A Wilde's Kind of Night: Bedouin Camp part 2

What's that Oscar Wilde's quote? We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars. A friend introduced that to me on her visit to Spain junior year of university, and it was apt in the Jordan desert.  Often used, yes, but apt.

There are moments – I can count on four fingers where the truth hits so hard that I can't help but write in run-on sentences, blathering on and on to sickening levels about beauty and joy and existential thoughts that ought to belong behind ivoried towers instead of on a blog where discerning minds with little time to spare on reading and less time to care about the sensations of one person so removed from the real world >> *ooh, if you read that right, with all the emphases, it could almost be poetry slam. aw yeah.

Once was during that most controversial, hated, beguiling, loved, fetishized, sinful, rapturous, holy, frenzied, gentle, gross, beautiful, physical-spiritual of acts.

The others? On the beaches on Abel Tasman, on the mountains of Kepler's ridge, and when I touched for the first time the God who I don't believe in but who still believes in me – aged eleven after a sermon of "How can you live for God?".

Dharma comes like a whispering wind, then lightning, it comes and renders the parts of you that wants to understand, it splinters the labyrinth – crumbling down like a deck of cards, so futile and easy and loathsome – when it comes, it's a violent silence, the click of Lego blocks into place, the abrupt and sudden thrill of insight wriggling into the deepest depths of your belonging, and it settles in that emptied center, expanding with infinite pace and terrible mournful patience – then there is warmth...

I hiked as the sun dipped into the sand.  The bronzed glow cast the bluffs in brilliance, the different hues of red and tangerine and violet smeared across the rounded tops of the walls, like – like when you put a flashlight behind your hand and how your fingers glow.

I lost my way a couple of times. More than a couple.  The sand clawed and grabbed, and sneaked into my sneakers.  A winding trail led to a dead end, of 7 story walls be-speckled by a few figs and manned by boulders.  A straight path often turned on itself, in circles.

The 'mountains', rounded by time, jutted up from the sea of sand like knobbly fingers. I was lost within the spectacle, and by extension, within myself.

I came back to the camp, sweaty, but smiling, crashing onto a cluster of cushions on the thick rugs.  Hussein, the smoker, sidled over and offered tea, honeyed and mint, in a small glass. His brother, Mahmoud, had awoken, bathed, and now was dressed in dark jeans and an untucked striped shirt.  Hussein had on his kerfiyeh, red checkered head-scarf.

We fell silent as the moon shimmered into view, pale and shy. Hussein offered me a smoke, and I gave him my Ipod -- to listen to "American music".  He air drummed to the Beatles, Iron & Wine, Jack Johnson and Dylan before handing it back to me politely.  "You like Egyptian music?" he returned.  "I don't know too many," I said.

That's when Mahmoud cracked a dark smile, rushed into his tent, and brought out a tape player. Guttural and serene, rhythmic and flowing – the boys tapped, then wailed, and warbled along, stamping and clapping in a matter of minutes.  A couple of men showed up, their truck spitting out dust.  All kinsmen of the boys, they came and sat cross-legged on the rug and began to sing, pour tea, and soon, became engrossed in conversation with that most glottal of languages.

Dusk came and went. More men came and went – two Syrians and a Jordanian farmer.  Each time, I was introduced as Taiwanese, hands were shook vigorously, and cheeks were kissed.  The Syrians and I dabbled a little about Lebanon, America and politics before falling into a much welcomed silence.  The farmer invited me to his home to see his carefully tended trees – more than 100 species he boasted, in perfect, if broken English.

The food came. Buttery olives and pickled vegetables, warm bread and delicate roasted mutton, sweet tea and even sweeter water.  The spread was immense, and after a couple of times obliging to eat more, I declined and politely took a cigarette instead.

The fire was 3 feet high by the time I arrived.  Low blocks of wood – sawed tree trunks, circled the flames, where a kettle of tea hung, boiled to dark flavors. Abu-Sayed ("Father of Sayed"), the Ammarin's official gatekeeper was holding court with two women, Shouna the Kiwi and Nina the Brit. "Asalamu Yeshua!" A. Sayed called, and pulled up a log for me. "Tea?" He placed a mint spring in the sugared tea. "Have you met my two Bedouin sisters?" he asked – and grinned.

We talked, drifted in between mournful silence and bursts of awakening, until the deep of night.  Shouna has been living in a tent on Ammarin grounds for the last 6 months – she comes to Jordan every year to camp out in the desert for a number of months.  Her friend, Nina, has been in Jordan numerous time – for this trip, it's her last few days.  Both of their backgrounds were half shaded, half shadowed.  The glimpses I got were tantalizing. Both were in their fifties. Both spoke perfect Arabic although "Nina speaks more of a classical Arabic" Shouna confided to me.

A. Sayed slipped away as the embers glowed heavy. 

At one am, the two boys, Hussein and Mahmoud, strolled past to offer their goodnights. "Good night Shouna, good night Neena" they crowed, skipping around the fire. "Ninny! Did they call you Ninny!" shrieked Shouna, dissolving into a burst of cackling. "Ninny, Ninny!" Hussein wailed.

"They're mischievous ones, they are," said Shouna, once silence descended again. "Mahmoud actually has a thing for Western women, although he should be careful as he already has a row with his family about one..."

Shouna worked in Israel for 8 years, God knows when.  She uncontrollably falls into gossip about the Royal Jordan family and the galas that she has been to (and yet she's in a tent in the middle of nowhere!). "Did you know what the attendant to the Princess said to me the other day?" she'd croon to Nina. "Oh, were there other men around?" Nina strung her along -- and they would be off.  Me, I found a couple of mattresses, lug them out to the campfire, and laid back to listen to the soap operas.

Nina grew up in Yemen, tagging along with her British father through diplomatic missions. She loves the region, and has somehow found her way back to England as a teacher. "You like Harry Potter?" she queried. "Rubbish. Lord of the Rings is much better reading."  We talked about children's books, and holiday spots – about New Zealand and Arabic customs, we discussed Lebanese politics and American aggression, Ovid and the types of faux pas that so-and-so has committed in front of her royal highnesses...

"So what do you do?" I asked.

"Oh, we're nobodies!" A tinkling laugh from Shouna.

We three laid there, head back, under the desert night -- like a velvet cloak thrown over the sky's shoulder.  "Throw another log onto the fire, would you please?" Nina asked.  The temperature had dipped, and our goatskin blankets were just beginning to warm us.

Then one.

"Did you see that, Nina?"

"Why yes, I did. Marvelous, isn't it?"

Silence.

Then two.

"Josh, did you see that one? My that was a long one."

Three. Four. Five. They came at different depths, at different times, at different lengths.  Some came faintly, hiding behind the pudgy moon's blush. Others streaked brazenly across the yawning black. Still others flared but for a moment, then whimpered away. The sky opened, then came towards us, curving into a heady embrace.  The shooting stars kept coming -- the vast sky, reflected in the silent desert sands became a glittering canvas, a super-sized God-sized glow-in-the-dark playground.

That's when dharma came, like the crack of a hammer.

As I drifted to sleep under the celestial tent, I could hear Nina murmuring, "Now won't you be a dear and throw another log into the fire, Josh?"

Funny how after all the endless varieties of humanity and its buzz, it's space rocks and atmosphere that bring out the truth.

Posted by: kdawg | September 19, 2006 at 11:34 PM