Bedouin Living

Beads of sweat slide down my face into my eyes, making them sting with sunscreen as I shade myself in the hot desert heat. My best friend, Carrie, & I met in the Istanbul airport only days earlier, but it feels like a lifetime ago – we’re onto our third country in four days. We sit sandwiched in a red sandstone crevice at the summit of Jebel Khazali in the Wadi Rum desert, sipping freshly boiled sweet tea as we look out at the Saudi Arabian border. Our local Bedouin guide, Atallah, takes a sip out of his red paper cup, & begins telling us a love story.

Atallah guides us through the desert to Jebel Khazali

Years ago, his grandfather fell in love with a beautiful woman. Most Jordanian men have multiple wives, but his grandfather only had eyes for one. When he met her, he knew in his heart they were meant to be together. The only problem: her father was not a good man. He was greedy, & told Atallah’s grandfather that he could not marry the girl unless he could pay 100 camels. & 100 camels is exactly what it sounds like… very expensive. He couldn’t afford the dowry, but he was desperate to marry this woman, so he took desperate measures. He crossed the border into Saudi Arabia & stole 100 camels, brought them back across the border into Jordan, & bought the love of his life.

One year later, happily married, Atallah’s grandfather was approached by a Saudi man who recognized his camels. He had been looking for them for months, recognized the leader of the herd, & demanded they be returned. But this man had a soft spot, & upon hearing Atallah’s love story, he made an offer: come work with me for one year in Saudi Arabia & receive the camels as a wedding gift. He took it, & lived happily ever after his one year of slavery. He raised Atallah’s father, who went on to marry three wives & father 31 children.

This is only a glimpse at how different the culture is in Jordan. It is a land that is unlike anywhere I’ve seen before. We wake up each morning in our Bedouin hut in a camp all to ourselves, spend our days in the back of a 4WD cruising over sand drifts, & hiking red monoliths to spectacular viewpoints of a land that looks like Mars.

 

Our home in the Bedouin Desert

Wadi Rum has been inhabited by Bedouins since prehistoric times & features some of the most exquisite geography I’ve experienced: red canyons with petroglyphs etched into the walls, sandstone mountains with natural bridges, & kilometers of red sand in every direction.

We sweat, climb, & surf down dunes in the late afternoon until red sand overflows in our boots. 

Sand surfind on Mars

We stop for breaks to drink tea, picnic on pita bread, labneh, lentils, hummus, tomato & cucumber salad, & stop our jeep to feed our leftovers to wild camels. 

The perfect picnic

Look at that grin!

We hike up mountains with a boiling teapot to watch the sunset, play card games & laugh after dinner with our Bedouin guides, despite the fact that we don’t speak the same language. 

No better way to watch the sunset

We listen to Arabian songs played on the oud & fall asleep under a night full of the most spectacular stars. It is quiet, secluded. We are tiny specks in the universe & the earth feels gigantic, magical. Nothing else matters, except this very moment.