10/11
London fog. Or, to be more precise, Heathrow fog, though I expect they share the same weather. I don’t know why I thought its fame to be myth but I have just been proven utterly wrong. It really is as thick as pea soup. Landing was a shock as I had thought we were still descending through an exceptionally long layer of clouds. Had I been less tired, I might have taken a cue from the short glimpse of early sunrise, a thin, bloody red band blossoming into the most brilliant swath of orange before being obscured well before touching down.
10/13
The Inland Sea is like nothing else I’ve seen before. The steady wind which has followed us over the miles of dunes to get here blows in from the water, carrying the smell of clean salt. The water itself is sharply divided in two distinct shades of blue; a light greenish aqua at the shore turns abruptly into a deep grey-blue of the sea after about 100 feet. It is peaceful and inviting, a combination that I have rarely been able to ascribe to the sea. It’s easy to be still here….
… What does it mean to be myself? Can I behave differently in different cultures and still be me; be comfortable? Which is more important: doing a specific thing or achieving a specific result?
10/14
For a middle eastern country, Qatar seems extremely enlightened. The Amir and his second wife [he has four] are very much beloved by their people. The Amir has created a council of advisers, half appointed by him, half elected by the people, from which he makes his decisions. It’s about as close to a democracy as a monarchy can get. Education is incredibly important here, and the second wife’s pet project. K-12 schooling is mandatory and college is highly encouraged for men and women alike. In fact, the schooling of any Qatari native is entirely free, wherever in the world they wish to take it. There is no income tax, health care is free, and the government will give the men who graduate from college a plot of land and a loan with which to build a home. For the record, women can own property and are a strong economic force here, though they don’t enjoy that particular benefit upon graduating college.
It suddenly strikes me as particularly poignant to be contemplating the difference between the public and private selves here, in this part of the world, where the disparity may be among the greatest. It makes me wonder how the Muslim belief system is reconciled with daily life. Most of the Christians I know are not very good ones, strictly speaking. Is the average Muslim any different?
10/15 (Petra at night)
The walk down to the Siq is pleasant. The pathway is wide and gently sloping. The direction meanders a bit, as if it is in no particular hurry to be getting anywhere. The smell of horse is strong and I hear a soft whickering nearby, where a small herd of them are bedded down for the night. A jet flies overhead sounding, just for a moment, like thunder. We pass the first gate. Even in the darkness it has a majesty about it and, crossing through, I begin to feel a sense of peace and great love. Truly, this is a holy place.
The canyon walls have gathered in like old friends, escorting us the rest of the way down to the treasury. The walk is so pleasing that I almost don’t want it to end. These walls of ancient stone seem to understand the sentiment and generously oblige me with a most satisfying distance. The raw dirt and rock give way at some point to worked stone which once ran all the way up but now only remains in patches.
Slowly, the strains of a single rapapa begin to emerge from the darkness. We are nearing our destination. Coming around the final bend, the ground is covered in candle bags. The rapapa player is sitting in their midst at the base of the tomb commonly known as the treasury and the throng of people who rushed down before us are all seated around him on the ground or leaning up against the cavern walls, enthralled. The melody is at once simple and complex. There are very few different notes, but the ways in which he combines them soon leave me shaking my head, lost, and so I just try to still my mind and listen. A man comes around with a tray of sweetened tea after the last echoes of the prayerful tune leave the valley and are replaced by that of a lone flute coming from within the [tomb] itself. Again, this new melody is a simple one and yet incomprehensible and unwilling to be followed by my untrained ears. So again I just try to listen, sipping my tea in respectful silence. At the conclusion of this second tune, we are invited to sit in total silence for two minutes, a feat which turns out to be impossible for many.
10/16
We ride horses down to the Siq this time. My horse’s handler tells me his nickname is Zorro (the handler, not the horse) and he comments on my “Indiana Jones” hat. I’ve been getting compliments on this hat all week. I find it funny, especially here, where the movie was filmed. To me, it was just the best hat I had for keeping the sun off.
As expected, there is so much more to see today within the same ground we covered last night. I am even more glad to have had the prior introduction now as it allows me to focus on details that would have been lost to me otherwise in sensory overload.
This place is huge; it’s an entire city built to accommodate the living and the dead in equal measure, spreading out all over this canyon. There are stairs carved into the rocks nearly everywhere you turn…. I can see why they chose it, just on the beauty of the stone alone. Comprised of layer upon layer of sandstone, the stone changes color ten times in the span of an inch. You could spend five days here and not see it all; ten if you had [our] guide.
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