Desert Song

“The Biggest Big-Screen TV of them all!” is how my friend Suzanne billed it to the students last week when she suggested we go on a school trip to the desert Wadi Rum for the weekend. “We will lie on the desert sand and star gaze, and it is better than any big-screen TV you have ever seen,” sold Suzanne on the prospect.

Not that it is hard to get me to go anywhere—I am like my mother and her eternal rejoinder, “I’ll go.”

Wadi Rum (along with the planned lunch at the seaside resort of Aqaba) is the last of the major spots in Jordan I had yet to visit. It is legendary for its landscape—not the usual stony plain of limestone that is much of Jordan, but this was the haunt of Lawrence of Arabia, as well as the site of much of the location shoot of the epic movie (never forget—movie locations are maybe even more real than historical locations!) due to its granite, basalt, and sandstone mountains rising majestically from the sandy, desert floor. I had seen photographs, and some colleagues, the more granola-crunchy types, go to Wadi Rum frequently to camp. Unlike my mother who announced to her dying day, “I am a camper,” I am not. Although, I hasten to add—I did camp last October in Kenya!

So 60 of us signed up to go on the trip! I was on duty this weekend anyway, so why not take an overnight trip with the students. There was a moment’s pause—I had not taken an overnight trip with students since the spring break in Greece in 2005, but I looked forward to the seven adults joining in on the camping and hiking fun. The planners had to get a dispensation from the Ministry of Education allowing us to take co-ed students on an overnight trip in Jordan since it is usually not allowed.

It was about a four-hour drive to southern Jordan, and the driver of my bus was stopped three times by the police—maybe they are all just old friends. I had forgotten about long bus rides with students—the Albert Einstein phrase comes to mind, “The pain fades away and the beauty remains.” Hmmm…there was the constant battle over the volume of the music for nearly every song. I guess they thought they could wear me down. Yeah, do they know who they are dealing with??

We arrive at Wadi Rum, and instantly you see that the hype is valid. The rocky landscape has been weathered over the millennia into bulbous domes and weird ridges and textures that look nothing so much like molten candle-wax—you know what they remind me of—remember the Brady Bunch episode where Peter makes a volcano for his science class, and then it goes off when Marcia and her girly friends are over? It looked like that volcano-like structure.

Anyway, it is the sheer bulk of these mountains that awes—and the endless ochre sands. Everywhere you look you see these mountains—some smooth, some scarred and distorted, all seemingly melting and dripping under the burning sun. It has the look of an incredible moonscape, or maybe monumental islands in a dry sea.

We arrive and park the buses in a tourist parking area, and then the camp officials pile you onto roof-less Land Rovers to drag race across the sands to your camp site. It is hot—that kind of hot I had forgotten during the last few months. It is easily 90 degrees, and I get into the back of the Rover with a gaggle of boys—who of course beg the driver to careen across the desert sands and beat everybody. The camp officials keep uttering the same saying one hears regularly, “Welcome to Jordan!”

We get there and throw our gear (Ha! Do I actually have camping gear? A toothbrush and five not-quite finished issues of Entertainment Weekly comprise my gear!) and run out to take advantage of the opportunities galore to scramble around on the rocks and pick your commanding view for the sunset.

The sunset was extraordinary—the evening coolness blissful after the reminder that Jordan is indeed a real desert.

The camps are all run by Bedouins, and this is real camping. No electricity, yet they do make sure you enjoy the Bedouin hospitality—dinner in lovely goat-skin tents, sturdy carpets on the sandy floor, lovely gas lamps, and camel saddles for interesting seating. They offer us dinner—besides the usual dips, spreads, and salads, they have roasted chickens, potatoes and onions, all hauled up out of an underground roaster. The camp staff sang us a welcome song, and a shepherd’s lullaby. I gotta say—these Arabic songs all sound alike to me, but I appreciate the sentiment.

After dinner we set out to lie on the sand, and take in that big-screen Suzanne had promised. The clarity of the desert air helps produce a starry sky of stunning beauty, and the tranquility of the pitch-dark desert night is simply magical. Of course—the night was far from over. Our merry band of teen-agers was not content just to enjoy the stars. There were groups here and there yelping, boys rolling down the sandy hills, girls talking about boys—take out the sand part, and it is exactly like any of the gazillion trips I have chaperoned in the last score of years. I sat down with a giggling group, and they asked me about the party game “spin the bottle.” Good heavens! That travels around the world, too? Then one guy was talking about the Milton-Bradley game, “Monopoly,” practically reciting all the spaces on the board, when a girl interrupts and says, “The Saudi boys are playing ‘Chicken.’” I say, “you guys know about “Monopoly” and ‘Chicken’??” Faris then laughs, and says, “Oh yeah, Mr. John—remember all you need to know about us is that we live in tents and ride camels!” (Usually the stereotype does not hold up so, but the closest camel is maybe only 50 feet away, and we are surrounded by our desert tents!).

At midnight we scurry the students off to their tents, actually overhearing such things like, “I’ll call you in a little bit and we’ll meet.” It is sentences like that make adults decide: we better stay up and guard the tents. Oh that, and when several girls tried to walk over to the boy’s tent to visit, “We just need to borrow their speakers,” was their weak excuse.

Four of us decide to linger at the campfire, and we linger until about 4:00 a.m. But it is actually not such an onerous task—it was fun, first as we mocked one of the drivers’ snores as he buzz-sawed his way through any hopes of silence. One of the boys poked his head out of the tent about 1:00 pleading, “Is that a human sound??? It has to be a camel! I can’t sleep!”

We killed time by playing games like each person speed-adding a word to a sentence, trying to never let the sentence end. It was way more fun than that sentence makes it out to be! We shared odd phrases/sayings in Arabic and in English. I offered this Benjamin Franklin saying: “Hunger is the best pickle,” but I think Mazen won the contest with his translation of an Arabic phrase describing something unexpected as “a fart without an appointment.” Ahhhh…those things are mighty funny around 3:00 in the morning.

We got up around 6:00 as the students got up. After breakfast the camels arrived for our regiment of riders to mount these desert beasts. It was fun watching the students rise into the air as the animals galloped off for a ride. I went and climbed another of the mountains, slathering on the sunscreen since it was already desert hot. By the way, you will notice I haven’t mentioned the bathroom situation—let’s just say the outdoor latrines and showers in Kenya were far more amenable!

The only fissure in an otherwise lovely trip was when we met the students at the end of their hour-long camel trek. It seems one of the camel-keepers had flirted, well, more than flirted, with one of our girls, and proposed marriage, and threatened to steal her away, and some more harassment. His behavior, and subsequent running away as our Jordanian colleagues took control of the situation, necessitated calling the tourist police. As our chaperones found out, our Saudi boys wanted real vengeance—and I mean, they wanted to go and get this guy. The Bedouins responded in their tribal way. One of my colleagues said, “Great, we walked right into a stereotype of Arab men.” Eventually the police arrived, assessed the situation, and offered us several scenarios. Should the family get to beat the boy? Should we press charges and go to court? Should our group get the chance to watch the police beat the young man? There is still so much to learn about other cultures.

The girl is fine today, and while we did not cancel our lunch plans at the seaside resort town of Aqaba, it was a strange ending to the first overnight trip from KA.

The Desert Song was an operetta penned by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein in the late 1920s—and a huge hit as New Yorkers embraced the exotic themes and ersatz-melodies of the faraway desert. As much as I love a musical, the actual alluring cliffs, ochre sands and sleeping under the stars of the real thing was more exciting. These Wadi Rum monuments were the actual pillars T. E. Lawrence depicted in his account of the 1920s Arab Revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I am waiting for more guests to come to Jordan and discover them with me.