Jordan: A nomadic paradise increasingly short of nomads
Despite its small size, I found it hard to get my bearings in the Hashemite Kingdon of Jordan. I couldn’t decide whether to read about its Hebrew history, (the name Jordan comes from the Hebrew word Yarden (descending), referring to how the river Jordan flows towards the dead sea); its postcard-perfect 2000 year old archaeological site was built by the Arab Nabataeans; its rulers — the House of Hashim, a family who have governed everywhere from Mecca to Iraq since the 10th Century; or about the 4 million Bedouin residents who make up more than a third of the population.
In the end I plumped for the latter as I was gifted Marguerite van Geldermalsen’s excellent book Married to a Bedouin. It is set in the recent past (1978–84), but has a real “end of history” feel about it. Indeed, only 40 years later, less than 1% of the Bedouin are now nomadic, meaning this ancient lifestyle has pretty much died out in my lifetime. The reasons are myriad, including that the nomadic life is hard, and that the tourist dollar trumps traditional ways of living. According to Geldermalsen, when the King decreed that people be given houses to live in, some were delighted, but others could tell that the promise of electricity would be a poor substitute for the freedom they were used to. It is wonderfully unsentimental book which makes it clear that when cars arrive in town, people are unlikely to keep taking people to hospital by donkey.
This week’s film, Theeb, is also unsentimental about the complexities of life in the desert. Filmed in Wadi Rum, Southern Jordan, but before the present day borders were agreed, it is the tale of a young boy following his brother as he escorts a British officer across the desert. Both the cinematography and the story are engrossing, and so I’m surprised the Guardian only gave it three stars. Shame on them. Perhaps though I was particularly enthralled as I was, at the time, transcribing my Great-Great Grandfather’s stories about living in Al-Faw, Iraq back in the late 1800s and travelling round the region. It may be 1500 kilometres and centuries apart from the story of Theeb, but there were many similarities… a reminder that a way of living can survive centuries and then be lost in a generation. Culture is, it seems, is only a generation deep… but it always lives on through food!
Living in Birmingham means being surrounded by a variety of bakeries specialising in the heart-warming, home sickness defeating delicacies that people find it so hard to leave behind. And so it was that on a sunny Sunday morning I headed to rose bakery to buy Jordanian bread, fava beans, fuul and grape juice for a Jordanian breakfast! For those of you who don’t know fuul or (amusingly) foul, it is a delicious, easy to make bean dish eaten all over the Middle East — I would strongly suggest you try to make it as it’s protein rich, garlicky and livens up many a meal. I made enough at breakfast to ensure there was some left to go with our evening meal, aubergine mnazaleh and Jordanian cauliflower. Like other Middle-Eastern countries it seems that while vegetarianism may not be prevalent, vegetable dishes are — meaning you can have the time of your life dining on side dishes without ever feeling like you are missing anything.
Other than far too sweet grape juice, I also did like the locals and drank far too much tea. This particular Bedouin tea recipe includes mint, cardamom and cinnamon, which sounds delicious until you realise it also includes a quarter cup of sugar per cup of tea and requires you to steep the tea for 15 minutes. I didn’t sleep for about 2 days and my teeth will never be the same again.
The massive caffeine hit may be one of the reasons I plumped for a playlist called Bedouin desert rave. It’s a selection of tunes I would certainly love to listen to as the sun comes up in the desert, but I doubt there is anything very Jordanian about it and so, as I head off to Kazakhstan I thought I shall leave you with this selection of Jordanian music instead!
