Becoming دعسان 

In the Balkans I had decided on a course of action for future trips. The strong and decisive masochistic bone in my body had decided that my travels were missing that mental or physical hardship that makes you want to cry and go home. I wanted to struggle at doing something worthwhile instead of coasting around as a backpacker. So, I signed myself up for a month of Arabic classes so that I could build a grammatical framework around the large but random collection of words I already knew. The mental challenge was definitely there, however, when I got back into the flow of living in Jordan, I realised that the city felt too familiar and easy. Routine was boring me and so I set time aside to visit my Bedouin friend Tawfiq down in Wadi Rum because the desert cures all ills. After spending weeks down there, I got to know a little more about Tawfiq and life as a Bedouin, but also about the desert itself.  

One of the Gang 

After hitchhiking from the main road with an Italian couple and repaying their kindness through translation and information, I walked to a new falafel place in Rum village while Tawfiq was off sorting some tourists out. Falafel shops are a ubiquitous and venerated part of day-to-day life in Jordan and so they became my food-fuelled happy place, a place I was quite at home. But then they charged me 2JD for a plate of hummus. I raised my eyebrows and my internal monologue tutted loudly saying ‘That’s extortionate for hummus’ but I paid the man because of hunger and that underlying British embarrassment in the face of possible confrontation. I sat sipping tea when Tawfiq arrived, he asked me where my food was, and I told him about the extortion that had occurred. A couple of years ago Tawfiq had given me a Bedouin name دعسان (Da’san) and now I heard it used in an anger-filled tirade at the men in the shop. Tawfiq boomed that it was unacceptable that they had charged me tourist prices seeing as I was not a tourist, I was in fact دعسان, a good friend. The shop’s owners came out and apologised profusely, gave me my money back, brought my food and gave me extra falafel on the side.  

We stopped at Tawfiq’s house before heading out to the camp. He needed a shower and the camel in his backyard needed milking. He milked the camel into a metal mug, and offered me it. I gave it a swig and it was so creamy, smooth and a little sweet. Most intriguingly the warmth was nice too. You can keep your run of the mill cow milk, get me that luxury camel milk. 

I spent many evenings with Tawfiq and his friends or family. Some evenings we would take tourists out to watch the sunset from a huge escarpment looking over an untouched tract of desert, there we would sit, drink tea and I would try to decipher as much of the conversation as I could. Other evenings we would hang around the entrance gate to the national park where tourists would have to come by and show their pass and tell us their camp’s name. Tawfiq would say that being there was like fishing, fishing for tourists who didn’t know where to stay or trying to convince people to come to our camp instead. But really, I think it was just an excuse to mess around with his friends who were there to “fish” too. 

The Sheik’s Take on Shergar  

One of the main reasons I came down to visit Tawfiq was to see the camel races. They happen a few times throughout the year and are a serious affair in the Bedouin community. The camels are bred, trained and fed specifically for racing. In fact, a champion racing camel in the camel racing heartlands of Saudi Arabia or Oman can go for far more than a prize race horse, millions of pounds on a single humped beast. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the racing, I had been told to get up before sunset so we could catch the first race and check on Tawfiq’s camel.  

In the truck before the sun had risen over the mountains, the colour drained landscape of a cold dawn greeted us. As we sped towards Ad-Disah, where the race would happen, the golden sun slid from behind bulbous mountains and did its best to warm our faces. Dust and dense early morning mist intermingled above the sand, clinging on despite the sun’s gathering heat, which was restoring colour to the landscape, its light soaking into the porous surfaces and reviving their rich tones.  

The camel track was a 6km long oval situated on the hard mud of a dry lakebed, however the track itself was made from soft sand. The first day of racing was for the young camels which ran 2km or 4km. Before the racing, we went into the area where the camels were being prepared and it was perhaps the most interesting part. Reminiscent of Saudi sheep markets, there were Arabs from all over the peninsula and beyond. Dark skinned men often leant on or tended to the couched camels, while gruff throaty shouts of Arabic and whatever camels speak vied for their message to be heard. Radio controlled robotic whips were tinkered with on the desiccated ground before being tied to the camels. Soon a man in a keffiyeh started calling names from a sheet of paper and camels were quickly brought forward to be numbered with spray paint. Either obediently led or aggressively persuaded, they then went to the track. By this point most owners were running for their pick-up trucks ready for the start of the race, while the people who had to prepare for the next race stayed behind and watched the race live-streamed on Facebook on their phones.

As soon as the barrier is raised the grunting growling race begins. An ungraceful and surprisingly quick start becomes unexpectedly engrossing as the camels stretch out their legs into a full gallop silhouetted by the rising sun. Over 4km it was hard to tell which was going to win, some would drop back as others found a burst of speed. We drove at the front of the pack of trucks that followed the camels from the outside of the track. As the race was coming into its final section, cars beeped incessantly to encourage the camels; men, drivers and boys hung out of windows to shout for their camel. Headscarves were waved madly, and shouts became more rabid as we entered the final turn. The driving was as insane as you would imagine from a load of drivers looking to their left at their camel instead of the dusty and uneven lakebed in front of them. Swerving, bumping, beeping cars all in a ragtag formation, kicking up a dust storm in its wake, it was as if I had transported myself into Mad Max: Bedouin Badlands (the soon to come sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road). 

The next day the older and stronger camels raced the full distance (6km) and got up to 45kph. Tawfiq’s father won a race and once again we finished the day covered in dust and completely in awe of the scenes we had witnessed. 

Canyon Cruising 

The day before the camel racing a German girl called Leila and an Aussie guy called Matt had arrived at the camp. I had met them in Amman before and got along with both easily, on the day of the final camel race we decided that instead of getting a lift all the way back to the camp we would hike through the desert. Tawfiq recommended a trail that led from Rum village through a rocky cleft in the mountains and then over the sandy desert floor to the camp, it isn’t on any tourist’s radar, and you would never know about it unless you were told. Sounded like an adventure. So, after gaining little insight from Tawfiq’s terrible explanation on where to walk, we made sure we had enough water, some food and set off.  

First, we climbed up an old, dry waterfall, its sweeping curve traversing the valley that would lead us to the base of the mountains. The climbing wasn’t too hard but gave us a good introduction of what we could expect for the rest of the morning. On top of the waterfall was a flat shelf of rock a few hundred metres wide that extended along the base of the huge mountains ahead of us. We were faced with a choice of three canyons to take us onwards and through the mountains, we chose wrong first, heading down a sheer sided valley, only finding pools of water and places to climb. We turned around, happy with our little mistake and the views it afforded us up onto the unfathomable expanse of the bare and perfectly sheer cliff faces.  

In the correct valley according to the arrows carved into the rock, we walked a little way down the narrow bush strewn canyon floor and climbed small rock faces no more than six metres high to continue. However, as we got deeper into the mountain, the climbing became harder and the drops steeper. Matt, the most jovial, jokey, slang slinging Aussie you’ll ever meet was for want of a better word ‘shook’, He was not a fan of heights and was struggling in sections. Leila was not an experienced climber either, so I was somehow leader of the group, forging a path ahead and finding the easiest way for them to follow. As the rock continued to press in on us and the climbing continued to increase in difficulty, we thought about the difficulty of returning and instead pressed on (climbing down a rock face is often much harder than climbing up).  

We reached the final challenge, and it was the scariest yet, seeing no easy way forward after a good look at all the options, I said we would have to climb a crack in the rock away to our left which led up to a small flat platform and then one final lip of a climb above that. I went first climbing the crack steadily by jamming hands and feet into it and finding hard and secure juts of rock to use as holds. The crack was actually ok, a bit of a long steep fall for Matt’s mind to overcome but the rock was grippy and there were plenty of hand holds. On the small platform I soon realised that it would be the next small section that would be the hardest part. It was a 4m wall with only a few decent handholds and no good places for your feet. It was an inelegant climb full of grunts and slithers to get to the top. Matt came up after me and I gave him a hand up the final wall and as soon as he got up, he walked off shaking with the adrenaline dump and took a couple of minutes to calm down. Leila stormed her way up the crack but when she got to the final wall, she got her feet a little muddled and slipped down, falling back onto the small platform and scraping her stomach on the rock in the process. I was thankful for the width of that platform and Leila’s perseverance to get to the top on her second try. A few nerves were frayed so we took a break before continuing.  

The walk down the other side of the canyon was easier, Matt played music, we chatted, and I got to know them both much better. Matt was just a joker through and through, a really nice guy as well. Leila exuded confidence, intelligence and I think she enjoyed the outrageous cheeky confidence of Matt. 

Once we were out of the canyon and into the sun, Matt revealed his final form. There’s too much going on to warrant a description or explanation, please see below for a photo so you can feast your eyes on the sight yourself. Before the final stretch to the camp, we summited an enormous soft sand dune and had a snack on top, taking in the vastness of the place.  

That evening I chatted away to Mahmoud (the Egyptian cook and cleaner in Tawfiq’s camp), he spoke no English and I think it must be incredibly isolating for him to live far from home in the desert with no one to talk to but his employer. It was nice to practice my Arabic with him and to teach him some English. As Matt, Leila and I unwound after out busy day, we spotted camels walking across the wide valley. I told Matt to go and grab some stale bread from Mahmoud and sure enough the camels came, and we fed them from the tent. After the bread was gone the camels wouldn’t leave and so we took it in turns to chase them away which was incredibly entertaining. Finally, before I went off to sleep, I sat in the doorway to my tent, the fresh unpolluted air of the desert mixing with the floral aromas from my recently showered body. I looked up at the hundreds of stars shining through the inky firmament and imagined their indiscriminate dispersion of light shining through the unimaginable vastness of space. Beauty requires no meaning, no explanation but the incredible beauty of space is only enhanced by how unfathomable it is to us. Tawfiq turned off the light in the main tent as I sat there and I saw him move to-and-fro by the blue-white light of his phone torch, preparing to sleep outside beneath the stars.  

The next day I was heading back to Amman and one of the tourists at the camp had a car and was doing the same thing, so I asked for him to give me a lift. He said yes, hurray! But hang on, oh my goodness this man was awful. He had been mostly insufferable when I heard him at the camp (complaining that it was boring, that the Bedouins should move their trucks because they were blocking his view, that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working etc.). On the long journey north, it transpired that he was only spending 48 hours in Jordan in total saying that he thought that was ‘plenty’, he expressed his disinterest in the culture, the food and the sights. He even, in an attempt at a change of subject, expressed his dislike of his own daughter. In fact, the only thing he seemed keen to do at all, was to get a massage. I was utterly bewildered by this Dominican American’s view on the world and glad to get out of the car. Although, despite everything, I had made it to Amman free of charge and now had a story to tell about an awful person and people love to hear about awful people. It’s a very strange human interest and one I whole heartedly endorse. Who wants to read a book on a charity giving, family person who gives time energy resources and love for the sake of goodness as opposed to the fear of supernatural retribution after death. Unless they were especially important in history, then give them a miss. But killers, maniacs, gang leaders, drug dealers, instigators of ethnic cleansing and genocide those are interesting people. They give us an insight into the mind of the other, someone we couldn’t imagine encountering, or a life we couldn’t imagine leading. So, when your autobiography comes out my Dominican American friend, I shall be first in line at Waterstones.  

A Bloody Courtyard  

I had just finished my Arabic course and I knew already that I would spend my final week in Jordan back down in Wadi Rum. I had an exciting hike planned, one that I had been thinking about for a few years, but before that, Tawfiq told me that his family was coming together to slaughter a camel. This was to thank Allah for his niece’s recovery after being hit by a car a few weeks before. Tawfiq invited me to come along, and it was one of the most intense, visceral things I have ever seen.  

The camel was led into a small courtyard which it filled almost all of. It seemed to know what was about to happen by the guttural growls, violent shakes of the head and attempts to get up from its couched position. Boys as young as 5 or 6, all the way up to the patriarchs of the family, filled the gaps in the courtyard and various knives were being passed around by all. There were hefty cleavers, plastic handled little knives, long straight knives with wooden handles and long curved blades. The demonic groans and guttural shouts from the camel intensified and reached fever pitch as its throat was slit, the blood spray was projected horizontally out of the courtyard to the dirt and sand. Everyone got to work quickly, and first the head was taken off. Skinning the animal began in earnest. The older more experienced men set to work on the body, while the younger men were given the neck. Knives were called for as theirs were dulled by the work, young children brought them hurriedly from all corners. The children then brought the dulled ones to the cinder block walls to sharpen them. As the camel was butchered, bowls were brought for the blood, while sacks and string were brought for the unwanted organs. Tawfiq’s father had the only seat in the courtyard and watched intently. His thick meaty hands, rested steadily on his lap or grasped into a pocket for a cigarette, they’d done these jobs before, everything from knife holding to skinning and butchering, now it was his time to rest and oversee. As the butchering continued, mainly from a large wooden tree stump block, meat, gristle and bone flew with every swing of the cleaver. Full cups of tea sat next to the butcher’s block, but the tea was drunk down quickly despite the flying organic material probably finding its way into each cup. Everyone was blood soaked, hands were red, dishdashas were spattered heavily and sliders were discoloured. Yes, that’s right most people were wearing sliders. How has that become the butchering footwear of choice? Maybe you can’t trust the cut of your knife unless your toes are able to breathe? Is that a butchery superstition? Or do they perhaps like the pitter-patter of blood falling on their naked foot? God knows.  

As meat was transferred into the largest pot I’ve ever seen in my life, an old man in the corner was sat on the floor with two young boys watching them try to chop a leg bone in half. He carefully intervened, demonstrated and explained how to do it with smile on his face, presumably remembering when he was their age, learning the same skills from his older relatives. 

Later that day, we came back to the house and ate the kidney and liver (always eaten first in Arab culture) with freshly cooked bread, while sat on the floor with Tawfiq’s family. Much like my experience with Abdulrahman’s family in Taif, I was seated in accordance with my status in the family, so to my right were the old men and I was sat by the next dish, which was with the middle-aged men, elsewhere the children and women ate their fill too.   

I found the whole experience of this day utterly amazing. Yes, the slaughter of the camel was a little sickening, with that volume of blood and the exorcist-like sounds of the camel before it died. However, the butchering process was fascinating. The way the whole family worked together, their differing roles in the process and seeing a full camel being broken down to the cuts of meat we take for granted as plastic packaged hunks of disassociated sustenance was so important to me. I felt not only connected to the culture and to Tawfiq’s family, but also to the meal I was to have later. In a way I wished I could have more of a connection to my food more often, maybe not slaughtering my own animals but moving away from the sterile environment of a supermarket. Instead, I wanted to continue to have the opportunity to go to markets, butchers and greengrocers. That part of the British way of life has eroded away for the sake of convenience but is very much alive elsewhere in the world and the difference in quality is often evident. Seasonal produce is king and air miles clock in at zero. 

Water is Disgustingly Heavy

As those who have been following this rollercoaster of inconsistent blog posts will know, when I lived in Jordan I completed a few sections of the Jordan Trail, the national trail running the length of the country. This was in part due to a thirst for adventure but maybe an equal or bigger part was an excuse to escape and evade the Jordanian government trying to keep me inside, day in day out, during Covid lockdown. The furthest south we reached on our Jordan Trail adventures was Dana, a beautiful area of mountains and desert near Petra. However, the stretch both Firas and I most wanted to hike was from Wadi Rum to the sea at Aqaba (around 72km), traversing the desert for three days. Now, I had been proselytising the idea of doing it together to Firas for the last 5 weeks and his enthusiasm hadn’t waned. He seemed keen. But, knowing how unreliable he is with plans and timings I gave him a date he needed to let me know by. Shock and horror he didn’t let me know anything and so I was left in a limbo waiting for my so-called friend to send a simple message. He didn’t, so I very angrily bought all the food and drink I could carry for the three days (some potatoes, aubergines, peppers, bread, ma’moul and five 1.5l bottles of water) and set off much later than I wanted, saying a fond farewell to Mahmoud and leaving around 3pm.  

First, I crossed the alternating hard and soft sand of the well-worn main valley that is crisscrossed by tyre tracks. I reached the entrance to Khazali canyon and walked past the famous sand dune, which is covered with tourists most days. From there, I entered the wide expanse of the next valley, the one that runs straight from Rum village into the distance. Sometimes it was horrible soft sand and sometimes it was glorious dark compacted small stones. The wind would whip up behind me out of nowhere and scour any loose sand onwards much more quickly than I was able to go, aiming to meet the slowly setting sun at the far-off mountains. My bag was unbelievably heavy with all the water, clothes, food and tent but I knew that I would make it, my bag would get lighter the more I drank and giving up isn’t really my thing. I reached the end of my long shallow ascent up the valley and took one last look at the vague outline of Rum village in the unsteady horizon behind me. I turned back to the job at hand and descended past a long train of camels and their owner, I was getting closer to the mountains and Bedouin camps had long since disappeared, only a few tyre tracks remained. I made it to the mountains just before the sun set and decided to make camp while I still had light. Before I pitched up, I found a small tourist camp, not a permanent Bedouin camp like Tawfiq’s, but at adventure tour group from KE Adventures in normal tents. I got chatting to one of their Bedouin guides who was super nice and was amazed that I had walked from Tawfiq’s camp (everyone knows everyone out there), he gave me some advice on different easier routes to Aqaba. However, I said I was a crazy Englishman, and I would prefer to do the real Jordan Trail route. He told me that once I was camped up I should let him know I needed anything. Without me asking he soon brought around two big bottles of water which were a Godsend, what a nice man. My fire took a bit of perseverance to get going but it was soon lighting up the red walls of my own little alcove of Wadi Um Al Muqawwar. Finding large enough sticks was difficult so lots of firewood foraging had to be done to get the fire hot enough for my potatoes and aubergines. I left them to bake and stared at the stars, thinking about the day and what was still to come. I was 5km short of the first day’s usual objective because of my late start, but I had still managed 20km in 3 hours according to maps.me which I’m not sure is right but I only know what I‘m told. This meant that to reach the suggested campsite for the last night of the trail I would have to walk 32km the next day, with a lot of elevation. I knew I would do it and I knew it would be hard, but I had no idea quite how far my body would be pushed.  

I started my second day by giving some of my rubbish to the nice man in the tourist camp and then began a long uphill slog through soft sand before the sun had a chance to reach the valley floor. I turned right, up and round a rocky rise where I was supposed to have camped the night before. I dipped down into a wide stony valley surrounded by the classic bulbous mountains of Wadi Rum but far away from any signs of humanity. This was the edge of Wadi Rum’s classic scenery though, because I soon began walking into a narrower valley with water wells and a steady incline. This meant that with every step the views of Wadi Rum kept improving behind me but I couldn’t stop for long because the flies were awful. For this reason, I had to, once again, use the tried and tested t-shirt around the head trick (a long-established tradition for keeping the sun off my neck and the flies out of my ears).  So, with the swarm of invertebrate freeloaders out of my ears but still staunchly encamped on my bag, I reached the top of the hill where a lone tree stood out among the beige sand and rock.  

Soon I was heading downhill towards the distant speck of Titen, a remote Bedouin village sitting in a wide valley fed by the wadi I was walking down. At Titen, I got a bit of a second wind and the horribly aching shoulders were bearable for a while and my painful lower back was eased by shorter steps. This glorious second wind ended about half way up the next hill. It was a narrow pass following a rock-strewn wadi. It was beautiful and reminded me of Tinghir in Morocco but the rocks moved when I stepped on them, I was tired and had been forced to take drastic measures. I had been forced to go commando to alleviate the chafing on the inside of my thigh. I had already walked over 20km and at the top of the wadi I decided to take a much-needed break. I scoffed ma’moul like a wild animal and took in the view of the far-off trees in front of the dark mountain where I would soon be heading. I felt the trepidation of two hobbits seeing the fires of Mordor for the first time, I was tired and climbing wasn’t what my body wanted to do and yet here we were. No magical ring on my person but I did have the hairy feet of a hobbit, so I was halfway there.  

Heading down was fine and so was skirting the dark mountain, I even felt somewhere close to functional going under the power lines. Was this my third wind? I sat near to the huge high voltage wires watching them disappear into the distance, where the mountains were featureless due to the sun hovering just behind them. I began the last climb of the day feeling alright but as the incline remained the same and the varying soft and hard gravel underfoot wore on, I began to die a little inside with every step. I was done. I began stopping every 100 metres to check how far I had left to walk and for the smallest of rests. Those last 2km were soul destroying but I made it to the top, to the end, to my camp for the night. I practically collapsed into the permanent Bedouin tent that was there as the last campsite of the trail. It had a fire pit and wood to burn, I put up my tent and collected wood, but every activity was hard. I could only manage a stooped waddle anywhere I went; I hoped that I would be better in the morning. Before heading to bed after a small dinner of bread, one pepper and one potato (the rest had rotted to a foul slush over the day), I stood outside and watched a lightning storm on the eastern horizon (where I had walked from). With each flash of lightning the hulking immensity of the storm clouds was shown. I watched for a while both for the spectacle but also to see which direction it was heading in, I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of such a storm on top of a mountain, with a day’s worth of narrow wadi walking still to go (impossible or suicide when rain is forecast). It seemed to be moving southward so I went to bed and prayed to the old gods and the new for there to be no change of direction in that storm.  

I slept well and got away at 8am for my final day of walking. The first 5km were joyous, I just followed a winding path along the side of the mountains which steadily descended towards the wide wadi floor below. Easy walking with great views, a great start to proceedings. At the bottom I followed the path of the wide dry wadi, walking in the riverbed was the path of least resistance and meant a few more kilometres of easy downhill travel. At a point I entered the mountains which had been looming on the horizon as my final barrier before the sea. I left the wadi here and found myself zigzagging through narrow rock corridors carpeted with annoying fine soft gravel. This made climbing hard work, but my body was still feeling ok, I emerged from these narrow corridors of rock and began climbing other wadis, passing Bedouin huts which worried me because if they were inhabited then there would be dogs. But they were all abandoned, and I soon left them behind, entering an area of the valley that had walls of clastic poorly sorted sandstone (big bits and small bits all mixed up) a classic sign of years of flash flooding. I kept grinding upwards until I reached the pass, the final mountain of my hike. From there I looked down and still had a long way to go but there weren’t any more uphill slogs left. At the pass the flies left me to my own devices, and I started walking and rock hopping down a valley to civilisation. There was tonnes of plastic and glass everywhere. I skirted the edge of a large car and lorry plant for a while which was horrible and then, I nipped up to a road which I crossed and dropped down back into the familiar territory of a wide wadi. I followed this towards the sea, passing under a huge drainage tunnel beneath the motorway which was pitch black inside, had dog poo and paw prints on the floor which didn’t fill me with confidence. The second motorway drainage tunnel was too low for me to get through, so I hopped over the road and then down to South Beach, the end of my hike. I sat there for a moment, incredibly hot, and unbelievably tired. I haggled with taxi driver for a while getting the price down a little but at the end of the day I was too tired to care. I got in and chatted away to him. He was amazed by what I had done, whistling in awe every time I mentioned something in my stilted Arabic, even telling other people he picked up on the way about what I had done.  

I got into the hostel, a place I know well. I dropped my stuff and got in the shower. It was glorious, I felt so clean and all the aches were soothed by the warm water. I had made it alone, no help, no company, just me and my stubborn brain.  

Final Thoughts  

In my previous post on Wadi Rum, I tried to show the beauty of the place, the starkness and wildness of the desert. But since then, since returning to Jordan a few times and spending more time with the people, more time in the places; I feel I have come to understand more about the land and how the people are inextricably linked to it. Much of the time in my daily life back in England I have the urge to be back, back in the village where they call me دعسان, back where the desert fox screams like a child lost in the night and where you can sit atop a mountain or dune and hear nothing but the wind, see nothing but the radiant warmth of sand and stone, and fall asleep warmed by an afternoon sun or under the light of a thousand stars. 

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If you made it through this blog with a smile on your face and perhaps the flutter of adventure in your heart then why not share it online, pin it to a village notice board, post it to randomly chosen addresses across the country, physically affix it to your local MP, riot the city streets with my writing on placards, write it in blood across the city walls? If not just leave a comment? I love a bit of feedback.