by Don George
What a gift! This is how travel stretches us: For me, now, waking up to a dusty dawn wail to prayer, looking onto tiny streets crammed with shops topped with Arabic loops and twirls, where men in kefiya sip tiny cups of cardamom-scented coffee, is intimate and familiar; it has become a part of my world, and so it will remain forever.
And there have been many such gifts on this trip.
One of the things I have gained is a new appreciation for the reality of the Bible, and for the rich presence of Bible-related sites in Jordan and neighboring areas. Scattered throughout Jordan are places associated with Abraham, Moses, Lot, Aaron, Elijah, Joshua, Jesus, and John the Baptist, among other Biblical figures. A couple of days ago I visited two of the most famous sites—Mount Nebo, where Moses gazed upon the Promised Land and died, and Bethany beyond Jordan, where Christ was baptized by John the Baptist. This was heady stuff for a Protestant manqué who had pretty much relegated all such sites to the realm of Sunday School storytelling. It gave a new and vibrant relevance to the Bible and made me want to re-read it as a guide to the modern Middle East.
Another lesson has been realizing what deep-rooted characteristics the countries in this region share—despite their bitter conflicts. Yesterday, on a trip to the desolate, sun-baked, and wind-swept ruins of Umm Qais, near Jordan’s northern border, I looked out on areas that now “belong” to Syria, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. There was no huge white dotted line separating one from another; the landscapes were indistinguishable, all one geologically. And the people shooing sheep or buying melons and eggplants or making dinner plans on cell phones in these areas were not really so different either, I was sure.
The day before, at Bethany beyond Jordan, I walked down to a viewing site on the Jordan River. A rock in the middle of the river, my guide told me, marked the border with Israel. If I could leap from that rock to the other side of the river, I would be in Israel. I looked up at a wide platform on the Israeli side and saw some people looking over at us. I waved and yelled “Hello!” They waved and called hello back.
It was silly, I know, but it seemed very important at the time. The sense of some impenetrable and threatening Other looming on the far side of that placid riverbank seemed so absurd. Here were people whose ancestors had lived in this region for centuries, who shared linguistic and cultural roots. I reflected on what I had heard over and over from Jordanians in shops and on the street, that governments are the problem, not the common people. “People everywhere want to get along,” the owner of a crafts shop had told me. “We like the Israeli people; we like the Palestinian people; we like the Iraqi people. People want to get along with each other. But the governments are bad. All governments. They just want power.”
The region’s age and shape took on a different face that day in the easy-going and altogether enchanting town of Madaba. Here, in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, are the remarkable remains of a mosaic map that dates back to the 6th century. The mosaic, which originally contained more than two million tiles, depicts the Holy Land as it was in 560 a.d., stretching from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the desert in the east, and from the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon in the north to Egypt in the south. It was spine-tingling to think of pilgrims and traders 1,500 years before standing where I stood, gazing at the exact same stones, remembering loved ones they had left behind in Jericho, or dreaming of the journey they would one day make to Jerusalem.
At the northern ruin of Jerash I stepped back even farther in time, to a 3rd-century Roman city of 20,000, with impressive theaters, temples, plazas, and broad shopping streets where the ruts of chariot wheels can still be seen. As I walked around the amazingly well-preserved site, imagining everyday citizens shopping and gossiping in Latin half a world away from Rome, I encountered a family of four in the amphitheater. There was a young girl and boy, perhaps five and seven years old, a husband in his mid-thirties, and a wife of indeterminate age—indeterminate because she was completely covered in a black burqa, with thin eye-slits her only exposure to the world. Yet here they were on a simple family outing. The children were scampering around the complex, and the parents were talking softly with each other, a typical young couple delighting in their children and occasionally reprimanding them when they threatened to topple down stone stairs. At one point a tour guide invited their daughter to step to the middle of the stage and test the theater’s amazing acoustics. After much encouragement from her parents, she wriggled, all giggles, to the center of the stage and yelled out “Ahhhh!” Then her hands flew to her mouth and her eyes grew wide as her words echoed and amplified around the theater. We all laughed together.
It may seem terribly simple-minded to say so, but this little incident put the burqa in a different light for me. I don’t mean to suggest that it made the principles behind the burqa seem more palatable or benign, only that it un-demonized and humanized the whole burqa issue for me. It gave me a human referent for what had previously been a de-humanized symbol, made me see it not simply as an icon of oppression. I have no idea what that woman felt about the burqa; she may have accepted it without complaint, or wished she didn’t have to wear it, or never even considered other options. But she made me realize that there are humans under those symbolic layers, women who bear children and try to teach them not to fall down stairs and who enjoy long autumn walks with their families around centuries-old ruins.
Like so many other things on this journey, that encounter in Jerash made the whole Middle East equation more human and more complex.
And so we come back to Amman and the end of my journey. As I wrote soon after my arrival here, all the misgiving I had felt when I boarded the plane in New York on September 17 vanished once I set foot in Jordan. In ten days here, I have never—not for a single moment—felt threatened or even vaguely uneasy. People everywhere have been extraordinarily open and kind and hospitable, eager to talk about the world, warm and welcoming beyond all my expectations.
Time after time, wandering virtually alone around world-class ruins or deserted handicrafts shops, I have felt the heartbreaking toll of geography on this country of treasures. Two days ago, I walked into a beautiful carpet store in Madaba and the owner asked what kind of carpet I was interested in. I wasn’t there to buy, I told him, I just wanted to learn about the carpets. That’s fine, sir, he said, and proceeded to ceremoniously unroll carpet after carpet, giving me a concise lecture on the history and highlights of Bedouin, Persian, and Iraqi rugs. I had the feeling it had been quite a while since he had done this, and that it was a pleasure for him simply to be going through the motions of his trade. “How is business?” I asked at one point and he looked at me. “Sir,” he said slowly, “business is not down; it is dead.”
Still, when I finally said that I had to leave and that I really wasn’t interested in buying anything, he didn’t try to bully me into a purchase, as carpet-dealers in many other countries have. He simply smiled graciously and said, “That’s all right, sir. Would you like a cup of tea before you leave?”
Despite all the fears from friends and family at home, and despite the sophistical saber-rattlings of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush that are beamed here daily on CNN and the BBC, I haven’t felt a moment of misgiving on this trip—that is, until this morning, when I awoke to find a slim white envelope slipped under my hotel door. I opened it, thinking the hotel had mistakenly compiled my bill a day too early, and found a letter bearing the seal and name of the Embassy of the United States of America. The note was from one Arnaldo Arbesu, Acting Consul, and it began:
“In keeping with our policy of making available as much information as possible concerning potential terrorist threats and targeting, we are distributing the following notice through the U.S. Embassy warden network. We note that it is consistent with patterns of information already discussed in previous worldwide announcements, including that of September 9, 2000.
“The U.S. Government has received uncorroborated information indicating tha
t as of this summer one member of the Al-Qaeda organization was considering a plan to kidnap U.S. citizens in Jordan. There is no further information to determine the credibility of this threat, or indications of timing. The U.S. embassy is working closely with the Jordanian government, police and Security Officials on the basis of this information, and they are taking appropriate measures.”
My first thought was: I’m glad I’m getting out of here tomorrow. My second thought was: Oh god, poor Jordan, this is the last thing it needs. For me, this message simply underlined the truth that had become so evident throughout my trip. As a tour guide had said on my first day in the country, “Jordan is a quiet house in a noisy neighborhood.” Or to put it another way: Jordan is a victim of geography. It is a relatively peaceful and progressive country smack in the middle of a region dominated by dangerous despots and racked by age-old conflicts. It is an oasis, but the desert is vast and severe.
As I pack to leave, I am boundlessly grateful that the blank space labeled “Jordan” on my mental map has now been replaced by this vivid multi-colored mosaic. And I pray that the historical betrayals and antagonisms that delineate this region today will give way before the deeper desire of everyday world citizens—whatever their country, whatever their religion—to live side by side, in peace. For one thing, the monuments here can teach us all valuable lessons about the aspirations and achievements of our ancestors; but even more importantly and more urgently, the wonderful people I have encountered on this trip deserve nothing less.
Baja: Touched by a Whale
I had never seen a whale, much less touched one. And so, when the opportunity arose to travel to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez on a whale-watching expedition, I jumped onboard. The journey was organized by Lindblad Expeditions, a founding member of a consortium of adventure travel companies called the Adventure Collection, whose Adventurous Traveler blog I had been asked to edit. I am normally more attuned to close encounters with cultures and peoples than animals, but whales are so enormous and at the same time seem to be so intelligent and benign, that I have always been irresistibly attracted to them. What eventually transpired on this expedition was so extraordinary and so moving that it vibrates within me still. And it made one more lesson clear: Not all the encounters that transform us are of the human kind.
I WANTED TO TOUCH A WHALE. At heart, that was my entire reason for traveling to Baja California Sur, Mexico, to cruise in Magdalena Bay and the Sea of Cortez in the spring of 2007. In thirty years of world-wandering and twenty-five years of living on the Northern California coast, somehow I had managed to miss seeing, much less touching, the largest animal on the planet. And on my life list of Things to Do, touching a whale was near the top.
Of course, it would have been foolhardy to predicate the success of an entire trip on such a mission; that would almost guarantee failure. So I told myself that just seeing a whale would be enough. And I told myself that even if the whales inexplicably failed to show up, there would be other rewards that would more than merit the trip.
But I have to admit that after my first morning’s whale-watching excursion—motoring around the choppy seas of Magdalena Bay for two hours in a rubberized Zodiac peering whalelessly into a cool, cottony fog—my heart had sunk about as deep as a bottom-feeding gray.
These depths were plumbed again at lunch, when passengers from other morning excursions breezed in with tales of whales swimming right up to their Zodiacs; quickly an invisible divide grew between those who had and those who hadn’t.
While this was only the second full day of our cruise, I knew that the Zodiac outings were the only opportunity we’d have on the week-long trip to get close enough to whales to touch them, and I knew that I had only two more Zodiac outings—at 4:00 that afternoon and 8:30 the following morning—to realize my dream. To pass the time after lunch, I tossed and turned in my bunk, stared blankly at my journal, and scanned the implacable horizon.
At 4:00, seven of us clambered into our Zodiac with a naturalist and a local whale guide on board. The local guides are essential: They know the waters and the ways of the whales, and they ensure that we are complying with rules established to protect the whales in the region. (In fact, these local guides are the only individuals who have the official Mexican government permits that allow whale-watching.)
As we bounced over the waves, the fresh air and sea spray swooshing our faces, Carlos, the broad-smiling, big-hearted, encyclopedic Mexican naturalist on board our ship, reviewed what we’d learned so far: Every year gray whales make a 5,000-mile migration south from the frigid waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the comparatively tropical waters of Baja California. The whales arrive here around January, and in these gentle, protected waters, they give birth and raise their young.
“Blow at two o’clock!” he suddenly yelled, and Lucinda the Zodiac driver shifted toward the spout of whale-spray that had materialized on the horizon.
The area we were approaching—Carlos pointed toward the now invisible blow—is known as “the nursery,” a protected stretch of water near the Boca de Soledad’s narrow entrance from the ocean to the bay. This is a favorite place for whale mothers to give birth and to train their calves, Carlos said, teaching them how to swim against the strong currents at the mouth of the bay. When they’re ready, they embark on the long migration north again, in March and April.
“Rolling!” Lucinda shouted, pointing ahead. In the distance we could see a massive gray arcing shape mottled with whitish spots slowly rising out of the water and seeming to turn over on top of an even larger gray mass beneath it.
“That’s the baby rolling over the mother!” Carlos said. “They love to play like that. Whales are very tactile creatures, and touching is an important way for them to communicate and to bond.”
As we bounced closer, Lucinda slowed the Zodiac and we could clearly see two massive humps—one twice the length of our Zodiac, the other so much larger we couldn’t see its head or tail—swimming side by side. The mother spouted and with gigantic grace flipped her flukes up and then dove into depths we couldn’t fathom. The baby dove after her.
We floated, scanning the blue sea surface for whale “footprints”—smooth oval stretches of water created when the whales propel themselves with their tails underwater. We searched for spouts or sleek gray humps breaking through the waves. Nothing.
“Carlos,” I asked, “when a whale flips its flukes like that—can you call it fluking?”
He cocked his bald head, smiled. “You can call it that if you want to.”
“Look out! Nine o’clock. Coming right for us!” Lucinda shouted, and rising toward the surface a huge gray-white shape sped toward our Zodiac. The baby!
“He’s coming to check us out,” Carlos said.
“Splash! Splash!” a passenger named Thuy said, and immediately she and another passenger bent over the side of the Zodiac and began to slap the surface of the water with their hands. “We learned this morning that this might help attract the babies,” she explained.
Suddenly a four-foot-long gray head appeared just below the surface of the water a few feet off our Zodiac. The baby whale turned and swept its eye over us, then swerved away. “Keep splashing!” Thuy encouraged us.
So I got on my knees and leaned over the Zodiac’s rubbery side and began pounding the water for all I was worth.
“Momma at three o’clock!” Thuy’s husband Mitch said and nine heads simultaneously swiveled. A blue-white undersea giant at least three times longer than our Zodiac serenely swam by us.
“I think she’s checking us out to see if we’re suitable for her baby to play with,” Carlos said. “Send out good whale vibes.”
Our Zodiac erupted into cries of “Come here, Baby! We love you, Baby! Momma, your baby is so beautiful!” accompanied by a chorus of splashing.
“Here comes Baby!” Carlos said and the now familiar snout surged toward us, swimming right up to our Zodiac, lifting itself out of the water so it could touc
h us. I dove forward with the other passengers and stretched my arm as far as I could. Contact!
Sleek, smooth, soft, rubbery whale-skin—cool and pliant and living and unlike anything I’d ever touched before—was flowing under my fingertips. Baby seemed to give a little smile and then pushed away.
“Woohoo!” I shouted and high-fived Mitch and the Zodiac resounded with Woohoos and All rights and Wows. Even the two teenagers among us seemed impressed.
But Baby wasn’t finished. It swam right under our Zodiac—I felt its bulbous back slide lumpily beneath my knees—then surfaced and made a run for our other side. Like cartoon characters, we all leaped to that side. And again, Baby swam right up to us, lifted its head out of the water and seemed to welcome—to initiate—our contact.
Again I leaned over as far as I could and trailed my hand in the cold whirling water and again the cool sleek touch of baby whale skin electrified me. Double whale contact!
For the next half hour we floated in an otherworldly orb of whale-ness. Baby and Momma circled around our Zodiac, spouting, rolling, diving, swimming side by side, skimming up to us and then plunging playfully under us. A few times Baby swam up to us as if we were a rubber ducky in its bathtub and pushed us along with its snout.
We were all whooping and laughing and calling out to Momma and Baby and for a half hour it was as if we were having an interspecies play date.
I didn’t think it could get any better than that, but shortly before Momma and Baby swam away into the depths of the bay, Momma sent her own message. She had been swimming warily but serenely at a distance from the Zodiac the entire time, content to let Baby play with us, just monitoring that we all behaved.
But at this moment, she swam straight at us, a blue-white underwater mammal-bus hurtling our way. She swam right up to the Zodiac and turned gently over as she approached, so that her eye was out of the water, looking up at us. As she cruised under the bow of the Zodiac, where I was straining forward, she passed right under me. I arched and extended my arm and felt her cool, sleek cheek. I stroked it for a few seconds and in that time she looked straight into my eye and I looked straight into hers.