Out of Jordan

My last dive in Jordan was at night. There were three of us — Eero, me, and our instructor Abdullah — plus one soldier watching to make sure that all the people who entered the water came out again. We dove the same site earlier in the day, but at night it was transformed. Gone were the schools of fish swimming by, shimmering in the light blue water. In their place were lone creatures making their way through the blackness. As we shone our flashlights around we come across a tiny octopus, a strange box-shaped fish, and a large crayfish which Abdullah managed to catch and stuff in his pocket for later.

Because the dive was going so smoothly, Abdullah took us to a nearby shipwreck. The king of Jordan had sunk it specifically to create a site for divers. We had visited it previously during the day and it was spooky then. At night it was positively eery.

We had been swimming along the sea bed for a while when all of a sudden our lights illuminated a wall, the ship's hull, rising up above us. The ship was resting on its side so when we rounded the front, the deck rose up from the ground at a steep angle. 15 metres down in the black water, I couldn't see anything but the captain's cabin above me oriented almost vertically, and Eero and Abdullah floating nearby. Pointing my light away from the boat — up, down, behind me — the beam disappeared into darkness. It was the first time I felt dizzy and disoriented underwater. I had to remind myself of the way the ship was resting to figure out which way was up and which was down.

We swam along its length, the deck a wall on our right. Structures slowly took shape as we approached in the darkness. I pointed my light up and saw the ship's mast looming horizontally above our heads. I pointed it to the right and saw an open hatch with a ladder leading into the gloomy interior. Everything was rusty, with coral growing over it and the odd fish hiding in corners and recesses. As fascinating as it was, it definitely tested my nerves. The constant fear in the back of my mind was imagining what it would be like to get left behind in the darkness with the hulking skeleton of the ship for company.

I was relieved when we at last swam over the side and headed away from it, encountering the sandy ocean floor again. Before getting out of the water we sat with our flashlights held to our chests to block out the light. When we moved our hands through the water, tiny specks of phosphorescent plankton lit up.

The next morning we left Jordan. It fulfilled my expectations in the best way possible: by tearing down a lot of preconceptions about life in the middle east. Namely, that the entire area is a dangerous place and that people are at war with the west. I remember the man running the hostel I stayed at in Amman saying that if you visit a mosque during prayer time, you'll only find 5 or 6 people there. Who has time to pray 5 times a day? He may have been joking, but the point was clear. People are people, no different from the US where some are Catholic and some are Methodist and some are Jewish and on and on. In Jordan, some are Christian and some are Muslim and some are devout and some don't care much. And everyone mixes together, with Ms. Jeans chatting away to Mrs. Fully-Veiled. Not all that surprising, really, though it does conflict with the image we sometimes get from the news where the middle east is a uniform mass of people headed on a collision course with the US and EU.

Overall, I was won over by the genuine friendliness Eero and I encountered everywhere. So many people were keen to simply say hello and welcome us. Try and think of the last place the following happened to you: a policeman stops you in the street and asks where you're from. Maybe you're intimidated by his gun and wonder what problem he is about to create for you. Then he asks you if you've been here before. Upon finding it's your first time, he shakes your hand and says "welcome to our country," before walking off with a smile. If you're coming up blank on memories of this happening in your life, I used to have something in common with you before I visited Jordan.