World Trip 2012-13

Cigarette smoke stings my eyes. Ashtrays and little glass tea cups, sticky with sweet bedouin tea, are scattered on the floor between the mattresses that the women lie on. The sound of old women bickering is international. On the TV another international phenomenon provides background noise in the form of Arab Idol.

I am in the house of a Bedouin family in the village at Wadi Rum, Jordan, and I feel like I've fallen into one of those novels about Muslim women that seem to be in vogue. I am lucky to have this chance to sit in this world, separate from the tours, the markets, shops, bars, buses. I feel somewhat invisible as conversation and daily life flows around me. Yet at the same time I feel guilty, an opportunist voyeur.

Earlier that day I had I spent some time with a seventeen year old with surprisingly good English. She learnt it in school, but she doesn't attend anymore. Her friends are still at school, but she is married now, apparently the only one in her class to be. She is a second wife and it's all I can do not to ask what that is like, what that means in practicality. On her part she is curious about my lack of religion, and is happy to question me and to try and explain her God.

She stays inside the house, sending a small boy to buy food from the shop. She doesn't want a job, or at least realises that it is not likely in this economic climate. "Most women stay at home" she explains to me. She offers the TV remote to me. There is an english language movie channel, and she tells me she's seen Titanic three times. She likes modern Indian movies and would like to visit India someday.

She spent the day in pajama bottoms, only changing to go out in the late afternoon, donning the naqab to make the short journey down the block to her mother-in-law's house. She tells me that it feels better to wear the naqab rather than have the "men looking", and having experienced the "men looking" I find myself nodding in agreement, or at least seeing her point.

It is her mother-in-law's house I am staying in. It includes two rooms with low couches along three of the walls which serve for both socialising and sleeping. That afternoon I had sat in the larger room with children freely wandering in and out while the younger women talked and chatted on WhatsApp on their smart phones. Now at night before I fall asleep on the low couch now serving as a bed, I jot down some notes, maybe I too can write a best seller, or at least a travel essay.