I sit in a Bedu tent, made of goatskin and old sacks, drinking tea. As the sun sets, the desert air cools rapidly, and we huddle closer to the camp fire. The wind howls, our resting camels low softly in the distance, but otherwise there is only silence. Despite my limited Arabic, and the limited English of my guide, Suleiman, I chat with our hosts in their immaculate white robes and red and white chequered headdresses. Their questions are endearingly naive.
"Are there Bedu in your country? Deserts? Trees? Birds?"
Each answer is considered carefully, as if it were the sage advice of a prophet, rather than the observations of a slightly scruffy backpacker. Then the line of questioning switches from my far off exotic homeland to my suddenly not-so- personal life. How long am I travelling for? Where is my wife? How many children do I have? With the aid of Suleiman, who as a guide has been exposed to Westerners before and obviously knows a little of their strange ways, I explain that I am unmarried, that in the West people tend to marry later, that I have no children. This is greeted with sceptical laughter.
But what of, ahem, sex? Suleiman and I explain about the concept of girlfriends, dating, pre-marital sex. My audience sits in stunned silence. It's clear that despite their mobile phones and pickup trucks, their exposure to Western culture has been exceedingly limited. They look at me as if I had just told them I'd been to the moon. (As that particular heavenly body illuminates the sand, I briefly consider telling them about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. After some reflection I decide not to - I fear my credibility would evaporate instantly). Slowly a sly grin creeps across the faces of the younger ones as the implications of sex before marriage become apparent. I feel guilty. As they trudge piously away from the fire to pray, I feel a bit like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
As Suleiman - he does not pray - and I sit in silent contemplation of the odd exchange in which we just participated, an ancient radio set hums quietly. I cannot understand the dialogue from the chat programme, but the music is familiar enough. As if to emphasise the surrealness of the situation, the unmistakable saxophone notes of Kenny G drift across the sands. I cannot contain my laughter. Dinner is served in traditional style. A communal bowl of sticky rice into which we all dip our (right) hands, fashioning a handful of rice into a congealed ball with the fingertips, before gracefully consuming without a hint of spillage. At least that's what the Bedu do; in no time at all I closely resemble an autistic five year old let loose on a rice pudding, with a sticky mess all over my face, hand, and lap. Everyone politely pretends not to notice.
I had long hoped to meet some "non-Westernised" Bedu, and here, in the red desert of southern Jordan, I found them. Suleiman and I had travelled alone, by camel, for two days to reach them. Wadi Rum is not particularly remote and many toursits visit every day. Yet the overwhelming majority do so by 4 wheel drive; early on our first morning we saw literally dozens of them roaring past us, slowing down briefly to take photos of the two eccentrics riding fully laden camels, now in the 21st Century. Part of me wished I was wearing Bedu robes instead of khaki trousers for the full Lawrence of Arabia effect.
Once they had screeched past us in some crazy catch-me-if-you-can race from sight to sight, Suleiman and I settled down to the gentle rhythm of travel by camel. We spoke little, often sharing no more than a couple of words for hours. Suleiman confided in me that he only travels in the desert by camel - he hates large groups of people and goes to the desert in search of silence and solitude. And, oh, what silence there is to be found in the desert. On our first night, having not seen another soul for the best part of six hours, we made camp in the shade of some giant red boulders. After unsaddling the camels and collecting firewood, I scrambled up the rocks to get a better view of the fast-approaching sunset while Suleiman set about preparing dinner. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the already vivid colours of the desert were tinged first orange, then red, and finally purple. Darkness came quickly, and soon an impressive canopy of stars illuminated the cloudless night sky
After a simple enough dinner of rice, potatoes, and bread (Dr Atkins would clearly not approve of Bedu living), washed down with gallons of sweet black tea, we settled in for the evening. As I lay in my sleeping bag on a mattress of desert sand I stared up at the sky and listened to the deafening, echoing silence of the night. As a habitual city-dweller I had always imagined that the phrase "the sound of silence" was a product of Simon and Garfunkel's drug-addled minds; a function of LSD or pot, or coke or whatever else long-haired types with guitars were dropping, smoking or snorting back in the Sixties. Yet at Wadi Rum I finally registered what they were talking about. Granted, it could perhaps have been something to do with the the thick clouds of distinctly "herbal" smoke drifting from the quietly grinning Suleiman, but I like to think it was something more profound.
Of course, the pursuit of silence, solitude and the elusive Bedu were not my only motivations in trekking from Rum to Aqaba by camel. T.E. Lawrence, the enigmatic, almost mythical figure immortalised in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, famously made the same journey in 1917. Unlike Lawrence I was not accompanied into town by a legion of irregular Arab cavalry; nor did I in fact arrive in Aqaba on my trusty humped steed, instead hitch-hiking the last few kilometres into town in the flatbed of a pickup truck driven by a pious family heading home to Saudi Arabia. Yet in some small way I liked to think of myself as following in Lawrence's footsteps.
One of the most enigmatic and most-romaticised figures in modern history, "El Awrens" as he was know in Arabic, made his name by living with the Bedu, speaking their language, adopting their customs, wearing their clothes. By virtue of his acceptance by the Arab leaders, Lawrence was able to assist, advise or lead (depending on who you ask) the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule during the First World War, securing a legendary reputation for himself, and in the process doing a great deal to ensure an Allied victory over the Axis Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. Lawrence's promises of Arab independence, subsequently broken by the Allied governments at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (much to Lawrence's disgust), still haunt the Middle East today as the artificially-constructed states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, struggle to maintain their existence.
More than once the Bedu remind me of the total artificiality of the national borders in this region, replying with a shrug when I asked where they are from. "Some call it Saudia, some call it Jordan. We call it the desert." Theirs is a tough existence, eked out from some of the harshest conditions on earth; indeed, T.E. Lawrence famously called it "a death in life". Yet as I lay down in the sand, gazed up to the heavens, and listened once more to the awesome, deafening roar of total uninterrupted silence, I found myself starting to dread the return to civilisation. As the great desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger wrote in Arabian Sands: "No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match." I know what he meant.
