Driver, Turn South

The dashboard is covered with a faded pink shag carpet. Tassels are hanging around the sides of the roof. The speedometer is stuck at 0. In the back are a young boy and a man in his late 30s. Behind them, next to two tires, is my backpack, full of clothes and a bottle of cologne I bought at one of the many perfumeries in Amman just so I could see how they mix the scented oil with alcohol and water. The man on my left has greying hair and a jolly smile. He drives the pickup with the steering wheel almost resting on his large belly, coaxing it as it struggles up slight inclines and accelerating on the downsides. In about 4 hours we should make it south to Petra.

How I came to retrace my steps through Jordan is a hard tale of rejection. I returned to Amman on the 24th after passing 4 weeks in Israel. Despite 3 previous setbacks in my attempt to visit Syria, I wanted to try once more. I had heard more positive stories about the friendliness of Syrians and the beauty of the city of Damascus than anywhere else.

So I found a taxi going north from Amman and shared the space inside with 3 others. It took an hour and a half to reach the border. I paid the Jordanian departure fee, changed my money to Syrian pounds, and continued to the Syrian border.

I made it close enough to feel the presence of the Axis of Evil, but the immigration checkpoint stood in the way of my entering and actually seeing the greasy cogwheels turning slowly, spreading badness across the globe.

The passport control hall was slightly chaotic — the type of setup where 10 people crowded around each window trying to find a space to put a hand through and wave their passport around, hoping it would be taken next by an immigration official. The man who took mine was short and grumpy. I had given him my second passport, the one without at Israeli border stamp in it. Unfortunately it also lacked a Jordanian entry stamp. It didn't take him long to figure out what was going on.

"You've been to Isra-eel! You — back to Jordan. No Syria."

I protested but to no avail. I considered trying to bribe him with the $10 I had in my pocket for that exact purpose, but there were too many people around. I preferred that my first attempt at bribing an immigration officer be in a more inconspicuous setting. Lack of courage got the better of me. In short order, the official gave my passport to a lackey who motioned me to follow him outside. There, he waved down a taxi, waited while I collected my bag from the car that brought me to the border, gave me back my passport and waved me off. And so my hopes of visiting Syria were dashed for the fourth and final time.

The next day, back in Amman, I decided to go south to Egypt, following the same route through Jordan I had travelled with Eppu a month prior. I timed my arrival at the bus station precisely — when I got there the last bus south had left long ago. I decided to wait and see what turned up, and as I sat on the curb, an old white pickup truck with faded pink shag carpet on the dash slowed to a stop next to me...

Outcast

"Fuckin' mother Arab countries."

This was not a happy story.

"14 years I worked in Libya. 14 years. Then they took my money and kicked me out."

The man was in his late 40s and dead sober.

"They tell me I'm a spy. They take my money. $300,000. They take my apartment. They take my business."

I risk giving the appearance that I take pleasure in other people's pain in admitting this: this is what makes travel fascinating.

"They put me in prison. Jail. You understand, my friend? For 250 days."

I was on my way to find a late dinner when I met him at the hostel.

"They fly me back to Jordan, my country, in a special jet. With security all around. Like I am... Osama bin Laden or something."

In my normal day-to-day life, where would I ever meet someone like him? Where would I ever hear a story like his?

"I used to live like a king in Libya. 2 cars. A driver special for my wife. Large apartment. And now here I am. In a hostel."

Possibly nowhere. In a house, I feel like eating and I walk to the fridge. On my own in Amman, I get a story to fill my head while my stomach stays empty.

"What I have to do here? I sit in my room. I come out and watch TV. I smoke cigarettes, I use the internet. And wait. This is no life. Everday I wait to get out of this fuckin' country. I go to America. Or Israel."

Israel?! I checked I was awake to hear this coming from a non-Israeli middle eastern man.

"Those places, a citizen is holy I think. The government doesn't allow this to happen. They help. I go to see the foreign minister here. He tells me, 'What can we do?' Meanwhile King Abdullah is making millions in business with Libya. What is $300,000 to the government? That fucking King Abdullah. Money is all these Arab countries care about. They all should burn."

His tale was too fantastic. But he looked, acted, and talked sincerely. What to make of him? What was the other side of the story?

"Be careful of life my friend. She is like a bitch. While you have money she is fun. But one day she will take everything you have and leave you."

All I could do was take in the experience. And remember it. Because one day soon, an encounter like that won't be a normal part of my life.

As with the last post, the quotes here are reproduced to the best of my memory but are not word-for-word accurate. Next time I'll have to travel with a tape recorder. On the payroll of a newspaper.

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.

Women in Jordan

So what about the role of women in society here? Let me skip all of the questions you may have because I don't have the answers. I haven't talked to anybody, man or woman, about the topic. All I know is what I've seen on the street, which is a variety of dress ranging from skirts + t-shirt to headscarf with jeans to fully draped in black with a burqa.

(As an aside, I was curious when I saw a woman with only her eyes showing, looking through the window of a clothing store at jeans and summer tops. There are so many questions I would have loved to ask her.)

Because I don't know the first thing about traditional Jordanian culture, what women think, how they are treated, what rights they have, etc., it would be arrogant to assume anything. Things may be great, terrible, or somewhere in between.

What I can say is that from my foreign and selfish point of view, being a man in Jordan ends up tilting towards the boring end of the scale. Drinking coffee, eating at a restaurant, or smoking a nargileh, the vast majority of people you have for company are men. Think of how a typical nightclub is run. Goal #1 is get as many girls there as possible. The rest of life inside a club follows onwards from that first goal. Life here is a bit like a nightclub on opposite day.

At first glance, this may sound like a wholesome idea for daily life. But as I was walking down the street with Eero earlier today, I realised I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying because I was distracted by a mannequin in a halter top. I haven't checked with a doctor, but being accustomed to living in a different culture I imagine being around real women would be a little healthier.

Deep Water

Today, day 2 of my Advanced Open Water course, I went on a deep water dive as part of my training. My instructor took me down to 28 metres (~92 feet). As we swam down I had a dizzying feeling of slight panic at how far underwater I was. It was strangely similar to the sensation of looking down when you're high up on a ledge with a hundred foot drop opening out below you. It disappeared when we stopped for a minute, however, and it was fascinating to be completely unable to see the surface of the water. I was surrounded by blue, and the only difference in looking up was that it was a paler blue.

My course book stresses that diving below 18 metres, the generally accepted boundary for deep dives, should not be done just for the sake of thrill. You should be descending to a depth because there is something you want to explore that requires it — perhaps marine life that doesn't exist at the surface or a wreck. However, I can't deny that the enjoyment I got out of my dive was largely due to the depth. It was oddly comforting to sit on the sandy bottom in the middle of so much blue, watch the life around me, and be completely enveloped in a different world.

Diving in the Red Sea

From India / Jordan

We pulled up on a beach owned by the prince of Dubai at about 9:30 yesterday morning. It was a barren piece of sandy land in the middle of an even more barren landscape of brown scorched hills by the Red Sea. Some evidence of its previous life as a public beach was strewn about in the form of broken bottles and cracked tarmac parking areas. Some piece of presumably corrupt politics allowed the land to be taken from the public and sold to the prince, husband to the daughter of the king of Jordan, for the purposes of development. The land sat empty — probably awaiting a rise in property prices, at which point he will be able to sell it for a profit.

On this hot summer day in the desert, however, the beach's private ownership was being conveniently ignored by our group of 9 divers for the purposes of scuba exploration. As the sun made its presence felt on every inch of exposed skin, we unloaded tanks of compressed air on the hot ground and started getting our gear on. A jeep drove up with a large machine gun mounted in the rear. Being near the borders of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the military was checking that everything with our dive group was kosher. Maybe kosher is the wrong word. Can you say they were checking everything was halal? I don't know. You get the picture.

We divided into two groups and walked across the beach to the shore. I noticed a family had claimed an old shelter and hung up woven goat-hair blankets to block out the sun on two sides. They had two goats with them. I wondered if they were squatting there. It didn't seem like a pleasant place to live.

Stepping in the water was instant relief from the heat. It was calm and clear which made for very enjoyable diving. It was my first time in 3 years and I was surprised how quickly it all came back to me. Everything went smoothly apart from a slight hiccup with my BCD, the vest you inflate and deflate to control buoyancy, on the second dive. I tried letting a little air in it and something got stuck, causing it to blow up like a balloon. I started floating skywards like a cartoon character who has inflated himself with helium. Luckily I was only 5 metres underwater so there was no risk of decompression problems. My instructor caught hold of me and fixed the stuck inflate button as I pulled the emergency dump valve to let all the air out of my veset. From then on it was smooth sailing.

The most exciting thing I saw was a puffer fish, the type that blows up to a large size to intimidate would-be predators. Of course, it may have just been mocking me but either way it was fascinating.

Once back on dry land, it became apparent that the family under the shelter wasn't living there. They were having a picnic with the goats. Having slaughtered both of them and hung up the meat, they were in the process of grilling as we walked back to the van to take off our gear.

Assuming all goes well, by the end of 3 days Eero will be a newly certified PADI Open Water scuba diver and I'll get my Advanced Open Water qualification.

Diary Notes from Jordan

From India / Jordan

Day 3

We left Amman today to head south. Our days in Jordan's capital city are remembered through a haze of nargileh (water pipe) smoke and falafel binges (total consumed so far: 21). We visited some of the Roman ruins scattered throughout the city, as well as a huge blue-domed mosque. Also enjoyed evenings in a rooftop cafe where the western atmosphere was matched by the menu prices. Looking forward to the sites of Petra.

Day 4

Falafels consumed: 27

Eero and I set a target to eat 80 falafels by the time he leaves in under 2 weeks. Consistency is key. If we keep going at our current rate there won't be any problem.

We spent the day walking around Petra, the ruins of a city carved into the stone faces of hills 2,000 years ago. It's just as mythical as it looks in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and slightly surreal as some of the sandstone has eroded over time, making it seem as if the rock has melted. I walked around wondering how an ancient civilisation had managed to carve away such huge volumes of stone. I also wondered at the presence of a large Mövenpick resort just outside the gates. The connection between Swiss ice cream and a historical site in the middle east escapes me.

Day 5

Falafels consumed: 32

Eero is showing signs of falafel fatigue. He missed the day's goal by 1. I may have to think of a motivational remedy.

Another day spent walking around Petra. It's a surprisingly large area, and when you take things at the lazy relaxed pace we do, you could spend days covering it all.

In the afternoon we hiked through a narrow canyon full of twists and turns. It's not a hidden trail — it's even listed in the Lonely Planet — but it was virtually free of tourists. The walls were only a couple meters apart in some places and worn smooth. Absolutely stunning. Although it looks like it was formed by water, in actual fact it's due to tectonic plates ripping the rock apart. A highlight of the trip so far.

Pictures to follow once my film is finished. Update: Links to pictures added.

On the Road Again

After a 6 week pause in India I hit the tarmac this morning, touching down in Jordan. The temperature was below 25C, a very nice change from the 40+ searing heat of Delhi. I've yet to do much apart from sleep (the 6:30am flight was precisely timed to prevent me from resting more than an hour last night) but I get the sense of a very friendly peaceful atmosphere walking around the streets.

My good friend Eero is due to arrive in an hour and will be joining me for the next couple weeks. I'm looking forward to his company. For now, I'll wander around until he gets here. Sitting in this internet cafe I can hear the evening's prayer from a nearby mosque. It's a soothing sound in the clear evening air.

Last week I took a trip to Amritsar and the India-Pakistan border, where every evening the guards put on an incredible show when lowering the flag and closing the border gates. I didn't manage to write about it (and really, a video is needed to do it justice) but some pictures are online here. It has become such an event that crowds gather to watch from grandstands and there is an emcee to lead the crowd in chants of "Hindustan! Hindustan!" The guards' marching is straight out of John Cleese's hilarious turn in the "don't mention the war" episode of Faulty Towers.

There was more to the trip, like the incredible Golden Temple (pictures alone unfortunately cannot begin to give a sense of the atmosphere) and an unplanned jaunt up to Dharamsala / McLeod Ganj (abode of the Dalai Lama in exile). I hope to pick up my pen a bit more often now I'm on the move again.