Bit by the Ice

I stand on a dust-choked macadam intersection below the ramparts of a Crusader castle, on a rocky slope both hallowed and defiled by centuries of holy wars. I’ve been disgorged from a bus at an unmarked, deserted crossroads, stranded far from my destination.

I’m hot and hungry and headachy. But mainly I am smothered. Shrouded by the neck-to-ankle clothing I must hide myself within in this tribal, patriarchal country. Smothered by rules and stares and furtive innuendos from men who fill the cities, the buses, the streets, and the cafes.

I had boldly chosen the local bus to Karak, with a taxi connection to Madaba: unpretentious, “authentic” transportation.  But this day had been filled with cultural clashes that insidiously abraded my adventurousness, and left me bedraggled on that empty corner of desert.

The first cultural skirmish was over punctuality. Jordanian buses do not depart until every seat has been sold, even if the last seat is filled three hours after the published departure time. No problem; I enjoyed watching the driver drum up business even while checking my watch compulsively. The next clash was more personal, however. The testy driver ejected me from my well-chosen window seat on the shady side of the bus and loudly booted me to the two women’s rows in back, to be squeezed among veiled mothers and squirming toddlers, and disapprovingly stared at by the cohort of male passengers.

Still, the universal sorority of mothers soon buoyed my spirits as we women surmounted the language barrier with photos of family revealed on that ever-present connector of 21st century travelers, the smartphone. We shared sparse apples and pita, and I imagined myself a kind of Freya Stark.

But as the hours dragged on and we bumped down the glaring desert road without air conditioning or open windows, another cultural spat was insidiously wearing me down, this time in the guise of that supposed soother of souls, music. Specifically, throbbing drums, thrumming ouds, and high-pitched ululations. Three hours of Bedouin ballads blasting over ancient crackling speakers sapped my last reserves of equanimity.

The denouement came when we women were shoo’ed off the bus at this barren intersection, though I neither saw nor heard any signal that this was their/my stop. Mothers and grandmothers now wave goodbye as they unflappably walk off, their veils and jilbabs snapping in the hot wind. I am alone, abandoned beneath a crumbling castle. How did I end up here?