reeks of faded elegance and quiet dignity.

One day a man intent on armed robbery entered the hallowed precincts and made his way to the Garden Cafe. He waved his gun about and yelled, “This is a stick up!” No one paid him the least attention, just continued eating their meals.

He approached the cashier. “Give me all the money in the till!” he ordered, pointing the gun at her.

She didn’t bat an eye. Giving him a look of stern reproval, she said, “Young man, this sort of thing just isn’t done at the Empress.”

The man looked wildly about, discharged his firearm into the ceiling and fled. The diners continued eating placidly and a neatly garbed lackey appeared with a broom and dustpan to sweep up the bits of ceiling plaster that had drifted down to sully the pristine floor.

End of episode.

The second story occurred in Paris. I was there with 29 teenagers, the rash and harried leader of a Spring Break ”field trip.” Late one nascent spring day, I was crammed into the metro cheek by jowl with ten of my students and about half the city’s work force. We stood patiently, clinging to metal poles as the train clattered through station after station.

Suddenly a woman shrieked, “Voleur! Voleur!” and lunged towards a man standing innocuously beside me. A look of alarm crossed his face and he darted out the doors just as they whooshed shut. I managed to jab him with my elbow as he passed.

“That man was trying to pick your pocket,” the woman told me indignantly.

I had my coat tied around my waist as it was hot underground. I checked the pockets which had contained only some loose change and my teaching credentials. Nothing was missing.

Out on the street, I asked the students if they’d noticed anything.

“Oh yes,” said one particularly sweet girl, “That man kept putting his hand in your pocket. Every time he did, I just took it out again. I was starting to get a bit scared.”

I gazed at her in astonishment. “Why didn’t you say something?”

She gazed back at me in equal astonishment. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

The third story takes place in the Ontario hinterlands and involved my other brother, the one who isn’t a musician. We’ll call him Toy. My parents do, so why not?

Many years ago, when his twins were tiny, Toy and his wife lived in a cottage that had a summer kitchen. These rooms are found off the main kitchen and aren’t well enough insulated for year-round use. They tend to become storage areas and usually have a locking door that separates them from the house proper.

One morning my sister-in-law, Syl, came toodling out to start breakfast. She whisked up the blind in the window of the door leading to the summer kitchen and what to her horror-struck eyes did appear but a villainous looking male body lying on the floor amongst a heap of croquet mallets.

“Toy!” she called. “Come out here right away.”

Toy dutifully presented himself and peered through the window at the body, which was now starting to stir ominously.

“You have to do something,” said Syl, “Before the babies wake up.”

Now, if Toy had been American, he would have fetched the family gun, taken aim and blown the intruder’s brains out. Being Canadian, he opened the door cautiously, tip-toed across the summer kitchen, bent down and gently tapped the man’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” he asked. “Can I help you?”

The man opened bleary eyes. “Huh?” he intoned, obviously sunk far into his cups.
Toy solicitously helped him to his feet and out to the street where he stumbled to the neighbour’s lawn and collapsed once more. I’m told he lay there till noon, alternately sleeping and belting out slurred renditions of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, fortified by cups of coffee trotted out to him by anxious local residents.

These anecdotes should serve to illustrate why, when Bird Feeder Guy at the Bedouin Bar in Aqaba turned to me and said, “May I join you?” my automatic response was, “Of course.” I didn’t want him at my table and had no desire for further conversation with him but – well, the poor guy must have been exhausted after attending to all those birds and was probably too weak to make his way to an adjoining table. Either that or he wanted to practise his English.

To my relief, however, he sat down for only few brief moments then got up and left the hotel. The happy feeling of release warmed the cockles of my heart and I carried on with my awe-struck perusal of King Tut’s treasures.

Ten minutes later, BFG returned.

“I invite you,” he said, “to Happy Hour – special drinks – in special hotel across the street.”

“No, thank you,” I said coldly and with a deep inward sigh.

“Why not?” he demanded, very assertive now.

“Because I don’t want to.”

“But why? We have good time. Very nice place.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to go. And I won’t.”

“Why not? I am your Egyptian friend. I take good care of you.”

This distressing exchange continued for several minutes, BFG now verging on the belligerent. Unfortunately, the shrieks of the birds muffled our words so I couldn’t look to the bar staff for rescue. Finally I summoned what Piglet used to call my Teacher Look.

“You will go away,” I said sternly and with authority. “You will go NOW and not bother me any more. If you do not, I will start to scream. Do you understand?”

A few shreds of argument threatened to dribble from his lips.

“NOW,” I repeated.

He went.

Even in Jordan, I thought, even in Jordan.

Hubbly Bubbly

Palestinian shepherds; Nazeeh and the sea; Awaiting the performance; Hubbly bubbly with the lights of Eilat in the background.
*************************************************
From Wadi Rum we drove through a lunar landscape to Aqaba at the northernmost point of the Red Sea. We passed some men tending sheep on a rocky hillside and I insisted on stopping to take pictures.

“Palestinian shepherds,” Nazeeh said as we got underway again.

“Palestinians?” Startled, I found myself up against the brick wall of my own ignorance. “There are Palestinians in Jordan?” I scrolled through my inner geography for the country of Palestine I was sure existed somewhere in the region.

“Many, many Palestinians here,” Nazeeh announced. “Especially since three hundred thousand get kicked out of Kuwait.”

“Kuwait? Kicked out?”

“Yes. Mr. Yasser Arafat support Mr. Saddam Hussein in Gulf War, say he a good man and Americans bad, so when Kuwaitis get their country back, they kick out all the Palestinians.”

“But why did they come to Jordan?”

“Nowhere else for them to go.” Nazeeh shrugged. “They are – what is the word – workers who go to another country but not citizens there.”

“Migrant workers?”

“Yes. Migrant.” Nazeeh rolled his tongue around the syllables. “I remember this new, good word.” He paused, committing it to memory. “So they come back and their camps get very full.”

“Camps?”

“Yes, Palestinians live in camps. Many millions.”

Numbers don’t often translate well, so I didn’t immediately take this figure at face value.

“How long will they stay there?”

Nazeeh looked at me pityingly. Poor ignorant western woman his gaze said. “Only God knows. They always live in camps. Long ago Israelis kick them out of their villages and they run here. Live in camps. United Nations send food for them.”

Some shreds of history returned to my shocked consciousness. “Are you telling me that Palestinians have been living in refugee camps here since 1948?”

“Oh yes. Is big problem because Jordan very poor country. I tell you before, we don’t have oil. Our King give citizenship for two or three hundred thousand but we can’t help the rest. Jordan very small country, too, with lots of desert.”

Too stunned for further comment, I readjusted my mental bearings as we wended our way into the city of Aqaba.

Since the lobby of my hotel was full of Arabian splendours, my dingy, poorly-lit room was an unpleasant contrast. Bashir certainly fell down on the job here, I thought. If I’d become his doxy according to plan, I’d most definitely have pelted him with strong words for his lapse in attention. I pulled open the curtains to let in some badly needed light and watched the sun set over the Red Sea, a shimmering orange ball sinking swiftly into the shiny grey depths.

“Why is the Red Sea called Red?” I asked Nazeeh when I met him in the lobby at 5:30.

“Because of coral,” he said. “The sea is full of red coral reefs. We go now to the beach but you will not see coral tonight. Too dark. And in the morning we go to Dead Sea. So maybe you never see the famous coral.”

Horrified to learn it was illegal in Sharjah – Sheikh bin Sultan al-Qasimi thought it encouraged gambling – Nazeeh insisted he was going to treat me to some “hubbly bubbly” or smoking shisha as it’s more formally called. Not narcotic, as fans of Alice in Wonderland might suppose, it’s just fruit-laced tobacco filtered through water and a kind of cotton batten. I chose apple, hoping it might be the least cloying of the various fruits on offer.

Setting up the pipe was a genuine performance with much to-ing and fro-ing and fanning of coals, which have to glow just so to coax the best flavour from the tobacco.

Nazeeh watched proudly as I took my first mouthful. I found it overly thick and sweet and it induced vague nausea but I puffed valiantly on as the sea lapped over stones, its little tongues slipping in and out almost at our feet, and children splashed in the shallows. Others tried to sell me cheap plastic sandals and tin trinkets and irritating Arab pop music blared from speakers mounted above a kebab stand.

Like a blessing from heaven, the mournful rising cadence of the call to prayer challenged the blare and a teenage boy hurried to turn it off. In Jordan, it’s illegal for music or other canned public noise to play while the muezzin’s calling the faithful.

Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
Ash-haduan la illaha il-Allah!

God is most great!
God is most great!
I testify that there is no god but God.

When done properly, by a well-trained, truly devout muezzin, the call has a lovely liquid sound, trilling and tripping like a spring brook gurgling over smooth stone, as it did that night, blending with the soft splash of the sea and producing a feeling of profound peace.

“Those are the lights of Eilat,” said Nazeeh, pointing across the rippled sheet of dark water.

“Eilat?”

“Yes. In Israel.”

“Israel?” It was hard for me to believe another country could be so close, especially one with such a big history. I experienced one of those little flashes, or shifts in understanding. Canada is a huge country, the second largest in the world. For me, a journey of several hundred miles, one that can be done by car in a single day – and driving 800 miles in one day wouldn’t be pushing the limits for a Canadian, especially a western Canadian – is short. China is also huge, only marginally smaller than Canada, and I easily assimilated its endless bus and train journeys. Much of Canada is a frozen waste. Distance means little. Here, in this most ancient and holy of lands, distance a Canadian would consider negligible – a matter of metres – means everything: the difference between joy and sorrow, freedom and incarceration, hope and despair, life and death.

Nazeeh chuckled. We were beginning to know each other well. “Yes,” he said. “Small countries here. Not like Canada or China. Tomorrow night we see the lights of Jerusalem. I, Nazeeh, will show you.”

Rendered once again speechless, apple essence fizzing in my veins, I stared at the sea until dessert arrived, also courtesy of Nazeeh, a block of mozzarella-like cheese drenched in honey and topped with orange angel-hair coconut and a sprinkling of chopped pistachios – perfect antidote to the sickly sweet hubbly bubbly.

On our way back to the car, I saw a small, ancient and very battered flatbed truck parked at the side of the road. In it, a woman was cooking dinner on a circular pan hooked up to a propane tank. Puffs of steam rose into the night air and the woman, thin and stooped, wearily brushed strands of hair off her forehead. A young girl, swathed in a heap of tattered patchwork blankets, sat on a threadbare couch that ran the length of one whole side of the flatbed and chattered animatedly to the woman, no doubt her mother. The girl’s eyes danced with joy despite the dire poverty of her surroundings.

I remembered Nazeeh’s comment, “Jordan is a poor country.”

Maybe my hotel room wasn’t so dingy after all.

Thank You

Just a brief - but big - thank you to those who sent recovery wishes while I wasn't feeling well. I don't think I'm out of the woods but there's a clearing ahead.

I'll be continuing the Jordan story tomorrow.

The Queen's Garden

Islands in the mist. That’s the rather banal thought that persisted in my brain as I rode the ferry to Vancouver last weekend. The water over which we sailed was a rippling grey sheet, the fog a grey shroud that turned the Gulf Islands into featureless grey-green humps. The sky and the distance had ceased to exist.

The Queen of Too Much awaited me when I emerged from the five-mile walkway ferry riders must traverse to get from boat to parking lot. We started talking as if our conversation had only ended a few minutes earlier. That’s one of the many nice things about knowing a person since they were 15.

Arriving at the Queen’s Palace is always exciting. Much like at Buckingham Palace, there are little dogs everywhere, running and leaping and yipping with joy. The furnishings and bibelots greet me like old friends: the Victoria sofa, the handmade cherub mirror, the Japanese lady in a glass box, the elegant tea cups nestled in their hutch, the Little Mermaid – the real one – statue and the welcome runner dispensing advice in neat Danish needlepoint. As well as the wholesome goodies within, the surface of the Queen’s fridge provides an endless visual feast, including photos of the Queen in a cancan costume.

Since the Queen had graciously given the kitchen staff an afternoon off, we proceeded to a Japanese restaurant for lunch – very late, just getting in before it closed – but I’m not a breakfast eater and the food on the ferry is an inedible disgrace, a slap in the face to the province our premier likes to call the “best place on earth.” He likes calling it that so much, in fact, that he ordered it emblazoned on our license plates, a source of grim humour to us peons who ride the ferries in our hungry thousands, dodge the bullets flying in Vancouver’s vicious gang war and sidestep the needles dropped everywhere by our homeless junkies. I will admit, though, that the carnage is set against a backdrop of incomparable beauty.

Then came preparations for the main purpose of my visit. The Queen’s youngest daughter, Lily, was appearing in her high school musical that night. Back at the Palace, nervous and distracted, she searched the cupboards for suitable sustenance, eventually found in the form of a bagel and cream cheese. Coupled with the take-out chicken the Queen brought home from the restaurant, there was an acceptable amount of food for her to be unable to eat.

We dropped her at the home of a fellow thespian. We picked up two dozen fuchsia roses. We retrieved Lily and her friend and took them to the stage door. We prepared dinner for the husband and the older daughter, Rose. We solved all of that day’s planetary problems. We donned evening gowns. I use “we” in the royal sense. The Queen did all these things while I followed obediently and understood, again, why her realm is called Too Much.

As always, time wore on and the big moment was upon us. We ensconced ourselves in the theatre – having successfully stampeded our way to good seats – while fellow attendees chattered in excitement and anticipation. A pleasant, muted cacophony rose from the orchestra pit. The lights dimmed. A hush descended, that almost holy hush that pervades the atmosphere just before the curtain rises on a live performance. It’s a moment of suspension between two worlds and the anticipation becomes momentarily unbearable as we wait for the journey to begin.

And the audience was indeed transported. I had expected Bye Bye Birdie to be good. I’ve worked with teenagers and know what they can do when inspired and trained. But this show was superb, absolutely professional, riveting. The three hours we spent in Conrad Birdie’s universe passed outside regular time so it had no regular meaning and wasn’t noticed as it passed.

Lily, too, became another person. Radiant. Assured. Full of her character. As if she’d come home at last to the place she really belongs and where she is most herself. Her seamless performance enhanced the others’, as theirs did hers. She has an amazing stage presence and a great talent.

Afterwards, the foyer was thronged with parents and flowers and – teenagers; as if the proverbial midnight pumpkin moment had arrived and turned them back into their everyday selves. Their youth and adolescent mien were shocking coming so soon after they’d populated the sophisticated world behind the footlights.

Lily stood with her fuchsia roses, tearful, giddy with overexcitement and post-performance high and the bittersweet feel of the show’s final evening. Surrounded by her proud family, her youth, energy and brilliance bubbled up, casting a sparkling net of emotions that joined those cast by the other young actors and made the whole foyer shimmer.

Back at the Palace, sleep was impossible. We gravitated to the kitchen where food and wine were flung about, the rudiments of a feast.

I sat with a goblet of red while Rose picked at some California rolls. Chronically ill since early childhood, Rose has a soul much older than her years and she glows with a kind of concentrated luminosity, fragile as the mother of pearl sheen on abalone shell, intense and wild as Van Gogh’s stars.

I asked about Twilight, a book I tried to read because of all the fuss, got most of the way through it and didn’t bother reading the last dozen or so pages as I didn’t really care what happened. I was curious to hear an intelligent opinion about why it’s so popular.

“It’s the love story,” said Rose. “The impossible love story that everyone wants to have but never quite does. Or hasn’t yet. And with Bella and Edward it’s more impossible than usual but somehow seems more real at the same time. And you’re right. The book isn’t very well-written but it’s a big book. Some people who’ve never really read a book outside of school before read Twilight and not only love the story but have a feeling of accomplishment at reading such a big book.”

I said I thought the impossible love story thing had already been done – and done better - in Buffy but the show ended many years ago and perhaps seems old to today’s teenagers.

And so we talked about vampires and Twilight and love and literature until the castle clock harrumphed and hooed, its insistent arms swinging towards 1:00 a.m. I had to reluctantly admit the evening’s revels were ended, the last sparkles winking wearily out as the net faded and dissipated.

My foot touched the cold floor and a little shiver ran over me. I looked down. Only one slipper on one foot. What a way to come back to earth! Had I brought only one? My eyes scanned the floor. I searched my bag. Nothing there and still only one slipper on my foot. Had encroaching age and the blasted kidney infection destroyed a quarter of my brain cells as I still struggled on, unaware? A conviction of helpless stupidity began slipping its mantle over me but, just before I could be covered in despair, I spied something green and familiar peeking out from the Sleeping Basket of the Palace Dogs. Yes!

And so to bed.

Not Gone

This one's just to let readers know that I haven't vanished. I've been ill. Regular posts will start again very soon.

Hanging at Hermann's

******************************************
Tickles arrived in town late last Friday afternoon to play an anniversary gig with a Quintet he joined 20 years ago. Hermann’s, the longest continuously open jazz club in Canada, celebrated its 28th anniversary that week, the Quintet being one of the highlights of the celebration.

Led by Stu (trombone, piano) and featuring Tickles (piano, tenor sax), Cam (alto and soprano sax), Ken (bass) and Dave (drums), the multi-award winning Quintet comprises the top musicians in Canada, possibly the world. (I’m only the teensiest bit biased due to baby bro’s presence among them.)

Stu’s a larger than life kind of person, a Dylan Thomas type who dominates any room he’s in and whose brilliance hauls you up by the nape of the neck and demands attention. When he plays with the other members of the Quintet, enchantment descends – an extra dimension insinuates itself, a chemistry combined with such consummate skill and artistry it takes your breath away.

I arrived at Hermann’s early as there are usually standing-room-only crowds when the Quintet plays. Perched on my accustomed stool by the bar – the one that affords the best view of the musicians and the best acoustics – I watched people arrive and imbibed the rising sense of anticipation and excitement. As usual my thoughts wandered off, this time to the weekend nearly 20 years ago when I first began getting to know the members of the band.

They were at the start of a cross continent tour that included Toronto and New York and ended up at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, famous for many historic events, not least the assassination of RFK in 1968. I was living in the Remote Coastal Village and in the throes of organizing a Spring Break trip to France for myself and 32 students. In exchange for some fund-raising help, I told the Band Teacher I’d try and convince the Quintet to extend their tour to include a concert and workshop in our village.

It didn’t take much convincing at all and, once the concert was over, they descended on my home to be fed. Tickles arrived bearing apple pies from my Mom and I had a savoury beef stew bubbling on the stove. Post-performance ebullience filled everyone except San, Stu’s girlfriend and the Band Manager. Prior to the Remote Village gig, they’d gone down to Washington State to kick off the tour.

Apparently there’d been some trouble at the border. “May I remind you,” San said sternly as I ladled stew into bowls, “that water balloons are forbidden. Absolutely. At all times. No exceptions.”

General murmurs of agreement greeted her pronouncement. Stu finished his dinner quickly and sat down on the couch with his back to Cam, who hunched over the table spooning up some last bits of tender carrot and beef. Then he casually removed a straw from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. From one of the front pockets he withdrew a handful of paper pellets. He put one of them in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, raised the straw to his lips and blew. Soon Stu’s back was peppered with spit balls.

Dave, meanwhile, brought delight to eight-year-old Creature’s heart by doing his famous – and startlingly realistic – gorilla imitation. Many children fled screaming when he contorted his face and let his knuckles dangle floorward. Not so Creature. She asked for it to be repeated again and again.

So – spit balls flew and a gorilla stumped through the carnage while Stu sat oblivious, telling tales of gigs past.

This happy halcyon scene faded from my mind as the crowd grew. Stu arrived and came by to say hello.

“I don’t know how it will go tonight,” he said. “We haven’t played together for a long time. I’m not even sure what we’ll play.”

I said I was sure it would be wonderful.

Cam appeared at my elbow. “I don’t know how it will go tonight,” he said. “I can’t even remember the last time we played together and we haven’t rehearsed.”

I repeated my reassurances. Tickles loped in. “I don’t know how it will go tonight,” he said. “We haven’t played together for ages, we haven’t rehearsed and Stu didn’t even bring any music.”

I offered yet more reassurances and, glancing at the two grand pianos inexplicably crowded into the musicians’ corner, added brightly – and in jest – “Maybe you’ll play some two piano.”

Tickles looked seriously alarmed. “I hope not,” he replied. “We’ve never done that. Besides, one of the pianos is a piece of crap. It took 15 years to convince Hermann to buy a decent one. I don’t know what it’s still doing here.”

He wandered off and I felt badly about teasing him.

Fifteen minutes later they began to play and, of course, it was wonderful – intricate, subtle, rich in tone and feeling.

Suddenly, unobtrusively, Tickles moved to the crappy piano and Stu sat down at the good one. Gently, so softly at first that it was like the liquid chords of one instrument, they launched into a two piano duet. A kind of glamour fell over the room. Fairy Tales.

After the break, Stu made the obligatory speech in praise of Hermann. “Three years ago,” he went on, “I wrote a song for the 25th anniversary, Hanging at Hermann’s. In my usual, absent-minded musician’s way, I gave the only copy to Hermann. He did me the honour of having it framed and hung it on the wall here.”

He moved aside a black curtain that had been looped up to deflect glare. Sure enough, there was a framed score, snuggled between a couple of decrepit trumpets. The rest of the band trooped over and gazed intently at the wall for a few minutes.

Stu let the black cloth fall into place again. “We haven’t actually played it again since that night,” he said, “But we’re going to give it a try now.”

And, once again, the melody that began to weave its way around the room was polished, elegant, riveting. Then, towards the end of Tickles’ piano solo, there was a slight thickening of sound. Stu had spontaneously turned on the bench where he was sitting to tentatively add a chord, a feather touch, once more making two pianos sound like one.

Abruptly, a fire overtook them. And it was a duel, a sound storm, a whirlwind of rising harmony and surpassing beauty, a haphazard gift of the moment, an exquisite merger, a duet. It commanded absorption, travelled like an electric current up the spine and filled the heart and the brain and the veins with glory.

We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams...

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth...

World-losers and world forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yes, we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
A.W.E. O’Shaughnessy

Eye of the Beholder

I’m taking a break from the Jordan Saga to bring you a brief report from the confines of my Real Life. The weather continues dismal, cold and windy, permitting only a forced display of stunted daffodils and unhappy cherry blossoms.

My local newspaper offers the following comfort:

After enduring the coldest winter in 16 years and now persistent below normal temperatures that are chilling what should be spring, Islanders can be excused for asking what gives.

They may not like the answer.

Meteorologists suspect coastal BC is now being nipped by a trend of colder than normal winter temperatures that could last a decade. Or two. Or three.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a phenomenon of alternating phases in which offshore ocean temperatures tend to run warmer and then colder – for 20 to 30 years at a stretch.

I’ll never be warm again.

The global picture doesn’t look any prettier. Doom and gloom cascade down from all quarters. My favourite British newspaper, The Independent, under the headline Seven Years to Save the World, fills me in on the upcoming G20 Summit:

The agenda is an ambitious one. Beneath all the news hoo-haa about grungy protesters, cancelled police leave, be-suited City workers being told to dress down and even the spectre of a terrorist dirty bomb lies the grim reality of a deepening global financial crisis. The task before the G20 is to rescue the drowning global banking system, rewrite the rules of the financial markets and stop a global recession tuning into a great depression.

Well! As the Chinese like to say when they’re in the mood for showing off their English translation skills – Any clue what’s happened? Lady Macbeth cleaned up on the stock market.

Which reminds me of how Canada originally joined the ranks of what was then the G8, way back in the 70s. Gerald Ford came up to Ottawa one July – his first visit to the Great White North - to complain about something or other and the prime minister (either Trudeau or Joe Who, if memory serves) invited him to play golf. Ford was blown away. He’d set forth armed with skis, a heavy parka and fur-lined gloves only to find nary an igloo in sight. He had to borrow Canadian golf clubs. And they worked! And the Greenside Bar served Budweiser Beer! Montreal had paved roads! He was so impressed he offered us the greatest honour he could think of – membership in the G8. Once you’re in, of course, you can’t get kicked out again unless you do something really naughty. And Canadians are so quietly polite that no one notices when we’re naughty – so our very own Stephen Harper will be in London next week helping to save the world.

The planet really is doomed.

Closer to home, this little gem appeared in my mail box at work yesterday morning:

Dear Employee Services Person,

I suffer from alopecia of the eyebrows and lost all my brows. As I am 64 years old, it is due to menopause and hormonal change. I had my eyebrows tattooed recently as it was getting quite embarrassing. Does my Health Spending Account cover this procedure?

Please advise. Thank you.
Esmerelda

At first I thought my frolicsome colleagues were having me on – but no, truth is always stranger than fiction. I sank to use of a cliché there because the unthinkable has happened. I actually don’t know what to say to Esmerelda. Words fail me. The world may be coming to an end long before its G20-engineered doom overtakes it.

I wonder what she had tattooed. Two lines of exclamation marks? A stand of pine trees? Two rows of little chickadees waiting to dive into a bird bath cunningly stencilled on her cheek? What would you choose to replace your eyebrows? Jesus Murphy. I put that down as an expression of semi-disgusted surprise – a loose equivalent to Good Grief – but I suppose it’s as good a choice as any. And a skilled tattoo artist could make the letters come out even over each eye.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot

Off I go to collect my blessing.

Dancing With the Sand

What immortal hand or eye...

Wadi Rum

Disgruntled camel; Salameh's home; Salameh and his truck; Fig tree; Nabataean graffitti; Lawrence's House; Silly sheep

************************************************

After the exchange about marriage in Canada, we drove in relative silence until we came to another Bedouin village. Nazeeh pulled into a sandy lot, causing a couple of camels to glare at us balefully as he did so. A man emerged from one of the tents and walked towards us.

“My name is Salameh,” he said with a dazzling grin. “Means ‘safety,’ so you know I take good care of you. Come, we go in my truck,” and he indicated an olive green vehicle parked nearby.

I turned to Nazeeh. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“You want me to come?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.”

Given my experiences with Bashir and the Egyptian Steward, I wasn’t taking any chances.

He didn’t bat an eye. “For this trip I give you Arabic name. Tha ee yah. Means Seven Stars.”

I was charmed and took care to jot down the phonetic syllables so I didn’t forget them but couldn’t help remembering my family’s reaction when I acquired a Chinese name. Some lovely students in the hinterlands of Hubei Province dubbed me Wen Rou, which means something like Gentle Heart. In response to my excited e-mail, my Mom said, “I couldn’t stop giggling. You sound like a character from Winnie the Pooh.”

We all piled into the ancient truck. The smell of gasoline was so strong I couldn’t breathe. My nose hairs bristled and my eyes burned. Good thing the driver’s name is Safety, I though. If someone waved a chilli pepper in our general direction, we’d go up in a towering ball of flame. I asked if I could sit in the back, saying I’d get a better view.

“But very windy,” warned Nazeeh.

“I don’t mind.”

Off we went across the trackless sand, winding around vast rock formations that rose towards the sky like the thumb and fingernail of God. The subtle gradations of colour were amazing, every imaginable tone and shade of brown, yellow and orange. I thought of the magnificent Egyptian monuments I’d seen so recently. Here God Himself had created something far more spectacular. It was as if the Egyptians had laboured in vain for millennia to recreate what already existed at Wadi Rum.

The truck swirled to a stop and Nazeeh helped me hop down over the tailgate, my brain still whirling in awe.

“The Holy Quran mentions Wadi Rum,” said Salameh. “There it’s called al Emad, the old word for mountain, and described as a place like nowhere else on earth, the place where Allah went ‘dancing with the sand.’”

Nazeeh walked over to a silver tree growing from a rock. “See what our God has done!” he said, an expression of rapture on his face. “No water, no earth, and yet this fig tree springs from the stone. It lives here just so for hundreds of years I think.”

I remained silent, not wanting to break the holy spell that had caught us in its shining wake.

A little while later we came to Lawrence’s Spring and Lawrence’s House. It isn’t really a house at all, just some foundation stones, and it wasn’t built by TE Lawrence but, scholars think, by Nabataeans, the same people who left Thanoud, or graffiti-like images of giraffes scattered throughout the area. It was, however, a favourite resting place for Lawrence of Arabia and he often camped here. I felt momentarily a part of his story, touched by the exotic magic that lingers round his name.

Meanwhile, the wind blew and flocks of silly-looking sheep trotted past.

We drove a bit further, to no particular destination. Nazeeh and I strolled about while Salameh stayed with the truck. We sat down side by side on a wide, flat rock and drank in the beauty.

Biblical phrases come to mind naturally here – “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills” – and Biblical scenes come alive. I narrowed my eyes and could almost see the Children of Israel trudging along in weary lines as they wandered in search of their Promised Land.

It was absolutely still and utterly quiet except for the mournful mutter of the wind in my ear.

“This is the most healthy life,” said Nazeeh, nodding towards the distant shepherds. “But it’s too difficult now for most people.”

We lapsed into companionable silence. The sky arched above us, a flawless blue bowl, and the awesome architecture of the wilderness – coloured in canary, pumpkin and sepia – stretched away on either side, a sacred stillness brooding over all, and contentment warming us.

“It doesn’t get better than this,” remarked Nazeeh.

No, it doesn’t.

Drink Your Coffee

Al Mansef

********************

I awoke to glorious sunshine. Cold still crimped the edges of the morning but light flooded the landscape, transforming Jordan into a hymn of radiance.

Nazeeh appeared promptly as I dawdled over my coffee and diary notes.

“Let me downstairs your suitcase,” he said. “Today we go to Wadi Rum and Aqaba.”

I smiled. “Downstairs” was Nazeeh’s all-purpose word, flexible enough to be nouned or verbed at will, for everything from the bottom of a valley to the lobby of a hotel.

As we set off into the sunshine, the inevitable question came up at last.

“Where is your husband?” asked Nazeeh.

Perhaps because it was so unexpected, intruding into the brightness like a shard of ice, tears gathered – sudden, unbidden – in my eyes and threatened to run down my face.

“He died last year in China,” I replied, brushing away the tears with my fingers.

Nazeeh was horrified. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should not have asked that question. I make you cry. Never should I ask such questions. I not forgive myself. I am very bad man.”

“No, no,” I said. “Please don’t be upset. It’s a normal question to ask.”

“But I make you cry.”

“Not any more. See? I’m fine. Just a few tears. It’s part of the grieving process. And it’s good, really. I have to get through it. I can’t go the rest of my life never talking about my husband.”

Nazeeh eventually accepted that he hadn’t blighted my day and the little contretemps led to a description of Jordanian courtship and marriage rituals.

When a young man decides he’s ready to marry, he tells his mother and oldest sister who scout around for a suitable bride. They hold discussions with neighbours and low-key meetings with families to whom they’re allied by business, previous marriages or friendship. When a decision has been reached, there’s a big formal meeting in a tent or hall, presided over by the respective sheikhs (male elders) of each family.

The lady’s womenfolk prepare coffee and the lady’s sheikh sets it before the man’s sheikh. He doesn’t touch it. He acts as if it isn’t there.

“Why do you not drink this coffee I give you?” asks the lady’s sheikh.

“Why do you give me this coffee?”

“It is to greet you and welcome you.”

Still the man’s sheikh doesn’t touch the cup.

“Why do you not drink this coffee?” the lady’s sheikh asks again.

“Because I do not yet know if I should. We are here for a reason.”

“And what is the reason?” inquires the lady’s sheikh.

“We are here to know if there is an agreement between us, if our son shall marry your daughter. You must tell me whether or not we have such an agreement.”

A dramatic silence falls over the tent as everyone waits for the lady’s sheikh to speak.

“Drink your coffee,” he announces slowly, syllables resonating. Joyful noise breaks out and jubilation reigns.

The wedding occurs a few days later – of, if the man’s house isn’t ready, a few months later. The lady’s family needs time to prepare sweets and the bridal gown, as well as “to kill sheeps and goats” to make Al Mansef, a special nuptial stew.

On the big day, the woman wears white to symbolise her purity. The man wears black because it’s the colour of the hardest rock and indicates he will be strong and true, protecting and sheltering his wife so long as they both shall live, just as a tent nestles confidently at the base of a tall cliff.

There is no ceremony, no service at the mosque. The couple simply appear before a judge who questions them – the woman about her untouched state and her domestic skills, the man about his ability to care for a wife and children. Then they go to a great feast where there is music and dancing and tables groaning under the weight of wedding delicacies.

Finally the newlyweds head off to spend their first night together. In the morning, The Ritual of Blood on White Sheets is enacted. The bride’s mother and the groom’s mother arrive to make sure there’s proof of the girl’s virginity and the man’s virility.

Nazeeh sighed. “These are the good ways. The old ways. But week by week and day by day they’re changing. I do not know why. Young people get divorced. Some of them do not even care if the wife is a virgin.”

I made sympathetic noises. Then I said a very stupid thing and came closer to being killed than at any other time during my foreign adventures. I don’t know what possessed me to say it. It just popped into my head and fell off my tongue.

“In Canada,” I remarked, as absent-mindedly as casting off junk mail, “We’ve just legalized gay marriage.”

Nazeeh’s mouth fell open. “You mean two mens? Together?”

I nodded.

The steering wheel went slack under Nazeeh’s hands and we slid to the edge of the road, perilously close to plunging over the 200-metre drop off. My heart leapt into my mouth and I wondered when I’d ever learn to shut up.

At the last possible moment, Nazeeh regained control and we slithered back onto the highway.

“Two womens, too?” he asked, voice rising to a squeak.

I nodded again.

“This is too much.” He shook his head like a dog with a bee on its nose. “Not here. In Jordan, two mans go to judge and ask to get married? The judge say, ‘No, no, no. You go straight to jail.’”

He drove in silence for another few minutes. My heart was still racing.

“This is too difficult.” Nazeeh cleared his throat. “I cannot think about it. I must put it out of my mind.”

And so he did. The sun shone down and we continued on our way to Wadi Rum.

I made a resolution on the spot and have kept it ever since. When asked about Canada, I give a standard response: Canada is extremely big and there’s lots of snow. We are a peaceful nation of vegan hunter-gatherers and we’re very kind to our sled dogs.

Jordan Explained

Bedouins learning the traditional art of mosaic-making; Nazeeh and Bedouin guide at Little Petra; Hotel staff twist towels into fanciful shapes hoping to earn a tip

*************************

“Bedouins nearly wreck Petra,” said Nazeeh as we sat over a very late lunch. “Thousands of them everywhere. And gypsies. They camp in old buildings. No room for foreign visitors. Finally government throw almost all of them out. Build a village for the ones who stay. FREE. Bedouins not pay.”

“That’s nice,” I remarked. “But I didn’t see any signs of a village when I was down there.”

“No. Village destroyed because Bedouins bring their animals inside. Sheeps and goats indoors with people. Very dirty. And gypsies just hide until government people gone. Then they come back.”

“Oh dear.” What else could I say?

“But Bedouins are learning. Slowly.” Nazeeh chewed reflectively. “And compared to Gypsies, they’re very clean. Gypsy women have no shame.”

“What do you mean?”

Nazeeh sucked his teeth and didn’t answer. “Bedouins,” he launched into an obviously memorized spiel, “live in large tribal groups. There are twenty or thirty thousand in Jordan. Unlike the Gypsies, they work.”

“What do they do?”

“They farm and herd, look after sheeps and goats. A few even go to school and one became a government minister. They are Jordanian citizens and they wander only within certain areas. Usually they are quite clean.”

“Tell me about the gypsies.”

Nazeeh made a face. “They are dirty, they steal and they don’t work.”

“I didn’t know there were Gypsies in this part of the world.”

“Oh, yes. Thousands of years ago, a Romanian king kicked them out of his country because they wouldn’t comply with decency standards.” Nazeeh looked very proud at his use of this phrase. “They are not Jordanian citizens. They have no passports and they roam around between Syria and Saudi Arabia, often travelling through Jordan. Sometimes they work in circuses.”

As I searched for a rejoinder, Nazeeh pointed his fork at me. “They use magic.”

“Really?”

“Yes. When I was a boy, even though my father said it was forbidden, I watched them make their camp. An old man untied a scarf from around his neck. Just a little scarf. He put it on the ground and suddenly I saw many things. A big loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, a bag of olives and a knife. All from the little scarf that come from his neck.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Also, they hypnotise people. I see this with my own eyes. Gypsy woman come to my grandmother’s door and ask for water. My grandmother afraid but is bad luck to refuse gypsy food or water so she bring a cup of water. Gypsy woman sip water but all the time she talk, very low, in Gypsy language and hold out her hand. My grandmother walk like in her sleep and put six gold bracelets in Gypsy’s hand.”

“Your grandmother told you this?”

“No, I was there. I, Nazeeh, see this with my own eyes. I looking through the keyhole.”

“And you didn’t run in to stop your grandmother, to wake her up?”

“No, no. I am too afraid. Gypsies are dangerous. Also they are fortune telling which Quran says is very bad.”

“Are you still afraid of them now?”

“Yes, I am very afraid.”

Back on the road again, Nazeeh said, “Now I take you to special place. You mustn’t tell my boss because he will say I charge you money. But I no charge money. Many people not even know about this place. Little Petra.”

I managed the biggest smile I could muster from my still frozen depths. “Thank you.”

We bounced through a village of Bedouin tents until Nazeeh stopped the car and said, “Wait here.” Soon he returned with a Bedouin teenager in tow and we walked across a desolation of rock and sand. Eventually the boy began to point out facades gouged from the rock. We climbed up and he showed me Roman frescoes almost blackened out of existence by the smoke from camp fires.

“Little Petra was like a hotel by the wayside,” the boy explained. “Caravans stopped here if it was getting dark and they knew they wouldn’t make it to Petra before the sun set. There’s a legend about a secret tunnel that connects it to Petra and comes out in the chapel there. I’ve looked since I was a little boy, though, and never found it.”

As I was thanking him and doling out the requisite tip, he added, “I can give this tour in seven different languages but haven’t gone to school for even one day. Not ever.”

At long last, I arrived back at my hotel, damp and chilled to the bone. I drew a gigantic bath and lay in it until my skin puckered and the rocky cold of both Petras was vanquished.

Petra

Moses' Spring; Equestrian Annie; the Kazmeh; Many Colours; Bedouin camels

*****************************************

The next morning dawned rainy and chill. When I ordered coffee, a melancholy waiter informed me, “Sorry, no more.”

My downcast face prompted him to add, “150 Koreans come and drink it all.”

I hadn’t so far seen 150 of anything in the entire kingdom of Jordan – except sheep – and felt disbelief contort my caffeine-deprived features.

“Worry not. We will find,” and the waiter scurried away to be replaced almost instantly by Nazeeh.

“Today we go to Petra,” he announced, rubbing his hands together.

We drove first to Moses’ Spring. This marks the spot where the Israelites found themselves dying for lack of water following their flight through the Sinai desert. Carrying those stones covered in the Ten Commandments was thirsty work. God told Aaron to strike a rock with his rod of office. He did so. Water gushed forth – and continues gushing to this day.

Nazeeh approved of my reverence towards history. “It looked better in the past,” he said. “About 15 years ago, the government built this roof” – he gestured upwards at the ceiling, constructed like the dome of a mosque – “and this pool” – he indicated the rather grotty and stagnant receptacle into which the water trickled. “But still special place.”

I agreed and we carried on.

“Do you know why we say ‘Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’?” Nazeeh asked suddenly, peering through the windshield at the drizzle and mist.

“No.”

“Because our kings are famous for going on the Haj. Haj, Hashemite. Travel to Mecca, you understand?”

Before I could respond, we pulled into a vast empty parking lot.

“Here you have different guide,” said Nazeeh. “I am not allowed to walk with you into Petra but I know this man. He is very good. Respectful. You ask him many questions and he tell you answer. Do not forget to give him tip. I think 10 Jordanian dollars fair. Okay?”

“Okay!”

“And here is snick.” He thrust a carton of apple juice and three Swiss rolls into my stiff fingers, then handed me over to the new guide.

The next thing I knew, the guide said, “I help you up,” and there I was seated on a horse, face on into frigid wind and stinging rain, trotting towards an apparently impenetrable rock wall rising from the gloom several hundred yards distant.

“At least I don’t have to walk,” I thought, the jacket and scarf I’d bought in Dubai providing little protection against the onslaught. “Maybe the cold will be easier to bear on horseback.”

I spotted an opening in the cliff and looked forward to getting out of the wind.

“I help you get down,” said the guide pulling me from the horse just as I started to feel comfortable. There are some things about foreign countries I’ll never figure out.

We entered the winding 1500-metre Siq, a narrow gorge that provides the only entrance to the fabled rose-red city of Petra. It winds between rock walls up to 200 metres high.

The Siq was first discovered by Edomite farmers who ventured down to carve tombs from the sandstone. Later, when the Nabataeans realised the Siq was the unique means of ingress, they founded a city, a stronghold to keep them safe from their enemies. Unfortunately, there was no water – no springs – wells were dug in vain – so the place couldn’t withstand a siege.

The guide pointed out the runnels the Romans carved into the stone on either side of the narrow defile. Once they’d figured out how to pipe water from Moses’ Spring, Petra became perfectly secure and many years went by before some nimble villains managed to block the spring and mount a successful siege.

The cold receded as we walked between the massive walls, swirling with colour and twisted into shapes that resembled fish and elephants. Beneath my feet, the stone was rutted by the wheels of Roman chariots. Carvings of camels laden with goods and surrounded by groups of people reminded me Petra was a major stop on the Silk Road, part of the King’s Highway and, in antiquity, the biggest place between Damascus and the Saudi desert.

Suddenly I heard a strange sound – the clip clop of horse’s hooves and the dull spinning of wheels. I couldn’t believe my ears. The guide said nothing as we both looked expectantly ahead. Moments later a horse-drawn, Roman-style chariot came briskly into view, driven by a man standing up to better control the reins. Horse and driver sped by us like a dream.

I experienced the weird sensation of being transported back in time and felt almost dizzy with it. A thousand years – two thousand years – could have been whisked away by the wind. I could be standing in any of the last two hundred centuries. Not a single sign of the 21st century intruded.

“Gypsy man,” said the guide and walked on.

Just when I thought we’d wander the Siq forever, we rounded a final curve and the famous Kazmeh, or Treasury, rose before me. Its name comes from the Bedouin belief that Pharaoh hid his treasure here while pursuing the Israelites from Egypt. I guess it was slowing him down.

The Treasury wasn’t as red as I’d expected but the weather was so grey and dull it leached the colour from everything. The place was swarming with Bedouins, donkeys, camels, horses and ragged children selling rocks and silver jewellery.

With a few notable exceptions, the area was more of a ruin that I’d expected, too, more like a Bedouin camp than the noble remnants of an ancient city. The guide pointed out that Petra covered 25 square miles and that the Bedouins, for a fee, let visitors ride their donkeys or camels to the more distant sites. Not having realised the place was so large, I had only a few hours in which to explore.

I marvelled at a Cave of Many Colours and a theatre, the only one in the world carved completely from stone. The Romans added arches and black walls.

By this time I was so cold I was shaking, with blue lips and chattering teeth. My body had gotten used to much hotter climes and was registering a distinct protest.

The guide noticed my distress.

“You need warm,” he said. “Maybe Bedouins help.”

With my Pashmina scarf wound around my neck and head so as to leave only a slit for my eyes, I followed him, head down, watching only his feet, my brain empty of anything but the all-encompassing cold.

“You sit here,” the guide said at last.

I shook off my scarf and did a classic double take as I gratefully sank onto an old piece of carpet placed in front of a blazing campfire. A group of men sat around it. Their dark eyes stared at me from weathered faces. Most of them remained opaque, obsidian, shuttered windows on a world I’d never know. A few lit with the sparkle of slow smiles.

Someone handed me a tin cup full of steaming tea. It was amber, a little cloudy, and a pungent scent rose with the steam.

Heaven became a seat on the ground in front of a leaping fire surrounded by Bedouins, permeated with the strong smell of camel and donkey, jingling to the sound of bells and harness.

A very large man, the leader perhaps, came and sat down next to me, giving me a sidelong glance as he lit a long thin pipe.

We sat in silence. He looked straight ahead and I sipped my tea, which turned out to be delicious and deliciously warming. Then the man reached into his robes and pulled out a handful of coins.

“Very old,” he said, holding out his palm covered in what, indeed, looked like very old coins, gold and silver, glinting in the light from the fire and ragged at the edges, imperfectly stamped circles.
“Roman, Greek, Nabataean,” he went on, moving them around so I could admire the imprinted Caesars and other kingly heads. “I find in – you say fast flood?”

“Flash flood,” I supplied, ever the conscientious language instructor.

“Yes. Flash flood. Very valuable. For you, only 200 American dollars. Worth much more. Usually I sell for one thousand American dollars, but no visitors now. Only you. So I make special price.”

I nearly laughed out loud. To begin with, I had no American dollars and certainly not 200 of them. Even if I did – and wanted coins – I had a vague idea that most countries had laws banning the export of antiquities. And the thought did cross my mind that these might be clever reproductions.

“Sorry,” I said. “I am a Canadian and a teacher. I have very little money. And I don’t collect coins.”

The man grinned, revealing a mouthful of black and broken teeth. “That’s okay. You buy my coins and when you go home you sell for many thousand dollars. You help me, I help you.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

He smoked for a while. No one spoke and the wind whistled through the rocks.

“One hundred American dollars,” the man said finally. “Bad for me but very good for you.”

“No, I’m sorry.” I replied, starting to feel uncomfortable. My guide stood in the background, ignoring me.

A few more minutes passed. The Bedouin man sighed and cleared his throat with a coarse liquid bubbling of phlegm.

“Twenty-five dollars,” he said. “Best offer. I get almost nothing and you go home, become rich in your country.”

Inspiration filled me, a result of the blessed warmth. I gave him a huge smile. “But this is terrible,” I said. “Look at these coins.” I brushed my fingers over them where they still lay in his outstretched palm. “So beautiful. So old. You must not sell them for $25 – that would be a crime. You wait for a few days. Soon a rich American will come. He will pay $200 – maybe even $500 – and be happy. You, too, will be happy. And the American will love the coins, which is good because these coins were made to be loved. You do not want to sell them for a song to a silly Canadian woman who does not understand their importance.”

The old man grinned and returned the coins to the depths of his robe. I looked up and saw that his companions were also grinning, as was my guide.

“Bring this woman more tea,” the man ordered. And it was brought.

A little later, the guide delivered me back to the parking lot where Nazeeh was anxiously pacing in the drizzle.

You okay?” he demanded. “You gone very long.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just cold. The guide helped me get some tea from the Bedouins.”

Nazeeh looked as appalled as if I’d told him I engaged in exotic dance, semi-clothed, and then sold myself to the lowest Bedouin bidder.

“Get in car,” he said, scowling at the guide. “We go to lunch now. And I explain you Jordan.”

We squealed away, tires spitting gravel at the forlorn guide left standing in the rain.