Getting back to Jordan
How many years had it been since my last trip to Jordan? I ponder this as I board the plane one glorious morning in April. Eight — and definitely too many, especially since my obsession with Jordan and the Middle East has reached worrying levels. I even started a PhD to quench my thirst for the Levant, yet for some reason, I never felt ready enough to actually go back. Too much had been going on — war or not war — and my stupid full-time job never gave me the time to sit down and really consider that I could do it. What if I fell in love all over again and realised I had made a massive mistake when I chose to return to England after my previous trips? I missed everything: the warm khubbez, the posh cafés in Weibdeh, floating in the Dead Sea, and the awe of reaching ad-Deyr in Petra. I booked the trip in November and had been counting down ever since — “like brides with their weddings,” I used to joke with my Arabic teachers online. Too bad I never wanted a wedding. All I ever wanted was to step off the plane and feel the sand catch in the back of my throat, and my weepy eyes.
Only this time, it was different. After over a year of learning Levantine and forgetting my MSA, I felt more in tune with everyone — from the slightly confused border control officers at the airport, who stamped my visa quickly once they realised I was about to start a conversation with them, to the people at the car rental desk, to the police who laughed each time they stopped me and waved me off with well wishes. The roads were familiar. I had to carefully dodge rowdy groups of children, scattered sheep, and the notorious half-hidden speed bumps. Two hours in — not even halfway to Petra — a rock flew up and punched a hole through my windshield. I clearly needed to get used to dodging flying stones again, flung by trucks speeding well over the limit. My hands were sweating on the steering wheel, my left arm growing hotter and redder by the minute: yes, I was back in Jordan.
The windy King’s Highway was stifling. The view, as expected, was mostly sand—I couldn’t see much from the road, not even at the highest point. There, a funny-looking improvised café seemed to smile at me with its fluorescent colours, adding a touch of brightness to the otherwise never-ending sand-coloured mountains. The wind blew hot and scorching, lifting waves of sand into the air. I squinted, and where there should have been the Mujib Dam, there was nothing but a trickle of water. The dam was effectively holding back nothing; the water had stopped even before reaching it. I wasn’t surprised — Jordan is one of the most water-deprived countries in the world. Still, the sight of what once must have been an oasis now reduced to arid, hard-rock rubble sent a shiver down my back —one that only faded when we stopped to refuel the car and came back when I managed to stall it. Me, stalling an automatic car. Fitting I suppose.
I’m not going to pretend the situation in the region didn’t hold me back when it came to booking my trip — it did, of course. But despite all the reports I’d read about the massive drop in tourists visiting the Kingdom, I genuinely hadn’t realised how desperate the situation had become. Driving into Wadi Musa, the town surrounding Petra, it was clear that significant investment had gone into building new hotels and facilities to accommodate the expected flocks of tourists coming to see one of the Wonders of the World. But the sight of how much of it stood empty — if not entirely abandoned — sent that familiar shiver down my spine again and again. It broke my heart to see so many empty restaurants in late April, which is supposed to be peak tourist season in Jordan — neither too hot nor too cold. Our hotel, of course, was empty except for us. The owner kept pleading with us to leave reviews — on every website imaginable — as he desperately needed the business. And then, stepping into Petra felt like a private experience. At 6:30 a.m., it was just my boyfriend and me, along with a handful of other Western tourists. I told myself it was just because it was early, so we carried on and began the hike to ad-Deyr.
A far cry from my previous experience — where crowds bottlenecked at the end of the Siq, spilling into the small square in front of the Treasury — we had no one in front of us this time. Just a few people cleaning up from the previous night’s Petra by Night, and a handful of early-rising hikers hoping to catch the sunrise colours. A light breeze stirred the air. A few cats lounged lazily nearby. Two Bedouin men tended to their camels. That was it. Petra in 2025 felt intimate — a world apart from Petra in 2018, with its queues and insistent silver-bracelet sellers trailing behind, tugging at your sleeve, offering to take you to a “secret” viewpoint above the mountains. We left the Treasury behind and continued toward the Monastery. The shops along the way were still shuttered. A couple of donkeys drank quietly from stone basins, waiting patiently for their owners to return with tourists unwilling to make the steep climb on foot. I kept shaking my head in disbelief — torn between being ecstatic to have the place almost to ourselves, and deeply saddened that the businesses these vendors and locals had relied on for decades were now dwindling. All because of a war that has nothing to do with them, being “fought” in a place which might be close in geography, but that it’s so far away in many other ways.
That place — the one close in geography — was in front of my eyes an hour later, when we reached the Monastery and climbed even further up. There, where the “café at the end of the world” opens onto a vast panorama, I could finally see it: Palestine. I was so happy to be back. Palestine holds a special place in my heart—one that’s impossible to fully describe, a space carved out by love, yes, but also by pain. Especially over the past few months. There I stood, on the mountain overlooking my beloved Palestine. I sipped from my cup of Arabic coffee, closed my eyes, and let the breeze — the breeze from Palestine — wash over me. And for once, I allowed myself to surrender to the sandy silence.
