The Way of Wanderlust (23 page)

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 that 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.

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.