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.