Wadi Rum: two nights in a Bedouin camp

First case of diarrhea: woke up this morning in Wadi Rum with a stomach ache. I had been kind of nauseous the night before at dinner, but I had a normal poop. I ignored the only-slightly-irritating pain in my stomach and ate breakfast, taking a few cucumbers and an egg omlet. But after breakfast and before leaving the camp for the day on our camel ride and hike, I detoured to the WC and allowed myself a morning poop, even though it contradicted my three day streak of evening poops. It wasn't much, but there it was, the cursed orange brown liquid in the bottom of the toilet. I didn't have too much time to dwell on the death of normality in my bowels though. My camel was waiting just outside the WC tent, and the most of our group had already mounted. I walked out from the WC with the last three or four people and followed the hand gestures of a Bedouin man to a collapsed camel. He frantically beckoned me onto the saddle. I swung my leg over the hump, and in almost the same instant the back end of my collapsed camel was suddenly much higher than the front. She laboriously untucked her front legs and rose to meet her rear end in the air. I took a moment to adjust to stilted life, and decided I liked it. Tall as I felt, my camel was actually one of the shortest in the pack (what is a group of camels called?). Mounted on camels, the Mennonites slowly began their departure. We were hooked together in pods of four or five camels. Each pod was led by a Bedouin man, who clicked and whistled and wacked the camels when he wanted them to turn left or right or speed up or slow down or stop eating or sniffing or biting. My camel was given a nice wack on the neck several times for attempting to eat the blanket draped over the hump of the camel in front of her. Other than that she was a very well behaved camel. The ride was nice with the exception of a few stomach cramp episodes and the lingering question about the status of my underwear. Eventually, we made it to the camp where lunch was being served. I sat down and leaned back on the Bedouin couch on which they sit to eat. It was easier to keep the thunderstorm in my stomach under control while sitting motionless. Feeling chilly after a heat flash from an intense cramp, I reached into my bag for my jacket, but it wasn't there. I closed my eyes to think where I had put it. I saw myself taking it off and laying it across my camel's back. Ah yes! so I jumped up and ran out to the spot where I had just recently dismounted my camel. Gone. I looked out into the desert in the direction we had arrived from and saw the Bedouin men taking the camels back. I walked back to the group and made it known that my jacket was missing. "Tell Mohammed" "Find Mohammed" my friends told me. So I looked and asked around for him. Finally I found him, told him what had happened, and waited as he conceded with his friends in Arabic. "Come ride in the jeep with us. We will go by jeep," he said. So I got in the back seat and he and one of the Bedouin men I recognized from the camp got in the front. We drove through the sand with no clear path, just dodging dessert plants until we got to the group of camels "Chequet! Chequet?" I heard them saying to the men on camels, and then whoosh it was flying through the car window. We turned around, turned up the radio - a female singer wailing words I didn't recognize. I'm assuming it was Arabic - and dodged desert brush back to lunch. The entire jacket hunt took about five minutes total. Unfortunately, the diarrhea lasted much longer.

A Grand Adventure

This coming semester, I will be visiting the Middle East with a group of students from Eastern Mennonite University where I am currently studying Mathematics and English Literature. We depart on the 12th of this month and return on the 23rd of April, and whatever happens in between those two dates will hopefully be the adventure of the decade ( the end of the second decade of my life and the beginning of the third). I am hoping to share some of my adventures, thoughts, opinions, insights, complaints, longings, and perceptions here on the blog that first helped me to listen to and share my voice. I thought a blog would be an appropriate place to share with you all because it is less intrusive than email, because I will be able to upload pictures easily, because my posts will be organized chronologically and therefore be more accessible to you and to me when the trip is over. I hope we can enjoy this upcoming experience together .
Sincerely,
An anxious adventurer

Walking and Watching

It is good to go on a walk
past the house of a high school friend
and see each window lit up,
tall rectangles of warmth in the gray evening --
snow and sky and siding --
someone in each room,
wrapping presents.
I can picture him and his family.
It's Christmas Eve.

It is good to watch a snowflake
for the last five feet of its life,
pulled into the pavement or onto the lawn,
joining fellow flakes and losing shape.
"The death of individualism," I think.
It saddens me, and I remember holocausts
I survived secondhand, flipping the pages
to discover my own chance survival.
How many snowflakes died each day
during the Holocaust?
And yet the end of their flight
is the cause for my joy,
piles of snow I can lie in
tomorrow, when
it's Christmas Day.

Birds for Windows

The birds have the truth,
carry it on their wings to their death
brought on by the advanced technology
of cleaning products,
which make windows and glass doors
completely transparent,
a trait worth paying for,
apparently,
or no one would ever upgrade their Windex.
But they do,
sealing the doom of the winged.
And after the impact of Bird and Windexed window,
someone -- a boy in a flannel shirt with one pant leg rolled up,
the right leg -- finds the body
and endeavors to preserve it.
Borax and scalpel in a wooden box
covered with national pride,
a red and blue flag papered on the inside.
Ironic ownership for a Mennonite taxidermist.
He pinches, pries, with long and beautiful fingers
blue eyes. Peels back the skin, looking for truth,
but it isn't there.
It is the part of them that no longer lives post-Windex impact,
the part you heard from the corner of your ear
outside a window at night --
Nightingale, sing us a song
of a love that once belonged --
singing truth as you fell asleep.
The birds know, but they're dying
for the sake of transparent windows
and doors.

Fountain

I ran away with all your love --
filled my pockets,
cupped my hands to catch it,
poured what I could
in the curls of my hair
and my morning, afternoon,
and evening mug --
"Call Your Mother"
it says.

You laughed at me,
playing in the arc and splash
of your love,
like the children
who play in the fountain
in the Park on Queen Street
in the summers,
the ones we said
we wanted to be like.

and then I ran --
mug and pockets and hair
arms and eyes
full of what you gave so freely.

The Evolution of God

Shadow in a speckled wood

Rustle of the leaves

These that haunt the hunting man

keeping safe his seed.

Under-haunted, unbelieving

taken by surprise –

the brother of the man who lived

and gave us El Shaddai.

Pages, pens, and ink away

Israel’s story thrives

Learned people hunting hist’ry

For the reasons why –

Shadow in a speckled wood

Rustle of the leaves

These that haunt the hunting man

keeping safe his seed.

Sleepover (4/30)

Pillowed heads

side-by-side in bed

in the corner room

with the ochre walls

that you can't see 

with the lights out.

Bare feet

poking out from the sheets

that cover the bed

with the pillowed heads

in the corner room

with the ochre walls

that you can't see

with the lights out.

Unquiet minds

that speak whispers 

and rustle the blinds

beside the bare feet

that poke out from the sheets

that cover the bed 

with the pillowed heads

in the corner room

with the ochre walls

that you can't see 

with the lights out.