Everyday Treasures

When I pictured “spending a day amongst the Bedouin” in the ancient city of Petra, hanging out with the Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t what I had in mind.  But from the moment we entered the Siq - the narrow passageway that winds its way for just over a kilometre before opening into the ancient city - we were surrounded by Jack Sparrow lookalikes.  Black kohl smeared under their eyes and wild curly hair tamed under a bandana or a traditional keffiyeh made it easy to picture them listing crazily at the bow of a great ship.  

Many of the local Bedouins make their living as tour guides and “chauffeurs” for the tourists who come to explore the red rose city where most of them grew up.  Our first encounter with these colourful characters came as they careened their way through the gorge with the thunder of horse-hooves echoing against the high rock walls, dragging tourists clinging desperately to carriage rails in their wake.  Having successfully avoided a crushing death-by-pirate-mobile (and dodged the abundance of selfie-pods and Korean tour guides wielding large flags) we were rewarded with a golden view of al-Kazneh (The Treasury) as we rounded the last bend in the Siq’s striped stone walls.  

The area, surrounded by high rock on all sides, was crowded with other tourists taking photos, carpet-backed camels who seemed happy to pose for said photos, and tanned Bedouin children shouting, “Happy hour!  Ten postcards, one dinar!”   As we took turns posing for the obligatory “I was here” shots in front of the grand stone edifice, a guy in camouflage pants, a navy blue Ralph Lauren Polo sweatshirt and a white bandana approached us, leading a grey donkey by a rope.  

“You want I take photo of you together?”

We smiled and he clicked, and then he informed us (nonchalantly, in a practiced non-pressuring voice) that he’d be happy to give us a ride up the 800 plus steps to the Monastery if we wanted.   

“Much easier for donkey than for you,” he smiled, gold caps shining in the sun.  “If you can’t find me, ask anyone for Feraz.  They find me.”

As it turned out, Feraz was rarely out of our sight.  Or, rather, we were rarely out of his.  As we strolled the Street of Facades, poked our heads into royal Nabataen tombs and took in the grandeur of the Roman amphitheatre, we never went more than five minutes without him appearing on his donkey, nodding as he trotted by.  No one was going to steal his customers, that was for sure!  Occasionally, other men and their camels would sidle up to us, the animal’s smile revealing a checkered dental past, the owner calling out, “Taxi, Madam?  Air-conditioned!”  We decided that, rather than spending our time shopping around, we’d stick with the devil we knew.  When we were ready to make the trek up to the Monastery, Feraz got us saddled up on a horse and a donkey and off we went.

“The donkey knows the way,” he called out as my mount trotted on ahead of where he was walking my roommate’s horse.  “Don’t worry!”

And as if to reinforce the message, the dreadlocked owner of the donkey whose bottom I followed along the millenium-worn colonnaded Roman road turned on his transistor radio and bopped in time with Bob Marley.  “Don’t worry about a thing,”  he belted out, accompanied by the clip-clop of hooves.  “Every little thing gonna be alright.....”

A few minutes later, when we’d settled into the sway and swagger of our beasts of burden, Feraz pointed to a hillside sloping up away from the Roman temple we were passing.   

“See that cave, there?  I was born there.”  We had read that many of the Bedouin currently running the tourist show had lived inside of Petra until the government built them a “new village” nearby, so I was inclined to believe him. 

“How long have you been working here?” my roommate asked.  

“I start when I am seven,” he answered.  “Like these kids.”  He nodded at a pair of boys racing their donkeys up ahead, eliciting a flurry of shutter-clicks as they paraded in front of a group of Asian tourists.  “I learn from the older boys.  And now I teach these boys.

I was grateful for my little grey donkey as we made the steep climb up the narrow path.  He indeed knew the way, and moved with surefooted familiarity up the steps carved out of the mountainside.  (Other donkeys, apparently, weren’t so trusty.  For example, the one sporting the Aussie who flew by us yelling, “Look out!  Out of control donkey!!”)  My roommate’s horse, a natural tour guide, it would seem, was intent on giving her an up close and personal view of the grain of the stone in the rock wall, often at the expense of her right leg.  Feraz, himself on foot, appeared to be no less winded than his animals, though his dark sweatshirt didn’t seem to be doing much to prevent the beads of perspiration collecting on his forehead.

“It’s okay,” he said when we reached the top, patting his horse with a metallic smile.  “I take taxi down.”

I don’t know if the donkey would agree, but I thought the Monastery was well worth the trek.  Not only did the monks back in the day do a spectacular job of finding an “ends of the earth” sort of a place where they could worship in peace with an incredible view, but they (or whomever they hired) carved a real masterpiece out of that rock face.  I was in awe of how they managed to produce perfectly round, evenly spaced pillars without the use of modern tools, especially when, like the Treasury, the components were not so much “assembled” as “called out from the stone.”  Amazing.

We scrambled up yet another hillside (Where was that donkey when I needed him?) to admire the Monastery from a higher vantage point and I laughed when I saw that the lookout was populated by Inukshuks.  Either the monks were the ancient ancestors of the Inuit or some other Canadians had left their “I was here” marks in recent days.  I couldn’t resist grabbing a few stones and adding a little one of my own to the collection.

Turning our backs to the Monastery, we took in the  "well-advertised view" of the vast expanse of barren desert and windswept rock that is the Wadi Araba.  It’s no wonder the children of Israel needed a cloud and a pillar of fire to guide them - I’d be completely lost if I were set loose in the wide open emptiness and told to find my way home!

After fortifying ourselves with dried fruit and cookies from my backpack and Coke and Mr. Brown’s Iced Cappuccino from the mountaintop refreshment stand, we picked our way back down the steep trail, this time sans donkey.  I wanted to spend a bit more time exploring the Kings Tombs, but my roommate was done with climbing for the day, so I deposited her at a little cafe to people watch and then made my way up the trail to the western facing facades of the Urn, Palace and Corinthian Tombs.  Lonely Planet had informed us that the late afternoon sun would turn these grand edifices a blazing shade of pink.  Low cloud cover dulled the effect somewhat, but I was still dazzled enough to understand why the Nabataen kings would want to spend eternity on this particular hillside.

The crowds had thinned out considerably by this point in the day - at least to where not every photo was splattered with sun visors and unsightly fanny packs.  Several of the souvenir stands were sitting unmanned while clusters of Bedouin locals took tea breaks in the shade.  I spotted a couple of donkeys taking a break from Monastery Duty in the coolness of a cave.  As I approached the multistory Urn Tomb, three little girls clambered around on the ancient equivalent of a great stone jungle gym, either too distracted to offer to show me their uncle’s trinket stall or too young to know they ought to.  

In the distance, a long walk in the sun away from where I stood, I could make out what I thought, judging by my map, might be the Crusader Fortress.  Just above it, on a high ridge, sat a cluster of half-finished cement houses.  I wondered if that was where the “new village” for the Bedouin had been built - the one that replaced their caves with doorbells and indoor plumbing.  Were they grateful that the place where they lay their heads at night was free of ticket stubs and clicking cameras and Europeans trying to figure out how to tie their new checkered keffiyehs?  Or did they stare at those four concrete walls and long for their red rock home?

As I headed back down the hill, ready to call it a day and make the trek back up through the Siq towards dinner and a comfy bed, I turned around to admire the warming of the colours on the rock one more time.  Motion beside what otherwise looked like an abandoned souvenir stall caught my eye.  I squinted and recognized the camouflage pants kneeling, then rising, then kneeling again, the white bandana being pressed to the ground.  It was Feraz, tucked back in the shadow of a flapping tarp, doing his namaz.

I felt like I was intruding on a private moment, and yet I couldn’t help but watch.  Here was a man who spends his days charming weary hikers and shuttling them around in his “four-legged taxi” for a fee, and yet even his few solitary minutes with his Maker weren’t completely free from the eyes of a curious tourist like myself.  I watched as he stood a final time, cupped his hands and then brought them up to his face, sliding them slowly down his cheeks to receive the blessing of Allah.  He rolled up his prayer rug and tucked it under the trinket table beside him.  And then, straightening his bandana, he untied his grey donkey and made his way back down the hill to find his next fare.

I know where all the furniture is going to go.  I know I’ll be having new light fixtures installed (if for no other reason than that the current bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling make my roommate feel as if she’s walking into a KGB interrogation room....)   But as for the walls and what I choose to display on my bookshelves, I’m wide open.  Knowing me, it’ll probably take me ages to get it just the way I like it.  Or even to hang the first picture.  As an adult in my (almost) mid-thirties, the space between this floor and ceiling is the only thing in the world that’s really mine.  And that makes it feel really significant.  I want my room to express who I am and who I’m becoming.  A little more grown up (but not TOO much!), a little more homey, still colourful and creative.  I want it to be a place that inspires and encourages me when I’m working, is an inviting haven when I’m resting, and brings life to my heart during both.  

Indiana Jones was speechless when he first laid eyes upon it in The Last Crusade.  The characters in the Agatha Christie novel “Appointment with Death” (which I’d brought on the trip for “ambience reading”) found it to be a perfect backdrop for murder.  My own first glimpse of Petra’s Treasury was no less full of awe.

For the next half hour, various solo musicians treated us to an assortment of Bedouin tunes.  From their places in different corners of the stone gallery, the lively voice of a flute, then a stringed instrument, then another flute rang out in the darkness.  With each performer, lights positioned a little ways up the back cliff wall caused the Treasury to brighten, sharpening its shadows and defining its details.  The scene before me was mesmerizing, but when I leaned back on my elbows and looked up, that was when the show really took off for me.

That sky.  Stars - millions of them on display in a visual concert of their own.  Barely aware of the narrator’s comments, I drank in the beauty on the canvas overhead, and when I joined in the audience’s applause, it was more for the Artist than anyone else.  

When the music had finished, men brought around trays of hot tea (that Trip Advisor commenter must have hit them on an off night) and we sipped ourselves warm in the chilly night air.  Picking our way back through the candle-lined passageway, I watched the light dance on the soaring rock walls overhead, catching mysterious glimpses of a grave carved out here, a statue in a niche there.  As the path broadened at the mouth of the Siq and we made the climb up the last hill, the candles on the path ahead seemed to merge seamlessly with the twinkling lights in the night sky.  

And it's hard to say which shone brighter.