Dayenu

We climbed up the mountain together, stepping on and over the chipped sandstone, and then turned around, and gazed at what our distant ancestors must have looked at thousands of years ago.

Wadi Rum is a desert within a desert. In fact, per its name (Wadi means valley), it is a flat expanse between harsh rocky mountains that contains occasional sprouts of greenish-brown plants that approximate tumbleweed but is otherwise devoid of life. Visually it is stunning, and as we climbed, further layers of rock mountain came into hazy-blue-view in the distance.

It was the second day of Passover, and, for the first time, I understood why the Israelites cried out, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in the desert?” I could see one person – or maybe two – managing to survive in Wadi Rum without modern technology and the ability to import water, food and shelter, but for ten to survive would necessitate a series of miracles. For hundreds of thousands of people to survive, you would literally need food to magically appear every single morning. No number of miracles in Egypt, no quantity of plagues (be they 10 or 250 or more) hold a candle to the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in this desert. In a modern-day Middle East when we are constantly reminded of how much easier destruction is than creation, I kept thinking that God created this desert simply to show how incredible God could be. The people who left Egypt only having seen the destruction of which God is capable may not have been ready to enter Israel, but those having seen the creation of life that God engineered over 40 years in this desert . . . they must have been willing to follow God anywhere.

And we traveled backwards. After leaving Wadi Rum, we arrived at Aqaba, Jordan’s only port, a touristy free-market city on the Red Sea. The water is beautiful, and it sits at the heart of so much that holds the world captive right now – at one point (at the Royal Diving Club, where you have to pay $25 to use the beach, but where you can at least enter the water – two friends had been hurt, one by urchins and one by a broken fishing hook, at the public beach) we were within five kilometers of the Jordan/Saudi border, looking across at Eilat and Israel’s border with Egypt. Here, perhaps, Jews walked on dry land so many years ago.
Under the cloudy sky, the water was bitingly cold, but we snorkeled with Evan and Ayhem (the trip’s organizer, who was excited to come, but didn’t mention that he couldn’t swim and spent the time doing small circles around the dock) and saw great coral reef and ocean life, including sea snakes and lion fish and many others. I did wonder, though, how, with all this coral, walking through along the sea bed was possible. . . .

The trip itself was exhilarating and frustrating. Traveling with members of seven nationalities and in all age groups can be an incredible experience, and a very frustrating one. Unfortunately, much of the trip was segregated by culture and language – though, we did get the chance to chat quite a bit with Evan about his diplomatic adventures. Everything was further complicated by the intense range of cultural expectations, especially concerning punctuality (for instance, we left Aqaba a half hour after we were supposed to arrive at Petra, which is two hours away) and noise levels (as a note, we tended to side with the Koreans on both). We were happy to see all the sights, but truly driven to return to only one: Petra.
Petra is incredible, if mind-boggling. Here a successful trading village was literally built into rock. People carved out homes (you can see neighborhoods, and we wondered if there was a rivalry between those near the theater and those near the Palace Tomb, for instance, or any other type of my-home-cave-is-better-than-your-home-cave type of dynamics). The whole concept is rather startling, and, where they decided to do it with class, it is truly amazing. Apparently, as well, we didn’t even see the largest and most fascinating, but we are looking forward to making the trek when Mark and Ken are here. Pictures abound.

We miss you all, and are sending love from the desert.

Your Arabic phrases of the week:

Bahar al-ihmar – The Red Sea

Hal wasalna hata alaan? Are we there yet? (Literally, Did we arrive until now?)