Prison Tattoos and Coke Nails

I sneaked/snuck into the house today in order to avoid being fed immediately.

Last weekend, Dana, Mara and I went down to Karak in an attempt to meet up with other friends who were already in the area and planning to go hiking. We met at the bus station at about 6:30 (I was, of course, there closer to like 6:50 -- love me as I am!) and from there boarded a small bus going to Karak. In our collective wisdom and against all odds, really, we managed to fall asleep in the exceedingly uncomfortable seats on the bus and nearly end up on our way back to Amman. Luckily, though, a good samaritan informed us that we were, indeed, already in Karak and that we should probably.....get off.

And that we did. Then, we were completely lost, having no idea where to meet our friends, where they were or how to get to any trail. Luckily, though, Karak is only a little bit of a shithole and actually has a very nice castle, which we decided to visit after a pushy cab driver tried to insist to us far too many times that he could drive us anywhere, at any time, forever. After getting his number and having him call us (read: unfortunately, me) about nine times, we decided to stay at the castle and hash out our plans so we could bypass ever seeing this cab driver again.

Inside the castle, we ambled around a bit before sitting down with my guide book, which I, only on a whim, brought with me. Despite the presence of said guide book, however, we were still a group of three completely indecisive people and our reading amounted to about just a notch above nothing. All we knew was that we wanted to hike. Luckily, though, we had the vocabulary (sort of) to express this desire to a very nice man inside the castle who chose a place for us, directed us to where we might find a van that would take us there and told us about how much it would cost, all while giving us a brief tour of the castle. He also had an excellent mustache -- one that I would grow if I had the balls....heheheeeeeeeee.

After shuffling our way down the giant hill upon which the castle was perched, we found a line of vans and hopped into the first one we saw, complete with fringe from the top of the windshield and nearly unbearable shag carpeting. (Sidenote: many things that in the states would be incontrovertible deal-breakers in the States seem to be whole-heartedly embraced here, such as shag carpeting on the bottom of vans, lots of hair product, visible chest hair, leering, tiny mustaches (particularly in Syria) and living with one's parents.) The driver, who was actually very nice, was either hard of hearing or was for some other reason completely unaware of the fact that he was always yelling. Always. Every time he turned around to talk to us, every time he got on the phone (really comforting when were racing through the precarious roads in the steep desert mountains) and even when he was talking to his friend's wife (a friend who he stopped to pick up, along with this man's groceries, on our way to our mysterious destination), he was literally bellowing. Friendly bellowing, but bellowing nonetheless.

When we reached our destination we were pleased to find that......there was no destination. The name that we had been given was actually just the name of an area -- Wadi Bin Hammad. Lovely, but hardly a way to start a hike. Mashallah, we found a sign that read 'Hot Springs -- 8km.' I'll leave it to you to translate that into Arabic for the full experience of the story. Either way, we were on our (more expensive) way, mostly thanks to Dana who encouraged both Mara and I to splurge a whole 5JDs. I'm my father's child -- what can I say? Upon reaching the hot springs, we realized that we had definitely found a gem. The man who greeted our disoriented selves welcomed us with a speech in English that he had clearly prepared many years ago but had only had the opportunity to use once or twice. He asked us how we found them, as they didn't normally get very many foreign tourists. He was only slightly disappointed when we explained to him that we literally stumbled upon the place.

The wadi was beautiful. Walking into it felt, for lack of a better description, like walking into the movie Avatar. It was lush, green and full of water. The stream running down the middle, which was a beautiful and welcome antithesis to the desert we had just driven 45 minutes through, was lukewarm and welcomed our bare feet. Soon, though, the rocks in the bed of the steam tickled our feet and were just downright uncomfortable, so we continued down in our shoes. The mosses were bright green and the rocks were vibrant reds, yellows and blues. Water dripped down from overhanging rocks like desert icicles, in a solid stream. I came to understand the Looney-Tunes-style oasis, complete with palm trees but, unfortunately, lacking the beautiful (and animated) women. Instead, we got a nasty dude who wanted to show us his dong who, even more unfortunately, was not animated. At least in that case the size would have been embellished.

The trip back was interesting. We managed to find one of the last busses heading back to Amman from Karak. It was much larger (and only 5 JDs for the three of us) than the bus on our trip down, but we did get a lovely man with a scorpion tattoo that looked like it had been etched rather than done with a machine, a pseudo-mullet, long scars and a few open wounds on his arms (indicative of knife fighting, both in the past and recently), lovely eyes, a coke nail and an impressive amount of shit in his teeth. We're talking like plaque build-up. Presumably, he could have used to coke nail to remedy the teeth problem, but I guess he just wasn't interested. Either way, as a result of these qualities, since I was terribly distracted when he was talking to me, only mildly afraid that something of him (be it a tooth or a flap of skin) might fall off and hit me, I did not fully comprehend that he was telling me that they had only /two/ seats on the bus instead of three. The first half of the ride, thus, was terribly uncomfortable for the three of us mushed together on two seats. Finally, though, some men shuffled around, people got off, we got an extra seat and, in the end, we made it all the way back to Amman. Time well spent.

Also, our cab driver told us all about how he had been in America, having visited Texas and New Mexico. When we asked him about it he told us about how the Jordanian government had sent Jordanian soldiers to the southern border of the United States to, in his words, 'round up the Mexicans and throw them back' in order that they might learn how to do the same to the Iraqis coming through the Eastern Jordanian border.....you should have seen his excitement. Yet another mindfuck in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

love,
anneke