Down the Open Road

Pink dust had embedded itself into the crumples of the clothes I’d now worn for 24 hours and wisps of hair were glued to my forehead by a paste of sand and dry sweat. It was just after sunrise and I was ready to return to the clean hire car we had abandoned on the edge of the desert the previous day. Mahmoud, our young host, had other ideas and insisted that breakfast came first. So there I sat stuck to a green plastic chair in a tiny concrete bunker, sipping sparkling mint tea and reciting one to 10 in the Arabic dialect I’d learnt the night before.

This tiny village, separated from Saudi Arabia by a few dozen miles of sand, was inhabited by three hundred or so Bedouins who called the open desert ‘home’. At the end of a desolate road that stretched for hours past nothing at all, a collection of concrete houses, two single-sex schools, and the cafe in which I found myself, made up Wadi Rum.

The little room was buzzing as people came and went with a speed usually reserved for Monday mornings in Piccadilly Circus. While Mahmoud and I counted, all around us men dressed head to toe in bright white robes were exchanging lively greetings. Most passed by, hailing friends through the open doorway, but others would pull up a seat and stop to swap village gossip.

Every few minutes a small paper packet of pita and falafel balls was swung across the counter. From no discernible queue, someone would leap forward to grab the package, before yelling a few pleasantries and heading out the door, bound for home to feed the family.

After about an hour of this routine, a young man arrived sporting ripped denim jeans and a black biker jacket. He seemed incongruous to me; his starkly different sartorial choice standing out among the white gowns, but the group welcomed him in as they had everyone else that morning.

Like the young man, my presence had also failed to raise an eyebrow. For every greeting thrown across the room between friends, I received a beaming grin as if I sat at this table sipping tea every morning.

After a couple of hours, I was certain I’d met every male from Wadi Rum to the Saudi border. My Bedouin friends were sure I was here to stay, but sitting in that cafe I knew that if I didn’t leave today, several months from now I’d still be sitting there on the edge of the Jordanian desert.

Peeling myself off the green chair and heading for the door, I suspected that one day I'd be back at the end of this road drinking tea with Mahmoud, counting one to 10.