Off the Beaten Tracks

by Irina Bogatyreva

  “Of course, I’d be delighted, but won’t I be a bother?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right then!” I answer, genuine gladness on my face, impossible to conceal.

  “Then we need a cab.”

  We leave our things at his house and drive to dinner in Joseph’s car. Joseph, that’s the Arab’s name. We eat fried potatoes with chicken and vegetables, and we drink Pepsi. He doesn’t let me pay for it.

  It turns out that Joseph is from Lebanon and works in Amman, where the company rents an apartment for him and his family.

  Without a trace of indifference this time, in fact, quite the opposite, Joseph asks me with sincere curiosity about Russia and the countries where I’ve been.

  That evening I managed to expand the boundaries of my journey to cover yet another country as Joseph told me of his beloved Lebanon with much enthusiasm!

  Then he allotted me a separate room and even made up the bed, despite my assurances that I could do it myself. He kept coming up with more things to do for me as if he derived some kind of pleasure from it. Like a child who has just mastered a new skill and can’t get enough of it. It was so fun for him!

  Bottles filled with sand

  I’m looking at the Israeli shore glowing with bright yellow lights; the lights of Egypt are shining a bit further, to the right. I am in Jordan. Between us lies the Red Sea, but the heavy warm blanket of the night has covered the red and turned it to black. The sea is softly tossing in its sleep, the waves splash unhurriedly onto the shore, mumbling and snuffling drowsily.

  * * *

  This morning I arrived in Aqaba, a city on the border of three states. I got picked up by a mini-bus on the outskirts of Amman where Joseph had left me. All the other passengers paid for the ride, but the driver kept reassuring me that I was riding for free.

  I am walking in the very center of a wide boulevard. Jordanians are sitting on benches under the trees, together with their friends and families. They don’t pay any particular attention to me. They see too many tourists – this is a well known international tourist resort. Largely because of this I’ve decided not to stay here for very long. Too many shops, restaurants, and streets full of green cabs. It’s hard to make friends in such a city.

  All I need is to find the office where I can get my free visa, since I’ve arrived in Aqaba – a “free economic zone,” as the Jordanians themselves call it. I’ll leave the city as soon as I get my visa.

  A souvenir stall on the corner is selling bottles filled with multicolored sand. Behind the counter stands a young shopkeeper in dark glasses. He is expertly pouring purple mountains, brown camels and orange clouds into a bottle.

  My attention is immediately arrested by these mountains, camels, and clouds, and I can’t tear myself away.

  “Hello!” The shopkeeper greets me loudly and cheerfully, in English, fully aware that he’s got me hooked. I can see myself reflected in his dark glasses: a potential customer.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Russia.”

  “Oh! Russia, Moscow! You can put down your backpack, have a seat and you can watch.”

  “No, no, I’ll be going, just for a second.” Naively making my apologies, I am still unable to tear my eyes away from the exquisite sand filling up the bottles.

  “Are you alone?” Knowing he’s got me hooked, he reels me in easily with his casual but interested tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, put down your backpack.”

  I take off my backpack and sit by the little table, gazing wide-eyed at the Jordanian’s work. He is pleased by my attention, and continues to envelop me in a web of standard questions: where from, where to, how.

  A minute, two, three, and now he, having taken off his glasses, is the one staring at me. I simply told him where I’m from, where I’m headed and, most importantly, how I’ve been traveling.

  “I can’t believe it…Would you like some tea? My treat,” he adds. “My name is Ibrahim. What is your name?”

  He calls an assistant and asks him to bring us some tea, then hurriedly turns his gaze back to me, and I see a completely different expression than before. He now speaks quietly and not as insistently as before, so I answer his questions more willingly.

  “Why do you wear a headscarf?”

  “Well, your women wear headscarves, so, out of respect for tradition…”

  Judging by his reaction, Ibrahim has never yet encountered a foreign woman wearing a headscarf, nor such an explanation.

  As invariably happens in Muslim countries, we end up talking about religion. Ibrahim believes in the absolute truth of Islam but when I ask if he prays the namaz he answers in an uncertain and unsteady voice:

  “No.”

  He can’t explain why. As we continue our conversation wholly engaged, a young Arab around twenty-seven comes up to Ibrahim’s table with a slow and arrogant gait, obviously going for the European look: blue jeans, black sweatshirt, blue baseball cap, sunglasses. A thick gold chain seems to gleam only in order to draw attention to his dark tanned neck. He gives me a nonchalant sideways glance and says hello to Ibrahim who enthusiastically starts telling this guy about me and our conversation.

  The guy’s name is Khalil. Hearing that we’ve been talking about Islam, he sits down to join us. He has an excellent command of English and with unexpected openness begins talking about what religion means to him, about his studies of the Qu’uran and his thoughts about what is written – all this without a tinge of arrogance or condescension. He speaks without a break, looking at me and holding eye contact, seemingly afraid that if he loses eye contact I will disappear like a mirage in the desert before he gets a chance to have his say.

  Like Ibrahim, Khalil is convinced as to the absolute truth of Islam, and in speaking about it he resembles a man who has just discovered a treasure and wants the world to share in the joy of his discovery.

  “And what about you? Do you observe all the teachings of the Koran? Do you pray?” I ask, full of hope. On my second day in Jordan I’m already asking these questions with hope, rather than with the certainty of a positive answer as I had in Syria.

  Echoing Ibrahim, Khalil answers:

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  He drops his head, then suddenly raises his eyes as if I were the one expected to answer and not he.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel that the less I pray, the more I become alienated from God, but there is nothing I can do.”

  Then he glanced back at me:

  “I don’t understand why I’m telling you all this. It feels like we’ve known each other for a long time. I have never said this to anyone before.”

  I feel my cheeks burning and look at Ibrahim as if he could offer me a way out, and suddenly I remember:

  “I need to go to the visa office.”

  “I have a car,” says Khalil.

  “Ibrahim says it’s not far from here.”

  “I have a car all the same.”

  Shops, restaurants, hotels flicker past in the car window. At the office they tell me to come back tomorrow. I’ll spend the night in this city after all: Khalil’s parents have left for England while his brothers and sister are at home.

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  “There are ten of us all together.”

  “Ten! And you all have the same mother?”

  “Yes. My father married when he was thirty, and my mother gave birth to the last child when he turned forty.”

  The brother

  The large house was a mess of the sort only twenty and thirty-year-old sons can create when their parents are on vacation. One sister cannot cope with this chaos on her own, especially when she lives elsewhere and visits only in order to cook for her brothers. This is what she is doing when we arrive at Khalil’s – a girl around twenty, with beautiful facial features. She welcoms me very warmly and despite my
insistent offers does not allow me to help.

  We sit down to dinner. Khalil introduces me to his younger brother Sufiyan. Another one of Khalil’s brothers comes into the room. The first thing I notice about him are his huge arms with bulging muscles. Well, well! I wonder why he needs such muscles.

  “This is Iyid, my brother,” Khalil introduces us.

  Iyid carefully studies me and smiles with sad-looking eyes, or maybe I’m just imagining it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tatiana.”

  “Wha-a-t?” He frowns uncertainly.

  “Tatiana.”

  Later he tells me he misheard my name as santyana which in Arabic means the part of a woman’s underwear worn on top, and he was confused.

  “Where are you from, Tatiana, Germany?”

  “No, from Russia.”

  “A-a-ah!” He exclaims significantly.

  I would find out about the meaning of this reaction only later, in Khalil’s office. He works as a tourist guide. When his boss heard I was from Russia he chuckled slyly:

  “From Russia with love?”

  I already have some idea what this implies, but I still ask:

  “What do you mean?”

  My slightly indignant tone change the atmosphere. The boss doesn’t answer. Although, of course, it isn’t really his fault that the majority of women working in the Aqaba nightclubs (not as waitresses) are from Russia.

  Iyid’s scornful tone is most likely for the same reason, but it doesn’t last long. Khalil goes to fix his car and Iyid begins showing me photos on his laptop.

  “This is my older brother, he lives in England. Our parents have gone to visit him. This is my second brother, he lives in France. And this is my crane. I work on a crane in the port.”

  “You need such big arms to work on the crane?”

  “No,” he smiles. “I work out. And this is me in Egypt. I really love Egypt.”

  “Do you go there on vacation?”

  “Yes. It’s warm there.”

  “Like it’s cold here?”

  “Now it’s cold here, it’s winter.”

  One of the most entertaining things to do while travelling is to scare the locals with stories about Russia. To tell Austrians who can cross their country in five hours, for instance, that in order to get from Moscow to Vladivostok it takes six days by train. Or to tell a Lebanese person, who lives in a country of four million people, that in Moscow alone we have ten million.

  Later, Iyid and I go for a walk on the beach, and as we stand on the dock, I look into the blue water of the Red Sea and wonder whether to go swimming or not. I tell him that some Russians swim in winter.

  “We go down to the river, break the ice and jump into the water.”

  If I could have photographed Iyid’s face at that moment it would have been the most unique shot of the entire trip.

  Khalil comes back late that evening. We hang out with Iyid. He has an excellent sense of humor and we laugh the whole time. Still, it seems to me that for some reason his eyes are sad.

  * * *

  “Can you whistle?” Iyid asks me as we were walking out of the house early the next morning.

  “Yes, but not loudly.”

  “I can’t whistle at all, so I always ask my friends to hail cabs.”

  Iyid wants to show me the office. A green cab whisks us to the center of the city.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” I ask him on the way to the office.

  “Yes, sure…”

  “You have very sad eyes. Why?”

  He doesn’t answer immediately.

  “I have many sad thoughts. And I think them all the time.”

  “What kind of thoughts?”

  “If I tell you about them I won’t think them anymore.”

  “So wouldn’t that be better?”

  Most likely not, because Iyid doesn’t answer.

  Such a familiar situation: when melancholy lives inside you for a long time, in the end it becomes a source of pleasure and you won’t give it up for anything.

  Once I have the stamp in my passport we go for a walk.

  “Let’s go to the beach,” Iyid suggests. “I’ll show you my sand bottles.”

  “You can make them too?!”

  The table is covered with these wonderful handcrafted objects, but there’s no one to look after them.

  “Nobody looks after them?” I ask in disbelief.

  “No. But no one will take them. I leave them like this even overnight.”

  “And what if someone wants to buy something?”

  “They’ll give the money to them,” Iyid says and points to some venders nearby. They are his friends, and offer us some of the sunflower seeds they are selling.

  “I’ll make one for you, OK?”

  “Why don’t you sell your little bottles like Ibrahim?”

  “You make too little money this way. And I have to pay for the gym. I work out for a couple of hours almost every day.

  After Iyid makes me a present for me we take a walk along the embankment. To the right the noise of the sea seems to gently push us towards something.

  “So why do you spend so much time at the gym?” I ask. “Is it really so important?”

  However hard we try to talk about something general and simple the conversation keeps coming up against locks impossible to open, and I see that there is no way to free him of his sad thoughts, no way for him to let them go.

  Iyid stops and leans against the low stone wall. I sit next to him but he turns away and crosses his arms on his chest as if holding on to something inside. In a little while he says:

  “Because I want to be strong. I think that there is strength in this. I am really weak. Part of me wants to cry, but I can’t cry because I’m a man.”

  I see his face and I hear his pain. Talking about this brings tears to his eyes.

  “Several years ago I had a girlfriend. I loved her very much, I did everything for her. But she turned out to be… She was just after money. We went to nightclubs, I began drinking. I stopped praying. In the end I began taking drugs because of her. The last thing she made me do was get this tattoo… I never want to trust anyone ever again… And I think that I’m terribly weak. That is why I go to the gym.”

  I touch his shoulder. Iyid straightens up and I jump off the wall. We slowly walk on. I take his big warm hand and it feels like I’m holding a child’s hand. The warm clear rays alight in his eyes. The keys and the lock click goodbye to us from the low stone wall left behind. All is well, there’s no need for them any more.

  The funny Dead Sea

  Today the sun rose for the tenth time to illuminate my road. But am I on the road? I spend every night at someone’s home and this usually becomes much more than just a roof over my head. It becomes a home in itself, hard to leave every time. I’ve never been hungry on this trip and I’ve not spent any money on food yet.

  I already have more than ten new numbers in my phone beginning with un-Russian 0s and 2s. Every day I receive text messages from my new friends. They worry about how I’m doing and regret that I only stayed with them for a short while. They are all people whom I’ve met during this journey. I even have a Jordanian brother now! He writes more often than the others and in almost every message says how grateful he is to have met me and that he will never forget me.

  So am I on the road? Or am I at home, a home with dimensions larger than I could ever imagine?

  I’m striding along a paved road; to my right is a village. Beyond it lie the Jordanian mountains: low, with peaks painted in pink, orange and red. The sun paints them every day with its hot touch at sunset. They are its trusted harbingers and even in daytime they carry a promise of the unusual color feast of the sunset.

  I look at these mountains, at the sky, at the desert to the left of the road. All this is mine, native to me. So many times I have heard people say to me with complete sincerity: “Make yourself at home!”

  Like on the first day of my trip,
when on the road from Trabzon in Turkey I was picked up and carried, so I’m still carried by people.

  * * *

  The driver takes me to within fifteen kilometers of the Dead Sea before he has to turn. But that’s for the better: I need to find out where exactly on the shore the hot springs are. After swimming I’ll need to wash off the salt in their warm fresh water so that I don’t dry up to a crisp from all the salt.

  I’m walking along the side of the road looking back at the one-story concrete houses stretching out close to the road and thinking, “How can I meet someone in this village who speaks English well enough to explain how to get to these hot springs?” On a road to the side of the main one a car slows down and a young Jordanian man in his early thirties with skin the color of chocolate gets out and addresses me in excellent English:

  “Hello! What do we Jordanians say when we meet a foreigner? Welcome! Can I help you in any way?”

  Of course, I’m not going to lie to him. The hospitable Jordanian knows where to find the hot springs but agrees to tell me about them only after I have tea at his house and meet his family.

  My new friend’s name is William. Not only he tells me all about the hot springs, but also offers to take me there.

  We leave the car on the side of the road and walk through a field of tomatoes. I look carefully at the smooth surface of the sea opening out before us trying to discern what is unusual about it. Only when we get to the beach do I notice the enormous rocks covered with a thick salt crust like white icing. The sea rolls onto them in licking waves but the waves do not, like cows or elk do, lick the salt off but rather leave the rocks even saltier.

  The beach is completely deserted. William brings his family here so his wife can swim just wearing a bathing suit rather than the long shirt that Muslim women wear on public beaches.

  I’ve heard many a horror story about the danger for one’s eyes of even tiny drops of water from this sea. So the first thing I do is head off with a mug to a stream of warm fresh water coming down from the mountains.

  With a mug of water in place of a first-aid kit waiting on shore and with William waiting for me a little further off I can finally explore the most unusual sea in the world.

  The water is not at all summery – this is January after all. At the bottom there are stones encrusted with salt. I discover just how sharp they are when I get back to the beach, my feet striped with crimson marks.