Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

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Jordan — 4, day two, from Amman to the Dead Sea

2015-12-14

We woke up around ten, finished off the bread left over from Sasha's dish yesterday, and started asking Nadir, who was admiring the landscape outside the window with a glass of tea, to call up Ragai.
Who punctually arrived in ten minutes. We didn't expect such a trick from a Jordanian citizen, so we hastily grabbed our bags and ran out to load up. Mr. Ragai turned out to be a middle-aged, calm, slightly plump, and balding guy; he explained that Rybakov would have to squeeze in so that, bent double, he could fit together with the bicycle on the folded-down back seat.

 

 

A young man in an olive jacket sits on a sunny balcony, looking at the camera. In the background, a cityscape with a mosque and residential buildings is visible.

The apartment even has a balcony

Three men stand around the open trunk of a dark car, where a bicycle is visible inside. One man bends over the contents of the trunk, while the other two watch.

Nadir, Ragai, and Sasha loading the bikes

A smiling man in a blue t-shirt has climbed into the cramped luggage compartment of a passenger car and sits on top of travel bags with his pants slightly pulled down in the back. A palm tree and a building are visible in the background outside the car window.
Tight squeeze, but no hard feelings

When we inquired: “What about police?” Ragai, smiling, reported, “No problem at all””". As the person who usually bears the burden of social interactions on trips, I sat in the front seat next to Ragai, who wasn't averse to chatting. When I  immediately buckled up out of habit, Ragai looked at me reproachfully, and said “Not cool”. I had to do as the Romans do and unbuckle, although I regretted it literally a couple of minutes later, when our carefree driver stepped on the gas to sneak through right up to the red light. At the next intersection, I actually got the feeling that he stepped on the gas to sneak through up to the green light, like in the Georgian joke about the jigits.  Having shown off his youthful bravado in this way, Ragai calmed down a bit, and from then on only endangered our lives to the default extent accepted here. He lamented that we wouldn't see Amman,  and offered to drive us around a bit so we could get at least some idea of it. The city is very beautifully situated on hills, but the interchanges and navigation on bikes there would be sheer torture.  From the mister's comments, we also learned that he himself is a Christian, and that there are only three percent of them in Amman (Wikipedia says twenty in the country, so someone's got their wires crossed) .
Muslims,  in his opinion, hate everyone and aren't glad to see anyone. Ragai brought us to a wealthy neighborhood, which by Cyprus standards looked like a regular rundown little village, pointed at some small mansions, more solid ones than which, in principle, can easily be found back home in Stropy and on the Shunka, and announced that thieves live here.

A road with moving cars stretches into the distance towards hills with scattered buildings, under a clear blue sky. In the lower left, part of a car's hood is visible.

 



- Do you know who the thieves are?
- The government and bureaucrats, I shot back.

Ragai also announced that King Abdullah II is a thief and a corrupt official too, and generally a world-class shithead. In our subsequent wanderings, we repeatedly stumbled upon citizens who declared the king to be “very good, a benefactor, the savior of the nation”. Portraits of the king and his family hang in many local eateries, including the one where we had dinner yesterday. Naturally, in all government institutions as well. Putin's Russia immediately comes to mind, along with the novel “1984”, for some reason in exactly that order.


Another dialogue:

- Where are you staying at the Dead Sea?

- In Al Mazraa, a village on the edge of the sea
- Must be  with a local, the village isn't popular with tourists, Ragai deduced, what's  his name?
- William
- A local can't be named William!


Like much else on this  trip, this mysterious question had to be left to the will of providence. After all, it had already sent us a lucky bus to Amman, the wonderful Mr. Ragai, and we expected further favors from it, despite the fact that the notorious William hadn't sent me the coordinates of his house, and generally hadn't replied on Couchsurfing for two weeks.
However, while the sun shines, Ragai is driving us to the Dead Sea, treating us to coffee and cookies, and showing us where Muslims booze behind their wives' backs, and then toss the empty bottles. They booze exactly here not without reason, but because the views are magical.

An elderly man in a striped shirt stands on a hill, intently holding a transparent bag in his hands, while a young man in a blue t-shirt sits on the ground and looks at him. In the background — a cityscape, green hills, and a construction site.

Two men of different ages sit on the ground under pine trees, resting. Next to them are a thermos and disposable cups; in the background, a hilly landscape and a red billboard are visible.

A wide shot of a settlement with light-colored buildings spread across the hills, with dry fields and rocky terrain. In the foreground are two simple stone structures and gentle dry slopes under a clear blue sky.

 

Two people sit with their backs to the viewer on a shaded grassy slope, offering a panoramic view of the city located in the valley. In the foreground, construction materials and patches of bare earth are also visible under a clear blue sky.

PB200050

 

A panoramic view of arid terraced hills and valleys under a clear blue sky, with a distant settlement on the horizon. In the foreground is a green coniferous tree and shrubs.

 

A selfie of a smiling man in a green fleece jacket against the backdrop of a hilly mountain landscape under a clear blue sky.

A panoramic view of arid hilly mountains with stepped terraces under a clear blue sky. In the foreground, green shrubs and trees are visible, and on the distant ridges — small settlements.

 

Two smiling boys are riding donkeys, and two cyclists are standing next to them on the side of the road, against the backdrop of a body of water and mountains.

 

When Rybakov expressed a desire to flounder around in the Dead Sea, our benefactor promised to help out and take us to a free beach. The thing is, the official beach for tourists, which is called  Amman Beach, costs some absolutely outrageous money - around 20 euros per person. What for ? - a natural question. As I understood it, solely for the fact that there are no mountains of trash there (an indispensable attribute of the Jordanian landscape, as we had managed to notice during our short stay here so far), and for the opportunity for female tourists to swim without a hijab.
Yes, you heard right - at the beach where Mr. Ragai (whose full name history is silent on, so he will forever remain for us under this official pseudonym) brought us, there were local representatives of the fairer sex, but their idea of swimming looked rather ridiculous by our standards.
Girls and women in clothes that completely covered their bodies would simply sit down in the water, knee-deep, sit there for a couple of minutes, then stand up. That was the entirety of the dubious pleasure.

A dry desert landscape with a row of simple huts on the shore of the Dead Sea. In the background, modern buildings and mountains are visible under a cloudless sky.

 

A vast rocky landscape with a person on a white horse standing on a hill, a body of water on the right, and the vague outlines of mountains on the horizon.

A panoramic view of a foggy mountain lake with a coastal town, surrounded by wooded slopes and distant mountains under an overcast sky.


Having marveled enough at foreign customs, Sasha waded in for a swim. Out of habit, he immediately dove in headfirst, only to hear upon surfacing Mr. Ragai's warning that he shouldn't do that. The salt (excuse the pun) is that the salt of the Dead Sea is so salty that the slightest scratch starts burning like napalm, and washing the white residue out of your hair becomes a truly Herculean task.  Having gotten a kick, as is customary, out of the buoyant properties of the Dead Sea, Sasha climbed ashore, and tried to wash off the salt residue in a rusty, trash-filled stream. After a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts, he asked me to taste the water in the stream, because by that time he himself had already experienced total desensitization due to the blindingly intense taste of salt in his mouth.
Naturally, the water turned out to be salty. Fortunately, thanks to our companion, for just a dinar Sasha was able to wash off those highly curative salts, for the sake of which many tourists fly halfway around the world.

A half-naked man in dark swim trunks leans toward a reddish-brown stream flowing over dry, rocky ground littered with trash and plastic bags. Large eroded earthen mounds are visible in the background.

 

A rusty-orange stream of water flows along a bed of gravel and mud. Scraps of trash, including crumpled plastic bags, are visible in the water and on the banks.

 

A wide view of an arid, dusty area, generously littered with garbage and household waste. On the horizon, under a clear blue sky, several primitive structures and rare figures of people are visible.

A man in swim trunks washes under a makeshift open-air shower. In the background, two men in striped jackets stand on the sandy ground, chatting.

 

A person holds a black hose connected to a cut-off plastic bottle with a blue cap, sitting on a brown plastic chair. The other part of the hose goes into the dry rocky ground.

An efficient and cheap way to shut off the water

When we were returning to the car, we were surrounded by sweet, cute children, slowly closing the circle. These larvae of future merchants and extortionists artlessly tried to push camel and donkey rides on us, their pushiness killing any desire to have  anything to do with them.
Nevertheless, with Ragai's blessing, I did get on a donkey and rode it in a tiny circle. For this modest amusement, the kids started demanding utterly immodest amounts of money, so much so that Ragai, who was negotiating with these fry of the tourism business sharks, practically had to scream obscenities at them. Half a dinar isn't money to them, you see!

Two smiling boys are sitting astride a donkey covered with a patterned red blanket, while two men — a young one in a white t-shirt and an elderly one in a striped jacket — stand next to them.

It ended with us almost driving away, and only then did the kiddos condescendingly take the small change. Ragai immediately explained to us that the kids were acting way out of line, because tourists are loved in Jordan, and if we were to call the police, they'd be in big trouble.
We're savvy folks, and are aware that Jordan even has a special tourist police, and judging by online reviews, it's genuinely effective in the sense that it strictly causes trouble for the locals, while tenderly protecting the tourists, which, in general, is far from always characteristic of police in poor countries.

Two boys sit outside against a backdrop of dry, sandy terrain. The boy in the foreground in a sports jacket looks to the side, while another boy in a dark vest with an emblem sits behind him, looking down.

 

Long story short, it came time to part with the idol of the youth, Mr. Ragai. On the beach, he talked on his cell phone for a long time, and I involuntarily eavesdropped. Mr. Ragai was telling his invisible conversational partner (apparently a journalist or a charity worker) about a Swedish movie concerning the hard life of an Arab teen from the boondocks, and was willing to pay for translating the DVD into the local dialect. I asked what languages are spoken in Jordan, to which Ragai replied that Arabic is so Arabic that it is officially spoken in 22 countries, including here. Sounds impressive.

A smiling man rides a donkey and gives a thumbs-up, while a boy leads the animal on a rope across a sandy desert area. In the background, other people, a camel, and the open trunk of a car are visible.

 

A boy in a blue sweater and gray pants stands next to a black donkey covered with a light blanket on a sandy area. In the background, a yellow-green taxi and straw canopies near a body of water are visible.

When, as a final request, we asked him to drop us off on a hill ten kilometers away, so we wouldn't have to pedal right  at the start of our route uphill, Ragai didn't understand where we needed to go at first, and thought it was some remote settlement, but was willing to drive us even there.

Everything I've recounted about this genuinely hospitable man predetermined our reaction when the time came to settle up. And even though  Mr. Ragai waved it off, and said he just needed gas money, we solemnly handed him 50 euros - roughly what we would have paid a taxi driver who would have just taken us to the Dead Sea, without the cultural immersion and curious educational digressions. Mr. Ragai even offered to give us change, but we too didn't want to lose face and disgrace our beloved Latvia with stinginess.

Mr. Ragai bid us a heartfelt farewell, and we hung our bike bags, pulled on our cycling tights, fired up the navigators, and prepared for what I had done thousands of times, and am capable of repeating over and over again. Under any conditions and situations, healthy or sick, sober or under the influence, in the heat or in the cold, in winter or summer, abroad or back home, outdoors or even indoors. Pedaling.

A man in a lime-green cycling uniform stands on a winding asphalt road in a desert landscape, next to him are two bicycles and gear. In the background, the blue sea, mountains, and a communications tower are visible under a clear sky.


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