by Maggie Downs
Those words echo: You are just blood. I believe I am far more than my blood—although isn’t that the reason I am traveling? If I don’t have this blood connecting me to my ancestors, what else do I have? It is this blood ripping through my veins right now that keeps me alive and vibrant and seeking. It is also this blood that might become my undoing, the genetic curse that might one day steal my memory. This blood is my inheritance.
I say none of these things to Hakeem. I just hate him.
When Abdullah returns, he walks me to a cluster of low huts. I hear lapping water nearby and faraway gunshots.
“Abdullah, I’m scared.”
“You will be safe,” he says. He props my backpack against one hut and unrolls several rugs on the sand, making a bed for me to sleep.
“Abdullah, I hear gunshots.”
“Oh, not gunshots. This is Bedouins playing and dancing.” He stretches his index fingers out like pistols and fires them into the air. “Ha ha ha! Bang bang bang. Is just for fun.”
I appreciate that he cares enough to lie. It’s something my mom would have done.
Abdullah leaves me with presents: Three packages of Nescafé instant cappuccino. One package of chocolate cookies. The shemagh scarf that was wrapped around his head. When I bring it to my nose, it smells of sandalwood mixed with something slightly Camaro-y, like the Egyptian version of Drakkar Noir.
He also hands me a fat bag of hash.
“I don’t want to cross any borders with this,” I say.
“Trust me,” he says.
There is only the slightest door on my hut, a thin sheet of plywood that doesn’t fully close. I point to it, and Abdullah takes my hand in his. “Trust me,” he says again before he leaves for good.
And I do. Between us, bread and salt. Abdullah is my bread, warm and comforting. Hakeem is salt, unpalatable in large doses. Both necessary.
I wake up just a few feet from this biblical sea, where Moses helped the slaves escape from Egypt, where I was told God hates women. I walk to the edge of the seashore and scrub my face with briny water. From here I can see the rusty mountains of Saudi Arabia, the faraway coast of Jordan, the smallest sliver of Israel. I wade in knee-deep, half hoping the water will part for me.
As the sea laps around my legs, I think about how I interpreted my wobbly tree pose all wrong. It’s not that I am too weak to remain; it’s that I am flexible enough to kiss the ground and stand again. I bend without breaking.
Hakeem drives me to the port two hours before the ferry is scheduled to leave. He offers to carry my backpack during the short walk to a roadside café, where he sits me down at a plastic table. He hugs my backpack and says he will hold it for ransom until I give him 1,000 American dollars.
It’s a preposterous request, and I’m not frightened by it. As a journalist, I have endured anthrax scares, death threats, and stalkers. When I wrote an article about a high school football coach who gave teenage girls gifts of lingerie, I arrived home to find one of the coach’s supporters waiting on my porch with a shotgun. A Mother’s Day column prompted a reader to fill my voicemail with a rant about how she wanted me to die of Alzheimer’s. Every week for one year, I received unsigned postcards that contained a single word: “cunt.” I am an inadvertent expert in determining which threats are real and which ones are noise. I know how to diffuse anger, to be accommodating, to bite my tongue.
I don’t have the money Hakeem wants. Because the ATMs are empty, I have only enough for the ferry ride, maybe a couple of Egyptian pounds more. I wouldn’t give him $1,000 anyway. I’d rather walk away from my things and leave Hakeem holding the remnants of a woman who was too strong to stay.
Instead I give him the bag of hash. This makes him happy, and he shouts out orders for food.
We are served French fries, falafel, and fuul, a dish of slow-cooked fava beans with tomatoes, onions, and swirls of tahini. Hakeem tears a piece of pita in two and hands me half, and I use it to mop up the fuul. It is delicious and salty, only slightly bitter. When it comes time to leave for Jordan, I don’t even wave goodbye.
Room for More
MY INTRODUCTION TO PETRA IS BY NIGHT.
The narrow gorge that leads to the ancient city’s ruins runs nearly a mile, like an artery that pumps people toward the heart of the place. It is called the siq, and it’s a fault in the earth, ripped apart by tectonic forces. When the Nabatean capital city of Petra was established around 312 BC, this was the grand caravan entrance, traveled by merchants, traders, and Roman soldiers. Archeological evidence suggests this was also a sacred space.
Tonight the siq is lit by tea lights that illuminate the canyon walls with an ethereal glow. Overhead I see a smattering of stars.
These looming walls should be enough to terrify me. They are tall—up to 600 feet high in some places—and it is dark. A Bedouin guide has asked everyone making this journey to go in silence, so the only sound comes from echoing footsteps and the occasional braying donkey and mewling cat. But the siq comforts me in the idea that something that has been ruthlessly split apart could continue to pulse with life.
I wonder how many mothers have passed through these stones over the years, how many families traveled here for food or water or spiritual sustenance. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people whom I will never know, their names lost to the past. All roads lead to this place—where voices, names, and blood disappear into the earth—and still the world stands, holding fast to these secrets.
The passage opens up at Al Khazneh, the Treasury, Petra’s most recognizable building. It’s an elaborate structure carved out of the rosy sandstone rock, built sometime in the first century. It is also one of the final things on my mom’s list.
Tonight the Treasury glows red with candles. Rugs are arranged on the desert floor, and people from all over the world squat or sit cross-legged. Bedouin musicians play songs and sing in lilting Arabic. I can’t understand a single word, but every one of them seems to slice right through to my heart. I close my eyes and sway. Each time I inhale, the sharp desert smell reminds me of my California home—the green scent of herbal plants, the subtle but solid aroma of arid earth.
Though the Arab Spring continues to swirl around the Middle East, I have safely evacuated Egypt, and I am in a stable place. I’m also with people I know. On the ferry from Egypt to Jordan, I ran into Rose and Hew, friends from Dahab, and we are traveling together for a bit.
As soon as the ferry made it to Aqaba, we found a hostel with Wi-Fi, and I contacted my family for the first time in almost two weeks. I didn’t even know what time it was in Ohio; I only knew the call would be answered.
“Dad?”
“Oh, Margaret, Margaret, Margaret,” he said. His voice broke at the sound of mine, until it splintered into a wail. “Come home. Why won’t you come home?”
My dad was never one to express his feelings, but that night, before we hung up the phone, he said he loved me.
Next I called Jason, who knew I was alive—he had been following the electronic trail of ATM withdrawals—and I reassured him that I would carefully follow the news and stay safe.
Nobody wants me to stay in Jordan. My family believes an uprising in one Middle Eastern country will become an uprising in every country, but I don’t want to leave. Not yet. I feel the presence of my mom here in the sweep of desert, the shifting sands, the streaky rock formations.
I remember a road trip we took out West when I was about twelve or thirteen years told. My sister and brother were already adults and had moved away from home, so it was just my dad, my mom, and me, together for a couple of weeks in a maroon Buick. We departed Ohio and followed part of the Oregon Trail, stopping in dusty, sweltering towns along the way, then looped around to South Dakota, through Badlands National Park. Our goal was to reach Mount Rushmore, but I discovered the Badlands were the true marvel.
It spoke to me in a way that no landscape ever had before. I took dozens of photos—and this was before we had a digital camera—so I cli
cked and filled frame after frame of bizarre outcroppings, sharp spires, and layers of eroded strata. I was enchanted by all of it. The ombré of color. The desolation and melancholy. It’s a place where you can’t tell the difference between what’s breaking down and what’s rising up, but either one creates a sense of possibility.
“Isn’t it amazing?” I gasped. My mom agreed and laced her fingers through mine. I thought I was too old for holding my mother’s hand, but I let it go this one time, since nobody was around to see us. We were quiet for a moment as we gazed across the expanse. Then I broke the silence.
“Why do you think they called this the Badlands?”
“Because the Goodlands would sound silly,” she said.
It was a joke (the Lakota tribe gave the land its name, “Mako Sica,” which means “land bad”), but I can’t help thinking of it now, surrounded by another rugged and breathtaking landscape. I am far from the “goodlands” of my childhood, separated by distance and time from the place where I stood in awe and held my mother’s hand.
What I wouldn’t give to hold her hand again. What I wouldn’t give to make space for her on this rug, to sit by the dancing candlelight in this monument of carved rock and empty tombs, to let the low and primal hum of the music move through us.
My eyes are wet as I look around this magical spot. The canyons and rocks here are a consolation, an assurance that it’s possible to weather time and tragedy and still be a thing of formidable beauty.
Finally, I mourn. This ancient place holds my sadness too.
I SPEND THE NEXT DAY AT PETRA, CLAMBERING OVER THE canyons, hiking through the ruins, experiencing the city from every possible vantage point. Petra Archeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Archaeologists speculate that only a small portion of the city has been uncovered, but what’s there is spectacular.
After a full day of sightseeing, I return to the town of Wadi Musa, where I’m staying in a hostel for the night. Abraham, one of the owners, invites me to join him and his friends for an authentic Jordanian dinner.
Abraham negotiates his Land Cruiser through narrow side streets of the congested city, barely missing a pack of small children and grazing donkeys. We speed past handwritten Arabic signs, crumbling homes, and shops made of sagging wood. Soon we are past the limits of town and out in the mountainous desert. I’m in the backseat with a man on either side, their faces ruddy and chapped by wind.
“So where are we going?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” Abraham says. He flicks his lighter, singes the end of his Dunhill cigarette, and puffs at it. His friends joke in Arabic. I can pluck out a word or two, but most of the conversation floats past me.
There are no more roads, at least none that I can discern. Dusk buckles under the darkness, and soon we’re traveling through a canvas of ebony sky. A half hour later, the vehicle groans to a stop on a blank swath of desert, populated only by a few scrubby bushes and jagged rock formations. Shortly after we arrive, another vehicle pulls up and parks near us.
“When you said we were going out to eat, I thought you meant a restaurant down the street,” I say. “I didn’t know you meant outside.”
He laughs. “It’s cool,” he says. “This is Jordan barbecue.”
I don’t even know how that’s possible here. There is nothing to barbecue on—no kitchen, no grill, not even a source of heat.
“Yalla,” Abraham says, and his friends scatter. They return within moments with branches, handfuls of twigs, and one dry, dead tree. A few of the guys construct a fire pit—a hole in the ground into which they place a metal rack—while another pulls supplies from the trunk. Abraham readies the food. My offers to help are brushed aside.
When the fire has mostly settled into hot coals, Abraham buries the food inside. Eggplants and a head of garlic are positioned under the embers. Chicken and roughly sliced onions go on the rack.
Ahab, a lanky guy in his early twenties, spears dozens of raw chicken legs on a metal rack and hoists the meat into the air triumphantly.
“Look at me! I am hunter!” and his friends cheer.
The chicken is rubbed with fresh greens and a fragrant spice mix, then balanced over the fire. A layer of potatoes, wrapped in wet cloth, is placed on the top shelf of the rack. Ahab spreads two blankets over the opening of the pit; then another friend shovels sand over the blankets. This will take hours to cook, and my stomach is already grumbling.
As we wait, Abraham puts the key in the ignition to start the car radio. I expect something traditionally Jordanian. What I get is Jack Johnson.
“Is this like being in California?” Abraham smiles as the song “Bubbletoes” plays. His hair is long and unruly, flopping over his eyes as he talks. He dances a little bit to the song and sings along.
“Kind of,” I laugh. “Okay, not really. I’ve never cooked my food outside in the desert like this.”
The truth is, this could be California—or any number of places I’ve found around the world. These are the essential ingredients for every gathering in every culture, everywhere. Friends, food, music. They are the building blocks of almost every memory I have too.
When I think about my mom, she’s often in the kitchen making supper, bent over the sink or a cutting board when a song she likes comes on the radio. She wipes a hand on a dish towel, turns up the volume, and shakes her hips to the beat. Then she gestures to me to join in. That’s how I remember it, anyway: laughter and singing, unraveling the day with joyful, uninhibited dancing. Perhaps that’s not the truth of it—maybe not every evening of my childhood was a spontaneous dance party—but that’s how it lives in my head.
“Take a plate,” Abraham says.
He digs the eggplant from the ashes and plops the vegetable on a plate. The charred skin peels off in one satisfying layer. The garlic cloves are now roasted and squishy, and Abraham squashes a few of them onto the eggplant. He adds a dollop of yogurt and a pinch of salt, slices a lemon in half and squeezes the juice over the entire plate. Then he mashes everything together with a fork before adding a generous drizzle of olive oil. He tears a piece of bread and dredges it through the mixture, then offers it to me.
I’ve eaten eggplant but never like this. It is smoky and creamy, with a depth of flavor I’ve never tasted before. He gives me another piece of bread, and I scoop the mixture greedily. After nearly two weeks of stale granola bars and instant oatmeal, the taste of a homemade meal is something akin to love.
It fills my stomach quickly, but Abraham laughs and says I can surely eat forty more bites.
The metal rack is retrieved from the fire pit. Potatoes are split open and sprinkled with salt. There’s a platter of blackened chicken and heaps of salad. We eat lentils and rice, tomatoes and cucumbers, bread smeared with garlic and oil.
I lose track of how many hours we spend warming our hands over a fire, coaxing down warm beers, singing and passing plates around. Every time I think I’m full, somehow there’s room for more.
The Only Way Out Is Through
IT’S MID-FEBRUARY 2011, WELL INTO MY SEVENTH MONTH of travel, and I’m in Addis Ababa, wandering the halls of the National Museum of Ethiopia. The basement here is home to the partial skeleton of Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old ancestor to humans found in the northwestern Afar region of Ethiopia. She was named Lucy because “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” played on a cassette tape while paleontologists excavated her bones from the dirt, which feels whimsical considering she’s also known as the grandmother of humanity.
It has been nearly one month since my mom died, and though I have felt the bracing immediacy of that loss every day, I am finally becoming acquainted with the depths of my sorrow.
The Arab Spring distracted me in Egypt with fear, stress, and anxiety. Alternatively, Jordan was a distracting relief, where I could while away my time with sightseeing and keep myself occupied with new friends.
What I discover in Ethiopia is that distracting myself from pain doesn’t mean dissolving the pai
n. I’ve been walking the streets, hoping the movement would somehow pull me away from myself, but it’s as futile as outrunning a shadow. Everywhere I go, there I am. And what I am is furiously sad.
Barbara is supposed to meet me here later in the month, and we will travel to the southern countryside together; until she arrives, I am alone with my pain.
I thought this museum would at least give me something pretty to look at, but all it’s done is make me think about family, ancestry, and the bones we leave behind. It’s not lost on me that Ethiopia marks time by a Julian calendar, made up of twelve months of thirty days, plus another month of just five days. That means the years here don’t pass at the same rate as they do with a Western calendar. So it’s 2011 for most of the world, but I walk through Addis Ababa in 2003. Present me is here, but I am stuck in the past.
There is a ritual aspect to death, and that part is comforting. Everyone since Lucy has participated in this. It is something my great-grandparents did, then my grandparents. My mom simply followed suit. Someday I will do it too.
Why then do endings feel so gutting?
In this moment, I think it’s because I am alone, and I am steeped in it. Distracting myself from grief didn’t work, and distance hasn’t helped either. My only choice now is to go through it, which is where I am now, and nobody else can join me in this place.
A security guard stops me as I make my way out of the Lucy room.
“Are you alone?” he says.
All I can do is nod.
TRAVELING ETHIOPIA IS HARD. THE FIRST TIME I TRY TO retrieve money from an ATM, my bank cancels my Visa. My backup is a MasterCard, which is not accepted in this country.
It’s a long, convoluted process for my husband to wire cash, which he does, but the fees are steep, and my hostel charges interest on every night’s stay and every meal that I can’t immediately pay. When my hostel runs out of water, I don’t have the ability to go anywhere else until I obtain more money. Then one last devastation: a new editor at the newspaper in Palm Springs, which has been running my travel articles on a freelance basis, says he no longer needs my work.