April 10, 2009 Jordan- Petra

Petra is incredible. It’s one of the 7 wonders of the world (the ancient city carved into the red rock cliffs about 6,000 years ago). The immense sculptures carved into swirling stone of mauve and red and rose and black. But the life that interacts with it, I think, is what makes its wonder. The small 8 year old Bedoin girl, hair fully covered, who skips toward my friend Najwa and I, and asks us the time in 5 languages, hoping to hit the right one and get us to answer so she can start the conversation and sell us one of the necklaces dangling from her outstretched forearm. She swears to Najwa in Arabic that she only does this on her time off from school. She grins and skips away.

Further up, the small boys sell the donkey rides to those of us with sore feet. The camels laze and munch beneath the ancient rock columns. The young men with playful eyes and long hair race their horses up the track, slow down and sell rides and flirt with the young women trudging past. I hear the legends of western women lured by Bedoin culture and married to Bedoin men, agreeing to live as nomads or near-it.

It’s clear why.

Aside from the fact that a couple of these guys look like Johnny Depp with the hair and eyeliner of Pirates of the Caribbean--it’s the idea of freedom. Home for many of us has come to be a place of things designed for comfort and luxury—a world of things which become a greater need to our minds than Spirit, than culture, than freedom. We bend to them. For young people with a strong sense of passion and spirit, the suburbs are like the 7th level of hell. We dream of being cowboys/girls and hobos, long past when those cultures were truly alive back home. Bedoin culture, in a lot of ways is that—the mystery, the rejection of creature comfort in favor of culture and nights full of desert stars.