What are the tears of the night?

Note: the Internet at Al-Amera has been slow all evening, so there are no pictures with this post (though I'll try to get some more up soon). Consider this your warning, as there's a long entry below!

What a weekend! Our trip to Dana Nature Reserve was (once again) unlike any trip I’ve ever taken. Six of us (me, Rakhee, Maria, Jamie, Dan, and Cory) opted to take public transportation since last weekend’s excursion to Aqaba and Wadi Rum ended up being pretty expensive. The girls had made reservations at the Dana Tower Hotel with a very helpful man named Hamzeh who told us that we could take a bus straight to Dana village if we asked around (most buses go to Tafila, a larger city nearby, and you have to hire another minibus or taxi to get to the village). Hamzeh told us he knew of at least one driver who he described as “fat, a fat man, like a bodyguard,” who could take us straight to Dana, though if we asked around, we could find others headed in the same direction. After deliberating amongst ourselves and with the bus drivers, we found a bus for 3JD—a real steal. However, right as we were about to leave, the fat bodyguard bus driver showed up, furious. Apparently our hotel had told him that there would be Americans waiting to get to Dana, and he was determined to have our business. He jumped into our bus and yelled at us to get off, saying he would charge us 2.50 JD. When our bus driver tried to start driving, he pushed his way to the front, wrenched the gear shift from the driver’s hand, and stopped the bus while delivering a punch. We stopped immediately, and all the men on the bus got off to settle the dispute in the parking lot.

Fortunately, a police car was nearby and the officers escorted both drivers to the local precinct nearby. A UJ student our bus who spoke English noted our worry and informed us with a laugh that such incidents happen more often then you think. Still, I didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified that our patronage is in such high demand.

The dispute was settled inside the precinct, and soon we were on our way via the King’s Highway, a long, twisting road that runs roughly parallel to Israel through Jordan’s countryside and desert. Goats and camels were the only traffic we saw for many miles. After a couple hours, we started going through small towns, where we would let a few passengers off at a time. Finally, we were the only passengers left on the bus, and the driver invited us to sit up near him.

We were in a village only a few miles from Dana, when all of a sudden our drivers seemed to know everyone we passed by. We ended up making a couple stops, to pick up a man the driver called “donkey,” presumably because of his short stature, and to chat with another friend of the driver. It turns out that our driver’s friend, who was clad in blood-spattered boots and brandished a large knife as he waved hello to us was a butcher. Good to know that the exclamations of “gill cheap” (“kill sheep” with a heavy rural accent) followed by a slashing motion and garbage can overflowing with intestines and horns in the front yard were nothing to worry about.

Nonetheless, we were somewhat relieved to be let off at the crossroads to Dana village. Our driver had tried to convince us that it would be 5JD each to get from the crossroads to Dana village, but we spoke with Hashem before being let off and he arranged for a van to take us to the village, free for patrons of the Tower hotel.

Driving into Dana felt as if we were going back in time. The village is comprised of several small one-story stone huts, almost all of which have been abandoned and are in various states of disrepair. We later found out that only two families live in Dana, everyone else has moved out to larger villages nearby. Our hotel, which “towers” (hence its name) over the other buildings at a whopping two stories, was a dilapidated maze of stone staircases and verandas. The interior and rooms were decorated from wall to wall with an eclectic mix of carpets, knickknacks, and on many of the walls, graffiti by past hotel guests. To top it off, the rooms all had names—we were staying in the “Sunset Royal Suite,” near the “Honeymoon suite” and right below the “Crazy Camel” and “Chinese” rooms. The staff at the hotel was very friendly, and served us tea out on the balcony as we figured out our plans for the afternoon.

We decided to take an afternoon hike to the local spring. Though Wadi Dana is not as “lush” as the guide books described it, it’s definitely as breathtaking as they promised. The hills leading down to the valley are dotted with more trees then you’ll see anywhere else, with tall cedars and abandoned vineyards and orchards. Rakhee and Dan found some green grapes which were a welcome snack on the hike, though almost all of them were sour!

We went headed back to our hotel and relaxed until dinner, a buffet meal of (surprise!) local Arab cuisine with the other hotel guests. It was an interesting mix of people: an older French couple, two young French women who teach French in a small village near Karak, two middle-aged Italian women, and an Israeli Jew who had already traveled to India and Egypt, among others.

After dinner we spent some time talking to the hotel manager, Nabil about hiking in the morning and transportation back to Amman. He arranged everything through a few phone calls, and then we sat out under the stars and talked. It turns out that Nabil has had a very interesting life: he visited North Carolina and several other states in the U.S. in his youth for military training. He used to be in the Jordanian military, but was part of the Special Forces and also became a Ranger while visiting the U.S. He was glad to hear we were Arabic students, and like so many other people we have met thus far, encouraged us to have a good experience in Jordan and promote cultural understanding between the East and the West.

But the part of our conversation that I will remember best is the part I’m sure I can’t do justice: learning back with his kheffiyah around his shoulders and cigarette in hand, Nabil told us that you can spend your life out in the desert, but you will never fully understand the night. He asked us: What are the tears of the night? What is the music of the night? What is the perfume of the night? What is the crazy of the night? One of the Italian ladies figured out these riddles: falling stars are the tears, wind is the music, but the rest had us stumped. Perhaps it was the night air, the mint tea, and the cool, quiet desert setting that made the riddles seem worldly and mysterious, but they also made me think back to a letter I received from Kathleen, my godmother, shortly before I left for Jordan, and made me appreciate my travels in a different light. Despite the adjustments I and others have had to make for this trip, it is still a one-of-a kind experience that I’ll never have again.

We went to bed on the early side since everyone had early hikes planned for the next day. Rakhee and I hiked part of the way into Wadi Dana, the huge valley below Dana village the next morning. It was a very steep hike back up—we ended up leaving the path and scrambling up the desert rocks, dodging goat droppings and minor sand slides to make our way, huffing and puffing into the village shortly before our bus came to take us to Tafila.

We arrived at the Tafila bus station around noon, and started asking around for busses to Amman. To our surprise, the bus drivers already knew we were coming—they’d caught wind of our bus debacle the day before and when they saw the six of us, laughingly asked “mushkillah? Mushkillah?” (This roughly means “trouble” or “problem”). Word travels fast in these parts. We told them “mish mushkillah” (“no problems”) and squished into the back of a minibus which departed only a few minutes after our arrival to the station.

All in all, it was a full and fulfilling weekend, not to mention easier on the money belt then Wadi Rum and Aqaba. The entire weekend ended up costing us about 21 JD each—not bad at all, considering we also learned how to use public transport to get around Jordan and picked up a few secrets of the desert and the night along the way. I can’t believe that I only have three weekends left to travel—there’s still so much I want to see before I go! However, I have to lay down the Rough Guide to Jordan in favor of my women’s studies reading for tomorrow. Time to explore Jordan through a gendered, theoretical perspective!