No wife, no life: In the Wadi

WADI RUM. After a sunrise tour of the red-sanded desert via Ali's LandCruiser, we lunched under the shade of a lone butte looming high above the empty space. Ali refused to eat. The Bedouins don't lunch and perhaps as a formal custom, they don't accept food from their foreign guests.

Ali, the nephew of a respected Bedouin in Wadi village, tours foreigners usually older travelers tracing the historical routes taken by the famed T.E. Lawrence. But today, a 24 year old French woman, a 27 year old Japanese man, and I are the youngest group this season, Ali noted. 

Lying flat on the cooled sand, I stared up at the sky and listened to the singular sound of munchies: goat cheese and crackers. The meal as with every meal ended with cardamom tea, heated by the fire Ali had kindled. We rested under the rock for the afternoon, falling in and out of sleep and telling stories from home. The storytelling eventually evolved into a curious inquiry.

Ali asked me in Arabic, "How many wives do you have?'

I told him I wasn't married. Unmarried himself, he responded with a Bedouin platitude: "No wife, no life."

Literally speaking, the saying is true. The Bedouins value wives for their childbearing, apparent in the high fertility rate among Bedouin women. And until recently with increasing returns from Jordan's tourism in the wadi, the Bedouins' nomadic lifestyle depended on their large numbers for survival.

Playfully, Ali and I mocked each other for having no wife/wives. So naturally, the afternoon ended with manly duels of arm wrestling and song.   

Comments

[Greg]

are 'arm wrestling and song' alluding to other more interesting activities that usually take place in the wee hours of the night? hehehe