You Have Not a Leg to Stand On (11 page)

We, very cautiously, stopped at the Jordanian border to try to bluff our way through. After all, I did have two beautiful women in my charge, and they were the only two females in the whole camp. They might cause quite a commotion. They seemed to genuinely appreciate that my two beauties could, potentially, be a problem. However, there was no question we had to remain here for five days with cholera tests taken each day. The only concession given us was to deem my beauties incapable of carrying something so obnoxious as cholera. They would be excused the daily testing, and we could pitch our tent away from the rest of the camp. The daily testing each morning entailed joining a queue, with everyone in the whole of this ever expanding camp, all male, of course, waiting their turn. At the top of the queue we dropped our trousers, turned around, bum in the air. A short stick with a little piece of cotton wool at the end was shoved up and then returned to its own glass tube. It was sent off to the lab for testing. No cholera was ever found because there was no lab that could possibly handle that number of samples, and test them all, every twenty-four hours.

The desert there was composed of dead flat black shingle and sharp sand. Although our little tent was pitched quite away from the thundering trucks, lines of tents and hundreds of drivers with their retinue, we never seemed far enough away to perform our morning ablutions, unseen. The first morning we walked and walked until we were specks on the horizon, By the fifth day we happily wandered only fifty yards before digging a shallow hole with our trusty little shovel, and squatting over it!

In retrospect, those five days turned out to be a surprisingly interesting and fun experience. Interesting because we attracted a small but continuous trickle, of fellow English travellers, all male of course. We had enough food for the five days, clean drinking and washing water, topped-up from the border post and something that proved to be remarkably popular, a very large tin of Nescafe. All the visitors were completely different characters, but the common theme, which made us all instantly at ease with one another, was travelling with practically no money.

Early the final morning we awoke with butterflies in our stomachs when we presented ourselves to the officials to restart our journey. With broad smiles they said they'd like us to stay longer, but they couldn't make up any more reasons to hold us. With much shaking of hands and a man-hug for me, off we flew along the straight road to Amman, the capital of Jordan. It was a bit of an anticlimax after all we been through to get here, over the last month, we just made a quick tour of the centre of the Old City, the Amphitheatre, and a Mosque. We then sped off south to an eagerly awaited destination of The Rose-Red City of Petra. On the way, there was virtually nothing of any interest to see or do but drive, as fast as we dared, along straight, empty, new tarmac roads to get to Petra, before nightfall, find the campsite and pitch our friendly little home.

However, there was one little amusing incident that unexpectedly sprung out along a particularly dull piece of desert road. We could see a long way ahead, and we noticed, parked on the side of the road we were driving, a long, black limousine type car, with a man in a dark chauffeur's uniform leaning against the front right wheel arch, and a shortish man with short dark hair and a dark moustache, in a pale yellow Airtex type shirt and khaki slacks, holding a cup of tea or coffee. We slowed, wondering if we might be asked to stop and help, but the man in the pale yellow shirt and dark moustache waved and smiled indicating no problem. We happily waved back as we passed saying ‘that was nice and friendly,' and drove on without any further thought about the incident. It may have been as much as five minutes later I suddenly put my foot on the break and screeched to a halt. Both girls simultaneously half shouted ‘What's the matter, what's the matter', I said almost shouting,‘That was the King of Jordan, The King of Jordan, has just waved to us.' ‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Honey, but C. (wife to be) said hesitantly, ‘Yes, it was I can picture him clearly.' She has an unusual ability to recognise anybody, even from afar, from behind, or the way they move. We all laughed out loud and continued on our way

The small township outside Petra was distinctly unimpressive. A campsite was marked on the map we were given in Nairobi, but there was no sign of it anywhere. We stopped at the Police station to ask if they knew where it was, ‘No there's no campsite, you can pitch your tent anywhere you like.' ‘So can we put it just outside here near you?' ‘Yes of course.' Then, as an afterthought, the officer who seemed to be more senior, said, ‘We have no prisoners at the moment, you can use our cells.' We looked at each other, amazed at the offer, ‘Can we have a cell each?' ‘Yes of course you can.' It was a night to be remembered. In fact, we must have been there two nights.

The following morning we walked down the hill to a little bedraggled group of underfed, sleepy horses. They perked up when we mounted and walked out well. ‘No, no they have all the food they want, this is the way they look. European horses are fat and lazy.' The road narrowed through the steep-sided gorge and turned slightly to the left to reveal the now famous first glimpse of the Rose-Red City of Petra. In those days, more than fifty years ago, there were no other tourists about, so the feeling of discovery, the feeling you were coming upon something so different, so huge, yet hidden, was thrilling. How could it remain undiscovered for so long? The excitement was tangible. Once we started to explore, there were no signs anywhere, it really was a city, it went on and on. We were ‘discovering'. Nothing was ‘built', no stone cut and placed on another, no foundations, everything cut out of standing rock. Primitive, yet fine and complex, and the colour, a soft, pale vibrant, deep red, for which artists would give their eye-teeth. There was no source of water, there had never been a source of water, so how it ever served as a feasible place to live and trade, I have no idea. It was a fun, exciting, fulfilling day. That evening we returned to our salubrious accommodation in the cells of Petra prison and cooked up a delicious supper, with the policeman on duty as our honoured guest. An early rise and a wave goodbye to our jailers, we set forth across the desert to Aqaba.

I don't know how it happened, but it wasn't until fifty years later, while sailing around the world on our wonderful little ship, the Saga Ruby, we discovered we'd missed a most incredible place. About fifteen miles north of Aqaba is a valley, dividing into other valleys of sheer towering rock. Thousands of feet high, brilliantly coloured in all manner of hues of deep reds and pinks, that is Wadi Rum. I can only suppose we missed it because there's no road to it, even now you can only get to it in a 4x4. My brother-in-law Douglas, the one who'd bought the shares for my mother in Stryker, when I was in Nairobi hospital all those years ago, was with us this time. He wasn't feeling very well, so he lay himself out on one of the long, low tables covered with kilims the local Bedouins use for entertaining cruise ship guests. Like a sacrificial offering, he went sound asleep. The waiters didn't know what to do.

The magnificent immensity of these sheer shimmering red cliffs rising thousands of feet straight out of the sand, had become a magnet for climbers. The driver of our hired 4x4 stopped about 100ft.away from the base to show us all the climbers dotted about the cliff face. At first we couldn't see what he meant, the face was so vast. Then slowly hundreds of tiny dots came into focus. The driver told us they would often take two or three days to get to the top, sleeping on the face.

***

On arrival in Aqaba we couldn't find a proper campsite with all washing facilities etc. so we pitched our tent just outside a nice hotel on the beachfront. We made ourselves presentable and marched into the swimming pool. I can't remember if ‘owning' a sun-lounger with your towel, was then acceptable, but that's what we did. The pool faced on to a beautiful white, shining, enticing beach. So with claimed sun-loungers, we dashed into the emerald blue, crystal clear water, for our first, and for me the last, swim in the warm, soft water of the Red Sea. C had, and in fact still has, a bell-like, beautiful, pitch-perfect soprano voice. She was a soloist in her choir at school. The situation in which we found ourselves was so perfect, so dreamlike, she started to sing ‘Jerusalem'. No sooner had she come to the end of the first verse, a la-di-da, barking English voice shouted, ‘Good heavens, a beautiful English girl, singing ‘Jerusalem' in the Red Sea, how incredible.' He was right. He swam towards us rather like a broad tugboat, creating a wave of water ahead of itself, and introduced himself, in a manner in which suggested we'd know who he was. We didn't of course. ‘You wouldn't recognise me with my clothes off, but I'm MP for South Herefordshire.' C nearly sank. He was ‘her' MP. This was precisely the situation C's parents were terrified would come about. He even said he'd ‘give them a call' on his return. Talk about ‘rubbing salt into the wound'.

All too soon we had to be on our way, the Iraq cholera quarantine had caused us to be well behind schedule. We were running out of journey time. We'd divided up our funds into the smallest possible amounts per day, then divided ‘that' into the whole amount at our disposal. The fact was we were running out of days for the entire trip.

Jerusalem's old town was then in Jordan, and their youth hostel was clean and well run. It was a thrilling, tingling, elevating experience walking about the narrow streets, knowing only the facade of all buildings had changed over the last two thousand years. The Wailing Wall, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Dome of the Rock, the Mount of Olives, the Way of the Cross, Golgotha. History was laid out before us. We three unnoticed observers, watching people casually going about their business, were wearing the wrong clothing. Clothes, the world over, are out of step with history. The clothes we all wear now, from the rain forests of New Guinea to the streets of London or New York, are all the same. It seems to me contradictory when we're still at war with one another. We send men into space, we travel at over 1000 miles an hour. We eat fresh food grown on the other side of the world the following day. Yet millions starve in the very countries the luxury food comes from. And the Middle East is in turmoil.

At least then there was peace, of sorts, allowing we three to wander happily from country to country, taking in all the beautiful, diverse sights and sounds you could never do today. The Six Day war was yet to happen. It was while in Damascus, being shown around the Jewish Quarter, the Old Town, the silver carvers and the street called Straight, we were told by our self-appointed guide, in a hushed, conspiratorial manner, ‘Very shortly, maybe in as little as three months time, there will be a war. The war will involve all the Arab Nations against Israel, which will change everything forever.'

I've skipped way ahead. I must go back to our youth hostel in Jerusalem from where we were well placed to drive to places of biblical history. Bethlehem stood out as the place that made a mockery of all the different Christian religions. The streets of shops surrounding all the holy places displaying thousands of trinkets of such irreverent rubbish, that I, even as a non-believer found incredibly distasteful. Nevertheless, C bought herself yet another long embroidered, ankle-length dress, which she still has, at the Holy Manger Store. When walking down the steps to the crypt where Jesus was born, we passed a large packet of soap powder, Daz, forgotten, forlorn, on the bottom step.

The Middle East - Part Two

Damascus to Hamburg

In Jericho, an incident took place that might have been disastrous. We were driving slowly down a street looking for a sign of the walls blown down by the noise of all those trumpets. There must have been some sort of public holiday, both pavements were thick with the milling crowd. Suddenly, a boy, a young boy, eight or ten, appeared, in the running position, head down, almost in mid-air, directly ahead of the bonnet. I slammed on my brakes, a split-second after I hit him. With a sickening thud, he bounced off the bonnet and hit the road rolling away. A shouting crowd immediately surrounded the car. My door was flung open and I was pulled out. I managed to push my way to the front of the car to see the boy. He was held standing, stooped, held up by bearded men. They too started shouting at me. The excitement generated in the crowd was palpable. It was frightening. There was nothing I could do. I gave in to the jostling, pulled this way and that. Quite suddenly two young men appeared, in their late twenties perhaps, very well built, clean-shaven, wearing grey tea-shirts. They extended their arms, gesturing the crowd to quieten. The effect was immediate, electric. They gestured them to be on their way. Murmuring, they dispersed as quickly as they'd gathered. They turned to me, and in fluent English, asked me what had happened. I explained, and one said he'd take us to the police station. He got into the back seat with Honey. The other one stayed with the boy and the two bearded men. We wove our way through Jericho to the station. He told me to follow him and the girls to stay in the car. The front room of the station was packed with people trying to elbow their way to the top of a queue. My heart sank. This would take forever. The young man said, ‘Follow me closely.' He turned one shoulder to the fore and cut a clean line to the head of a queue. A few words exchanged and we were gestured to a door at the end of a counter. A senior officer sitting behind a large desk offered us chairs in front of the desk. The young man spoke deferentially in Arabic to the officer and seemed to explain why I was with him. The officer then turned to me and told me in English, to explain in my own words, what exactly had happened. I did so. He listened without interruption and after a while he said, ‘You must come tomorrow to the court, the boy and his father will be there, and the Judge will make his judgement.' On the way back to the car, the young man told me exactly where the court was and reiterated the importance of the time I must be there. I, rather meekly, thanked him; imagine what could have happened had he and his friend not intervened at that moment in the crowd, we shook hands and I never saw him again.

Over supper, back at the youth hostel, we were recounting the story to fellow-travellers when one of them immediately asked if they'd taken our passports. On saying no, they all vehemently insisted we must pack up our things, right now, get into the car, not stop until over the border and into Syria. We looked at each other in astonishment. C said, ‘But we've done nothing wrong.' ‘What's that got to do with it, you hit an Arab boy, he bounced off your bonnet, tomorrow he WILL be bruised, tomorrow he WILL look as though he's been hit by a car, it's not worth the risk. Just imagine what you might have to pay to his family, it'll take months for the insurance to cover it.' I do hate know-alls. But he could be right. We hadn't thought this through. We had to go away and discuss this privately. C was adamant we shouldn't run away from anything, whether we were in the right or in the wrong. I knew, if I'd hit the boy at all, it could only have been my fault. We were looking out for those bloody walls. I could have been looking away at the moment the boy decided to put his head down and sprint to the other side of the road. That picture is as clear in my mind today as it was then. The two girls couldn't be held responsible in any way, but if I was held in custody, what would they do? Had the authorities purposely not taken my passport; were they giving me a clear signal to leave. The young man who'd saved us from the crowd did stress the importance of eleven o'clock; of course if we just left now, we could easily be well away from the Jordanian border and into Syria.

What we didn't know at this point was, we were going to be incarcerated for another five days of cholera quarantine on the Syrian border.

C was still adamant, Honey was in two minds and I didn't know what to do. But ultimately it was my responsibility. A friend had once told me, if you can't make up your mind which option to take, find a common theme, and take it out, and what you're left with is the essence of the options. Usually, it's with money, take away the cost, then the choice becomes clear. So here, if I ran away, even if I were being guided to do so, I'd be breaking the law. I'd have to live with that decision forever.

We were there, promptly, outside the courthouse, at a quarter to eleven. The girls stayed in the car. I met impassive faces. No hint of anything. I gave my passport to the officer on duty as identification. With just the briefest of glances, I was lead to the dock. I was getting a little nervous.

The boy was smartly dressed in a tidy long-sleeved white shirt and long black trousers. He had an enormous swelling on the side of his head just above his right eye. The bearded man sat next to him holding his hand. Behind them, filling all the other benches, was, what seemed to be, his entire family. I felt very alone. Only at that moment did it occur to me perhaps I should be represented by a lawyer. Were my fellow-travellers, at the youth hostel, right after all. You could hear a pin drop. The door behind the judge's chair opened and the judge walked in. We all stood up and bowed. He sat down. We followed suit. He then said something in Arabic. He then turned to me and said in broken English, ‘Tell me what happened.' For some reason I thought the explanation, should be very long-winded. So I started with leaving the dock in Kuwait. After a minute or two he tried to hurry me along. ‘Yes, yes, but
yesterday
,' he said. I said, ‘I'm sorry Your Honour, but, you see, we were staying at the hostel in Jerusalem, and we wanted to see the ancient history of Jericho, so we were driving along...' Suddenly the bearded man jumped to his feet and shouted something at the Judge, then pointed to the boy. The Judge shouted back and the man angrily sat down. ‘Continue' he said to me, ‘Well, you see Your Honour, we were slowly driving along the street, there were lots of people...' The man jumped up again, shouting at the Judge, pointing at me then at the boy. The Judge shouted back. But instead of sitting down, the entire family, seated on the benches behind him, jumped to their feet as well, shouting and pointing at me. Quite suddenly the Judge had lost control. There was pandemonium. He tried to regain his authority, hitting his gavel on the desk, but they wouldn't sit down. He turned to me, shouted in his broken English, waving his arm at me, ‘You, go, go.' I couldn't quite believe what he was saying, I shifted about, looking around, he shouted again, ‘Go, go.' A court official came up to me, took my arm firmly and guided me out of the court. ‘Go,' he said. I very hurriedly left the pandemonium and went. I ran to the car and jumped in, ‘What happened, what happened,' both quickly said in unison, ‘I don't know, but we've got to go right now.' We never did see those walls.

The borders, in those days, before the six-day-war, were entirely different from the position they're in today, and so we headed directly north to Syria. I don't remember exactly how long it took, but it can't have been long, as I don't think we stopped a night anywhere until we were in our prison that night. It wasn't really a prison, but we were imprisoned. Exactly the same little smirks on the border police's faces, as the ones who'd guffawed at us on the Iraqi border, immediately warned us of what we'd expect at the Syrian border. We'd deliberately chosen the smallest border crossing we could find, to avoid all the trucks and, possibly, another quarantine. It was way up in the hills above the northern Jordanian border. No one at the Embassy in Jerusalem had seemed able to give us any definite reason why there should be a quarantine, or indeed if there was a quarantine. Sure enough an emphatic, expressionless face gave us the order and kept our passports. We asked, ‘why?' ‘Because you've been to Iraq and they have cholera.' ‘But we've had five days quarantine to go into Jordan.' ‘Your passports will in returned in five days.' There was no point in pursuing this particular path. ‘Can you please direct us to your quarantine campsite.' ‘We have no campsite, but we have no one in our hospital so you may stay there.' Then almost as an afterthought, ‘And you must not walk into the town during your confinement, so the doctor will get you food.' The doctor couldn't have been more pleasant, he welcomed us with open arms. All this really was getting quite surreal. It was as though we were in a disjointed film where the director had no idea of the plot. This hospital wasn't a couple of rooms pretending to be a hospital, it really was a hospital. It had wards, all full of hospital beds, and shower rooms off the wards, and even an equipped operating theatre. How there could be ‘no patients' in a reasonably sized town such as this, was not believable. Unless of course, they'd found the answer to life. We chatted to the Doctor about his work in the town and chose our ward for our five-day stay. Nothing seemed amiss. But what did become apparent quite quickly, was the same problem we had from the very beginning. My two girls. Which one was free? He asked us what sort of food we'd like and kindly offered to bring it himself. The time passed quite pleasantly really, with the doctor's daily visits and very long chats. He was well read, spoke English almost flawlessly and was very interesting about the politics of the country. On the evening of the third day, he brought our supper as usual, but this time with a bottle of red wine. We glanced at one another. He was about to make his move. Supper went on and on and he stayed and stayed, the last drop of red wine had been squeezed from the bottle. What on earth were we to do. Our saviour suddenly arrived in the form of a roar of an engine, screeching to a halt outside the hospital front door. We thankfully flew to the windows, only to see a filthy dark-green Jaguar car that had evidently lost its exhaust. All four doors flung open simultaneously and out jumped five of the scruffiest young men you'd see anywhere. One of them younger than the others, probably about nineteen, and the driver a bit older with a short ginger beard, the other three in their midtwenties. The Doctor was furious. His evening ruined, he threw himself out of the ward and down the stairs to the front door. Shouting orders at the bewildered five young men, he turned on his heel and flounced off down the hill and back to the town. We introduced ourselves to our new companions, telling them how well we'd been treated and remarkably, the food was on the house. However, no food and no doctor appeared again. We wondered what would happen at the end of our confinement. We needn't have worried, on the morning we were due to leave, the doctor arrived with our passports and returned them with a smile and a little bow. We shook hands and he wished us well for the rest of our trip. No hint of embarrassment or awkwardness of why we hadn't seen him after he flounced off when the new intake arrived; or why the food so abruptly ceased to materialise after being so abundant for the first half of our quarantine. I can only suppose we were considered ‘fair game', some you win, some you lose.

A little episode happened with the group of young men; I seem to be talking about them as though they were younger than me. whereas the older one, the one with the ginger beard was, in fact, older. It turned out they were very short of money. I've no idea how they thought they'd get to England. The evening of the day before we were due to leave, I went to check everything was in order with the car. I couldn't believe my eyes when I glanced at the fuel gauge. Then stared at it in disbelief. It was completely empty. I checked with the girls we'd filled the tank just before leaving Jordan. There was only one conclusion, all the petrol had been siphoned out. After a brief discussion, I had no alternative but to confront the boys. The elder one hung his head in shame, and the others shuffled about, hands in pockets, looking at their shoes. He gave me the cash for the petrol. I'd like to have said ‘you can keep it' but we weren't in the position for such generosity.

In the morning we set forth for Damascus, leaving behind five young men, who'd be our age now, and who we'd neither see nor hear of again. And a doctor, with an empty hospital, who'd ‘tried-it-on' and failed. If all these disparate little episodes add up to make a life, no wonder our dreams are so diverse and confusing when everything we've ever done is recorded in such detail.

I think I've briefly told you about Damascus, and as I don't want this part of my story to turn into a travelogue I'll just reiterate one thing I remember most vividly. We were told by our self-appointed guide that there would be a war, in three or four months from then, between all the surrounding countries with adjacent borders to Israel, to reinstate the Palestinian Nation to its rightful position on the map of the world, which did not include the state of Israel. At the time, I didn't realise the enormous relevance of what we were told. Why were we, three very young travellers, told something of such incredible significance to all that's happening in the Middle East to this day? How could I have not taken it in? Here was an opportunity, handed to us on a plate, for a thoughtful discussion. Was this man an Arab or a Jew? What did he do? What was his purpose? Where did he live? How did he make his living? So much we could have talked about. He was with us for most of the day. We were worried he would ask us for money, but he didn't. C wanted to go to the street called Straight. He took us there. She bought yet another gown she still wears to this day. It's made of bright white, beautifully embroidered, soft cotton with long sleeves and hangs to the ground. A man's actually, but she wears it well. The hundreds of little narrow streets of silversmiths were beautiful and dazzling. I wish I could go today with, at least ‘some' money, but the civil war makes it impossible.