After a long morning goggling at the transcendent ruins of Petra, I flopped down in a solitary splash of shade and peeled a banana.
Suddenly prickles needled the back of my neck. I was being watched. I turned to find myself staring into the doleful, long-lashed eyes of a hungry donkey. Looking to his owner, whose kohl-lined eyes were lashed with equal exuberance, I gestured with my peel. He replied that Jack would be grateful for the treat.
Jack’s whiskered nose whiffled into my palm and the peel vanished. The man then introduced himself as Roc, a Bedouin who lived with his tribe in the hills behind Petra. Wary of touts, I was guarded in my response. Roc explained that he and Jack worked at Petra and had sought the shade escape the tourists. I could well understand his point.
We talked; I was fascinated by his Bedouin life. He offered, with pride, to show me. It was a risky but irresistible opportunity. I donned my hijab and we wound up into the hills, Roc on foot and I on Jack, in what felt like a strangely biblical procession.
His village was a ramshackle mix of huts, haphazard shade cloths and animal pens. We coiled our way into a pungent home where nearly twenty Bedouins sat sipping tea. Young children wove between the elders, jumping over stray chickens.
A shrunken women rose to her feet and scanned me intently, right down to my indecently naked ankles. I uttered a nervous ‘as salam alaykum’ – the habitual Arabic greeting ‘peace be with you’.
After a long silence her eyes were swallowed by wrinkles as she craned her head back in a cackle. She answered my greeting and made her way across the room. Taking my elbow in a bone-fracturing grip she led me to sit by her side.
She commanded the appearance of tea with a peremptory wave. It arrived swiftly, served in a glass that had seen more of life than I had. Roc explained that this was his great-grandmother. The rest of the gathering was just a fraction of his Bedouin family, of which I was now an honorary part.
