I walked slowly, letting the rest of the tour group draw ahead so that I could savor a quieter, more personal experience.
I don't like going on tours in large groups; it's like eating in a crowded cafeteria: the food doesn't taste as good to me when I'm surrounded by the pressure of bodies on the space all around me and the noise of a hundred voices all tuned to different conversations.
When they were far enough ahead, and the German tour group behind me was far enough behind, I paused, looked up. I had been walking on the flat, unevenly-paved floor of a narrow rift canyon cut into the mountains of the Jordanian desert by some ancient and now vanished waterway. Above me, the walls of the rift leaned toward one another, leaving only a thin slice of bright blue sky showing. Wind moaned through the rift.
For a moment, I could almost imagine that I was some Victorian explorer who had traveled by rail, steamboat, and Bedouin caravan to a place barely even rumored about in certain adventurous circles back home. But then there was a clatter and I was forced to step aside as a horse-and-buggy rattled by on the spotty stone paving. The driver was a lean Bedouin -- or someone passing himself off as such -- but the passengers were British or American or German: well-fed, wearing Hawaiian shirts, laughing at the jouncing they had just paid two dinars (about $6) for.
I kept moving so that I wouldn't get swept up by the pack of Germans gaining on me from behind. Soon enough, I had caught up with my own group, who were standing in a semi-circle listening to our guide explain the meaning behind some of the images carved into the walls. The one he was pointing at was of a caravan. We could make out the partially-eroded carvings of camels laden with goods; of simplified bas relief human figures leading them.
Then we moved on, plunging deeper into the Siq, the ancient rift canyon giving access to the once virtually inaccessible city of Petra.
Al Khazna, the most famous feature of Petra, appeared suddenly, a splash of carved pink stone seen obscurely through the rough gash that marked the end of the Siq. Another turn and Al Khazna's gorge opened out before us, the sky now a blue lake turned upside down, rather than the inverted river we had been following. There were tourists gathered in clumps and gaggles at the foot of the stairs leading up into Al Khazna, but even so, it had a certain majesty, as if it weren't deigning to acknowledge our existence. As if it was maintaining its aloofness there where it was carved out of the pink rock of the cliffside.
You would probably recognize it if you saw it, even if you don't know the name. You have likely come across its likeness on television, or in the movie theater, or on the Discovery Channel. Even before tourists began descending upon Petra like plague-minded locusts, daring videographers documented Al Khazna; the gaze of their cameras lingered on the tall pillars; on the huge human figures carved in bas relief; on those steps leading up to a wide doorway, the darkness of which seems to beckon, to promise that, just perhaps, a grand adventure lies within.
In "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail beyond that doorway. In "Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger," the doorway marks the entrance to the hiding place of the Fountain of Youth. Al Khazna's famous facade has also been highlighted in the movie "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and in the video-game-inspired "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation," and even in the video game "Lego Indiana Jones."
But Al Khazna is only part of the complex we know as "Petra." The city -- cliffside homes, temples, tombs -- sprawls along the sides of the gorge and then out onto the cliffs edging the vast desert plain beyond. All of this would only be mildly interesting -- just holes in the walls, barely more than caves -- except that the holes are surrounded by these intricate architectural carvings, as if Rodin had decided to hew an idealized city from blocks of stone the size of mountains ... and then got interrupted before he could get more than halfway done.
There were even more tourists at the far end of the city, gathered around a cafeteria-style restaurant catering to them. Bedouin child-robber-baron salesmen shouted at us, trying to sell us beads, or colored stones, or "authentic" relics; they even tried to barter, offering to trade the beads and stones for belts or ball caps.
Finally, after fighting my way through the line at the cafeteria and scarfing down a "traditional" Bedouin meal that would have left any real Bedouins fat and un-camel-worthy within a very short time, I found that I had an hour or so to myself before I was due to meet back up with my tour group at the bus. I slipped away, walked to a vast, tiered, Greek-style amphitheater carved into the side of a mountain, where I could be alone and listen to the wind. Then I went and stood beneath the pillars of Al Khazna just to stand beneath them and meditate. As I did so, a strange thing happened: the distant voices of tourists, the exhortations of venders and camel tenders, the shouts of children, shifted, became the street sounds of Petra when Petra was a hub of life and trade. It was then that I fully grasped what should have been obvious to me: that this place hadn't been designed for emptiness and silence ... but for activity and the chaos of life.
At that moment, the tourists seemed to fit into and belong to the staggering magnificence of Petra, making the ruins echo with the memory of people, making them seem somehow real and unreal at the same time, as if I were standing in the middle of a city of ghosts ... a city that was itself a ghost.
I blinked at this epiphany, and then left my place beneath the pillars to join them, just another ghost walking the streets of Petra.
The author didn't trade his belt for beads, if you were wondering. But if you'd like to make him an offer, feel free.
