T A B L E_T A L K Have you visited places you didn't want to leave? Regret leaving in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk. R E C E N T L Y Marooned in Colorado By Sara Baird A type-A journalist is forced to unwind at an idyllic, isolated (accessible only by narrow-gauge railroad or helicopter) Colorado resort (11/25/97) Road Warrior Jerry Yang Yahoo's Jerry Yang shares travel secrets (11/24/97) Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer A turkey chicken's Thanksgiving recipe (11/21/97) Crossing Mongolia By Amanda Jones Of gers and grit on the first recorded four-wheel expedition through the Gobi Desert to Lake Hovsgol (11/20/97) Gypsies of Spain By Curt Hopkins Scenes from a passionate stay in Granada (11/19/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		D I S C O V E R I N G+P E T R A ++|+P A G E+2+O F +2 Unlike the other vendors, who were young and exuded a "Welcome Tourist!" camaraderie, the old man did not smile. He just nodded toward his wares, a curious collection, one a child might display in his room: a few fake Roman coins, broken pottery shards, perhaps old, more likely new, crumbly decapitated little statues the size of Swiss army knives and, surprisingly -- an amazing assortment of bones similar to what is left after Thanksgiving dinner. One by one, with his large, knobbly hand he selected an "antiquity" and thrust it toward me with the admonition, "See." As I wanted to get on to the heart of Petra yet didn't want to be rude, I took each one, looked at it quickly, then handed it back, smiling "Thank you" and bowing slightly as if I were in Japan. Then, amid the jumble, my eye caught a flat stone face, small and round as a demitasse saucer. I thought it might make an interesting paperweight. After some ritual bargaining, I bought it for about a dollar, stuffed it in my daypack and bid him good-bye. "See!" he called after me. "No, thank you!" I called back. "No more." "See." "What is it?" "Antiquity. Nabatean bone." "Ha!" "Nabatean bone." "Bedouin bone, more likely!" "Same," he said, not insulted at all. "Nabatean. Bedouin. Same." He handed me the thumb-size bone. "Baksheesh," he said. "For you, baksheesh." I thanked him and hurried on. The trail turned right and I came to a narrow winding passage wedged between sandstone walls that curved inward and soared skyward a thousand feet. This was the Siq: the secret entrance to Petra. In places, the walls almost touched, shutting out the sky; at other points, they parted just enough to aim crisscrossed sunbeams to the ground with spotlight precision. Dwarfed by these eerie rocks, I went, twisting and turning more than a mile through the Siq, as it narrowed more and more. Light turned to shade. Sound amplified. From the opposite direction came returning tourists, Jordanian police on horseback, guides leading back ponies or vendors carrying out boxes of sand bottles. In this shadowy passage, we hugged the towering walls to make way for each other while the dense air held the dust stirred by hooves and the mingled smell of horse manure and oleander. Then in the next moment -- sudden splendor. No one could have prepared me for confronting such majesty as I emerged from a darkened cleft: El Khazneh loomed above me. El Khazneh is a towering peach-red palace. Six enormous Corinthian pillars support a Roman pediment; above that, a ledge balances six more pillars as well as six immense niches with statues of Nabatean goddesses and, in the middle, a round kiosk topped by a bull-sized urn! As if in a trance, I stood gazing at the palace. Then at last I walked on and saw I was in a valley rimmed by red cliffs. All about me rose the ancient city. Elaborate tombs, baths, stairways, streets, houses, banqueting halls -- hundreds of rock-hewn structures as far as I could see in an architecture fusing Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles -- affirming that above all, Petra had indeed been a cosmopolitan city. I knew the metropolis spanned over 250 acres, but I had no time to explore it. Tomorrow I'd return to bounce echoes against the marble interior of the Palace Tomb, take sage tea with the Bedouin, hike to the High Place of Sacrifice, whisper in the amphitheater. Tomorrow Petra would be my playground. But now it was a poem and I couldn't have come at a more poetic time. With the tourists gone, the 2,000-year-old capital withdrew into the twilight, hallowed by silence and the cool air which hung over it, still as protective glass. Walking toward the city center, I passed the Roman Colonnade. To my right, along the eastern cliffs were carved the decorative facades of the Royal Tombs. I sat on a boulder to look at these immense tomb-palaces of great kings, long forgotten. Tombs embedded with granite and limestone in horizontal bands of color -- blue, yellow, rust, cream, pink, lavender. In the last shimmers of light, the bands appeared to ripple like ribbons. I felt the poignancy of these ruins: Petra begins a story forever stopped -- a story not of great buildings, but of a great people broken by time. "Naaaaaah." Black goats herded by a little Bedouin girl crossed in front of me. I looked around. Goat herders were everywhere! Where had they come from? A woman in a long dress gathered goats along the Roman paving stones of the Colonnade; a teenage boy shepherded a flock right across the steps of the Palace Tomb! When I stood up, I saw wisps of smoke ghosting upward near the museum and, walking toward it, saw a woman in a clearing cooking on an open fire. I had read that in the mid-'80s, when making Petra a tourist site, the government evicted the Bedouins who had lived in Petra's caves for thousands of years. However, I now saw that the Bedouins not only sold Pepsi, made sand bottles, rented horses and acted as guides, they lived here. The Bedouins had prevailed, and as evening arrives, they reclaim Petra, not as dealers, but as dwellers. A breeze blew up. The sky was growing dark. Not wanting to miss the van, I rushed to re-enter the Siq, now a murky tunnel. Like Lot's wife, I turned to look back. I no longer could see El Khazneh. I no longer could see. Everything was shrouded in shadow. The way back seemed longer than I remembered. I shivered. The cool air had turned blade sharp. In the starry sky an Islamic moon emerged. Following the flashlight circle, I hurried up the trail, "Nabatean. Bedouin. Nabatean. Bedouin." The words of the old man uncurled their meaning into my mind and I began to understand. Behind me, in the blackness, remained those who become visible. Those who unbrokenly, magically, pitch their tents, tend their fires and gather their flocks. SALON | Nov. 26, 1997 Maxine Rose Schur is a travel essayist and children's book author who lives in Northern California. Have you ever had a magical travel experience such as this, at Petra or elsewhere? Share your tales in Table Talk. For more information about travel to Jordan, check out Wanderlust Marketplace. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PHOTO BY ROBERT HOLMES