A Sniff

III- More Petra

Nothing hits harder than the music knife to the heart, nothing makes you miss home more, “nothing feels better than blood on blood”, the Boss competing with the sunset over Petra and the call to prayer. Sunset’s like my call to prayer, too. It’s when I reflect- reflect like a windshield in the drowning western sun, take what the day has given me and shine it out there, most times to no-one.
What’s really going on, what’s the buzz, Al-Jazeera TV for the masses, oh yeah there’s a world out there, this is some real news, and they’re showing truck bombs in Afghanistan and I’m covering my mouth with my hand, but this isn’t hype, it’s truth. Or pretty close for the media anyway. I watch as much Al-Jazeera as I can, I’m a learning robot. Wish we had news at home. Now I’m here in the Middle East, half a day’s drive from Iraq, (like driving to Kamloops, or Portland), the familes on TV aren’t just digital puppets anymore, tragic marionettes. They are families. They run super-markets. Their kids give them hell. This sounds clitchy, but I understand these images a little better all of a sudden. Men weeping, walking behind coffins, blood on the streets- I’ve seen the streets here, and they look the same. Streets shouldn’t have blood on. People are people, most of em peaceful, if I had the balls I’d go to Iraq and see for myself, but I don’t want to be kidnapped to prove someone’s point. I just understand a little more now.

Jordan flags are in every car and the Arabic- beautiful and thick like caramel in the throat, but you haven’t heard an argument till you hear it in Arabic. I’m just trying to finish my shwarma, guys, but the kid with the ponytail, the Che shirt, the eyeliner is yelling hot caramel at the waiter, and then there’s attempted punches, a kick to the chest that connects, I’m so hungry I slide the extra chair in beside me, but keep chewing. Everyone holds everyone back. The kid was being rude to the Egyptian waiter because he’s Egyptian. I could see the kid was trouble, you don’t need to speak the language to know. Finished that shwarma. Climbing mountains will make you hungry.

I climbed two more today. The usual style of my youth- fuck the trail. Climbed up sneaky around a temple where no-one could see me to yell at me to stop, worked my way up chimneys, down gorges, a canyon labyrinth, leaving arrows made of branches to find my way back down these sandstone faces. Three hours later I reach the top and I get my rewards- bits of Nabatean staircase, worn, here and there, a cave temple and my very own sacrificial altar. I don’t think anyone makes it up to this peak very often, even locals. Almost no sign of unintelligent life. And I get to look down at the siq canyon from 250 feet on an overhang. Get the vertigo. Getting old? Maybe.

I ate this place up. Come down that siq today at 6.30 am again, no-one around, just rose walls rising around me. I’m listening, trying to picture the sound of hooves and chariot wheels 2000 years ago. I tell myself, I’ll never forget this feeling, this ancient gorge, quiet and empty. But I probably will. That’s why I write this shit down, that’s why I photograph so much. I never remember. Got a fuzzy ocean memory, blurry things bob to the surface now and then, and sink into the murky depths again. I slip messages in bottles and hope they hit the right beach. I keep old deodorants so I can experience the olfactory stimulus, maybe stir up something from the depths years from now. With naught but a sniff..

Before Even London Was Londinium

II- Petra

my lips are dry and burning, I was stroked by that sun today, I’m hurtin all over. Back. Left knee dodgy again. I think I’m locked into my room, Mohammed had to take the key from me under the door this morning to bring breakfast in. hope there’s no fires or earthquakes. I’m like a cranky baby right now. I must just be tired. Everything was pissing me off. Dinner was 11 jd’s, they said it’d be 8. Batteris, 4 dinars, after the first set didn’t work. Every kid saying, Hello, and then, One Dinar! They said there was music at the Cave Bar at 7- go back. Nope, 9 o’clock. I’m too damn tired to wait. This isn’t a goddamn travel guide, it’s my brain on paper. So. Petra blew my mind. I mean, it blew my mind. Palaces carved into canyon rock. Pink canyon rock. Deep gorges and high peaks. A whole little city carved by hand into rose-coloured stone. And I’d be a kid on a playground anyway, climbing in and out of these gorges, but then to walk up rock-hewn steps carved by Nabateans before little tiny baby Jesus burped up, and ascend to an altar surrounded by a spinning vista of peaks and valleys, an altar to the gods, a stone bench for the onlookers, the believers, and some high priest would slit a mewling lamb’s throat, and the bubbling blood would flow hot and fast like water into this basin here, and out through that pipe there and surely these heathens would dance and wail and chant, I had my arms up touching the clouds, thinking what I should sacrifice, here at this altar, holy even before London was Londinium.
Up and down, I went, up and down, drinking in views like milk, sunshine dripping down my chin, greedy little smile all over my face, hobbling down steps by the end of the day because my mountain-running knee says Enough is enough. What tools does a man use to cut a 90-foot column out of a sandstone cliff? Or an entire banquet room with straight, high ceilings and smooth walls? I left my fucking jaw in Petra. I don’t even feel I need to go to Macchu Picchu now. It was like that.
I’m glad I remembered how good this day was. It was just l.o.n.g. Hit the canyon trail at 6.30am and didn’t look back. Limped back up that same trail many climbs and canyons later, at 6.30pm. And dinner was good. A vegetarian’s nightmare. I had mansafe- Jordanian classic. Chuckled to myself, mawing tender lamb straight off a white leg bone, Mansafe maybe, but Lamb not so safe. I’m such an idiot. Humous and babaganoush to boot. Eating like a wolf. Rip-offs be damned, cheats be damned, my breaking knee be damned. I’m on top of the world looking down down on creation. Hope I can walk tomorrow.

Welcome. Welcome!

JORDAN
I- Aqaba to Petra


It’s some Muslim holy day here. No-one seems to be able to explain which one. I’m full of chicken kebab, bbq’ed and scrumptious. Long day in bus seats, but I made it here in a day , so I’m satisfied. Tel Aviv to Eilat was five hours of trying to build on the 3 hours of drunk sleep I had, between Israeli girls playing eyes, vacationers headed to surf city for some sin. Nothing but lip-gloss and chest-chuckling, these Israeli chicks, and loud as chickens. Thanks God again for my earplugs. Eilat’s stinkin hot at 2pm, so I forget looking for a bus to the border, and hop in a cab.
The border’s a breeze, over and out. Share another cab with some awkward Americans. The cab-driver tries to lie to me while we’re driving to Aqaba, Red Sea port city, tells me it’s a holiday, no buses to Petra, I should let him drive me there for 25 Dinars. –Give me your card, but drop me at the city centre. I’ll call you if I need you, I tell him. Full of shit for sure.
Big-backpack man, turning this way and that in the dusty quiet streets of central Aqaba. People are so friendly though. Welcome. Welcome! Welcome, says the butcher as he smiles and holds a guttering chicken down by the throat. Welcome! yells the pint-size little man from his daddy’s sweet shop. Everybody saying welcome, it’s hard not to feel.. welcome. Here in Jordan. A kind man walks up the street with me, shows me where the bus depot is. And there’s the Petra minibus, full and just about to leave. Good timing. Rickety little thing. Give the driver the dinars, only white guy, people glance, curious. I wedge into a seat and we’re trundling.
Outskirts of Aqaba look strangely like Leh- dust brown cliffs and crags rising into the screaming blue sky. 12000 feet lower and 40 degrees hotter though, so it is. Powerlines across the scrubby desert, random camels and Bedouin lean-tos with their pick-ups parked outside, (what lives those people must lead; wanderers). Seems to be a black plastic bag stuck to every desert shrub out there. Hard to believe they’re still handing these things out in the super-markets back home.
The three curious Jordanians behind me finally pipe up after half an hour. One wants to know how much is my camera, can he buy it. Another wants me to take a photo of the red sandstone bluffs in the distance, they are important in Jordan. It’s hard to understand their English. I’m surprised when a woman in a head-covering hijab and black robe to the ground translates what they are saying to me in English that’s a little clearer. As we climb and climb through the desert, the land finally falls away in the west, miles of deep gorges and sandstone islands in the air, like a Grand Canyon near the Red Sea. It’s breath-taking. The woman opens her curtain so I can see better and points out the canyon where Petra is hidden as we come closer.
A town begins to engulf our speedy little highway on either side. Wadi Musa. Again like Leh, built into the sweeping hillside above the sea of canyons that echo into the distance. This is where I sleep tonight.

Jamal in the pick-up says he’s got a room, I hop in. Jamal’s wrong, there’s no room- things are busy. He feels bad for taking me so far up the hill away from town, though, so he drives me around to three different hotels until I find a room. Private bathroom, two beds, a TV that doesn’t seem to work and a gob-smacking view of the sun sinking into the myriad of gorges in the distance beyond the town. I’ll take it.
Walk down around the town centre, lots of smiles and Welcomes. And nobody really trying to sell me anything. Feels like Pleasantville, Arab-style. Things aren’t even so different here. Kids in jeans hanging out on the corners, maybe smoking nargileh, men in the pool hall, families at outside table for kebabs. Allah-u-akbar riding the breeze and some men chatting in Arab head-dress. Not too many women out, and their heads are covered if they are.
The man in the grocery store smiles when I tell him I’m traveling alone so I can hear myself think. And here I am now, listening.

Tel Aviv

The beach beside the military base in Bat Yam, where Katya grew up, is nearly deserted- it’s a little cold for most Israelis, I guess. We ate excellent seafood. I listened to Russian. The kid at the next table was talking longing loveytalk with his girlfriend. He must’ve been about 19, 20. Sunglasses on his head like a camp counselor. They finished and got up to leave, and he casually slings a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Half of me is thinking, That’s a realistic looking water pistol!! The other half knows damn well it’s real as all hell. Katya and I gawk as this youth saunters away in his shorts, arm in arm with his girlfriend and his gun. I keep thinking how early American settlers probably had kids like this strolling around with firearms cause their new laws said they could, don’t want no injuns or no English strutting around like they own the place. Look where that got Americans. Katya’s aunt says they’re soldiers on leave, they have a special license to keep their gun with them, uniform or not. This way, if an Arab madman appears to gun down a bunch of students someone can take him out. Hard to argue with that- I don’t know what living in that kind of fear is like. But I sure don’t feel safe seeing a spotty kid that looks like he should be measuring children outside rollercoasters strolling around with a semi-automatic. That doesn’t feel like security. That feels like desperation. That feels a breath away from anarchy.
Sitting in the breeze in these quiet suburbs, normal sounds, construction, traffic, everyday life. But I’m in the middle of a tiny country that’s barely hanging on. It’s incredibly strange.
I guess the thing to do is just buy stuff.

* * *

so, Tel Aviv. The modern city. No cultural tour would is complete without a fuck-off vodka night at the Russian clubs. Throwing back sickly sweet vodka-redbulls at home before 11. We meet childhood buddy Igor on the corner and cab it downtown. Ksusha knows people, so we’re into the Rio for free. DJ’s blaring it, wannabe pornstars with white lace and angel wings gyrating slowly onstage. Mullet blue-eyed Russians with hazing vodka eyes gape as the little angels strip down to G-strings and fake titties, the place is filling up. Igor buying round after round, how to keep up, but it feels good. The club experience is to blast your mind with so much alcohol and screamingly loud music that self-conscious little whispers can’t be heard, and the Id can take over, grinding your hips, movin your lips in shouts that no-one hears, turning you into an animal machine in a smoky mating season, tuned into species propagation mode, all systems go go GO! Banging techno beats and sweating mess of bodies, rounds come and go down the hatch, you don’t even remember the cab ride between clubs, you don’t even remember where the shekels went. This is the unforgiving and not-so-blind mating ritual, biceps and tight shirts, tiny skirts and glossy labia-looking lipstick, sex pounds the blood like bass beats, all this and more, Friday night whores, we’re all made the same in the end, the same stuff, but it comes out in different ways. 5am, we’re home, don’t know how. Hitched a ride in some suped-up hotshot Honda blaring Eminem, seatbelts on, that’s for sure. Ears ringing, it’ll be the only reminder in the morning. Ringing ears and aching head. Answer the call next weekend again. Shaking tail-feathers. Squawk. SQUAAAAWK..