Who lives sees, but who travels, sees more.
Ibn Battutah
Over the course of the next few days, Khaled and I travelled north, following the old railway until we reached the town of Tabuk, and from there we headed to the border with Jordan, where I said goodbye. Khaled, and the people he’d introduced me to, had challenged all my preconceived ideas about Saudi Arabia. He’d shown me a country struggling to come to terms with modernity, but doing it nonetheless. I’d learned that it’s not an overnight process and there are still many dogmatic attitudes that hindered progress, but amid the deserts and rocks, I’d also found a country eager to embrace the benefits of technology, communication and a more rational attitude.
I thanked Khaled for his insights. If nothing else, he’d reminded me of the benefits of travelling with a good guide; someone who knows the country and its customs well. I’d realised how lonely it can be travelling without knowing the language, and a decent travel companion can make all the difference between a positive and negative travel experience, so I was determined to find someone in Jordan who could help me out, too. It was early December now and I had a couple of weeks before Christmas to make it to Bethlehem. It was a self-imposed deadline, but one that I couldn’t miss. I’d invited my brother and parents and some good friends to meet me in the holy town, so I had a goal.
Khaled disappeared back to the south amid a dust cloud and I walked across the border into the Hashemite Kingdom towards Aqaba, following the same route Lawrence and his men had travelled in their bid to reach Damascus. For the next few hundred miles, I would be following one of the most ancient and important overland routes in the region, if not the world. It was a route steeped in history and legend, and I was eager to explore.
But first I needed a guide. Entering Jordan felt like a breath of fresh air. For the first time since Iraq, I saw women unveiled and without headscarves. Boys played football on the beach in shorts and old men sold ice cream and balloons under the palm trees. Children swam in the sea and teenagers did backflips into the water from a jetty. There was a festive atmosphere as families, both Muslim and Christian, sat around in the parks picnicking together. Music was pumping from radios and speakers all around.
I discovered it was the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and the whole country was on a national holiday. No wonder it felt like there was a party going on. The bay was filled with luxury yachts and the hotels sold beer. In fact, there was a street full of restaurants, bars and coffee shops, where young men with trendy beards and skinny jeans hung out smoking shisha. I sat down at a table in the Ali Baba restaurant and pondered where I might find a decent guide.
In the past I’d sourced my travel companions from all sorts of places; usually it was word of mouth, taking recommendations from friends working abroad: NGO workers, journalists and military types who knew the score. Sometimes I’d used official tourist guides, but more often than not they either had an agenda, or else they were a bit dull and only interested in the usual tourist sites, rather than showing me the underbelly of a country. Aqaba, and Jordan in general, was awash with tour agents given its heavy reliance on the tourism industry, so I was sure I’d find someone easily enough. That said, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
As I waited for my coffee to arrive, I looked around the room. For the first time since the Gulf, I was in the company of other tourists. There were a few other Westerners in shorts and T-shirts enjoying a holiday. The local Jordanians were generally better dressed and were all busy laughing and chatting with their families. But in the corner, one man sat alone and stood out from the rest.
Wearing an off-white jellabiya, an oversize long-sleeved shirt, and a maroon headscarf that was wrapped around his forehead like a bandana rather than the usual Arab keffiyeh, he looked every inch like Captain Jack Sparrow. His hair was shoulder length, jet-black and curly, and he had a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee beard. His wrists were covered in bangles and he had tattoos on his forearms. But it was his eyes that drew me in. They were deep and mysterious and surrounded by thick kohl. Yes, he must be a pirate, I thought. What’s more, he was happily getting stuck into a pint of beer. I knew, instantly, that he was my man. Without a second thought, I got up and walked over to him.
‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’ I said, hoping for the best.
The pirate looked me up and down, his face betraying no emotion whatsoever.
After a few seconds, he spoke. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t suppose you would be interested in being my guide?’
He tilted his head, and took another slurp on his pint before responding.
‘Why not?’ he repeated.
Good start, I thought.
‘Will you travel with me for two weeks, from here, all the way to the north of Jordan?’
He shrugged, finished his pint and stood up.
‘Why not? Yalla.’
When you put yourself out there and pluck up the courage to talk to strangers and be open to new opportunities, the universe conspires to help you. I took my new mysterious guide’s willingness to get up and join me as a sign. It was serendipity at its finest, and I felt like I was on a roll.
My new guide, it turned out, wasn’t in fact a pirate; he was a Bedu by the name of Mishael Al-Faqeer. I agreed to meet him the following morning in the lobby of the guesthouse where I was staying. He turned up in the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before. The only addition was a tiny bag containing a spare pair of socks and a rolled-up, woollen brown cloak.
‘Do you have a sleeping bag? Is that all the kit you have?’ I asked. I thought that I travelled light, but he was taking it to the next level.
He chuckled. ‘A sleeping bag? Bedu don’t need sleeping bags. I grew up in a cave.’
With that we left the comfortable surroundings of Aqaba and trekked north-east into the sands of Wadi Rum.
Mishael was one of three million Bedouin living in Jordan. He’d grown up in the outskirts of Petra, brought up by his grandmother in a small cave hewn from the cliff face. Having left school at the age of ten, he was illiterate, but that hadn’t stopped him seducing tourists with his natural charm and suave piratical looks – earning a living as a guide in the world-famous ruins nearby. I’d guessed him to be in his late thirties, but it turned out he was only twenty-five. Despite his youth, he’d been married for a couple of years already, to a Dutch girl who’d fallen in love with this enigma of the desert.
Mishael led the way in silence. He only spoke when I spoke to him. His English was acceptable, if not good, but he was simply a man of few words, content to take in the majesty of the scenery. I followed as we left the highway and made our way across the blood red plain towards a remote farm at the edge of the national park. This was the original Hajj route from the north. For hundreds of years, pilgrims and traders of the old silk and spice route had come this way by camel in both directions, and now I was to follow in their footsteps. Mishael led us down a trail towards the collection of shacks surrounded by a rickety wooden fence.
‘It’s my friend’s house,’ said Mishael. ‘He will give us camels.’
We met Aude, another Bedouin, who agreed to come along as far as the northern edge of the Wadi Rum desert, which would take us five or so days to cross by foot.
It took him no time at all to assemble three camels, which were clearly used to load carrying and were as well-behaved as the ones we’d had in Dhofar. Aude was also in his mid-twenties and came with a serene aura. He couldn’t speak a word of English, but had a calm, kind smile and I knew that I could trust both of them implicitly.
Mish and Aude walked, leading the camels by a long rein. Aude, despite being happily married with a baby, was clearly in love with his camels, and gave them a kiss and a hug at every opportunity. We trekked over a low ridge, leaving behind the last of the trees, and after two hours we found ourselves amid some of the most beautiful desert landscapes I’d ever seen.
Wadi Rum is one of the Middle East’s most touristic destinations, bringing in more than a hundred thousand tourists a year, but the vast majority only have time to zip in and out on a jeep safari for a day or two, and stay in the main valley near to Wadi Rum village. Here in the south, we had the entire desert to ourselves. Vast escarpment rose on both sides, ancient sandstone tens of millions of years old, striking into the deep blue sky. It seemed to transform with the hours of the day and by mid-afternoon it had changed from golden yellow to deep scarlet. Above, buzzards soared high above the canyons seeking out their prey, but as I looked around there seemed to be no sign of life whatsoever.
‘Let’s make camp over there,’ said Mishael, pointing at the base of a vast rock face. I was glad he’d suggested some shade. Even though by now it was late afternoon, it was still hot – not as hot as the Empty Quarter, but hot enough, and I was ready for a rest. We walked the quarter-mile to the bottom of the sandstone monolith and unpacked the camels.
‘Follow me,’ said Mishael, dumping his cloak in the sand and strolling back out into the hot sand.
‘What are we looking for?’ I asked.
‘Firewood,’ he said.
‘But there are no trees.’
He just raised an eyebrow. ‘We don’t need trees.’ At that he suddenly knelt down and motioned for me to do the same. I looked at the gravel and sand at my feet. Surely there was nothing but stones? Mishael brushed away the first layer of sand and began to dig with his bare hands. And then I remembered how Mahrouqi had discovered wood buried deep under the sand back in the Empty Quarter. It was a reminder that the old ways weren’t completely forgotten. After a few seconds, Mish found what he was looking for. He unearthed a desiccated root, digging around the edges to make sure it didn’t break off. What I thought was only a small twig, once excavated turned out to be a huge series of twisted branches almost a metre long.
‘How did you know that was there?’ I couldn’t help but ask, still wondering at how he must have known.
Mishael shrugged. ‘I’m Bedu, we just know.’
He sighed. ‘The desert used to be filled with Bedu. Here, this valley was our home. When Lawrence was here, he found hundreds of families living only in tents. Nowadays everyone wants to live near the cities, even the Bedu nowadays have cars and houses. But me, I prefer a simple life. I would live out here forever, if only my wife would let me. I cannot write or read or drive, but I am happy here.’
With enough fuel to make a small campfire, we returned to the cliff base and made ourselves comfortable as Aude brewed up some sweet sage tea over the flames. He’d brought a chicken and he slow roasted that, too, along with some onions and rice. He even made his own bread from flour and water.
In the distance the sun set, casting long shadows from the rock stacks and causing the whole desert to turn blood red. The pillars appeared as melting candles rising from the wilderness; as if planted purely for the aesthetic pleasure of God himself. Soon a firmament of stars emerged from the depths of the heavens and for the first time in a very long time, I felt completely at peace. There was no phone signal, no internet, nothing to do. I’d long since read all my books and anyway, in this environment it somehow seemed inappropriate to want to transport my mind elsewhere.
Mishael and Aude began to sing old Bedu songs, and even the camels seemed to rest easy, chewing the cud and staring into the darkness. I listened and pondered the night sky, as a shooting star whooshed across the vast dome. The moon rose gradually, lighting up the alien panorama with such majesty that it was impossible not to feel instantly transported to another time; one in which material things meant nothing; where the only things that mattered were songs and love. In the flickering shadows of the fire, Mishael and Aude’s dark faces seemed to dance in the half light, giving them an other-worldly appearance.
I felt as though this was what the real Arabia was all about – this was the real life of the Bedu nomads and therefore of mankind itself. This was the natural state of being for humans. With a belly full of food and a song in the air, what more can man ask for? There was no choice here but to simply exist in perfect harmony with one’s surroundings. There was no struggle, except against one’s self, and a belief in the benevolence of nature. Mishael had magicked fire from stones and thanked Allah for that ancient knowledge. For him and Aude this was perfection – not the shiny cities and desires of modernity – simply living, unburdened by the paradox of choice or worry about the future. And for me, for the first time on this journey, I realised it, too. I understood that I’d been so wrapped up with the purity of the journey and making sure that I was ticking all the boxes that I’d forgotten to exist and enjoy it.
For the next few days I forgot all about home; all about my own troubles; I forgot about the past and even about what lay ahead. I enjoyed the simplicity of desert life, living as a nomad. We’d walk all day, following indeterminate paths and ancient trails weaving through the enormous sand dunes. The terrain shifted and morphed from wide valleys to narrow gullies and great canyons. The landscape was at once Martian and alien, and yet to my inner nomad instantly familiar and hospitable. We’d eat when we were hungry, drink when we were thirsty and sleep when we were tired.
There was no need to set up tents – not that we even had any. We slept in caves or simply out in the open, like prehistoric hunter-gatherers. I would snuggle up inside my sleeping bag to keep off the night chill, but Aude and Mishael, used to the winter nights, just wrapped their cloaks around their ears and slept soundly till dawn. I knew when it was time to wake up, as the familiar smell of tobacco wafted through the air. Whereas Aude was a devout Muslim and prayed five times each day, Mishael began the morning with a ritual cigarette. I never saw him pray once.
The days passed with ease and on the fourth day, almost to my own sadness, we passed by Lawrence’s spring, where my hero used to water his camels. Aude pointed to the waterfall, now all but dry and surrounded by local men selling handicrafts and carpets. It was filled with tourists and a signal that civilisation was nearby.
‘Some of the very old people remember stories of Lawrence,’ said Mishael. ‘Are you from his tribe?’ he asked.
I told him that I was. Speaking of my tribe, some English and American tourists took photographs of me, thinking I was a Bedu. Mishael nudged me and whispered with a wry smile.
‘They think we’re some sort of animal in the zoo. This is what it is like to be a tribal, but what to do?’ He shrugged and smiled for the tourists. I smiled too and kept my mouth shut, not wanting to ruin their illusion.
An hour later, we reached the main road that led to Wadi Rum town, where we fed the camels and stopped for lunch in one of Aude’s friends’ houses. The next day we passed through a remote gorge filled with trees and exited the valley on its northern flank. When we reached the main road, Mishael and I said goodbye to Aude. He gave us a solemn nod, jumped on top of his favourite camel and raced off into the distance, assuring us that he could make the return journey in just two days.
The two of us flagged down a lift at the side of the road and jumped in the back of a passing pick-up truck, which was heading to Wadi Araba, over the mountains into a neighbouring valley. The driver, an old farmer named Karim, insisted we join him for lunch and tea at his home, a little shanty high among the jagged peaks. Jordanians are renowned even in the Arab world for their hospitality, especially the semi-nomadic Bedu, and Karim was no different. He fed us delicious mansaf – a sort of lamb biriyani – on a huge platter, with yoghurt and roasted nuts and raisins. After the meal, he gave us no choice but to accompany him into Wadi Musa, where he was off to place a bet on some illicit camel racing.
Later that evening we finally made it, exhausted but content, into Petra. Mishael was happy to be home and promised that after he’d said hello to his wife, he would show me around the archaeological sites.
There’s a reason that Petra receives more than a thousand tourists a day. It’s one of the wonders of the world and rightly acknowledged as a world heritage site. I thought back to the first time I’d visited Jordan in 2003, when the ticket office was little more than a roadside shack and backpackers used to be able to sneak in over the fence unnoticed. I’d camped in the ruins overnight then, but these days the whole place is surrounded by high security walls and the ticket booth resembles those at the entrance to vast football stadiums.
Hotels had sprung up all around the edges, along with bars, restaurants and souvenir shops. I was expecting the worst, and so made sure I woke up at four a.m. to beat the hordes. It was a worthwhile endeavour, as Mishael and I were the first inside and raced down the narrow sandstone gully to ensure we reached the famous Treasury monument first.
In a scene immortalised in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a whip-cracking Harrison Ford rides horseback with Sean Connery to uncover the secret remains of an ancient kingdom. It was a piece of film that no doubt inspired many a young explorer to seek out hidden treasures, and I was as guilty as the rest. Mishael and I beamed with joy to see the wondrous building emerge from the carved cliff at dawn. Of course, inside, which is now off-limits, there is no hidden chamber containing the Holy Grail, or the ghosts of dead Crusaders – in fact it’s merely a huge empty edifice, long since plundered of its treasures by its Bedu guardians, Mishael’s distant ancestors.
‘When I was a boy, we used to climb right to the top. We’d play in the graves and have competitions as to who could jump from the highest point,’ he said. ‘We’d go digging in the caves and see what we could find. Sometimes we’d find gold and silver coins, which we’d sell to the foreigners.’
‘Do you think there is more hidden, or has it all been taken?’ I asked.
Mishael shrugged. ‘Every time it rains and the sand is washed away, we always find more treasure.’
We walked through the old Nabataean city with its intricately hewn tombs and monuments. We passed by the Roman city with its stone market street and temples. Beyond that we entered a narrow gully, where a staircase led us to the top of the mountain, from where the ‘monastery’ was hidden from view. Here, we had the place to ourselves. Many tourists were content with the view of the Treasury and didn’t bother with the forty-five-minute trek up to the top, and so we spent the morning and afternoon simply admiring the view of the rock-tomb and the spectacular Valley of Moses, which stretched out beyond the mountains below.
Mishael regaled me with tales of his childhood, as other locals came and sat with us, offering tea and food. I thought back with nostalgia to the time that Alex and I had stood in exactly the same spot in 2003, at the tender age of twenty-one. Everything had now come full circle, and I’d fulfilled a promise that I’d made to Alex to return.
In the evening, Mishael invited me to eat mansaf in his brother’s house and of course, I agreed. He led me down the mountain as the sun set somewhere beyond the Dead Sea, which remained tantalisingly out of view. In the darkness we descended to a hidden valley, somewhere outside the city limits, where a rocky outcrop was sheltered from the distant lights.
‘Here is my family home,’ said my guide. He pointed to a door at the entrance to a cave, where a candle flickered inside.
He shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. ‘It’s not finished yet.’
I told him that I felt enormously privileged that he should invite me at all.
Mishael’s brother and his wife Ferozeh, who Mishael described as the ‘Queen of the Bedu’, were standing waiting for us. The cave itself was tiny; it was only one room filled with carpets that ensured it was warm year-round. A gas cooker was firing up a pot filled with boiled chicken, and a few vegetables were lined up, ready to be added to the pot. The walls were bare, apart from some tacky posters of imaginary landscapes and some family photographs. It was clear that these people were verging on poverty, and yet there was something about their way of life that was far richer than anything I’d seen before.
Ferozeh was the first to introduce herself and shake my hand. It was something I wasn’t used to – a woman hadn’t offered her hand to me in months – but Mishael insisted that the Bedu ladies in Jordan were the most liberal and emancipated of anywhere in the region.
‘You’re welcome to our little home,’ said the lady in perfect English. ‘This is my husband.’ She waved at her man, who laughed.
‘See, this is what happens when you come into a Bedu cave. The women are in charge!’ He rolled his eyes.
‘Oh, shut up,’ she said in a joking manner. ‘Otherwise you won’t get any food.’ She waved a ladle in his face with a wink and a smile.
Ferozeh spoke six languages fluently, including Chinese and Japanese. She’d never even been to school and had learned entirely off her own bat, so that she could talk with tourists and relieve them of a few dollars in exchange for handicrafts.
She looked me over and grinned. ‘If we get some kohl on your eyes, you’d look like a Bedu, and then we’d welcome you into the family. It’s a shame I’m already married, otherwise you could live here in my cave.’ Her husband shrugged his shoulders and looked at me, rolling his eyes yet again. They clearly loved each other very much.
We sat down to eat and all night we laughed and joked, and suddenly it occurred to me that even though I was with people from a culture so far removed from my own, I’d rarely felt so at home.