On Petra

In the 1980s, the Jordanian government turned Petra into an official tourist destination. The Bedouins who previously occupied Petra's caves were made to leave, despite their continuation of the cavernous living that the Nabateans began here. In 2008, ten Bedouin families remain in Petra. All of them offer some tourist service--they run cafes, sell jewelry and other goods, and offer "taxi rides" on donkeys, camels and horses. Bedouin children run up to passing Germans and Swedes and in perfect English offer compliments and necklaces for 2JD. These people, like gypsies and pirates, have traditionally been nomadic. The requirement that those Bedouins living in Petra contribute to the tourism industry somehow means that goat-herding has become a secondary priority, and learning English, European languages, and Japanese essential to survival.

What would Petra be today if it had not been so heavily tourified? Would its inhabitants be migrants, traveling between here and the desert, speaking languages that only fellow Bedouins and Jordanians can understand and pursuing trades that their ancestors have pursued for centuries? Would Petra be deserted, lost, empty?

This ancient metropolis is stunning. It reminds me of a time I have never known--when cities were self-contained and self-sustaining--when a city's residents were a people, with a shared ambition or culture or believed purpose.

Yesterday we climbed to the High Place of Sacrifice and the Monastery. From both, the rolling hills, cascading mountains and sandy deserts of Jordan unfold before naive, non-native eyes as untouched, unexplored, full of potential. To a student or historian, this unfolding serves as a physical manifestation of centuries of historical events, discoveries, destinies, battles. These soft, soundless lands muffle violent conflicts and trying passages that, though bereft of any remaining witnesses, are so deeply embedded in the collective memory that our modern decisions, both large and small, are determined by them. It is on these lands that Christianity was built--it is here that Islam flourished--it is just across that sea in the distance where Jews are creating new dynamics with their fellow Peoples of the Books.

Yet thousands of years ago, a Nabatean priest was performing a sacred ritual at this very spot; a Nabatean family was mourning the loss of a loved one; a young boy was collecting sticks for a fire. The basic processes and priorities of life remain the same--though the spaces have changed (what used to be the high altar, perhaps the holiest of places in Petra, is now a stomping ground for scarcely dressed foreigners with Nikon cameras and sun hats), the way that we as people interact and grow has perpetually defined our existence.

Can We Make Such Comparisons?

I have been thinking a lot about the parallels between India and Jordan. Both are full of ungraspably ancient sites that serve as living reminders of some of the earliest human memories. Both have witnessed an onslaught of increased tourism in the last 25 years and have reaped the benefits and suffered the consequences of this constant global migration. Driving along the King's Highway today, I could have changed the shop names, slightly altered the women's clothing, and been in India all the same. Scattered towns with either immensely scattered or densely packed storefronts, many peddling the same goods, dot the drive south along the King's Highway. Between them, Bedouins herd goats and set tents on lifeless desert terrain, resembling Indian farmers who cross lonesome roads with their flocks.

Yet for all the similarities, some crucial differences are striking. Jordan seems to live life much more privately. Though traditional gender roles saturate both societies, Jordanians do not seem to conduct as many of their affairs in public as the Indians (or even the Dominicans). With a significantly smaller presence of beggars and a tendency towards patience, Jordan has surprised me by the lack of attention its residents pay to me, and the friendliness I encounter when they do engage me. Coupled with a minimization of private business in public spaces, this quiet co-existence makes Jordan seem less primitive, cleaner, more advanced than what I saw of India.

In Petra, things are different. In the mid-1980s, the primarily Bedouin town and its neighboring Wadi Musa were transformed into tourist enclaves, with buses of Russians and Germans unloading at new 4-star hotels. The local culture has responded with disdain and curiosity, it seems--both welcoming of its visitors, as Jordanians always are, and concerned about the future and status of this formerly peaceful area. Only here have I been called out to by streetwalkers and store salesmen, while in Amman and Madaba, I walked by unnoticed. There's a tension in the air that suggests an unfamiliarity with how to manage the transition from an ancient base for nomads to a static preservation of the past on view to the world. I fear that we're contributing to a stifling of the energy here, the stopping of this town's movement through time, its progression along an ever-unfolding tale.

On our way to this strange, haunted Wadi Musa, we traveled along the King's Highway to see spectacular countryside, Wadi Mujib (what many compare to the Grand Canyon), and the Crusader castle in Karak, the site of many of the Crusade's holy wars. Will the United States ever have such history? In the castle we peered through slit holes for archers onto endless rolling hills, spotted with houses of people whose families came from all across the region to that spot. Unlike Petra, Karak remains a living, breathing city--did it get the right balance of preservation and continued transformation?

On the Dead Sea, Identity, and Carpets

At Mount Nebo, tourists peer through the haze over the rolling hills toward Israel. They strain their eyes, close them, squint--they try to see what Moses saw, what Jesus proclaimed--they remember this as the Holy Land. At this site, Moses was buried. From here you can see across the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, Jerusalem and the glaring deserts of Jordan. We begin our morning here, reflecting on this historic site, this place that shaped most of modern Judeo-Islamo-Christian civilization. Then, we descend through the hills, past Bedouins and camels, to the border that didn't exist for Moses. After 2 checkpoints, we arrive at the Amman Beach on the Dead Sea. Israel lies just a few miles across the water, and guards keep watch for any signs of illegal crossing.

The Dead Sea region is not nearly as hazy or as putrid or as calcified as all the guidebooks have led me to believe. At 400m below sea level, the Dead Sea shore is rocky and sandy, like any ocean shore. The sea, an eerily calm basin separating two barely amicable nations from one another, muffles sound, as if this were the quietest, most solitary place in the Middle East. But then the Arab families and the French tourists arrive, and happy children squeal at the strange sensation of floating on water. Breaking the sheet of serenity, Jordanian salesmen pedal mud products while women in hijab wade steadily into the sea. We walk into the water until our feet are swept up from under us, and we are turned horizontal by a silent, powerful, motionless force. Floating effortlessly, unable to right ourselves without conscious strategy and careful motion, we gaze at Jordan to one side and Israel to the other, alone in a lifeless, dying Dead Sea. Is this where Jesus walked on water? Where Moses dreamed? Where countless explorers reached a seemingly insurmountable barrier?

Stinging from the salinity, I pull myself toward the beach. It is a strange sensation, but not one that is particularly alarming or fresh. On the beach I dream of sharing tea with the Bedouins, being nomadic, shepherding. Are these things I could ever do? I cannot stop thinking about the boundaries that we can't surpass, those things that by defining us confine us: the color of skin, gender, language, to a much lesser extent now, nationality. In a borderless world there are some borders that will always remain. There will never be a day when I can sit with a group of Bedouins or Parisians or African-Americans and not be, even just a little bit, an outsider. This makes me strangely sad, this permanence of identity, so malleable but ever-present.

After visiting the Dead Sea, we drive back up the winding road through the hills to the Mariam Hotel. We decide to mail our carpets and embark on a Madaba adventure. The post office gives us mildly credible information, and we visit a small stationery shop in hopes of finding packing supplies. A friendly man plays charades with us as we try to obtain packing tape and a box. After many comical interactions with other shopkeepers, we return to the hotel victorious. We end the evening poolside, supposedly the "hot nightspot" in this town, after overfilling our bellies at a reasonable restaurant.

I am not overwhelmed by difference here, as I expected to be. I am not sure if this is a pleasant or disappointing surprise.

On Palestinians and Jordan

We ended tonight in a sweets shop, ordering 3JD worth of sugary, sticky treats. This morning, falafel and fresh juice in Amman from friendly street vendors fueled an hour of taxi rides around town to purchase bus tickets for destinations beyond Jordan. After noon, we board a bus to Madaba with students, police officers, and tired men, and arrive in this small city in time for a poolside lunch at the adorable Miriam Hotel. In this largely Christian town, we discover mosaics in countless churches, play with wide-eyed children, share tea with a weaver-shopkeeper who sells us handmade carpets. I purchase two--a runner from Iraq and a unique piece by a Bedouin woman. The shopkeeper's brother gives us a ride back to our hotel, and we peer through the hazy windows of an ancient, wide-bodied Mercedes-Benz at tiny shops catered at the tour groups we have magically avoided. In the evening, we stroll down mildly populated streets in search of food and find full stomachs with a little room left for sweets.

I am glad we came here and saw the Greek Orthodox churches--a reminder that religious diversity exists in the Middle East beyond the Jewish-Muslim conflict that plagues this region. I am thinking more and more about Palestinians--what it means to be a displaced population so large and so much in the public eye. Canada and Jordan offer passports to these people--what does it mean to be a citizen of a nation to which you have no relationship beyond the acceptance of an act of generosity?

At 2:00am in New York, I Am in Jordan

At Queen Alia airport, the sun sets over the desert, bleeding into the immigration chamber where we fight, passport to passport, for the JD10 entry visa. Shuttled through the diplomat line, I claim my luggage and greet two khakied, familiar, facial-haired grown-up boys. Nick, Andrew and I ride in a taxi past a small amusement park, countless fruit stands, the sun disappearing into more and more distant sand. At the Palace Hotel, a dingy room greets us with its one perk: a balcony which brings the sweet Amman evening air in to cool our tired bodies.

We venture up a hill, or many hills, to the Wild Jordan, where we order many bland courses and incredible smoothies. The green florescent lights within hundreds of minarets speckle the Amman panorama--neon awnings for a city's biggest trade: faith.

At first, coming in from the airport along a mid-sized populated road, I reminisced about India--the clusters of mis-matched shops, the free flow of traffic and pedestrians and goods, the busy-ness of the shopping streets even late at night. Further into my first night in this country, in this city, I am not so confident that India and Jordan can be compared. Walking along a deserted Jebel Amman street at 1:00am, with two friends alongside, I sensed a serenity, a comfort, that India may never know. Here in Jordan, this tiny, peaceful nation amongst warriors, the pace is purposeful but relaxed, the mission meaningful yet not urgent. What more will I discover on its worn and lively streets?