Sweet black tea, pitch black darkness
I should have known better than to sit down for that last cup of tea with the Bedouins. You see, even in Petra’s seemingly endless June sunshine, the sun eventually sets.
The reality is that I woke up that day feeling like a modern-day Gertrude Bell, minus the controversies of course, and blissfully unaware of what the desert looks like or rather doesn’t after sunset. As I made my way from the entrance of the world-famous archaeological site of Petra to the Treasury, I navigated the winding Siq, shaped by millennia of relentless water flowing from the nearby Wadi Musa. The cloudless sky made the shadows between the towering, sail-like rock formations feel like static waves with me as the solitary explorer floating among them, surrounded by the muffled echoes of a still largely unknown, yet definitely visible past.
Too bad Petra’s scorching weather feels nothing like being bobbed about by waves; in the sea, sand is a refreshing tickle under your feet, while here, it’s just hot dust clinging to your already overheated face. All the guidebooks recommend having a hot drink in the desert; after all, it’s what the locals do, so they must have their reasons. For me, however, it seemed an unnatural choice, given that every fibre of my body was begging for something refreshing to replenish the litres of water I had sweated and to gargle away the bits of stubborn sand stuck in my throat.
I felt pretty defiant and rebellious as I approached a small stand near the Roman theatre, where a Bedouin vendor was selling refreshments. In my awkward classical Arabic, I asked for a bottle of chilled water, just to add to the weirdness and ensure I made a lasting impression. The smug smirk on my face dissolved when he looked at me, shook his head with clear disappointment, and said, “La, la, btahtajy as-Shai!” (“No, no, you need tea!”). Defeated, I accepted the ultra-sweet drink, thinking that at least Gertrude would have been proud of me: a tea drinker in the desert -- oh so very Victorian of me!
It turns out the guidebooks aren’t wrong as drinking tea in the desert when it’s hot does cool you down. They are also spot on in recommending the best view: the small platform not far from the Monastery. A view that makes every drop of sweat from climbing the endless rock-carved stairs worth it. When you finally overcome your fear of heights and decide to look down, all you can see for miles are billions of tiny specks of sun-reflecting sand, ranging from the yolkiest yellows to the deepest crimsons. However, if only the guidebooks did truly know all of the secrets… Maybe then, I would have gotten a heads-up to start my descent from the breathtaking panorama long before sunset.
Guidebooks can teach you a lot but they can’t prepare you for every aspect of travel, just like textbooks can’t teach you everything about life. Some experiences are meant to, well, be experienced — even if it means planning a hasty exit alone, deep in the darkness and in the middle of the desert. I tried to think of what Gertrude Bell would do and laughed at myself, realising she surely would have planned this much better than I did — though I doubt she had a flashlight on her iPhone, so in a way, I won.
In the end, I did what I do best and started wandering aimlessly, searching for any sign of human life to help me out — though preferably not a snake. I backtracked, trying to retrace my steps to find the Roman Temple and hopefully the same vendor. After what felt like three hours, but was probably closer to fifteen minutes, I finally saw it: the small kiosk where I had been given tea a few hours before. I approached it carefully, silently praying that the kind Bedouin would still be there. I knocked gently on the makeshift door, and there he was, sorting some tinkling loose change. He looked up and smiled, then opened the door of the buzzing fridge next to him and handed me a bottle of water.
