Sands of Time

Every Jordanian will tell you that the Bedouin are the foundation of the nation and that the desert is the nation’s soul. At the same time, the influence of the successive civilizations that occupied Transjordan continues to exist as a sort of palimpsest upon the
land—a land that has been whitewashed and overwritten time and time again, each “overwriting” leaving a discernible trace on the final image.

The rolling gait of the camel combines with the heat to hypnotize me into a stupor. I wrap the kouffieh tighter about my head and pull one side down to cover my face. I wear the red and white checked summer tablecloth pattern, the Bedouin head wrap that I saw most often in Jordan. It proves to be an indispensable tool against the cruel desert sun and the blowing sand and dust of the springtime khamseen (“fifty days wind”).

As we ride in silence I’m struck by the realization that the desert is characterized by an absence of smell. I brush against a tiny sage plant and its potent scent casts the world into sudden color, reawakening my olfactory antennae and startling me with its vividness. I’d been so attuned to the background that I’d forgotten we were traveling through a monochrome world.

In a similar sense I will discover that my photos of the trip look faked. The whites and greens of my clothing contrast so dramatically with the earth-tone world through which we move that I seem cut and pasted from another image entirely.

It isn’t that the desert lacks colour or variety. The rocks are veined with streaks of clay and ebony. They’re swathed in soft pinks, corals, scarlets and oranges—colours that the sun bleaches to a washed-out red and white at noon and that the waning of the day fills with shadows and contrasts. There’s ample variety to delight the eye. It’s just that the manufactured, vibrant hues of the outside world don’t belong there. Neither, truly, do we.

Midway through the first day’s ride we pay a visit to the camp of Raad’s family. A distant flock of goats is tearing at clumps of green and half a dozen camels stand hobbled beside two faded 1960’s Toyota Landcruisers. A new birth graced the herd five hours before our arrival. The calf struggles on shaky ninepin legs, bleating and stumbling its way into the world as it trips over rusting auto parts and tries to stay close to its mother.

Our party of three is welcomed into the men’s side of the tent by Raad’s father, uncle and younger brother. We remove our shoes and sit cross-legged on the woven plastic mat that forms a floor space on hard packed sand.

Bedouin tents (beit ash-sha’ar, or “house of hair”) are large open-sided structures of woven goat’s wool, propped up by sticks and securely roped. The gap beneath the sidewalls can be regulated to control ventilation or to block out wind-whipped sand. They’re also easy to collapse and pack when the pasturage has been exhausted and it’s time to move on.

“You want whiskey Bedouin?” Raad asks with a smile as he pours tiny glassfuls of hot, sweet tea. The protocols of desert hospitality are predictable and comforting. We’re made to feel instantly at ease.

After exchanging formalized greetings the men discuss the new birth and also a change in mounts. We had ridden out on two female camels, but Jason’s enormous bag of photographic gear has necessitated a switch to a stronger racing camel called Sainan. I’m given a sturdy male breeding camel called Azaran. I like to think that he’s needed to carry my notebook, which is compact in size but dense with potential.

I sip my tea and try to ignore the giggles of the younger girls as they peer at us over the cloth partition from the women’s side of the tent. The men are pointedly ignoring them; I sense that etiquette demands we do the same.

“Raad, how many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“There are 12 in my family. Six boys and six girls.”

“Your father’s been busy,” Jason says. “Perhaps he needs a second wife.” This is greeted by sly grins all around, and a nod of approval from the old man. “Are such large families common?”

“Yes, most Bedouin families are large. But these days young people are waiting two or three years after marriage to have children and they’re having one or two only, maybe three.”

“Does your entire family stay here in the tent?”

“Right now my mother is in the village. We keep a house there. Most Bedouin in Wadi Rum do the same. I like it alright, but the village is crowded and noisy. When I can’t sleep, when the noise bothers me too much, I drive out into the desert and unroll my blanket on the sand. There I can always sleep.”

“The desert is the true home of the Bedouin,” his uncle cuts in. “Our roots are here, our life and our spirit.”

Many travelers are surprised and sometimes disillusioned to discover that modern Bedouin life involves jeeps, tourists and a house in the village with modern conveniences like running water, television and internet. They lament it as a loss of tradition, but in fact it’s a continuity.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.