At night, when the dishwasher churns downstairs and Stephen sleeps in bed beside me, images come unbidden. Pictures appear and recede, tumble and shift as if badly set in an album. They are the sometimes surprising and sometimes familiar images that only my brain can summon — mind-photos. Unlike real photographs, posed and pale and partial, mind-photos replicate the real — what is most real. When they appear to us persistent and unsought, they remind us who we are — what matters to us. When we die, our mind-photos die with us.
That is why I write about Keben.
I write about Keben because the picture of this Turkish mountain village has come to me over the years like flute song across a mountain valley. I’m not asleep when I see the vertical village clutching a mountain cliff. A hamlet so isolated that as late as 1972, the inhabitants had never heard of America and in their frustration, asked, “Who is your king?”
We were staying near Silifke, in a tiny Mediterranean fishing village with our newfound friend Huseyn and his wife Eminou, her mother and their two sons, Mustafa, age 4 and Ey|p, nearly 2. It was Huseyn’s idea to travel to Keben when Ramadan drew to a close. In Keben we would visit Eminou’s family and celebrate Bayram, the culminating feast of this holy period. One morning, Huseyn announced, “Tomorrow we will go to Keben. We will be stoop-id [his amusing way of saying "stopped"] there.”
The trip preparation was intense. Huseyn and Stephen fished all day and caught a large bag of mullet and sea bass to bring as gifts. I helped Eminou make an extra vat of yogurt. Then, with several trips to the village pump, she filled the cauldron with water and hung it over the fire. When it was warm, we carried it into the storeroom and there she and I sat on little wooden stools and splashed our naked bodies with the water, scooping it out of the cauldron with hollow gourds. We soaped ourselves luxuriously with the soft white soap she had made from olive oil. Afterward, we put on our baggy trousers and sweaters and combed our wet hair by the fire. Now we were clean enough to visit Keben.
What with making the bread and the yogurt, the packing of it and packing the green olives and the clothes and the coverlets and of course, the bonjuk beading so hands wouldn’t be idle — what with all this activity, it was noon before we left.
Huseyn, Stephen, Eminou, her mother, little Mustafa and Ey|p and I settled into our VW van. We drove north into the Taurus mountains, winding along the narrow muddy roads. Several times we had to push the van out of the mud. At one point on the journey, Huseyn yelled, “You are stoop-id here!” We screeched to a halt at the side of the mountain where an overgrown footpath led upwards. He took his rifle and beckoned us to follow.
Leaving the others in the car, Stephen and I trudged up the path for about 10 minutes, not understanding why or where we were going until we reached a bluff. “Look!” Huseyn pointed up to a sheer cliff wall that held three enormous Hittite reliefs, each more than 30 feet high.
The sight of the magnificent carvings looming above us was breathtaking. Each carving was in profile. One was of a man, perhaps a priest in a long robe, with a long curly beard and wearing a tall cone-shaped hat. The second was even larger and showed a warrior in a short tunic with a spear. The third carving was the most beautiful — a woman in a pleated gown with a sort of fan-shaped hat. Her arm was raised, pointing to something in the distance.
“The lady,” Huseyn explained solemnly, “she is pointing to the ducks.”
While we were still standing awestruck by this hidden treasure, he walked to the edge of the plateau where we could no longer see him — but could hear the reverberating mountain echoes of his gunshots.
After a little while, Huseyn ran back, grinning. “No ducks today. We are going!”
Our van groaned up the tortuous road. As it climbed we could look far across the land. We saw pastures and tributaries of the Gvksu River in the shadowed valleys. By a stream, we stopped for a lunch of cheese and bread. Then we wound higher and higher until, in the red glimmer of dusk, we rounded a hairpin bend to see above us several waterfalls pouring over a cliff. As if mimicking the waterfalls, houses built of rocks or carved out of the mountain tumbled down the cliff — a flowing cascade of homes. From crevices in the mountainside rose delicate dwarf pines the pale green color of sage.
This was Keben.
Stephen drove the van up to the center of the village where we parked in front of a small pink mosque. A flock of children ran out to greet us with stares and giggles. They were extremely interested in Stephen and me — our strange coats, our shoes, our language.
“Whoosh! Whoosh!” Eminou’s brother, Ali, approached, shooing the children away like pigeons. Ali had deep, slanted black eyes, a big, bushy black mustache and a thick nose and mouth. Like Eminou, he was plump and cheerful.
There were hugs and tears as Eminou and her mother stepped out of the bus. The women went ahead to the house but surprisingly, Ali led us toward the mosque. We went in through a side door where there was a large bare room with men sitting about drinking tea.
Ali addressed them, and Huseyn translated. Ali told the men in the room and in particular the small group of elderly men huddled by the stove, that we were guests of his to be treated with respect and hospitality. The men sat listening seriously and when he had finished, they asked questions which only frustrated them as they were ignorant of the United States. Only a few had even heard that it existed and even they were not sure where it was.
They asked questions about the land we came from, the name of our king, whether you could see the ocean, the price of brides and the price of good wool sheep. After we had answered as best we could, the elders announced that we were the responsibility of every soul there, to be protected against harm. We were, they said, guests of the village.
We thanked them, then Ali led us out of the mosque along a path that was so narrow we had to walk single file in the now-dim light. “My friends,” Ali said to us as we went, “you are much welcome. You are the first strangers to visit Keben.”
Awed by this honor, we fell suddenly silent. We hopped on rocks across a stream to reach his small house, itself made of rocks. We took off our shoes and entered.
Like so many of the one-room homes we had seen in Turkey, this one was warm and cozy. The bare earth was covered with straw mats overlaid with handmade red and orange carpets. In the room’s center, pine wood burned in the fireplace where a large black cauldron hanging on a pole bubbled with stewed vegetables. Long, embroidered white cushions rimmed the walls while above our heads, hanging by ropes, floated a wool cradle holding a sleeping baby.
“Please, please, you are much welcome! Please come, you are sitting!”
We sat against the walls, our backs supported by the cushions. We were introduced to Ali’s slim and quiet wife, Melek, and his mother, a tanned, wrinkled woman with three horizontal rows of gleaming gold coins strung across her forehead. Melek sprinkled our hands with rosewater and then we were served a vegetable stew of okra, tomato and eggplant with hot flat bread to soak up the juices. We ate scrambled eggs too, and sipped sweet black tea.
The warm room made us drowsy. After the children went to sleep, Eminou and Melek and their mothers sat in the corner, chatting and beading bonjuk. In these Turkish homes with no traffic outside and no electric light within, the world vanishes fast, giving the interior an intensity. People appear beautifully posed and illuminated like the holy family in a Baroque nocturne. Lantern and candlelight cast the humblest family in high relief and gild them with grace. Now, in the opposite corner of the room, the glow from the crackling fire made dancing shadows on the joyful faces of Huseyn and Ali.
They were hatching a plan.
Ali reached under his shirt and pulled out something that he cupped in his hand. Huseyn took the lantern from the mantel and placed it on the rug at our feet. Sitting next to us, Ali opened his fist to reveal two coins and said with meaning, “Gold.”
The coins did not look golden, but rather a muddy orange-brown. Stephen and I took a closer look. We examined them under the yellow lantern light. Perhaps they were gold; they were very heavy. One of the coins had writing on both sides. On the other coin, one side had been completely rubbed away over time, but the other side showed a profile of a woman in a fan-shaped hat. The edges of the coins were crooked yet the warped shapes made them look really old. They looked real, but we had no clue precisely what they were.
Ali took back the coins and dropped them into a tiny drawstring pouch that tied around his neck.
“I don’t know from where they come,” he said. “My grandfather, he give them to me when I am a boy. I don’t show them to everybodys.”
Ali’s black eyes grew bright and it seemed to me that his upturned mustache and his mouth were both smiling together.
“Tomorrow, inshallah,” Huseyn said, “we get more gold coins.”
“What are you saying?” Stephen asked.
Huseyn then explained their idea. He told us that the mountains here were rich with Hittite carvings. The Hittites lived well before the Osmanli (Ottoman) reign but now the Hittites are dead. Gone. Their gold, though, must still be here. It must be in these hills and he, Huseyn, knew exactly where it was. Exactly.
“But digging for gold or any archaeological thing in Turkey is not allowed,” I ventured.
“You don’t think anythings!” Ali crowed. “In this moment we are asking the old men of Keben. We ask them. We ask them to give us donkey!”
Donkey?
Huseyn and Ali talked in rapid-fire Turkish to each other, then stood up and went out the door. In less than an hour, they returned beaming.
“We are very good. Very good.” Ali announced. “The old men say, ‘It is not our way to let strangers dig in our mountains.’ But we say to them we do not want the gold for us but as gift to the village. We give with everybodys! We say, ‘We have only good thinkings.’ Now they say yes. They give much tools. They give donkey!”
It was not easy to be quick at three in the morning when the air was so cold that clouds of steam rose from our mouths like speech balloons. Thankfully we did not have to dress as we had slept in our clothes. I just pulled my heavy sheepskin coat over my sweater and jeans.
Outside Ali’s home lay two shovels and a pick. Tied to a tree stood a donkey. “You are lady,” Ali announced. “You are on donkey.”
I didn’t argue. We hadn’t even started and I was already tired. Sleepy. I wanted to go back to bed. But like so many other times on this trip, I gave in to the small but strong voice inside me that said, “Oh, just go!” I found myself hoisted onto the small gray donkey. Ali and Huseyn gathered up the tools and the food bag and off we went into the blackness.
I felt dizzy on the donkey. It trotted and I bounced up and down. My legs seemed too long for the animal. I found it funny that just like on a bike, I could stop by dragging my feet on the ground.
By the second hour, I was getting sore. I hopped off the poor beast and walked with the others, holding the donkey by a rope like a dog on a leash.
The world was silent and we were silent. We walked slowly in single file up a narrow path. Ali led our party. He wore his cap but no coat, only a short jacket. A mountain man, he was well used to the thin, cold air. Huseyn followed in his heavy coat and his too-long woolen scarf. Every now and then he would pull leaves off the trees and stuff them into his coat pocket. Then came Stephen in his heavy flannel shirt and nylon parka, sometimes turning back to help me up a steep side or to mumble encouragement. The donkey was next with our tools now strapped to his back. He clip-clopped over the rocks in a determined manner, leading me by the rope.
The trail got muddier and steeper. The air was thin and I had to stop often to catch my breath. I could feel blisters forming on my feet and cold seeped through my coat. My teeth chattered when I tried to speak and the words seemed to echo in my mouth. Huseyn called back to us, “We are stoop-id here!”
We sat on rocks to catch our breath. The sun rose and burnished the mountaintops with its fire. Slowly, the air warmed. In this hallowed time we just sat and watched the rising sun color everything. The black shadows gradually became green trees and the navy-blue mountains grew a dusky brown. The air smelled of mint.
After a while, we continued on, up the mountainside until about three hours after we had set out we came to a rocky plateau. Huseyn rummaged in the bag until he found our binoculars. He focused them straight ahead to the other side of the valley.
“Look.”
He handed them to us. First Stephen looked, then Ali looked, then I looked. Across the valley, straight in front of us, were the three carved Hittite figures. “The lady,” Huseyn explained solemnly, “she is pointing to the gold.”
I looked again. We were standing at the exact point to which the goddess — or priestess or queen or whoever — was pointing. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I felt tired and suddenly deflated, yet barely hiding my disappointment, I croaked, “Yesterday you said she was pointing to the ducks.”
“Yes! Yes! Sometime I am thinking that! But now I am thinking no. The lady — she is pointing to the gold.”
The cliffs of the plateau were carved with rectangular niches that most likely were ancient graves. There was also a small, shallow cave and outside, a boulder that perhaps had once shut up the cave but now stood sentinel in front. Huseyn declared that the cave was a tomb as well and that the gold was inside it — this was, he said, exactly where the lady was pointing.
About six yards to the left of the niches was an Alice-in-Wonderland door no more than 4 feet high. This interested me more than the cave. I wondered why there would be a door inside a mountain? Huseyn led us there. He pushed the creaky wood door open and gestured me inside — a little room! A tiny shelter made from the natural cave inside the mountain wall. Inside was a fireplace where blackened sheep bones and a couple of pots lay among the ashes. A wooden bed piled with hay and a horse blanket ran along one wall. On a crude wood table in the corner stood an oil lamp. Strings of garlic dangled like party streamers from the ceiling. The floor was straw-covered earth.
“It is belonging to the shepherd,” Huseyn said. Then, sensing my uneasiness, he added, “You are not thinking anythings. Ali knows the shepherd. In this moment he is far away with sheep.”
Huseyn went to the bed, fluffed up the hay and straightened the blanket. “Sleep,” he commanded.
I climbed into the crunchy shepherd bed. Every aching muscle cried with relief. The bed was heaven. Huseyn made a fire and, peeling back layers of white cloth, he unwrapped lamb sliced into little pieces. He fried the lamb. “We must be drinking ata chai!” he suddenly crowed, leaving the lamb momentarily to pull out from the pockets of his coat a handful of fuzzy green leaves. Stephen put the kettle on and we drank what the Turks call “special tea,” a strong wild mint tea that is fragrant and sweet. After the hot breakfast, I fell asleep, warmed by the food and the dying fire.
I awoke to the syncopated sound of picks hitting rocks. Feeling much better, I opened the tiny door. Stooped over and squinting, I came out into the bright world. Stephen and Ali were hacking the earth inside the cave with picks. Huseyn was digging with the shovel. I grabbed one of the picks and began hacking away alongside the men. But my heart wasn’t it. Our tools were pathetic; the soil was dry as bone; as much as we dug, we barely reached a depth of three feet, and incessant digging was hard work that made you sweat. Most of all I was not a believer. I was digging for the fantasy, the idea of digging for gold. But even this reason could motivate me no more than a couple of hours. Then I put the pick down and took a walk along our isolated mountain plateau.
As far as I went, I could still hear the echo of the picks striking hard dirt. I walked to the cliff edge, where I sat down on a rock and looked across the peaceful valley. I was enjoying my solitude. With a twig, I made doodles in the soft earth.
After a while, a very clear melody floated up to me — a haunting, sweet song played on a flute. I climbed down the side of the hill a short way so that I could see where the song came from, but I could find no one. I could hear the lovely melody clearly, yet could not find the source. I scrambled back up the hillside as the music stopped. I resumed my scribbling in the dirt.
Suddenly my stick hit something hard. Something not a rock. Something that made a thin, hollow sound. I dug the earth with my hands, my nails filling with wet soil, until I pulled out a piece of pottery that felt strong but light in my hand. Brushing away the dirt, I saw it was a pot shard, terra cotta with two black stripes.
For a long while I just held it in my hands. I watched it as if waiting for it to tell me something. I sensed it was very old because it looked like it might have been a fragment of the Greek pottery I had seen in museums. My mind took flight. What did the whole vessel look like? How was it used long ago? Who had used it and when?
Musing, I lost track of time, and when I noticed it was turning cold I wondered did time even exist in the normal way here? Keben seemed caught in time — an old time. The villagers spoke of the Hittites as if they were some kind of neighbors. Time in these mountains seemed hazy, as if ancient and present could converge. Just holding the pottery shard, I sensed the past drawing near.
Suddenly I was on my knees again burying the relic and wishing with all my heart that we wouldn’t find the gold. I walked back toward the cave, and as I went, the music began again, sweet and melancholy. Yet looking out over the valleys, I could see only sheep the size of fleas. I ran back to the shepherd’s hut and grabbed the binoculars from our bag, returned to the edge of the plateau and focused them on the flock. Sheep by sheep, I scanned the landscape until I saw him — a dark-haired boy leaning with his back against a tree. I could make out that he wore the odd Near Eastern rectangular shepherd’s cape that is so stiff, angular and without sleeves, it gives the impression of wearing a garment bag. He was playing a flute. The boy was several miles across the valley, yet I could hear his song as strongly as if he were beside me. These mountains seemed truly enchanted.
I returned to the cave with a lighter heart and for another hour we all attacked the hard dry soil. In the late afternoon, Huseyn boiled another pot of ata chai and we sat on rocks outside the cave, drinking the yellow-green brew.
“Madame,” Ali said to me when I’d finished, “please, you are turning your glass upside down.”
I hesitated.
“Yes, Madame, into your hand.”
Having long since ceased to be puzzled by odd commands in Turkey, I obeyed. The few tea drops left in my glass drained through my fingers, leaving my palm with a little clump of damp leaves.
“I am looking at your life,” Ali said importantly. With a somber face, he stared at the leaves.
We waited a good while until Ali finally looked up from my messy palm and pulled at his mustache.
“Well?” I asked.
“You are having a very big life,” he said carefully. “But I am sorry …”
“Sorry for what?” I asked, alarmed.
“I am sorry, very sorry — you will not find the gold.”
For some reason, we thought this was very funny. We laughed — even the donkey grunted into his feedbag — and at that moment I had the delicious sensation that we were a company of happy fools.
By the time we arrived back in Keben, the gold light of oil lamps could be seen through the windows of all the homes and smoke was ghosting from the chimneys.
The next morning a crescent moon in the pink sky announced Bayram. The people of Keben woke early to pray at the mosque. That day, the women looked especially beautiful. They wore their brightest clothes and their gold bangles and even the youngest girl rimmed her eyes with black wax paint.
Returning home from the mosque, Ali said a swift prayer, then with a small, sharp knife, he slit the throat of the lamb tied up at his door. It was the day of tender slaughter. The children watched evenly as he laid the wool across a branch of an olive tree and hung the steaming offal on another. Then he placed the meat in several large enamel bowls and carried them into the house. After the grandmother of the golden coins sliced the lamb, the women took turns grilling it on a great round griddle in the fireplace. It seemed to be an enormous amount of meat. All morning the fat dripped into the fire, making the little house crackle and pop with the sound of sizzling.
When it was my turn, I was so hungry I longed to taste a piece, but I resisted the temptation. Turkish women always cared for others before themselves, and I had come to feel a close bond with these women who spoke and dressed and lived so differently from me. Tasting the meat would have set me apart; I could not break that bond for a piece of meat.
When the entire lamb was at last cooked and seasoned with sage, rosemary and salt, we left the house together as one family. We took the meat in wide pottery bowls to all the neighbors — from the very highest to the very lowest dwelling in the cliff-rim village. We carried the food and Melek carried her baby as we picked our way across the narrow mountain streams that had now turned pink with the blood from washed offal. We made a procession among processions that day.
Each family in Keben had killed and cooked a lamb and Bayram could not end until each family had eaten a bit of every other family’s lamb. Only in this way would the village food be truly shared. All day we knocked at little splintery doors, took off our shoes and entered smiling and chattering, our arms laden with lamb.
We jostled and bumped up against coin-decorated grandmothers, olive-eyed children, toothy young men and shy, holiday-eye girls. The wonder of it was that in every home the people looked upon us as marvelous explorers. Our dilettante treasure hunt was interpreted by the villagers as brave and informed. In each home there ensued serious discussion on where the gold really might be, the immoral ways of the ancients, the relative merits of picks versus shovels and the signification of carved archaeological figures on hunting ducks, fishing, planting crops and finding gold.
The smallest children had their own view of us. When we entered they lined up to bow, kiss our hands, then touch their foreheads to emphasize the honor of meeting strangers from so far away. After this ritual, they huddled in corners giggling and exchanging bright pink sugar candies which they cracked hard between their little teeth.
In the late afternoon, when Bayram had drawn to a contented close, Stephen and I left our hosts and took a walk along the top of the village. Pine needles crunched under our boots. The sun, dropping quickly from the sky, gave the cold air a misty glow. We walked a couple of miles beyond the village and stood at the edge of a cliff where we could see far across the hilltops.
We were both feeling strange but neither of us spoke. The waterfalls created a background music around us and a close moon hung low above us as if it were the village’s personal planet. In these moments, this small, true place seemed then and always.
But as night closed in and before we turned to make our way back down the path, we noticed that below, at the Gvksu River, construction had already begun. People in faraway Ankara were changing things. With our binoculars we made out some huge steel towers on concrete pilings. Were they electrical pylons or telecommunications towers? Or the foundation for a dam? In the dark twilight we could know only that whatever it was, it would destroy for eternity all days like this.
That is why I write about Keben.
Suddenly the Engkari river becomes shallow. Our pelvis-wide longboat is wedged between rocks with turbulent waters eddying all around. One good bang against these rocks would capsize us. At the back of the boat, the pilot cuts the engine and at the bow the barefoot oarsman stands and pushes his pole against the rocks to free us. With a gondolier’s grace, he prods and pokes us slowly through the passage. With the motor now silent, we can hear the electric buzz of insects and the musical calls of the broadbills ringing through the jungle like doorbells. When at last we’re free, the pilot restarts the engine and our narrow ironwood boat weaves through the sun-sparkled river — a needle through silk.
We’re a small group of adventurers — a photographer named Patrick, myself and our tribesman-guide — sailing into the heart of Borneo. This morning we are heading toward the Stamang longhouse, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, where we are to be guests of the Iban tribe, Borneo’s former headhunters. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but I have heard that these people once infamous for their fierceness are now renowned for their hospitality.
The narrow green river is sinuous as a snake. Above us the hills loom lush with a thick green rug of secondary rain forest: red-bark meranti, eutika, ironwood, rattan and palm. Some of the hills show the legacy of recent logging: a scattering of tree stumps rising up haphazard and gray as old tombstones. Other hills have been terraced in semicircular green steps and planted with mountain rice. Along the river’s edge, large ferns tangle mysteriously, and every now and then we pass enormous red blooms of rhododendrons and the beautiful pianggu fruit whose heavy pink-orange globes bow their branches nearly into the water.
We round a bend in the river and are greeted by Iban children in prim blue school uniforms washing their white enamel lunch plates in the river. In the shadow of their wooden schoolhouse, the children smile and with suntanned arms wave their plates in greeting.
The river narrows even more and gleams like glass in the dappled sunlight. The air is sweat-hot as we glide through a tunnel of foliage. From the highest branches creepers cascade to the ground like waterfalls. I’m so enchanted with this unfamiliar tropical world that I lose track of time — and all of a sudden we dock.
We’re face to face with a man in a loincloth whose body, except for his chest, is blue with tattoos. Dragons, scorpions, crocodiles, prawns, ferns and flowers flow over his throat, back, arms and legs. He appears to be in his late 50s, although his toddler mouth shows only two lower teeth. I know at once that he is the Tuai Rumah — the chief — for he wears a headdress of pheasant feathers and is followed by an assembly of royals. The entourage includes his sister, a plump woman in a black flowery sarong whose royal status is evidenced by her gold necklace and the tattoos that encircle her elbows; the chief’s wife, a thin, quiet-looking woman; and the shaman, a lean, older man, small as a fifth-grader.
“Hallo!” the chief calls to us.
“Hallo!” we call back.
“Hallo,” he calls again, making the greeting sound like a command. “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!”
Leading his retinue, the Tuai Rumah turns and ascends a notched tree trunk up to the bamboo verandah of the longhouse, where straw mats are piled high with peppercorns set out to dry. We follow, climbing the trunk and leaping over the peppercorns. “Take your shoes off,” our guide whispers. We do and enter. Slowly my eyes become accustomed to the shadowy air and when at last I can see, I’m overwhelmed, all my senses assaulted. Trying hard not to stare at anything, I stare at everything.
I am standing in the wide hall of a wooden house as long as a city block perched on stilts 15 feet above the ground. I feel I’m in a never-ending tree house. As far as I can see, there are people sitting about on mats — although some have now come to stand at a polite distance to look at us. Aside one whole wondrous length of the hall runs the bamboo verandah. On the opposite side, behind a hanging jumble of masks, tops, drums, blowpipes and baskets, stretches a row of 34 doors. And believe it or not, one of the doors has a cardboard sign that says “Chief.”
Our little group stands about awkwardly. The chief and the royals stand about awkwardly. We say nothing. They say nothing. There’s a slight tension in the air. What’s going on, I wonder. Then our guide nudges me and I realize that I am the cause of the awkwardness. I am standing on an intricately woven flax mat — the royal mat! I jump off, allowing the Tuai Rumah and the shaman to take up their places cross-legged on it.
“Hallo!” the chief calls, beckoning us to sit.
We sit on the plain mats, and at once the women bring in a tray holding a large aluminum teapot, sugar, plastic cups and saucers, small glasses, and a forbidding old soy sauce bottle about two feet high.
The chief takes this bottle and pours glasses of tuak, the tribe’s homemade rice wine. He lifts a glass and downs the entire amount in one go. This is the signal for us to drink too, but it’s not easy. The brew tastes like industrial-strength sake and I can only sip it demurely.
“No time!” the chief warns me. “No time!”
I smile, not knowing what he’s telling me. The women
laugh and after a few moments I realize that “no time” means “no
stopping.” Drink it up in one fell swoop. I am a bit nervous because most
of what I have read about visiting a longhouse emphasizes the Iban’s love of
aggressively urging visitors to get dead drunk. But mercifully, the
attention is taken off me and the tuak ceremony is replaced by a cordial
serving of tea. We all share pleasantries with no words in them. We smile,
nod heads, clink cups, laugh. Our guide hands the chief the gifts we have
brought: two bags of school notebooks and packages of pencils and pens.
The chief does no more than glance at the bags, immediately handing them to
his wife. Dealing with presents seems to be “women’s work.”
With sudden determination the chief rises. A young man
brings in a live chicken and with one lightning stroke of a knife,
slaughters it. A dab of blood is smeared on our hands to welcome us before
the executioner takes the
sacrifice off to the kitchen. Then our guide gestures for us to sit on a
long bench and, as if everything that has happened so far is familiar and
ordinary, he whispers, “Now you will see something interesting.” A group
of men, nearly as tattooed as the chief, moves to the gamelan instruments:
brass gongs and deerskin drums. The welcome dances will start and the
villagers crowd on the floor to watch. The chief, holding a painted shield
and a large knife, dances the Ngajat, the warrior dance. Bending low,
crossing one leg over the other, the chief is the supreme stalker of prey
– a hunter, leaping with focus and force, swift as a tiger.
Then the shaman steps forward, cocks his head, crouches low
and pivots his body slowly around to the intense, jangled music.
Extremely slowly. With his knees bent low, he curves his back and arches
his arms until it seems he has sprouted wings. The shaman is called the Tuai
Barong, which means Guardian of the Birds,
for he alone has the power to read omens in the flights and calls of the
jungle birds and to set the longhouse’s rituals accordingly. This lithe,
solemn man has somehow taken on the spirit of the sacred hornbill. Now he
is both bird and man. His sensual, hypnotic movements remind me that hundreds of
years before Darwin, these people understood
the biological kinship between animal and
man and recounted it in religious ritual. The ceremony disturbs and fascinates. It is
no wonder that the longhouse people who have seen the shaman dance all
their lives still watch, mesmerized.
Next a young woman appears wearing several belts of
silver coins, an elaborate beaded yellow blouse, silver anklets and a
silver headdress like an upside-down candelabra that jingles with her every
step.
“She’s a deaf-mute,” our guide whispers.
Fluttering her fingers, this glittering girl turns
softly and slowly in perfect time to the music, moving to the vibrations of the gongs coming through the hollow bamboo
flooring. As I watch her, an elderly white-haired man sitting next to me
smiles at me, as if to say, “Isn’t that some dancing!” I smile back, trying
not to stare at his ears — or rather, his earlobes, which are pierced so large you could pass an orange through them.
“Aaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
We’re rushed at by short squat creatures in bulky burlap
flannel shirts, baggy pants, socks, gloves and crudely carved wooden masks
with smiling faces. Looking like crazed trick-or-treaters, they pull us to
our feet and exhort us to dance with them. They tug, twirl and tease us
into dance. The music races. The drums boom loud as thunderclaps. The
jangle of the brass gongs is
both beautiful and disorienting. We’re in a frenzy of goofy dancing,
slightly scary and enormously joyous, a delirium where host and
guest — performer and spectator — are wonderfully blurred.
The music stops and the masked ones vanish. The
welcoming ceremony over, the rest of the day is ours to enjoy. Strolling
the longhouse, we are treated not as tourists, but as guests. We’re greeted
with smiles and invitations, yet we’re also “given our space” when we just want
to rest or merely observe.
The longhouse is truly an indoor village, an aggregate of
individual family units, and the hall, wide and shadowy, is like the main
street of the village, both a social center and a place for occupation.
The men are away working the rice and pepper fields or on logging
contracts, so I observe the women and oldest men engaged in a
variety of traditional activities.
The equatorial air hangs hot and wet. Despite the
industry all around, there is languor to the longhouse. On the verandah the
long-eared man sits in a black peppercorn sea, sorting the good from the
bad. Behind him, two women rhythmically winnow rice in shallow baskets.
Again and again, the rice flies skyward like an offering to the gods.
Inside the hall, the women sit on the floor in groups as
they work. In one small group, a girl crushes dried herbs in a stone
mortar, another braids a basket and a third weaves palm leaves into a
mat. A woman who looks old enough to be a great-grandmother is nursing a
baby as she fans herself with a banana leaf. Beside her, another baby
sleeps in a sarong hung by a spring from the rafters. Over the baby’s head
hangs a small empty bottle of Johnny Walker to ward off ghosts. Never
left alone, the toddlers are continuously indulged — teased, kissed,
passed from lap to lap, hugged extravagantly. The women laugh and chat as
they sit on the flax mats in their floral sarongs — I’ve entered a
Gauguin painting.
To cool off, the women bathe in the river as often as
six times a day. When the afternoon air has turned to steam, we too walk
down to the river, and soon we’re joined by a gaggle of preschoolers
accompanied by an elderly woman. The most patient of baby sitters, she
squats on her haunches, chewing nuts as she watches them frolic in the
river — splash wildly, scream with laughter, dive off rocks. When she
rises and turns toward the longhouse, without a word of protest her
charges leave the water and follow her in single file like ducklings.
And so the day passes. We spin homemade tops with the
children, delight the chief’s sister by our exaggerated wincing at her
soursop fruit, and in the early evening, eat a tasty meal of mountain rice,
jungle ferns, tapioca leaves, bamboo shoots and telapia fish all steamed in
bamboo. While we eat, the chief’s sister tells me a secret — she and the
other ladies were the masked dancers. “You!” I say in exaggerated
surprise. Exposing her gold teeth, she laughs gleefully at her revelation.
I am moved by the fervor of these people. They work with
intensity and take pleasure in music, animated conversation, storytelling
and laughter. Their intensity was perfectly described by Tom Harrison,
author of “Borneo Jungle,” who visited Sarawak as an Oxford student in 1932: “Living always in deep greens and teeming tropical life, the
Bornean natives see the whole world, both of reality and dream, in terms of
twisting, tendulous, exuberant vitality.”
Nighttime. Patrick and I are sitting on the hall floor after the
evening dances, drinking tuak with the chief. Up and down the dark hall,
groups of people chat around tiny yellow circles of candlelight.
The Tuai Rumah now wears sweatpants. He’s been showing us
several rope-untying tricks, and Patrick has taught the chief how to hang a
spoon on the end of his nose. Once again the gamelan music starts up
softly. The spicy scent of the drying peppercorns floats in on the warm,
black air, and beyond, the jungle is so alive with the pulsation of insects,
it seems to be breathing. With our guide translating, we ask the Tuai
Rumah what it’s like to be chief. His mood turns abruptly serious.
“I knew my life would be a good one,” the chief says. “When I
was 21, my grandfather came to me in a dream as a good spirit, as
the Owner of the World — a Pulang Gana. ‘You will become the Tuai
Rumah,’ he told me. ‘You’ll be a good chief and your family will have a
good life.’ He was right.”
The chief explains that being Tuai Rumah is
a big responsibility: He oversees the financial, physical and emotional
well-being of 34 families. He must never show favoritism because if he’s not
fair, he will lose his people’s support. Above all he must be strong and
make hard, even unpopular
decisions. In his time he has made many hard decisions, yet again and again
he believes he has been proven right.
“When the government built the Batang Ai dam, they
offered us a concession for taking our land, but I would not let my
longhouse accept it. Some thought I was foolish, for we were offered 30,000
American dollars. When they went to Kuching they were unhappy, for they
could afford only to drink coffee, yet they had to see people from a longhouse
who had sold their land, drinking beer. But today the other longhouse is
poor! They were not used to money so they bought too much on credit and
gambled too much on cockfighting. Now their money is gone — and their
land is gone. But we still have our land.”
“What is your hope for the Stamang longhouse?” I ask.
The chief considers the question for several moments as he plays idly with
the rope at his feet. At last he responds and his answer surprises me.
“To have a road running from here to Kuching, for we’re
very isolated. And also to see the children educated. Education is
important! I’ve sent the children who are more than five years old to the
boarding school up the river — the one you saw. And I welcome tourists
not just for their money,
but for the opportunity to see people from other countries. This way we
learn about them.”
As the chief talks, I am distracted by the sudden appearance
of his wife, who enters carrying the two plastic bags of school supplies we
brought. She takes out the 40 notebooks and places each one on a space on
the longhouse floor — each one about three feet away from another — like
stepping stones. When she finishes, she lays one pencil and one pen smack
dab in the middle of each pale blue notebook. Then, quietly, she walks down
the hall and taps a group of waiting women to come take the books. These
are the mothers of the children in the boarding school. Silently and
swiftly each mother picks up a number of notebooks equal to her number of
children. In less than a minute, the floor is bare.
It feels late now, yet beneath the longhouse, ducks and
chickens still cackle and quack. The fighting cock tied up outside the
chief’s door crows now and then as if it were dawn. We see again the man
with the elongated earlobes talking in one of the candlelit
groups. We’ve since learned he has the curious name of Goon and is the
chief’s older brother.
“If you’re the younger brother,” I ask the chief, “why were you made
the Tuai Rumah?”
Our guide translates this question, and after thinking a
moment, the chief answers: “When my older brother was a young man, he decided
the
earth was flat. He was convinced that if he could only get to the end of
the jungle, he could look over the edge of the world and know how big it
is. He had such a great desire to look over the edge that, without telling
anyone, he walked into the jungle.
“For three weeks we did not know where he
was. Finally people from another longhouse came upon him walking in the
jungle and brought him back here. After that it was thought he should not
be chief.”
“Because he thought the world was flat?” I ask.
“No, because he walked through the jungle alone. We do not do
things alone.”
We sleep in the longhouse that night, settling down just as a
thunderstorm breaks. The rain pounds like horses’ hooves on the tin roof, and
beneath the longhouse dogs howl so mournfully that the canine chorus rising
up through the floor is like ghostly wailing from the nether world. We
sleep like babies.
The next morning, we leave. “Come back!” the chief’s sister
says to me warmly. “And next time bring your family!”
It’s been a month since I visited the longhouse and I want to
go back. In fact, I surprise myself
by how much I think of these people. I want to live with them, know their rituals
and their festivals — know more about who they are.
I want to go back — but can I? I wonder about the
proposed Bakun hydroelectric dam on the Rejang river. The last dam
project, at Batang Ai in 1985, flooded 21,000 acres of land,
submerged 26 longhouses and displaced 3,000 people. The Bakun one, which
could supply one-fourth of Malaysia’s energy, would flood 200,000 acres
– about the size of Singapore.
Logging too has made its impact. The $1.5 billion
in yearly timber exports has not only propelled Sarawak from an exotic
backwater into the modern world, it has devastated an enormous area of
rain forest, home to 23 tribes. Today one-half of Sarawak’s land is zoned
for logging.
I’ve been thinking about these facts a lot. I think
about them because I now know a little — and care a lot — about a people whom a
month ago I hardly knew existed.
That’s what happens when you look over the edge of
your world.
I sure know what Elizabeth meant. We’ve been to Paris five times, but the very idea of Paris still seduces. I hunger for Paris and lust over memories. Yet at night, when I lie in my husband’s arms, it isn’t the recent, sybaritic images I conjure to lure him into that intimate realm of memory. No. At night, fancy restaurants, scenic boat rides, chateaux and boutiques evaporate. In their place float up memories, strange and strong. Up floats an idea of Paris from my first visit a quarter century ago, when I was 22 and newly wed.
Of course, even then I had an idea of Paris. That’s why, driving into the city in our VW van, I dressed in what I fancied were “Parisian clothes.” Never mind they were Parisian clothes of some other century. In my long black skirt, black boots, hoop earrings, flea market scarf of pink silk, I felt like Paris personified.
The moment I arrived in the City of Light, I was lit. “We must stay at least a month,” I told Stephen, my husband. “Let’s enjoy Paris!”
Paris was expensive and we had little money, but I made a fuss so at last he said, “All right, we’ll stay — but we’ll have to camp.”
“Camp! ” I cried. “In Paris?” Nobody camps in Paris!”
We did.
That night we rolled our van, outfitted with no more than a mattress, down the ramp to the Quai de la Tournelle, where vehicles are forbidden. We parked at the edge of the river, just past the Pont de la Tournelle. When we looked left, we could see the stone bridge with its little statue of St. Genevieve, and beyond, the floodlit Cathedral of Notre Dame. Looking right, we saw our quay merge with the next, then vanish in murky shadows. In front of us, across the narrow arm of the river, rose the elegant apartments of the Ile St. Louis.
We climbed in the back of our van, lay face up on the mattress and looked out the windows.
Magic.
The effect was as if we were both inside the van and out of it too. At once cozy in an enclosed, secret place, and also right out in the city. In its very heart. Above us, apartments loomed into the stars, their lacy iron balconies bathed in light, and at our feet, the Seine flowed discreetly southward.
“Let’s enjoy Paris,” Stephen murmured.
Now, a lot of practical things can get in the way of romance — such as the need for a bathroom. But we had the courage of youth and didn’t let it. The next afternoon we sat on the riverbank planning just which cafes we would discreetly visit at what times of day when a van, big and white as an ambulance, pulled up next to ours. A young man stepped out. He wore no shirt and balanced a hammer vertically on his nose.
“Gidday,” he said.
This was Basil Didier, a Mormon New Zealander who’d come to Paris to research his genealogy.
His trick turned the wheel of camaraderie. We had a few laughs together, then seeing our interest in his Citroen delivery van, he asked, “Would you like a perv?” which is New Zealand-ese for “Would you like to take a look?”
We were awed by the ingenious cabinetry: the seat that evolved into a bed, the stove built into the counter, the table hung on the wall like a picture, and the sink with its clever foot pump, small as a piano pedal.
“I’m a carpenter,” Basil said with Down Under modesty. But when I opened the narrow door and discovered a flush toilet, I knew he was more than a carpenter. He was our friend.
There must have been something in the air that August 1971. The next day two more vans arrived. One was inhabited by a young New York couple who’d just returned from North Africa. The other, a rusted black Fiat, contained a bearded artist from Hawaii named Hayden and his black dog, Mahler.
Of an evening, the couple would regale us with their adventures in Morocco and Hayden would recount the curious theatrics performed by a tribe of gypsies he’d lived with in Toulouse. For the next month, the six of us shared food, opinions, toilets and, at sunset, vin rouge. Surely there was alchemy at work, for though it was totally difendu to camp there, directly
across, as we learned, from the island home of Prime Minister Pompidou, the gendarmes never told us to leave.
Au contraire! Each night a gendarme would stop by our van to check passports and to see that we were all right.
“Ga va, jeunes Americans?”
“Ga va.”
One warm evening, as Hayden was inside his van painting on its walls by candlelight what he called his “private vision of Paris” and the New Yorkers were playing gin rummy and Mahler was barking at every kerosene barge that chugged up the river, Basil, Stephen and I sat on the quay, dangling our feet over the water. Stephen and I were drinking wine and trying in vain to get Basil to taste the marked-down cheese we’d bought from the Monoprix. But Basil was too busy preaching how French cheeses were decadent.
“Food should be just matter to fill up space,” he said.
Then he went on about sex.
Mormonism forbids sex before marriage and in his opinion that was “too right,” for any fool could see sex is merely a fad. A style! A kind of fashion!
“Sex,” Basil explained, “is just Gucci Hootchie-Kootchie.”
Bored with his ideas, we told him one of ours: to drive from France to India. “And what we need,” Stephen said, “is a camper, fixed up like yours.”
Basil was happy to take the bait. He said he was “right tired of dead Didiers,” and would be pleased to help us make our van into a camper. Our joy turned to dejection, however, when we realized the impossibility of such a project that required power tools, for we had no electricity nor any access to it.
“Too bad, too,” I said, “when there’s electricity all around us …”
The maintenance crew at the Collhge de France looked up from
their lunches, astonished when we drove into the courtyard.
“Why are you driving your vehicle in here?” demanded a
gray-haired man in overalls.
“Where else would we outfit it for the expedition?” Stephen
retorted.
“What expedition?” the man asked as the rest of the crew
stared.
“What expedition?” I asked silently.
Then in the same ringing tone used to call out metro station names, Stephen announced, “L’expedition ` l’Afrique du Nord!”
The man looked skeptical and the other men laughed.
But Stephen began relating the details of our “expedition
scientifique,” how we needed to collect flowers in Morocco and how
outfitting the van for this botanical study was part of the project.
Stephen blended gobbledygook with what the New Yorkers had told us about
Morocco.
The man threw his cigarette butt on the ground. “I’m sorry
but my men cannot help. Union rules absolutely prevent involvement.”
“Monsieur!” Stephen cried, “we wouldn’t dream of troubling
you. We only need to use the electricity here — and some power tools.”
The man paused, looking hard at Stephen and me. And in that
pause I dared hope he’d play accomplice to honeymooners.
Finally, in a voice low and sly, like beer trickling out of
a jug, the man said, “Well then, it’s not impossible … is it?”
For the next three weeks we spent our mornings in
construction. Basil drew a blueprint copying the classic VW camper
interior. The crew chatted with us every day and cheered us on. They not
only supplied power tools, but gave us steel rods and rollers from the lab
to make the couch scoot into a bed. They also told us where to find scraps
and army surplus items. While Stephen and Basil built the cabinetry, I
bought the supplies and sewed curtains.
Then, each afternoon, when Basil went off to his French
class at the Alliance Frangaise, Stephen and I fell in love all over
again. With each other and with Paris.
We strolled the Left Bank bookstores, plunging headfirst
into musty books, anticipating delight in finding just the right one –
for each other. We read Baudelaire at twilight in the spooky ruins of
l’Arhne de Luthce, a Roman amphitheater off Rue Monge. We sipped tea in
tulip-shaped glasses in the garden of the Paris mosque, and every other day
crossed the bridge to the Ile St. Louis to bathe at the municipal baths.
In our private washroom, as we splashed each other with warm water from the
copper pail, we were serenaded by the soulful tunes of the Muslim men who sang
in their showers. “Mustafaaaa, Mustafaaaaaaaa!” they wailed.
Their
mellifluous voices washed us in music. Then, damp-haired, we’d stroll at
dusk along the riverbank, our sandals clapping on the cobblestones while
above us, softly and silently, chestnut leaves fluttered, like the wings of
giant butterflies.
The day our van was finished was also the day Basil ran off to
Toulouse with his French teacher, Jacqueline. It was also the day before
Pompidou was to return and the day the gendarmes told us to go. “We have
to leave all this beauty!” I cried. To cheer me, Stephen said we’d have a
farewell feast in a restaurant. That evening we climbed up the
steep market street, Rue Mouffetard, but found all the restaurants full.
Ambling down an alley we came upon a Chinese restaurant jammed with
boisterous diners at tables no bigger than record albums.
“Entrez! Entrez!” the diners shouted at us. We were lured
inside and before we understood what was happening, tables got squeezed
together and we were seated with two men plowing through some inscrutable
Chinese dish.
The two were as different as gruyhre is from gruel. One was
tall and elegant with dark, wavy hair. An architect, dressed in a chic suit.
The other was short, fat and had a ruddy face. He appeared to be some sort
of factory worker, for he wore the blue working class jacket. In minutes we
were drinking wine, enjoying mushy chow mein and listening to the men
bemoan how Paris was no fun anymore as nowadays people were obsessed with
making a living.
“What a pity we have forgotten the zany little ways of life!”
the architect wailed, and we all drank a toast to this loss, feeling giddy
with joy.
As the evening wore on, I no longer cared that our intimate
tjte-`-tjte had turned into a tjte-`-tjte-`-tjte-`-tjte. We drank a lot of wine
and laughed like crazy. In fact, the whole restaurant was a boat of
merrymakers on the brink of capsizing.
When the lugubrious waiter asked if we’d like dessert, and I
declined, the architect appeared offended.
“Do you mean to say, Madame, that you won’t even try La
Banane du Chef? It is the specialty of the house!”
“I don’t have room for it,” I answered.
“No room! Nonsense! You will have the room when you taste it!”
“Very true,” the ruddy faced man said. “It tastes like
nothing else in the world! Am I not right?” he asked the waiter. The
waiter nodded as one might on identifying a body in a morgue.
“Why don’t you try it, if it’s that good?” Stephen urged,
knowing my fondness for sweets.
“I’ll have La Banane du Chef!” I said to the waiter.
As conversation and wine flowed, it occurred to me (through
a little haze) that this dessert was taking quite a long time. I was about
to question the waiter when the lights in the restaurant went out, plunging
us into darkness and causing a collective scream from the patrons. Then the
kitchen door was flung open and our waiter walked through the black
restaurant holding high a tray with a flaming dessert. Somberly, he made his
way to our table, guided by the blue-yellow light of the flames. He set
the plate in front of me and announced gravely, “Madame, La Banane du Chef!”
To my amazement, these words brought a hand-clapping and foot-stomping from the other diners. I looked down.
Banana fritters formed in the shape of a male’s private
parts.
Every eye in the place was on me, waiting for me to take a
bite, but I was giggling so much, I couldn’t. At last, when I did take that
first bite, loud cries of ” Ooh-la-la!” went up and the lights came on.
All four of us shared the dessert, which was delicious.
After dinner,
Stephen took my hand and led me up Rue Mouffetard. Up and up we wound our
way along the medieval street. The night was bright with moonlight, which
gave the ancient gray houses the look of tarnished silver. We stopped and
kissed, our bodies like clasped hands.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“You’ll see.”
For some time, we threaded up and around some side
streets until suddenly Paris was spread before us. How beautiful it
looked! Exactly like my idea of Paris. Like everyone’s idea of Paris.
Vibrant and askew. The gold-lit Eiffel Tower tilted jauntily, and for a
beret, wore the moon. The bateaux-mouches were now spaceships floating on a
black iridescent ribbon, while at the Place de la Concorde, the obelisk was
a rocket taking off. And far at the city’s cusp sailed Sacri Coeur — a
white ship guided by stars. Yes, that night, it seemed Paris, in sympathy
with us, twinkled and trembled, and leaned too in fervent anticipation. An
excited city listing toward love …
So if in the day, I recount some delightful French meal,
shopping discovery, historical site or museum exhibit, you’ll understand if
I say that at night, a more passionate nostalgia beckons. At night, when
I lie in my husband’s arms, I need only whisper “Gucci Hootchie-Kootchie”
or “L’expedition scientifique” or, if feeling particularly naughty, “La
Banane du Chef,” to lure us into the realm of memory. Lure us back to
that long-ago couple, fearless and fanciful. Back to the quivering nights
of a time-distant Paris when the air was dusty with miracles and the stars
were hung lower. Closer to our hearts.
“Sudden around me rocks and cliffs arise; the earth their footstool, and their crown, the skies.”
– John William Burgon, “Petra” (1845)
Thirty centuries ago, a Bedouin tribe from Arabia arrived in the land that is now Jordan. Here, they pitched their tents, tended their fires and gathered their flocks. The nomads came merely to graze their animals — but over time they did something extraordinary. They not only settled and tilled the land, they built an empire that rivaled Rome.
These extraordinary people were the Nabateans, and their prosperity came from the location of their capital, Petra, at the junction of trade routes linking Rome with China and India. By imposing taxes on the spices and silks that passed through Petra, and by offering protection from marauding tribes, the Nabateans grew fabulously rich. Their empire stretched from Syria to Egypt, and Petra was its crown jewel. A vast, elegant city, carved entirely out of colorful stone, Petra became one of the most important cities of the ancient world.
But then, in the third century, the Romans diverted the trade routes away from Petra, and the Nabatean civilization swiftly declined. By the fourth century Nabatea disappeared. For the next 15 centuries, the location of Petra was lost to the world.
Then, one autumn day in 1812, the fabled city was discovered hidden in a mountain cleft by an adventurous young Englishman.
Last year I discovered it.
The best way to discover Petra is to first see it as I did: at the wrong time of day. Instead of arriving in the tourist-traffic of morning, I came just before dusk. I came alone. I came on foot with neither guidebook nor guide. I began my walk when the air hangs still and all about, the mountains ring with the pitiable voices of sheep.
I had come to the village of Wadi Musa with my husband and two sons in a taxi from Amman. It was late afternoon when we arrived, and as we planned “to do Petra” the next day, the others chose to explore the cliff-edge village. But I wanted a preview, no matter how brief, so I took the hotel van to the entrance of the ancient site and arranged a pick-up time with the driver. And there, at the shabby ticket booth that marks the entrance to Petra, I unknowingly began a quest.
As I made my way down the broad dirt trail, departing horseback riders and carriages clattered past on my right. The trail sliced through the wadi, which was carpeted with a winter stubble of dry grass, scraggly oleander and gorse. On either side stood the ruins of outer Petra, notably hundreds of Nabatean tombs, a honeycomb of caves gouged into the craggy red cliffs.
Where the trail narrowed, I came upon splintery wooden tables lined up on the right. Along with postcards, here you could buy the ubiquitous Jordanian souvenir: a small bottle of pastel-colored sand with your own name written into it by fine black powder poured through bent wire. At this time of day, only a few vendors remained. I stopped to watch a returning tourist have his name poured into a bottle.
“See. See. See. See.”
I barely heard these words, for they seemed distant and strangely, to my subconscious, sounded like Spanish. In a moment I realized they were English and a command directed at me. A few tables down, I saw an old Bedouin man beckoning, and the abrupt sight of him reminded me of the very definition of Bedouin: “those who become visible.” He wore a long black robe. On his head he wore a white kafiya and on his bare feet, broken shoes. He looked a romantic figure. The black robe, the dagger at his side, and his skin, the soft-dun color of a sepia photograph, gave an effect that he was outside time.
“See, Lady. See antiquities.”
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.
