After leaving the EGT graduation, my friends dropped me off at 7th Circle, where I was to be picked up and taken to the Dead Sea Marriott for an overnight practice with Dozan wa Awtar, the newly reformed choir group that I joined last fall for the Christmas concert. The name literally means “Tuning and Strings.” After Christmas, the group was modified to be smaller, more compact, and with a definitely younger core group. Nedy, one of the long-term members of the group (having been in it for twenty years since he was a child), put together the event and trip as a bonding experience for us. Many of the young Arabs that are part of the group have been in it since they were children, and are now starting to turn the group in a new directions which is arguably perhaps more approachable for the younger generation than it was before.

I was picked up by Rana, another long-time choir member who had offered to give a poor, car-less foreigner a lift to the resort. She and I chatted as we drove along the well-lit highway to the southwest, about economics, college life in America (she had been grad student and Arabic teacher in Missouri), and I watched in amazement as the thermometer in the car rapidly clicked upwards, from 10 degrees Celsius in Amman, to 22 degrees when the car pulled into the parking lot, surrounded by aesthetically-lit palm trees waving in the gentle breeze.

The smells of salt, incense, and perfumes assailed my nostrils as we carried our bags into the building. The car, our bags, and our persons were of course scanned for weaponry or explosives before we were allowed to enter (this is what happens when you’re only 6 miles from the shores of the West Bank (and occupying powers control your shores). Rana had explained to me as we turned from going east to going south along the banks of the sea, “Do you see that road there, the one that’s barricaded? Before the Second Intifada, when things were comparatively calm, they were going to make this an open highway between Amman and Jerusalem. No one knows now whether it’ll ever be open again.” The lights of the occupied country winked hazily over the water through the salt-induced fog at us.

I checked into my room, which I was sharing with Silas. He had already arrived hours before I had, and was busy on his laptop trying to get the internet to work properly. The hotel had given us a room with a veranda and terrace overlooking the heated outdoor First Pool, which was visible through the lacy curtains, glowing that eerie blue color that pools always seem to have. Because I had arrived so late, I barely had time to take quick shower in the opulent bathroom and change before our scheduled meeting in one of the hotel’s conference rooms.

Paul Hornung was a little before my time, but it was great to see this here

The next few hours were occupied with singing, reintroducing ourselves to each other, and eating. The restaurant we went to, “Champions,” had a surprise mounted on the wall, one of 1960’s Green Bay Packers’ player Paul Hornung’s game jerseys. How unusual to see it here, of all places! But they also had one of Joe Montana’s jerseys on the wall next to it, and I suppose that in a resort that caters to wealthy American tourists, I shouldn’t have been that surprised. The Arabs and the foreigners socialized freely with each other, on everything from religion to the next season of “Prison Break.” Although most of us were Americans, we also have Swiss, Germans, Scots, Australians, and English in the group. Many of the choir’s Arabs have studied or worked internationally before, so their English is perfectly fluent and almost completely unaccented.

We didn’t get done with the practice until about midnight, at which point we had the quiet hotel almost entirely to ourselves. I was the only person in the entire group that had not yet set foot in the Dead Sea, so I practically ran past the glowing pools (there were at least four outdoor pools that I saw) to see the sea. I had been cautioned by the older, wiser group members to not attempt to swim out there after dark, because even though there’s not much chance of sinking in the Dead Sea, the wind and salty waves are extremely high, and can easily blind someone that doesn’t see them in the darkness. I contented myself with popping a leg in the water, sitting on the rocks on the shore that were coated with a thick, hard layer of pure salt that broke off into little sculptures in my hand. I tentatively dipped a finger in the water, and tasted it: so salty that it literally burned my mouth and tongue. I quickly spat it out, and noted that the water was so oily that it felt like gel between my fingers. After a few minutes the salt quickly solidified on the leg of my jeans, and gained so much stiffness that it felt like I was wearing a military dress uniform.

Although I only stayed up til a little before 2 that night, at breakfast the following morning I learned that some of my friends had stayed awake and on the beach chairs until 7 in the morning. I could only shake my head in amazement at this and wish that I still had the staying power that I had back in college. Breakfast was an extravagant affair, with everything from waffles and omelets, seven different kinds of meat (none of them pork, of course), and fresh fruit arranged in sculptures. They even had my favorite breakfast food, croissants, which I had developed an addiction to in France. Once again, it seemed like the place was almost deserted besides our group – but I realized a clue to this and last night’s lack of guests when I saw everyone else there were plump, elderly Caucasian couples. Early to bed, early to rise, I suppose. With my pockets stuffed with croissants to last me through the day, I joined the rest of the group for the morning’s practice.

Perhaps an unorthodox singing position, but we like to try new things here.

Our songs for the Spring concert seem like they’re going to be focused on old English and German/Swedish literature. Shireen, our director, is also particularly selecting songs meant to be sung in the round by parts, which means that they are quite complex and we needed to focus hard in order to stay with our parts. This was compounded by the fact that we were all kind of antsy from wanting to go play outside, and after only a couple hours Shireen let us scamper off, towels in hand, to the beach.

Two of the choir members, Yanal and Tara, kindly took me under their wing with the mission of giving me the best first-time Dead Sea experience. Anne, the Australian singer, gave me her newspaper for me to do the favorite classic pose of reclining in the water, reading the news. The beach was tagged with a red flag, warning of high winds, but I paid it no heed – there was no way that wind was going to stop me from enjoying that water! The water was literally the perfect temperature, the salts containing the heat of the sun, and the filmy and thick, and perfectly aquamarine blue liquid seemed to slide, not flow, around me as I stepped into it. Yanal snapped photos of Tara, Anne, and myself, and we probably spent 20 minutes in the water until I could feel the little pores on my face start to burn. It was such an odd feeling to try to walk on the floor of the sea, only to find the water automatically buoy me instantly back up to my back or stomach. If not for the waves, I probably could have fallen asleep there. The newspaper, splashed repeatedly with the water, looked like the wrappings from a greasy piece of fried chicken; gray and almost transparent.

Anne, Tara, and myself go for a float in the Dead Sea

After we all got out, Yanal walked ceremoniously up to me and hit me in the chest with a huge glob of thick gray-black glop. “This is part of the process. Hold still,” he commanded and then proceeded to coat me from ankle to forehead with gooey, slimy paste. Tara politely declined to join in on this part of the Dead Sea experience, but Anne followed suit and started slathering herself with the mud, taken from a tank that I hadn’t noticed before, sitting next to the shoreline. The nearby beach patrons laughed at my reaction and Yanal’s meticulous dedication to his task. I staggered up the beach to the rest of the choir, sunning themselves or reading on reclining chairs. The mud had instantly started reacting to the sunlight and was tightening my skin everywhere it touched, limiting my movement and pulling my cheeks backwards, causing me to drool amusingly whenever I opened my mouth, which was constantly because, for the same reason, I couldn’t really close it. Nedy, wearing a bright white polo shirt, declined my offer to give him a hug for some reason.

Zen with the Dead Sea. Either that, or I'm stuck in this position and I can't get out!

The mud hardened and crackled as the sun beat down on me. Eventually I found it difficult to keep my balance, and the salt in the mud was starting to burn, which I suppose is part of the experience too. Before I went back down to the sea to wash the mud away, I stretched my face, hard, for the first time, and a shower of mud cracked off my skin and flew in every direction, including my mouth. Note: Dead Sea mud makes a better skincare product than a foodstuff. In fact, you probably want it as far from your tongue as possible.

We spent the remainder of our 3-hour break lounging in the jacuzzis and heated indoor pools, although there were quite a few children and older people enjoying the shallow heated outdoor pool as well. Tara also showed me the Indoor Sea, a small room overlooking the beach with a wall of windows and a simple oval tub. She told me to try it out, which I did. Instantly a popped to the surface like a cork, and Tara explained that they had run a pipe from the sea to this room, so you could have the experience of the Dead Sea without the potentially-blinding effects of the supersaturated salt water. I ended up napping in here for about 20 minutes, reclining, ears buried under the water, listening to the distant roar of the waves hitting the pipe 200 meters away.

We practiced for a few more hours in the hotel, working on our rounds. At Nedy and Shireen’s suggestion, we tried going out to the dining hall to sing a few of our secular pieces to the public, but were quickly harassed by a guard who told us that there wasn’t a policy on public singing, therefore making it prohibited. Typical mindset here, really. With that forbidden to us, it was time to head out and back to Amman. Rana took both Shireen and myself back to Amman in her car, leaving a little bit earlier than everyone else because we all had meetings that evening to attend to. Kindly, they chose to speak entirely in English for the entire trip back for my benefit, so that I could join in the conversation.

The Marriott was an amazing place, but it really could have benefited from some pools that were deeper than 1.5 meters so I could do some real swimming. I’m definitely planning on going to the Dead Sea again, but perhaps for budgetary reasons I’ll stick with the Amman Public Beach, which is a little farther north and just costs JD 6 (about $10) to get in!