wadi rum post...finally

Just a quick disclaimer: this post should have been up over 2 weeks ago but I have been sooooo busy I haven't gotten a chance to finish it and put it online, but finally here it is!

I'm currently working on a super long post on my Jerusalem trip and still have to write one for Syria so stay tuned.......



I think I’m finally learning the true meaning of being a “big fish in a small pond”, because right now I feel like the tiniest damn fish trying to swim without gills in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s one thing to feel like you’re failing in some area of life, but it’s another to completely suck at that which inspires you and what you want to spend your entire life doing. I realize that I got into Arabic and Middle East/Islamic studies late in my college career, but I have worked like crazy to make up that lost time and catch up. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t just another case of Suzanne’s perfectionism gone into overdrive, but a terrible fear that I will have to pursue some boring and meaningless career in some area that I don’t really care about.

I told my dad a few days ago that what I would really like to do is work in a Palestinian refugee camp, specifically in Palestine. Of course he suggested that I just work in a camp in Jordan where *insha’allah* I wouldn’t get killed. But for some reason I have this totally irrational obsession with Palestine and I am absolutely DYING to visit. I did technically see it when I was at the Dead Sea and at Um Qais , and just the little bit that I saw was spectacular. All my favorite scenes of Jordan totally resemble the images of Palestine I’ve seen on television. And besides my love of the landscape, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the few issues that can really fire me up, because to me it is one of the most blatant violation of international law and human rights in the history of mankind. Every afternoon I watch this show on Al Jazeera International (that’s right, the one in English) called Witness that focuses primarily on human rights crises around the world, and one of them featured Palestinian families whose backyards were literally being cut off by the Israeli apartheid wall. I was actually crying during the scene where this mother escorts her kindergarten-age son beyond the end of the wall in the process of construction to view the stars over Al-Quds before his only image of the outside world becomes a gray concrete mass imposing on his ability to pursue a real life outside the prison that is the refugee camp.

Anyway, my friend Allison’s friend who came through Irbid for a night talked to me about her experience in a refugee camp in Palestine where she’s working now in a theatre that I believe Palestinian youth use as a creative outlet in the bleakness of camp life. I was totally fascinated and would really like to research more about that particular position, especially since I interned at a theatre in Spain when I studied abroad. Specifically I would like to work as a part of effort for the advancement of education opportunities for Palestinian youth whose families simply lack the resources- financial or otherwise- to give their kids hope for using education as a means of improving their devastating situation. So if any of you readers have any suggestions for something that even remotely fits my aspirations, PLEASE comment on my blog!

So now let me take a few moments to describe the most spectacular experience of my entire life- my trip to Wadi Rum. I can’t believe I almost made the mistake of visiting Damascus a second time and almost missing this opportunity because there is no way I would ever replace the experience I had last weekend. After enjoying a touristy, overpriced lunch of dry chicken and miscellaneous pasta salads, we embarked on the real part of the trip- a trek through a desert of rippling red sand and great stone monoliths emerging as testimonies to the existence of something out there greater than ourselves. We rode a “jeep”, that is, in the bed of a rickety little truck in the last days of its ninth life, to various sites including Lawrence of Arabia’s spring and former home and a number of locations ideal for rock climbing whose peaks had amazing views. I tended to spend more of my time with the guys on the trip (well, at least the first day since on the second I got really sick) since they wanted to take advantage of every climb and view possible. Obviously I don’t have the stamina that these guys do, as all of them are in amazing physical shape, but I did my best to keep up in my cotton skirt and Teva sandals. My favorite nook was probably a rock I climbed alone from which you could yell into the valley below and hear your voice echoed at least five times. Being the weirdo that I am, I used this opportunity to practice my ululation, one of the many bizarre sounds I have somehow managed to master.

The best part about this particular place was not, however, its conduciveness to making an ass of yourself in the middle of the desert, but rather that, on that rugged peak standing high above the sand-powdered valley below, I could for the first time enjoy the silence that exists between my ears. Even in small town life, you don’t realize how seldom you are able to hear the sound of nothingness, of a whiteness so pure and clear that for once all the jumbled thoughts and images in your head seem to fizzle out into nothingness. And suddenly you become a part of that landscape that has embraced you, and no longer are you trying to stuff all the erratic parts of your self into a neatly packed cubby in one society or another. For in nature there is no culture, no need for the rationalizations of relativism and scientific theories to explain away the inexplicable and the mystical. For the first time, even in my jaded little head, even in my ears packed numb and deaf with the gauze of rationality and the experiences that seem to disprove any existence of a being that might actually care if I exist, I thought I heard the voice of God whispering- for God’s voice is not heard in church or even calls to prayer, but in a virginal silence of peace and clarity.

Of course we did the other touristy activities like staying over night in a Bedouin camp where we enjoyed a fantastic meal that was cooked in a vat underground, and camel riding the next day, but to me there was nothing more amazing than enjoying the solace from so-called civilization. For the first time since I was a child- before bright orange streetlights appeared in our neighborhood that would forever put out the natural bulbs that lit the sky each night- I was able to look up see the Milky Way and Mars and Jupiter and shooting stars. I could sink my hand into the sea of sand and feel the earth run through my fingers, unfiltered and untouched by mankind’s tools of modification and destruction.

I tell you, if any of you gets a chance to visit Jordan, of course you shouldn’t miss Petra, but Wadi Rum is a like a secret haven, and stepping into its desert valley is like closing your eyes and falling into the place of dreams, where your mind no longer tricks your thoughts into a disappointed, cynical, and diluted consciousness.

It is places like this that make the Middle East the destination of so many spiritual voyagers and adventurers, and unfortunately, the object of so much conflict and opposition. I can’t wait to see what Jerusalem is like…….