23rd March
Wadi Musa, Jordan.
My day began early, passing through the Bethlehem checkpoint by 6am, in time to meet my taxi. As I waited at the Central Bus Station in West Jerusalem, I was reminded of my days living in Brixton. Early-birds witnessing the late finishes of night-owls - many teenage and twenty-somethings were returning from what appeared to have been a rather big night out. So close to the West Bank, the western culture of Israel could be a world away.
The coach journey from Jerusalem south to Eilat was uneventful, and stepping out from the air-conditioned vehicle and into the hot Red Sea air was a reminder of how lucky I am to live up in the hills - this is still just late March, and at the mid-thirties the temperature is quite hot enough, by summer it will be in the mid-forties.
After freshening up in the bathrooms of Eilat airport, which unusually is located in the centre of the town, I took a taxi and asked for the border. Which one? came the reply. I had forgotten that in addition to being just 8 kilometres from the Jordanian boder, Eilat lays just 11 or so north of Egypt.
The Jordanian border crossing point was deserted, except for a few bored staff members and a couple of waiting cargo lorries. After paying the £10 exit fee from Israel, I walked over the border to Jordan where the entry guards began chatting with me, incorrectly guessing my occupation and nationality (student and Israeli respectively) before letting me in. Looking ahead two days, I thought this would probably be in contrast to my (hopeful) re-entry into Israel– the Welcome to Israel sign I was walking away from didn’t convince me of the welcome I might receive on my return trip.
A short taxi journey took me into the centre of Aqaba, during which I humored the taxi driver’s advice that there were no buses to Wadi Musa and that his price was unbeatable – advice I have grown tired of hearing, lately – and waited by the stand for the buses to Wadi Musa. I got chatting to a local man from Wadi Musa, Ahmed, who was also waiting and after a couple of others turned up, we decided to share a taxi rather than take the bus.
Aqaba is a port town, and it seems to exist in some sort of tax-free zone separate from the rest of Jordan. After a few minutes drive out of Aqaba, Ahmed passed round large multi-box packs of cigarettes to the other two locals (he spared me), and as we approached the customs terminal I realised why. To pass north into the rest of Jordan, we had to be checked, and Ahmed lost the few boxes of cigarettes he still had over the limit, before reclaiming his ‘gifts’ from the other two once we were back on the road. It wasn’t a bad spot to be stopped for a while though, the scenery rather outshining the typically clinical appearanceof the terminal.
Once we arrived at Wadi Musa, I met with my contact there, Ghassab, who was busy guiding a group of tourists around Petra, so he sent me in a taxi to his family’s house in a nearby Bedouin village where I was customarily supplied with as much sweet mint tea as I could drink. The house was a simple series of brick rooms, built around a central yard.
The Bedouin hospitality towards their totally unknown guest continued with a perfectly seasoned barbequed chicken dinner which was followed, of course, by tea. Afterwards, I went to a nearby pool club with the 14 year old twin cousins of Ghassab, whose whereabouts seemed increasingly uncertain. It turned out that he had gone back to Aqaba with his tourist group, and hadn’t been able to return that night, so it wasn’t to be until the following evening that I would meet him properly.
Playing pool, getting used to their slightly different rules, drinking coffee ‘on the house’ and chatting with the men in this most local of places was a wonderful introduction to the real life of the people whom many tourists will have met as guides or horsemen when they visit Petra. The next day, as I walked around this New Wonder of the World, several saw me again, calling out as they rode past, promising me rematches and in typical Arab fashion, meetings with their families.
