Petra, Aqaba and the Dead Sea

Right now I'm writing from the terrace at the well known Books@Cafe in Amman, where some jazzy tunes accompany the beautiful view onto one of Amman's hills. It is nearly mid-June and the days are now becoming quite hot, people stay up late and every morning I wake up to a sunny day. I want to use this rather relaxed Saturday to portray my recent escapades around the country.

There is one thing, a visitor of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan cannot miss out on. Petra. In fact, from the moment I knew I was coming to live here, people started telling me “You have to go to Petra!“ It's the biggest thing in the country and the developments of the historical site, financed to a large extend by USAID, have created a real hype. OF COURSE I was going to go there. After the 20^th “Are you going to visit Petra“ I nearly wanted to shoot myself. I mean, would you ask someone who is planning on living in France, whether he or she will see the Eiffel Tower? Or would you ask: “Are you going to eat Tapas in Spain?”. Anyway, when I got here, the question became: “Have you been to Petra?“. After all this pressure, I am so glad that I can say: “I have been to Petra“ and I can also expose the banalities that every visitor is able to produce, qualifying the site of beautiful, mind-blowing, huge, hot, amazing... Indeed it is an incredible place, but allow me just to say how fed up I am with hearing people talk about it. This is why I am just going to do a few remarks on the place, and for more information, well GO THERE!

  Petra

A Frenchman we met there described Petra to be beyond everything: beyond time, beyond civilisation, beyond imagination... Indeed. It's difficult to believe that this used to be a flourishing city, while you are roasting on the way up to the superb views in the mountains. It is truly amazing and in my opinion, it's worth going for three days and just enjoy hiking around the place, because during the weekend we spent there, we were only able to see the main parts of it. Also, I might be interested in history, but I have a threshold when it comes to the intake of information. Thus, the thing I enjoyed most was being outside, with magnificent weather... 30° degrees sunshine (a bit cooler would have been even better). Hiking in such a beautiful place is incredible and my favourite spot of it all is what they call “The view of the end of the world“: beyond the Monastery, there is a spot in the mountains where you see the beginning of the desert and it just appears that if you continue walking, beyond the horizon you will fall of the earth. It is just magnificent.

A week later, I had the opportunity to see a bit more of south Jordan, especially the major coast city of the country: Aqaba. Although it is a beach resort, society there remains quite conservative because of its close ties with Saudi Arabia, only a dozen miles away. At the Red Sea, there is not much to do but lie at the beach, go snorkelling, scuba diving and enjoy other leisure activities. On top of that, the city is in a 'Special Economic Zone' so that especially alcohol and cigarettes are particularly cheap, which is quite an incentive to a lot of people every year!

Sunset on the Dead Sea

Jordan is also a great place for beautiful panoramas, especially the breathtaking canyons leading to the Dead Sea, which are called Wadis. However, getting around can become a pain when you miss a road and the lack of signs does not help in that matter! It can easily mean a 60km detour but for us it was an opportunity to accidentally drive past incredible views, that you don't find in any guide. Then in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, there is Mount Nebo where Moses is said to have seen the Promised Land before dying without ever reaching it. The view is beautiful there and at night you can see the lights of Amman in the East and the lights of Jerusalem in the West. On our bible-themed day, we also visited the Baptism Site, where John the Baptist is said to have baptised Jesus. The most impressive aspect of the site, in my opinion, is that the size of the Jordan river has been quite reduced, mostly because of Israeli irrigation policies upstream. This means that at the Baptism site, you are only standing ten feet away from Palestine. You can see some of the churches of Jericho! The distance in physical terms is ludicrous compared to the distance in constructive terms. However, the essential problem with the decreasing flow of the Jordan River is that the Dead Sea is slowly... well, dying. At the shore you can clearly see from the salt residues, where the water level used to be. A project of building a canal connecting the Red and the Dead Sea exists and it would reverse the shrinking of the latter. However, it also bears the name of Peace Canal, because regional cooperation is essential in its construction, but in the current climate, the project seems far from being realisable.

On a much lighter note, the Dead Sea is a perfect escape on weekends. From Amman, it takes about an hour to go to the lowest point on earth and then you can spend a day at the pool in the various hotels or beach complexes for about 20-40 JOD (20-40€) and spending a day in a bikini is a great bubble of oxygen!  

Kate and me at the pool bar...

Al-Urduniyya

I'm sitting in a taxi, driving from first circle to Yasmeen, where I live. It is dark already and the warm breeze feels good on my skin. Amman is my new home: Somehow, I have woken up one morning considering all these strange new things as normalcy... the chaotic traffic, the car honking, the staring men, directing the taxi driver yameen (right) and shmal (left) to this or that duwwar (roundabout), hearing the Muezzin at 5am, hearing the usual „Kefek?“ „Shu Akhbarek“ „Kulshi Tammam“ etc. There also is the distinct (horrible) music the gas vending car makes or the amazing food... I have grown very fond of labane ( a form of thick white cheese) and za3ter (a thyme mix) and my everlasting love for cheese finds satisfaction in Halloum!

However, for a country where you hear “No problem, no problem” (with the accent it sounds more like 'no broblem, no broblem') all day long, things are really complicated. You can't really use public transport, because they not only give the directions only in Arabic ( and although I can read the script, I am still very slow, especially when it comes to reading a sign on a driving bus...) there are no clear bus stops (I'm not even talking about a map!): a random queue of people on the side of the road is generally a good sign indicating that a bus will stop here. At the beginning, I struggled a lot with this, because for me, all this was totally irrational, as many things here. Organisation works differently, even when it just concerns a few people and their plan to meet up. You spend more time discussing how you will organise than it takes for all of you to gather in one place. But to my greatest astonishment, things do work out in the end. All this made me acquire a great deal of patience!  أصبر الجميل  (Patience is beautiful)!

When coming here, I wasn't very sure what it meant to be a woman, living by herself in Jordan. At first I struggled to see the limits of security and the limits of appropriate behaviour. I started being overly careful, and I am sometimes still not sure if I am exaggerating with my apprehension. I can walk along the streets at night in Jebal Amman without thinking of any danger, but then a random cat that comes out of a dark corner scares the hell out of you and you feel confronted with your own vulnerability, not really knowing what to do with it. People from home always ask me what I wear and whether I wear a headscarf. Although a vast majority of girls do wear hijaabs and some women with niqaabs wander the streets of Amman, I don't feel weird by exposing my hair. However, I dress modestly, which means that I try to cover my legs down to half-calf at least and my arms below the elbow. Especially when you are going around by yourself using taxis, precaution is better. When I go out with a friend who has a car, I can allow myself to wear something shorter, although I have lost the appeal to it, I must say. Long clothes make you feel protected and comfortable.

I still feel like I have a lot to learn about the culture here and I often have these awkward moments. Such as yesterday, when my friend told me to dry my hair as wet hair was a sign of preceding adult activity...

Sunrise in Wadi Rum

I haven't talked about the country's beauty yet and it is something one must talk about! The several places I have seen here have made me hold my breath. The Dead Sea offers a beautiful and calm panorama, with amazing colours at sunset! The stones in the water shine in tones of red and orange as if they were from a different planet. Of course, every visitor has to get the floating experience but I did resist the picture with the newspaper in my hands. The taste of the water is awful though. I had imagined it to be just very salty but even very very very salty doesn't get near the taste experience that water represents. It is that salty that it gets bitter! Nothing you would want to cook your spaghetti in!

When we to drove south via Wadi Musa towards Aqaba, we passed by the most impressive panorama. We didn't have the time to stop at Petra, but I will go there eventually! Instead, we went to Wadi Rum, to spend a night in the desert alongside the (local?) Bedouins. It was also an opportunity to drive a 4x4 in the desert, to see the sunset illuminate the red landscape, to eat some traditional Bedouin food, to hear their songs, to collect wood, to make fire and to freeze during the night! The silence in the desert is truly impressive and the chant of the birds in the morning was beautiful. Somehow we decided that we wanted to do a camel tour and although it was one of the shortest of the ones they proposed, the pain I subsequently felt in my lower body has accompanied me back to Amman and has stayed with me for a few days!

Coming back to Amman was really a step back into civilisation after the desert! For me, it felt like coming home...

Amman