You Can Ride My Donkey...But It Will Cost You

Tehva is the dirtiest child in the developed world.

If the theories on asthma and allergies are correct, and if they do in fact develop in some children as a result of an overly-sanitary environment, then Tehva will never develop these types of health issues. And neither will her children. In fact, I am currently questioning our decision to have had her immunized at all as I am pretty sure that she has been exposed to and developed immunity to all varieties of the pox and all major parasites. She is, in short, a mess, and nothing has brought that out more strongly than Petra.

We arrived in the cowboy town of Wadi Musa in the evening as everything was just coming alive. Poorly spelled, hand-painted signs were at every turn—“Highly Recommendeb Coffee” and “Enjoy You Tim Here” and “Wel Come to Petra!”—optimistic to the end, it felt like we had truly arrived at Jordan’s premier backpacker grotto. We parked the car, called our hosts, Vale and Ali, and then settled in to wait for one of them to turn up.

Tehva wandered over to a tree and summarily began stripping it of pine cones, alternating between shoving them in her pockets and tossing them cheekily at a group of Chinese tourists trying to flash photos of her endeavors. When she came back to us, she had a scalp full of pine cone bits, bulging pockets, and a scowl on her face. She growled at Silas but deigned to allow Tony to help her into the back of Ali’s pickup truck for the trip through town to their place.

The next morning we dressed all three kids as tidily as we could manage after a week on the road with less than a week’s worth of clothing and headed to Petra. After selling a kidney to pay for the entrance fee (“Well, at least it’s cheaper than a day at Disney Land!”—I really tried to put a positive spin on the price of admission) we entered into day one of, well, Petra. Really, I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than to pay a fortune for admission, to become dehydrated, and to be harassed endlessly by little boys with donkeys.

The donkeys minus the little boys

We wandered down through the Siq, which is a long, narrow rock corridor that stretches about 800 shaded meters 

and terminates here:

The Treasury, minus Indiana Jones

It is the answer to why the ancient Nabataens put their city where it did--nobody can get in or out of Petra without being seen and heard coming through the Siq. 

Within minutes of entering the Siq, fifteen people had asked Tehva if she wanted to ride their horses. One boy offered with a wink to have Tian ride his monkey. Tehva’s clothing went from clean to dingy by virtue of the fact that she was stroking each pack animal as we passed by, but by the time we arrived at the The Treasury, we had lost Tehva.

Not to worry, though, we found her here:

With her BFF, the Treasury-side seller

  

Now that we were in front of the Treasury, we had to contend with offers of camel rides, postcards, carriage rides, jewelry, Bedouin tea with sage, and tiny carved animals with even tinier carved animals inside. At the same time our attention was drawn to Russian touristas wearing high heeled shoes (how is it they haven’t fallen over yet?), Chinese tourists snapping thousands of photos with rapid fire, high-tech cameras,  Korean tourists demanding that their travel companions take another photo over here, and hundreds of Arab League nationals filling in the blanks. We never noticed Tehva bathing herself in the fine dust that drifts down from the stone walls.

The distraction of watching the world watch Petra

Even the locals enjoy the show

We walked further into the ruins and into an area with a coliseum carved from the rock itself. In the confusion of the open marketplace that has evolved in this area, we lost Tehva completely, found her again, discovered her jacket was gone, found her jacket, and then lost her again. She was in her element—in a half-cobblestoned, half-dust strewn confusion of color and motion. Within an hour she was completely camouflaged by the reddish-brown dust. Having smeared herself with handful after handful of the soft, cold stuff, she looked like any one of the Bedouin children who were prowling the area with pockets stuffed full of trinkets to pawn.

Here's a taste of Petra Day One--Find Tehva

What, you can't find her? Neither could we.

She disappeared completely for an hour and Tian found her trying to sell rocks for a dinar a pop (about a dollar apiece), standing next to the Roman ruin of a nymphaeum. She ran off again and then turned up at the very back of the ruins, near the Crusaders’ castle. She was on the back of a donkey, accompanying two boys named Omar and Abdullah. She had struck a bargain with the boys, promising them that she would help them attract tourists to ride their donkeys through the ruins. She had proposed a 30-70 split of the profits, with them receiving the larger share since they were the ones supplying the transportation.

Guiding the people in Petra

I gave up on Tehva for the rest of the day, abandoning her to the siren call of a life spent selling overpriced rides on pack mules. By the end of that first day, she had befriended the majority of the Bedouin children working within Petra, or at least manipulated them enough to allow them to think that they had been befriended. 

Tehva and her new BFFs, Rami and Monika the Mule

By the end of the second day she had her own puppy and was inexplicably riding a donkey named Layla through Petra freely, without a guide. When asked whose donkey it was, she just shrugged and said, “It’s my friend’s. If you want a ride, I will give you one but you will have to pay me 7 dinar.”

Her new best friend, Rami, had invited her to come live with him in the Bedouin village, and we considered sending her. After all, a trip there might allow her to find a new home for her puppy, and the possibility of a dowry loomed large in our minds. It just might help offset the cost of admission to Petra! But in the end, Tehva chose to come back with us. She even submitted to a shower, and sleeps at this very moment, clean and smelling sweet, across the room from me.

So I guess I should have started out by saying that Tehva was the dirtiest child in the developed world. However, she is also one of the cleverest. She managed to spend two days in Petra doing exactly what we all wanted to do—she spent 80% of her time on horseback/muleback/donkeyback and never paid a penny for the privilege. She ran with the Bedouin children, spent the entire day drinking sweet sage tea, and was indulged at every turn.

There is something to be said for being dirty. And for being Tehva.