The rest of the bus seemed semi conscious, or maybe they were just doing better jobs of voice modulation than we were. In any case, I felt that those extra 4 hours of sleep worked miracles and I made it all the way to the mountain without passing out in my seat. The sun was just beginning to rise, giving the world a blue-gray tint as we walked up the stone path to the meeting room on the summit. I had seen the same room a month ago with Christine when it had been a mosaic viewing room, but now the place was already packed with people, standing room only, all the way to the doors. Mika got a seat, and us three guys took turns rotating around limited standing room at the back of the chapel. I leaned against a veiled electronic keyboard and almost knocked it over, or that is, it would have fallen had there have been any place for it to land that wasn’t already occupied.

Pastor Lex can draw a crowd for his service: standing room only!

I’ve found that Pastor Lex’s sermons are a very interesting blend of Biblical lessons and historical storytelling, some of the most interesting I’ve heard. In my youth, my old Lutheran church had fiery sermons about life messages, but Lex provides a new spin on things, in my opinion, by providing the larger geopolitical context that surrounded the actions of the disciples, Jesus, and the leaders of the Jewish people. During the communion I was excited by the thought that our 150-person congregation would go outside and enjoy the morning sunshine, and indeed figured we’d have to because of the difficulty of moving around in the tiny room, but to no avail; Lex was able to maneuver us successfully without sending us out into the wind. The windows on the far side of the room were an accurate gauge of the wind speeds – judging from the pine trees waving frantically like flags, it may have been better that we were all huddled in there.

Mika had originally proposed a plan of having an Easter brunch with our guests, of the kind that us Midwesterners like to have on Easter at 10:30 or so, involving ham, eggs, and buttered rolls. Ham…even the thought of sweet, delicious, hard-to-find pork products here in Jordan was enough for me to sign onto anything she suggested. But, as David and Bart pointed out, they had rented a car for their travels a day before, and it was a shame for a group of foreigners to have access to a car and not make use of it. So it was decided that we would visit Jerash, then come back and have a dinner of some kind. This day was shaping up to be a more leisurely, less frenetic version of the day last month that Christine went to Madaba, Nebo, Jesus’ Baptism site, and then Jerash. Jerash had been closed then, but I knew that since it was only 10 there was no chance that I would miss it a second time!

According to David, this ant is unlike North American ants, with extended hind legs, a raised abdomen, and most eerie of all, true eyesight instead of smell - because the desert heat destroys pheremone trails.

The largest and most impressive ruin in the site is the Temple of Artemis, who was more than likely the patron goddess of the ancient city. David, who had visited Jerash before and had a guide, knew some special things about it. Or, to be more specific, he knew a guy who knew a guy who had paid for a guide here once before, so it was almost like we were receiving first-hand knowledge. Almost. He led us over past a gesturing vendor who had set up shop inside the temple itself, over to a column on the south wall. Curiously enough, the column had a spoon and a pebble wedged underneath its bulk, which David told us to take a close look at. We peered at it…and saw that it was moving. I squinted back up at this massive column again, which undoubtedly weighed at least 6-7 tons. The spoon though, was clearly waving up and down, a sign that the column was swaying in the breeze. We all laughed (nervously, perhaps) and backed away from it. Sure, it may have been standing for several thousand years, but no one wanted to tempt fate.

We explored the entire Temple of Artemis before moving on, all the way from the very bottom in a series of underground passageways, accessible by a otherwise unnoticeable door in the base of the alter. There were no lights down there, and some very odd smells in certain parts of it. Light filtered down on us from above from chinks in the stone, making me wonder nervously again how strong the floor was above us. I had a feeling that if a giant tourist group came in all at the same moment (as pictured above) we might run into trouble, trouble like the floor collapsing on top of us. Apparently, enough moisture had gotten down here during the recent rainy season that there were little plants and moss sprouting all over in the cool darkness, and with a little light balance change on my camera, I was able to capture the green glow in the air.

My favorite photo from the trip; Mika gazes into the sunlight from the tunnel passageways

It was at the Temple that we met Rachael, a young woman from Australia traveling through the Holy Land with her brother, who had left for the day to go to Syria. Rachael heard us talking about the tilting pillar and assumed that perhaps we were a guided tour (David laughed at this) but of course, journeys are always better with new friends, so she joined our little group soon afterward for the rest of our explorations. I recall in Britain two summers ago, meeting a Korean student studying in Liverpool, and thinking how cool it must be to be a foreigner working or living in a foreign country – now, years later, the four us of were happy to show traveler around our “home” here in Jordan with the pride that only pseudo-natives like ourselves can have.

Rachael probably assumed that we were all normal, well-adjusted people, but of course I had to prove her wrong within ten minutes in the North Theatre, where I was goaded, no – forced! into singing and dancing onstage for the amusement of an Arab family that was sitting in the seats, relaxing. It started when we saw the young son, probably 16 or 17, dancing on the stage for his parents, just goofing around. The five us applauded and cheered for him, and he bowed gracefully. However, when Bart and I explored the stage, the young man and his parents and sisters called down to us, “now it’s your turn! Dance some American dances!” Bart and I gave each other sheepish looks; what could possibly compare in energy with debka? We did a demonstration of “white men dancing,” and probably embarrassed the entire race doing it, but then when I started a kickline (I can’t stop doing kicklines; I blame show choir) we drew applause from the entire theatre. Of course, that just got me started and I proceeded to first sing “Mr. Cellophane” from the Chicago musical, and then I even tried to sing as much of Zahret al-Mada’en melody as my knowledge of the bass line allowed. I’m sure I would have gotten at least a few gongs before the giant cane hooked me offstage, but I couldn’t have asked for a better venue.

"Thank you for coming out here tonight. No, seriously, you're a great audience. I'll be in town all week."

Now that I had been put into the theatre mood, it was hard to snap out of it right away. Bart led me over to a pile of rocks that we hadn’t stopped by yet, and pointed out a courtyard and a high place that announcements and speeches could be given from. “Now, you can act like an emperor and have your minions spread out in front of you.” I was more than happy to take him up on his offer, posing, saluting and giving my “THIS, IS, SPARTA!” speech, with some modifications. Rachael probably thought that the two of us, especially me, were totally nuts by now, but she willing obliged to take pictures for us.

Right before we left, we stopped briefly by the South Theatre, which like Um Qais is the larger of the two in the city. I may have mentioned this before, but Jordanians, especially Bedouins, have a certain odd affinity to the bagpipes. They’re played at weddings without fail and you can always hear them somewhere in the city. In this case, we walked into the theatre at the same time as a group of Spanish tourists, and two chubby Bedouins, decked out in military gear and keffiyeh, started up a bagpipe and drum rhythm for about 10 minutes as the delighted tourists danced in the hot sun. An elderly Hispanic gentleman with long white hair in a ponytail climbed up onto the stage and started reciting what could have been Shakespeare, in Spanish. I only recognized a few words, but it was definitely recognizable for what it was.

Since Rachael had come up alone on the bus, we offered to give her a ride back to Amman and join us for dinner. Although I was looking forward to ham sandwiches, or steaks, or something involving ham, the others suggested that since Rachael was only in the country for another day, she should have something specially Arab – Jordanian specifically – for dinner. David and Bart exchanged glances, and Mika asked me, “Well, there’s this restaurant that the two of them went to recently; I’d like to try it.” Rachael and I asked what it was, and Mika said simply: “Sheep brains.”

Oh. Sheep brains. She said it as casually as if they’d suggested ice cream cones.

WARNING: DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO EAT, OR ARE PLANNING ON EATING EVER AGAIN. DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY OR ATTEMPT TO SLEEP WITHIN 3 HOURS OF READING THIS ARTICLE.

I'm sorry, but garnishing your brains with a green pepper slice is not winning me over.

That meant that ham was out. I kept my whimpering to a minimum, and obediently followed the group to a relatively normal-looking restaurant named Abu Musa (Father of Moses) near the edge of the downtown, only a few blocks down the mountain from Jebel Amman. I say “relatively normal” because most restaurants that I know don’t proudly display stomachs, sliced open heads, tongues, and brains on silver trays in their front windows. I tried not to make eye contact with the blankly staring sheep eyes, and focused instead on the pictures of happy, smiling sheep adorning the walls. How gruesomely ironic, I thought.

David and Bart ordered everything for us with great gusto, clearly enjoying our reactions. I felt fairly brave as we were ordering, even though David’s comment of “How many eyeballs would you like?” was definitely unnerving. The appetizers, simple vegetables, fatteh hoummus with bread, and broth arrived first and put me an even more confident state of mind. How could any place that served such tasty fatteh possibly be bad, I thought? Then the main course arrived; all of the goodies of a sheep on neat little plates, arranged artistically for us. We had grilled hooves, stomachs and intestines stuffed with rice, a brain on a plate, and of course the crowned main course (pun intended), half of a sheep’s head, including tongue, cheek meat, and one eyeball. “Dig in,” we were commanded. And so…I tried to.

I figured I might as well get a taste of the brains first, before Bart finished them off all by himself: “I love brains!” I quoted him. I took a slice of the ever-present Arabic bread, reached forward, and gently prodded the veined white mass, which wiggled gelatinously at me, like it was saying hello. Stop anthropomorphizing this brain, I commanded myself. Don’t think of encephalitis, either. I’m sure they cooked this properly. Then, before I could come up with more excuses, I pushed the bread through the frontal lobe, held the little pile in my hand momentarily, and popped it into my mouth.

Bart and David watched me. “It’s kind of like hard-boiled eggs,” Bart commented helpfully. “I don’t like hard-boiled eggs,” I retorted through my mouthful of brain. He was right though, they did taste like eggs that had been left in the sun for a little while and turned slightly sour. The texture was firm yet chewy, and if I hadn’t seen the skull where this brain had come from right next to me and had been blindfolded, I really would have just thought they were old eggs. However, as I swallowed my brainy treat, I decided to move on and try something else.

I sampled the rice-filled intestines, which were probably the most normal thing on the table – what’s a sausage, after all, but intestines with more meat stuff inside them? No problems there; they were a little chewier than normal, but completely passable. The hooves were sampled next, but as they were pretty much boiled/grilled keratin and cartilage, I decided that the lack of flavor was probably good enough reason to put that down as well. Meanwhile, David and Mika were tearing away at the half-faced sheep head. I’ve never seen what the inside of a herbivore’s cheek looked like, but I did recall from biology class that they had special rough edges in their cheeks to grind grass down. I saw it, but didn’t sample it as it looked too much like sandpaper to be appealing. Perhaps most disconcerting was how much it still looked like a sheep, even without hair and skin.

The white part behind the purple-colored head is bones of the skull and jaw, which the well-cooked meat is literally falling from

Bart, who had demolished the rest of the brain in a zombie-like fashion, was examining the stomach, trying to figure out how to get into it. As it was closest to me, I pulled on a bit of white sinew on it, but realized that it was a string that had been used to re-sew the yellowish sack shut after it had been stuffed with rice and other tasty bits. Bart hesitated for just a moment, asking how we were supposed to eat it with a string on it, then just shrugged and answered his own question by biting directly into it. As I was sitting across the table from him, I watched the rubbery flesh stretch, then stringily disintegrate into little shreds around his mouth. Bart had a weird look on his face when he came up for air, and he passed it around the table. Oddly enough, David declined the offer, saying, “That’s actually the one thing here I don’t like,” which made me feel very nervous all of a sudden. When it came to me at last, I took a bite. A deep feeling of nausea overcame me, and I swallowed quickly without chewing (Even as I’m typing this, I just shuddered a little bit at that memory). It tasted like…well, I won’t be overly graphic (too late, you say) but it tasted like how you’d expect the inside of a large intestine to taste. Enough said on that subject. No one touched the stomach again.

Soon all that was left was the eyeball, which David swiftly yanked out of the eye socket and waved in front of us cheerfully. Any bravery that I had ever had while dining evaporated and I suddenly found myself praying for the khamseen weather to suddenly destroy the building and all of us inside, and this dreaded eyeball. “There’s…there’s no pupil on it,” I stammered, poking at it its now-cold surface and the trailing optic nerve which draped festively over the side of the plate. “That’s because they boiled it, and then it exploded,” David chimed in, staring hungrily at the ball of flesh. I guess you could say that he was making eye contact. Rachael both politely declined a taste, even as David offered to cut it up for us all to try. I turned away from a moment to look at the waiter, grinning broadly at us from the next room – when I looked back, the eye was gone, and David had a contented look on his face. “There’s a bit of the optic nerve yet, if you want it,” he offered. “Check please,” I replied.

The total for our feast? A mere seven and a half dinars, which for 5 people is essentially nothing. I tried not to look at anything else as we left the building. Although up and until this point, I’ve considered myself completely open-minded about everything here in Jordan, but at that moment I needed to be as far from sheep offal as possible. Couldn’t make eye contact. Har har.

David and Mika left soon afterward, which left Bart and Rachael with me, lured by my invitation to Al-Borij for argeilleh. Like so many other Americans and even Jordanians, Bart had labored under the allusion that a 3JD argeilleh was the cheapest he was goigng to be able to find without going out to Jebel Nadeef and smoking out of a moldy coconut shell, but I proved him otherwise with the fine service, delicious cocktails and numerous argeillehs available at Al-Borij for only a dinar. The three of us sat for two or three hours discussing (what else?) politics and life in Jordan – both for Jordanian friends that we knew and ourselves. Rachael admitted to knowing almost nothing about the Arab world, so Bart and I offered our own opinions from our differing backgrounds – his from his few months at the university on the other side of town, learning classical (fu7sa) Arabic, and my own from learning 3meea (public) Arabic while teaching refugees. We agreed on most things, although Bart had to roll his eyes when I got a few of the patrons across the sidewalk from us to take sides on which was more useful, fu7sa or 3meea. Personally, I will stick by my decision to learn solely 3meea, for the time being, because it’s what I need to exist easily in Jordan, and I don’t see myself spending long amounts of time in the other parts of the Arab world, just visits. Enough words are the same between the dialects that even then, I wouldn’t be too worried.

At about 10:30, the I parted ways from the others, knowing that I had class the next day. There are only a few days left of class now – just two for me, in fact! We’ve started the final exam portion of class where I have my students work in pairs and then perform a one-on-one exhibition of skill for me to grade them on. As it’s now 3 in the morning now and I have the weekly bike ride in just 5 hours, I should try to catch up on sleep now myself. I’d like to apologize again if you actually did plan on eating at some point in the future, but after all, I did warn you.

Or maybe, you’ve actually become totally interested in eating sheep brains now after reading this, in which case I can only say Ahalan wa Sahalan (Welcome and Comfort) to you because Abu Musa is sure to have just what you’re looking for. Just follow the smell of old eggs.

We left Amman at about 8 in the morning, a caravan of two cars heading south down the Desert Highway. I was with Aaron and his girlfriend Laura, while Jeff and two other friends, Amir and Lillie, came along behind in the second car. We made fairly good time through the light rain in Amman, and the ride was smooth thanks to Laura’s car, a Mitsubishi that to be perfectly honest was the nicest car I’ve been in since arriving in Jordan. The one fault it had, as we three soon found out, that after passing 120 kilometers per hour (around 70 mph) that the car makes an urgent, constant beeping noise. “Warning!” it seems to tell you, helpfully. “This car is traveling quickly! You must be on a highway, where you may hit a goat at any moment! Warning!” Thankfully, the sound of our teeth grinding together drowned out the beeping after half an hour. That – plus the combination of horrible, 1980’s pop-crooner music that the Jordanians must think that Americans love (and rap, of course) and play on the few English stations – was enough to make me happy that I was still so tired from the previous night that I could easily fall asleep in the back seat.

About halfway down the country, a change in velocity (and the sudden lack of beeping) woke me up suddenly and I saw that we were being waved down to the side of the road by a mustachioed, slightly comical-looking police officer (think Mario, with a badge). As cars were clearly still zooming past at almost identical speeds, the guy clearly was noting the nice car and the Americans inside and thinking “easy pickings.” He greeted Aaron in passable English, and after the usual license-and-registration check (some things are always the same in every country, I guess), consulted briefly with a fellow officer and then gazed off into space, stroked his mustache, and said, “you must pay…errrrm….twenty dinars.” Laura muttered, “I’d like to see them give us a ticket.” All three of us clearly suspected that this wasn’t an “official” request for money, but instead a “please bribe me now” request. Aaron spoke loudly in his friendly, I-Am-A-Tourist voice, “No Money! Don’t Have Any! We Are Sorry!” The officers clicked their tongues at us, tsk’ing in reproach, and stepped away to consult again. The tongue-click, or “tsk” is the primary method of showing disapproval here, which took me by surprise because I’ve never seen anyone under 60 do that consistently in the States. Meanwhile, as we watched, the officers tried to flag down another car that was zipping past us. As we watched, the young women inside waved back at them cheerfully, and then sped up again and continued down again. Apparently, that’s what we  should have done. Finally, the two officers returned, and Mario poked his head back into the window, returning Aaron’s license-and-registration again and said, “Well, be more careful next time.”

The sun rose into the sky, racing the now-familiar reddish mountain crags for height before dropping off suddenly into sloping dunes and desert for miles in the distance, broken only by chains of massive power pylons like sentinels, shifting and looking almost animated as the heat-haze drifted over the sand. I wondered if the pylons were carrying power from north to south or vice versa, and why so many of them were needed for the tiny concrete villages that seemed to be the only sign of life besides the hiss of the cars on asphalt. At about 11:30, we pulled off the highway into the entrance to the Wadi Rum Protected Area, the same driveway that my tour bus had gone up two weeks before.

We stopped off at Beit Ali, or “Ali’s House,” a small compound at the edge of the reserve that was the last place to get drinks before heading off into the dunes, or rent ATV’s for desert use at exorbitant prices. We tsk’ed in amazement and disbelief at the cost of a can of crappy Amstel beer (4 dinars per can? 20 dinars for a bottle of wine?) but had little choice but to pay the robber’s fee; “like being in New York, without the civilization,” I commented wryly as we climbed back into our cars.

A few more kilometers into the desert along the small and winding, but well-kept road, and we had reached the end of the track for our own vehicles; further travel inwards was restricted to registered guides to prevent damage to the ecosystem and the whole death/dehydration thing that unfortunately comes from being inexperienced and lost in the desert. We didn’t mind; Laura and Lillie, the trip’s masterminds, had already contacted their favorite guide, Suleiman the Bedouin, and he would be meeting up with us shortly. Sure enough, after only a few minutes of casually tossing a football around the parking lot, the man himself rattled up to us in a sage-colored Toyota pickup with an open bed. He hailed us with a gleaming smile, which matched his gleaming white robe, as he stepped from the truck to help us lift our bags into the bed. He greeted everyone warmly; apparently this group had been using his camp for quite awhile now. I was struck by his height, smooth English, and especially by his very Westernized sense of humor – which made sense, since his job was to be a companion to mostly-Western tourists!

About to make a successful football catch in the Rum parking lot

After we had piled the truck full with our coolers, packs, and selves, the engine grumbled to life, and we lurched out into the Bedouin village, passing by goats, camels, and cavorting children who flashed by us in bouncing blur as we left the low buildings behind and entered the actual desert. I saw a vague blur of a ubiquitous Orange Telecom building (even HERE?), and had enough time to shake my fist and tsk a couple times before it too vanished in a cloud of dust behind us.

All of us except poor Jeff had sunglasses on, which we quickly adjusted tightly across our face because the combination of sun, sand, windblasts, and insane bouncing did not let up for the next 15 minutes of roaring across the dunes. Suleiman was definitely getting a kick from treating his truck like a four-wheeler ATV. As our hair whipped around our faces and we struggled to hold onto our pots, pans, and coolers, the mountains got increasingly larger and even more impressive. I tried to photograph, video, and hold onto things at the same time, but I don’t believe I was too successful and therefore that particular photography won’t grace the website. Laura mentioned that when they needed to travel at night, the Bedouins guided themselves with the lights of their trucks turned off, using the ridges and spires of the mountains as navigational tools. Looking around me at the distinctive crests that surrounded us, I understood that to a Bedouin, born and raised in the desert, they would be as clear as painted signposts.

All right, just one picture. Because you asked nicely.

Just as it seemed that our teeth would rattle themselves out of their jawbones, we jolted to a halt and found ourselves at Suleiman’s camp, where we met fellow camp manager Ali, a slender, quiet young man who wore contemporary jeans and t-shirt instead of robes. While modest in comparison to the ritzy “Magic Oriental Camp” from my last trip out to Rum, I preferred this camp immediately for its small, cozy size and its greatly improved view out over the mountains. Although this one was small, it still had a small but serviceable kitchen, and flush toilets and a shower hooked up to tanks suspended in the rocks of the mountain it snuggled up against. I asked Suleiman about that other camp, and he informed me that it was actually not even Rum itself, but instead considered part of a village called Disi, way back at the edge by the highway. The way he said it made me believe that perhaps the Bedouins of the “deeper desert” felt a little superior to the ones on the fringes.

We didn’t time before getting started with the main event of the evening – the cooking! My chosen dish was my dear Aunt Jennifer’s “Rocky Mountain Mashed Potatoes,” which is so-titled because, as she says, “they look formidable from a distance.” I had picked up 8 huge potatoes that morning before we left Amman, and it took about 20 minutes to get them chopped up into small chunks to have them soak over the gas flames of the small stone lodge next to the fire. Suleiman inspected my handiwork closely, and I jokingly shooed him away, saying “Ma fee mushkelay hohn, anna ma’lim!” - “There’s no problem here, I’m an expert!” He was amused with my Arabic attempts, and for the rest of the weekend only referred to me as “Al-Ma’lim.”

As Aaron and I worked over our vegetables (he with green beans and carrots), Lillie busied herself with preparing the turkey, which was destined to be cooked in a method never-before seen by the West – the Bedouin zarb oven! We all watched with interest as Lillie withdrew the dripping turkey (which is called deak in Arabic) from its brine and Suleiman tucked it gently into cylindrical metal stand, which he then lowered into an old, slightly-smoking oil drum which no one had noticed before because it was buried underground except for the top two inches of it. The stand fit into it perfectly, and there the turkey sat, peacefully awaiting its smoky tan. The two Bedouins covered the top of the drum with metal cover, sealing it perfectly and then used shovels to bury the entire setup under a foot of sand. A few puffs of smoke weakly floated from the reddish mound, and then nothing. Suleiman brushed the sand off his hands briskly and flashed his grin at us again. “Give it a few hours and it will be ready to eat,” he promised.

With my potatoes simmering on the stove, the deak in the zarb, and some time to kill, four of us decided to experience Wadi Rum in the traditional way: have a Bedouin drive you out in the desert and then take pictures of you doing random things! I had thought that Aaron had been out to the desert as many times as Laura, so I was surprised when he confessed that he had never actually been into the protected zone. He and I, as well as Erica and Lauren, found that without luggage and coolers to wedge us in place, we bounced even more around the bed than we had on the way into the desert; the threadbare pad over the metal bench was not nearly enough and my tailbone my never be the same. Suleiman mysteriously told us that we would be “Sand Dune Jumping” and we soon found out what he meant. The truck halted in front of a huge vista of flat desert at the bottom of a rise of dune, but the purpose was not for sightseeing; Suleiman directed us over to a small patch of undisturbed dune, about 30 feet of slope, entirely and deeply covered with thick, rust-colored sand. Staggering slightly as our feet tried to gain purchase, we followed him.

Suleiman demonstrated exactly what he meant with his statement, hitching up his robe around his waist (he was wearing pants after all) and taking a running leap down the hill. “I will take your photos, and you will take long jumps down the hill while I catch you in mid-air. It is a beautiful sight, and a very soft landing, too!” The four of us warmed up to this idea in varying degrees; Aaron was somewhat skeptical of the idea, but I quickly proclaimed that long-jump style leaps were not nearly enough for such an expanse of sand, and instead, Superman would need to be emulated. The other four exchanged glances, and Aaron said something to the effect of, “yeah, you first, man.” Obviously, me going first was exactly what I had intended, and after removing my electronics from my pockets, I demonstrated why my nickname in high school was “The Man Of Steel.”

(”Anta Tumza!” means “you’re kidding!”)

…okay, when I said “Steel” I perhaps may have been exaggerating. I wish that Suleiman had been able to catch me in the frame a little bit better, because trust me when I say that there’s nothing more exhilarating than leaping about 5 feet out in the air, feeling the breeze in your hair and the sun on your face, and then landing semi-hard on your wrists and feeling the sand in your hair and the sand on your face…and in your pockets…and in your ears…and nostrils. They may not teach this in schools, but the desert? It’s filled with sand. A lot of it. I pulled out my pockets and dropped about half a pound in a second, and spat some of it out. Suleiman called over to me, “They may not have told you about the new rule that we’ve made about desert conservation, but before you leave you’ll have to strip naked and be shaken down to make sure you’re not sneaking any of our sand.” I noticed that everyone was chuckling at me from up at the top of the hill, but I couldn’t quite make out what was being said through dense sand packs in my ear canals. I ended up taking my somewhat-Supermanish flights four more times before deciding that I should call it quits before taking the entire dune home in my pockets.

My best photograph of the day: capturing the essence of that exquisite "Dune Leap"

The second stop in the mini-tour was the Bridge, which was simply a huge natural sandstone formation, weathered out to form an easily-accessible bridge that attracted about two dozen other guided tourists. The rocks were covered in puffing middle-aged Americans who were being gently guided by white-robed Bedouins higher up into the rocks so that they could have their photo op atop the majestic stone. Having discarded my shoes during the dune leaping session, I scampered easily up the rocks after leaving my camera with Suleiman (I do have a love of climbing random things) and we all posed on the huge shelf, standing on a platform that was edged with countless initials and dates of past visitors over the years. I wondered if that was a good idea; this was all sandstone and therefore much more likely to break apart compared with other subjects of graffiti.

After making one last brief stop in the bottom of a canyon buried between two massive cliffs that had some 7000 year old carvings and pictoglyphs in it, we began the bouncy journey back to the camp to rejoin our fellows. We made a slight detour on the way when Suleiman noticed that another Bedouin’s truck had broken down far out in the desert; he gave the guy a lift to another camp that actually looked like a real non-tourist area; they had a flock of sheep and a camel lazily snacking on the patches of shrubs that grew everywhere. Still in my bare feet, I declined to stretch my legs momentarily when I noticed the sand was completely covered in dung from the animals. When we started off again along the deep ruts in the sand that was the only visible path back towards the others, I found myself fantasizing that the deep gouges and creases in the sheer rock faces of the mountains were like the air bubbles in a slice of bread, and that the play of dark shadows on the red and black stone were chocolate and strawberry syrup being poured over a shortcake desert.

I mean, don't they look like cake with syrup poured over them? Maybe it was just that my mouth was already filled with sand that I was having these thoughts.

I managed to keep myself from drooling too much over the next hour back at the camp as we reunited and continued the dinner preparations. The potatoes were perfectly mashed and the sour cream and cream cheese were added, but I realized I had forgotten to boil the yams, thus damaging my Aunt’s perfect recipe and making more plain mashed potatoes. There were sweet potatoes, candied carrots, beans with bacon (which Ali and Suleiman carefully avoided coming near) and pecan, apple, and spice pies for dessert. The crowning jewel of the preparations of course was the removal of the deak from its underground tomb, which caused a belch of collected smoke and a pungent aroma to rise from the uncovered drum. The Bedouins pulled the bird from the zarb and we saw what a smoked turkey really looks like – dark meat. A couple of us joked about needing more meat in our diets, and Suleiman sized me up and said to Lillie, “You could put the ma’lim in now; he should only take a couple of hours to cook.” Meanwhile, the low table was set in one of the tents and everyone gathered around it, cross-legged, to begin the feast!

Now that is a bird with a tan, dear readers.

The food was bountiful and delicious, and the company was excellent. The turkey itself, as I’m sure you’re curious, had a salty, smokey flavor which was unusual, but wonderful (although, as Jeff quickly discovered, the skin was completely inedible from the amount of smoke that it had absorbed). Lillie’s brining job was perfect and even though it had sat in a dry fire for two and a half hour, the meat just fell from the bones. I highly recommend building your own zarb and metal stand and giving it a try. You may also have to build your own desert as well for the full effect, but Thanksgiving is a good time to be resourceful! We crouched over our low tables in the smokey-smelling tent for a good hour tucking away before finally falling away, spent, as our ability to sit cross-legged was overwhelmed by our added mass.

The stars were the only things visible outside in night sky; having been to Rum exactly two weeks ago with the full moon, this time we were going to experience the exact opposite. We pulled the thin all-purpose farshat (mattresses) around the flickering campfire and everyone looked about ready to nod off, thanks to the tryptophan in our systems. I couldn’t believe it was only 8 in the evening. Suleiman seemed to know the best way to keep us awake – within another few minutes he had arranged for his cousin Hamid to show up with some British tourists, and Hamid played the uud (a small guitar-like instrument that sounds a little like a ukulele) for us and sang songs about lost love in high pitched, ululating tones. The ethereal voice and uud, combined with the flickering faces around the embers and the stars in the sky (not to mention the approximately 5 pounds of food in each stomach) caused us all to quickly drift off, retiring to thefarshat and pulling huge, thick, sand-ridden blankets over ourselves. Within a matter of 20 minutes, conversation had ceased, the Bedouins had pulled the power on the generator with a soft thud, and the entire desert was bathed in the soft gleam of the stars. All was quiet.

I studied the stars above me as if seeing them for the first time, and indeed, I was hoping to see some new constellations compared with what I’m used to in the Western Hemisphere. However, I noted the familiar shapes of the Dippers and Orion’s Belt and remembered that East/West doesn’t change the star patterns. As my eyes adjusted to the lights of the millions of pinpoints above me, for the first time I realized that I could see the entire shape of Orion, not just his belt – a first for me. I could even make out his bow, which was almost imperceptible even in the total blackness here. I understood now that if technology had preceding human consciousness, we never would have been able to wonder about the stars, because we never would be able to see them like this! I lay there, listening to music of the wind shifting through the sand and the foxes fighting over the last chunks of the turkey we had put out for them, and then had several dreams about how delicious sandstone was.

We all awoke sharply at exactly 8:20 the next morning, as the sunlight suddenly appeared over the top of our mountain and slapped us briskly in the face. Jeff and I, on opposite sides of the row of farshat, awoke at exactly the same time and stared blearily across the others at each other for a few minutes, having the usual camping-wake-up moment of “where am I again?” We were all completely covered in morning dewdrops and I sneezed several times, which probably aided in the rapid awakening of everyone else. We tried not to waste any time in preparing for the return trip (by eating the rest of the pies for breakfast) and putting Bedouins’ sleeping materials back into one of the tents. Meanwhile, I chose to explore a little bit more, climbing up to the top of our sheltering hulk of stone and looking out across the desert at the other little camps that I could now see dotting here and there.

Suleiman had disappeared at some time in the morning before we awoke (probably to take care of some other tourists) and so Ali took care of driving us back into the village. Although he drove far more leisurely than his colleague, the shock absorbers on the truck (or lack thereof) still caused us to careen into each other like popcorn in the bed. About three-quarters of the way back in, I spotted a few moving specks moving in the same direction as us, which quickly resolved into a truck and three camels, moving at rapid speed towards the village as well. Ali, rightly sensing a “tourist moment” slowed down to match pace with them so we could watch the proceedings. The leading camel was the most interesting: at first I thought that he had lost a rider, because I could see what looked like a saddle on his back, but then Jeff told me that it was actually a motorized, remote-controlled riding crop that was paddling the dromedary’s rump as the Bedouin driver pushed a button. I could now see the keffiyeh’d driver easily, leaning out his own window and holding a small box. The strides of all three animals were even and sure, and only their legs seemed to pedal the sand; leaving their bodies perfectly level. I tried to film and videotape the entire proceeding, but the roar of the truck’s engine and the fact that I had to keep myself from being thrown from the vehicle yielded poor quality results.

We had arrived at the end of our journey together and it was time to go home. Suleiman’s asking price per person was only JD 25 each, but we had already agreed to give him 30 because we liked him so much and because we had originally promised him we’d have more people with us. Suleiman gave me his card, and told me that I was a good ma’lim. I assured him that the next time I was down in Rum, probably next spring, I would definitely make sure to give him a call!

Saying goodbye to Suleiman the Bedouin before we head back up to Amman

I went out to see The Dark Knight yesterday evening, and of course I couldn’t let the opportunity for a simple yet visceral theatrical experience pass me by. Although originally a few other people that I went with planned on dressing up too, in the end it was just me. I don’t quite have Heath Ledger’s bone structure, so I couldn’t pull it off entirely (his face is much broader than mine) but I liked the results, especially since I kept it pretty close to his interpretation. It’s too bad we’ll never get to see him play another role as the Joker.

I wish I could have dressed as him too, but oddly enough, I couldn’t seem to find anyone that actually owns a purple suit. I ended up just wearing a purple t-shirt over a green button-up shirt, and then throwing a tie in for good measure. It wasn’t a very good costume, but people got the idea.

I saw this epic scene as I was walking home from work; my eye caught by an uneven shuffling near the corner of the wall next to my feet. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was one of those things that you only really hear about in middle school biology classes: a tiny black ant of the standard Wisconsin variety, tugging the hulking carcass of a massive bumblebee. Or was it a carcass? With some sense of anthropomorphizing morbidity, I noted that the bee’s legs were still kicking feebly, and one wing fluttered as the ant stubbornly dragged his victim along. Although I thought the motion could have just been attributed to the bumping and dragging over the tiny pebbles, the ant stopped as my shadow loomed over him and started to fumble for my camera. The bee kicked twice, twitched, and then was still again, confirming that the huge insect was still (somewhat) alive.

I wondered what had happened that this duet was able to come to pass. Probably, the bee had more than likely stung someone or something, and being only a bumblebee with one sting in its life, was dying when the ant came across it in the dust. I suspect that this particular ant was definitely going to move up in the world. Top Drone, I hope.

The ant, sensing that the paparazzi had come to witness his superhuman strength, turned from his parallel course with me and began to determinedly carry the bee up the wall to his right. It was quite amazing to watch – the ant never faltered or changed speed at all as he rotated, backwards, 90 degrees, and I found myself wishing that my camera’s puny 3x optical zoom was closer to 30x. I can only imagine how on earth he was able to move so fast, backwards, vertically, while carrying a victim four or five times his size. He was moving so fast that my little point and shoot (definitely lacking the ability to capture motion in low-light situations) couldn’t even create an image without blur. I was glad to get the plant in the picture though, to showcase which way is upwards (would I lie to you?)

Let’s all be very glad that ants are tiny creatures. We would be in a lot of trouble if they were closer to our size. More specifically, we would all be dead.

I was on my way home after walking a friend back to her apartment when I saw the flashing red lights of a fire department vehicle about a block away, just across the street from my office building. I walked up to see what was going on, and was treated to this beautiful sight of the fire hydrant being flushed, framed in the glow of the fire truck behind it. Fire hydrants put out a lot of water, and I stood for a few minutes and watched the huge arc the jet of the hydrant made, the droplets fanning out and almost reaching the other side of the street about ten feet away; quite the distance. Behind me, trickles and rivulets streamed down the slight slope of Charter Street and vanished beneath darkened cars, gurgling away into the hidden drains. The fire department guy monitoring the whole situation sat on a bench nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me with bland curiosity as I snapped a few pictures. I guess he was too used to the whole thing to notice how beautiful it was.

We had just gotten back home from watching Wall-E, which I haven’t yet heard a single bad review of from either professional nor word of mouth (we agreed that it was an amazingly adorable film). My friend and I had planned on just biking from my apartment to the theater, then catching the bus back, but I seem to have this gremlin-like ability to repel Madison Metro buses away from me when I need them. So we ended up taking an unplanned bike-back as well, for a total of around 15 miles or so. Ironically, we were a mile into the trip when the very bus we thought we’d missed roared past us, getting all the green lights (as we got the red ones shortly afterward) and vanishing quickly over a massive hill. The route took us through Speedway, which is a darkened path with a cemetery on either side. Lightning was already crackling in the distance, which of course made for a stereotypical Frankenstein-esque scene on either sides of the road as we biked through it. I wouldn’t have been half-surprised to see a hunched figure, illuminated in a dim glow, unearthing ancient remains beneath a crumbling tomb.

After I got home, the heavens pulled a fire hydrant imitation and started roaring, just barely missing drenching me completely with bullet-sized droplets and soaking the windowsill of my bedroom. At least that part of the night worked out well!