Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum

This was an incredibly fun and adventure-packed weekend so I might have to break it up into three parts—one for each day: Wadi Rum, Aqaba, and Independence Day.

Let me begin this by saying that I have never lived before this weekend. When you step into Wadi Rum you breathe air that is sweet, dry, and full of movement. Everything is both still and ceaselessly moving. The sky is so vast and the desert endlessly stretching before you. There are certain things which neither pictures nor words will ever be able to convey to you.

Our trip started, as most trips here do, late. Arab time runs at least half an hour to an hour late.  By the time we finally got started on our 5 hour drive we were already antsy. Ten minutes into the drive, not even outside of Amman, the driver stopped for a smoke break. This is life here. There were several children on the bus, and the Arabs in the back of the bus clapped and danced in the aisles to the dubka music the driver blasted through the speakers. For. Hours.

Along the way we were stopped four times at check points. There is nothing quite so terrifying as looking out your window into a tank with four stern soldiers astride it. Every time the bus would stop the dancing, clapping, music, and merrymaking ceased and everyone made a mad dash for passports, drivers licenses and student IDs. I don’t know that I’ve ever dealt with on-duty military or military protocol, and I can’t say I want to repeat the experience. A soldier would come on board, gather the passports of the men, and sometimes order them off of the bus. When one of our friends was told to get off the bus I had to remind myself through the oppressive fear that calling the soldier a fascist would be neither intelligent nor productive. Luckily, our friend returned after a while, safe and sound. But that is something different here: military presence is very common and threatening. They are on the side of the road, sometimes lurking on Rainbow Street, sometimes outside of the school, discreetly observing the students going about their mornings. Even when driving with some locals we were pulled over and asked for ID. Our shaken driver would only relay to us that we had been let go only because the officer knew his father.

But we did finally get to Wadi Rum after the maze of checkpoints. There are colors there that cameras cannot capture. Everything is smooth and speaks of eternity as though the hills have retained everything they have ever witnessed, and as though that were the entirety of history. There is not a sunset or sunrise more beautiful. There isn’t sand softer. The mountains are easier to climb than stairs, though the same could not be said of the sand dunes. Talk about work out. Those things are painful to climb.

Being there felt like being in a movie about learning how to love the world or like being in an Edward Sharpe song. In the middle of the camp site was a giant ring strung up with lights where dancing went on for hours, late into the night. When the men spun you around and around it felt like those slow motion moments in movies when two people who love each other stare at one another while the world spins around them as they dance. And you are in love. With every ounce of your life, the world, and everyone around you. We dubka’d and twirled and tangoed and chacha’d to our hearts content, then climbed the mountain and slept under the stars in the chill wind and wondered how we’d ever thought we’d known joy before this. Poetry is an important part of Bedouin culture, and staring at the stars bright and clear in the sky above me, I understood why. There were flies everywhere, I was laying on unforgiving, hard rock, I was cold, I was lying 5 feet away from a 100 foot drop, and the bathroom was a dark rock, but I’d never thought the world more perfect or life more simple and beautiful. How could you not be a poet? The stars were in reaching distance and it felt as though you could fly if you just decided to run and leap from the cliffs.

At 5 we woke up (if you ever really wake up from such sleep) and hiked up a nearby dune to watch the sunrise. It was still cold and the world was pink in the pre-dawn. Camels waded through the silky cool sand and we trudged behind, refreshed though we’d not slept two hours the whole night. When the sun rose from behind distant hills it was something like watching the birth of the world, I imagine. The sudden streaks of light that reached toward us from across that vastness seemed to kiss us with stirring life and warmth. The world was a song and it sounded like the rustle of grass and waves and rainstorms and sunlight. Part of me will sit on that mountain forever.

Can a place be both starlight and sunlight? Can it be the essence of night and then the definition of day? Can you stand to sit in your homes? Can you hear it calling your name?