Month: May 2013

A Journey, Part 7. Perspectives

Leaving Masada behind, we drove north, skirting around the Dead Sea before crossing back into Jordan at the Allenby Bridge. Getting into Israel at this border post had been such an ordeal a few weeks earlier, but crossing back to Jordan was a breeze. Jordan had become a kind of home-from-home for us, as we used it to stage our expeditions into the neighbouring countries. This was our third time crossing into the country and each time we’d encountered the same friendly reception. Getting back to Amman that evening, we checked back into the same hotel where we had stayed previously and I noted in my journal;

The mood in Jordan is so different from that in Israel. More easy going and laid back. Everyone seems happy despite the fact that most are poor. Israel was great, but I must confess that it’s good to be back.

The next morning we set off early for the Saudi Embassy, hoping that the visa applications would have been processed in our absence. This was, of course, wishful thinking, and the next few days saw repeated visits to the embassy, all to no avail. In the end, we managed to get the phone number of Madame Nadia, a member of staff who would serve as a point of contact for status updates, and we took the Kings Highway south toward the Red Sea port of Aqaba.

The scenery on the journey south from Amman is spectacular with vast wadis and canyons. Like many countries in the Middle East, Jordan is an archaeologist’s dream, rich in ancient history. From Amman, we’d day-tripped to the wonderfully preserved Roman ruins at Jerash, and also to a few desert castles, including Qasr Azraq, a fort used by T E Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. Now journeying south, we stopped to visit the crusader castle at Kerak, with its warren of subterranean passages and chambers, but of all the historical treasures in Jordan, few would dispute that the Nabataean city of Petra is the jewel in the crown.

Located in a hidden valley with the only access being through the Siq – a winding and narrow canyon – Petra remained unknown to the West until 1812. It’s hard to describe the first sight of the Khazneh as one emerges from the Siq – one really has to see it to appreciate the impact it has. Standing 14 storeys high, perfectly balanced and precisely carved from the rose-coloured sandstone cliff, it’s without doubt one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring of human creations. Somehow it’s managed to escape the ravages of time and almost two thousand years on it remains in near pristine state. We spent a day wandering about the ancient city, trying to absorb as much of it as we could. While Nabataean culture vanished many centuries ago and little is known today about these ancient people, we do know that to them Petra was the cosmic navel – the very centre of the Universe and the source of all energy and life.

From Petra, we continued our journey south to Aqaba and once there, set up camp in a seaside campsite a few miles from the Saudi border. We would spend the next few weeks there, taking daily trips into Aqaba town to phone Madame Nadia at the Saudi embassy in Amman and to get our daily fix of mint tea and Kunafeh. The campsite was a hub not only for for travelers passing through, but also for Jordanians who would come on the weekends to spend time with their families, and for Saudi men who would come across the border to ogle at Western women less modestly clad than legal at home.

I have so many memories from the campsite, including a Bedouin pop song that was played so many times by the caretakers that it remains imprinted in my mind and I don’t believe any amount of therapy would succeed in removing it. I managed to get through both Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield while we waited. There was a coral reef a short distance offshore and we would snorkel out to break the boredom of the day. It may sound like an idyllic location, but in reality the campsite was a desolate and windy place more reminiscent of a scene from Baghdad Cafe than Blue Lagoon.

Written near the back of my journal, in Western and Arabic script, are the names of four Arab men that we met and shared stories with in while there. Their names were Ali Mansoor Abu, Mohammed Ali, Eid Amer, and Daifallah Ali. I vividly remember sitting around a fire that they had invited us to, and using pieces of pita to eat chicken with yogurt as we talked about their lives and ours. As inevitably happened in these conversations they talked of how wronged they felt by Western hostility towards Arabs and the misconceptions in the West about Arab and Muslim culture. How strongly they felt that the news reaching people in the West was biased to Western views and perspectives and undermined Arabs and the truth. This same perspective was something that I had felt since entering the Middle East a few months before; It’s almost as if we become so used to one-sided stories that we come to accept that the side we know is the only side that exists.

If there is one truth that I have learned, it is that truth is elusive and those who claim to always know the truth are inevitably either fools or fanatics. I like to think that most people are neither and yet, despite that, we can and do have vastly different perspectives on what is essentially the same truth. In reality it’s difficult and often impossible for us to completely set aside the biases that our cultures, experience, and circumstances impart on us when evaluating the facts in order to arrive at we believe to be the truth. Even so, if we are aware of the impact that our predispositions can have on our analysis of the facts, we can try to take them into account and we will inevitably arrive at an approximation of truth that is more accurate than would have been the case had we not done so. As the world becomes ever more driven by corporate and political spin, so I think that the onus shifts to us as individuals set aside any desired or supposed outcomes and to be responsible when searching for the facts and determining the truth that the facts reveal.

Empathy is what allows us to see as through the eyes of another. The world will always be full of people with different opinions and perspectives and we should be thankful for and celebrate that diversity, or at the very least tolerate it. We can empathise with those that suffer if we allow ourselves to and I believe that as human beings we should always try to do so, equally and across the divisions between us. While it’s easy to say this, I find I have to remind myself, for instance, that the brutal killing of a child is no less a crime against humanity when it happens in Baghdad than it is when it happens in Boston. Increasingly, I find that the only attitude that I have no tolerance for is intolerance itself; It’s intolerance that ultimately brings about the lack of empathy that divides us and leads to hatred, mistrust, fanaticism, and violence.

For me, travel has always been about expanding horizons and new perspectives and experiences. Although I had great difficulty with many aspects of Arab and Middle Eastern culture, as our time in the region drew to an end I found myself rejecting many of the stereotypes prevalent in the West and accepting that many of the views held in the West are based on misunderstandings and a perspective that is fundamentally one-sided and flawed.

Despite our attempts to pass the time in the campsite, which included a spectacular day trip across the open desert to Wadi Rum, as the days marched on and there was no progress with our Saudi visas, we became increasingly restless. Despite weeks spent waiting and numerous promises, there had been no progress at all with the Saudi embassy in Amman, so we decided on a change of plan. We had heard that the Saudi Embassy in Cairo would issue transit visas to travelers sailing by sea from Suez in Egypt, to Massawa in Eritrea, allowing them to change ships in Jeddah, but not allowing them out of the port. We didn’t want to take our car into Egypt because of the enormous expense, so we decided to go to Cairo to buy passenger tickets, preferably fake, then get Saudi transit visas before returning to Jordan and using the visas for overland access.

Finally, on 16 May, we boarded Santa Catarina,the slow boat to Egypt. Once there, all went according to plan and a week later, on Friday 23 May, we arrived back in Aqaba. With Friday being the Muslim equivalent of our Sunday, we guessed that we would have less chance of encountering red tape at the border post, so we headed straight there with our not-valid-for-overland-travel-and-obtained-with-fake-tickets Saudi Arabian visas in tow. As if by miracle, they let us in.

It would take us two days to reach Jeddah and on this day, 16 years ago, we spent the day on the road south. In mid-afternoon, we turned inland off the coast road and drove a few miles across the open desert to free camp. The reading on the GPS was 24° 32.49N, 37° 29.83E.