The Desert

“Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened…”
--From the opening scene of the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; I’m not sure why, but driving through the desert made me think of this. In the play’s beginning, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern just kind of appear in a blank space, and try to glean some meaning from their existence. I could kind of see their predicament when I was in the desert—because here, desert means nothingness. Like the natural equivalent of a mall parking lot, that goes on, and on, and on, it’s just hard to get anything from it.
Anyway, they say the country of Jordan is almost 80 percent empty—not sparsely inhabited or lightly developed—but void of any humanity, any life. Before taking the bus from Amman to Petra, I couldn’t fathom that; imagine the US: from West Virginia to Utah, Minnesota to Oklahoma, there is nothing. No people live there, no water runs through it, nobody says, “let’s go hiking in the wilderness”; because really, it’s just sun-torched dirt. From Amman (via the King’s Highway), you slope down from the capital’s rich highlands into the dry crotch that chafes its way across much of the Middle East: from its western extent in Jordan, east to Iraq, and south through Arabia. Even in the cool winter temperatures, the harsh sun shivered out mirages on the asphalt. The road just kept rolling out before the bus, the scenery reliable and immutable: no trees, no road signs—steady as a treadmill. Chicken wire fences unfurled along both sides of the highway, as if someone were trying to repel unseen poultry. Caught in the wire were plastic bags of every color, waving like prayer flags in the dry wind. In this monochromatic land, trash provides shocks of color and motion.
Halfway between Amman and Petra, our bus pulled into Al-Sultani Tourism rest house (basically a Travelodge, with a hookah bar and the gift shop from Epcot). I just sat outside the bus and looked around at the village: about a dozen squat cinderblock buildings, rusted rebar poking through the tops of their walls. They were white, all but one—it was painted a pastel pink, and outside it hung bright garments bobbing on a clothesline. The small police/firestation next door displayed a loud billboard of King Abdullah II in military regalia. A guard in a government police uniform (ubiquitous black jumpsuit complete with beret) shuffled around. After a bit another guard poked his head out the door and shouted something in Arabic at guard one. Then guard one proceeded to chase guard two back inside, then guard two charged back out with his Kalashnikov leveled at guard one. Then they both laughed, and guard one turned away again to stare out at the desert, not sure what exactly he was guarding against.