Desert rose

The weather in Petra was not unbearable, but our guide Osama, a Christian Bedouin, kept reminding us to drink water. No strangers to intense summers, Filipinos are used to sweltering — but in the dry and dusty climate of a Middle Eastern desert, you don’t sweat as much, and could fail to notice until too late that you’ve dehydrated. The tour group walked down a narrow road formed by a crack in the mountain. Called the Siq, this 1.2 km-long defile is patched with cobblestones from a time long gone; on the edges rise magnificent twists and turns and jagged hulks of rose-red sandstone.

Petra, the great city carved out of the Jordanian cliffs, was recently included on the New Seven Wonders of the World List, besting other mysterious and mystical architectural marvels like the statues of Easter Island, the Angkor Wat, and even the Pyramids of Giza, the longest-running crown holder still alive (Ms. Egypt got a special mention during the ceremony, but I’m sure she shed a tear as she passed the baton). Official labels notwithstanding, this ancient rediscovered city is a World Heritage Site to behold in person. Indiana Jones might have done a good job immortalizing the Treasury’s first glimpse in his Last Crusade, but there are layers and textures and many stories in each crevice and fold of rock that cannot be reduced to a single moment.

The smell, for instance. Horses, donkeys and camels trod up and down the paths, pooping indiscriminately as they go. When you’re walking deep in a narrow corridor with little breeze and plenty heat, it can get quite aromatic. Members of my tour group got a bit funny off the fumes. “They should bottle up this scent and sell it as a souvenir,” one remarked. “Call it Petrid,” I said. “Or Ka-Bioessence,” answered another. 

After walking some distance, learning about the different minerals that give the sandstone its multicolored hue, Osama told us to pause. “There it is,” he said. We looked beyond the curtain of rock where some kids were playing, and the Treasury floated into view, a piece of delicately sculptured pink stone, literally a light at the end of a tunnel. I could imagine Johann Burckhardt trying hard to contain himself at this sight, for a little slip would have gotten him killed.

Burckhardt was a Swiss adventurer and scholar of Arabic culture, a sort of old-world James Bond or authentic Indy, and he had heard rumors about the ruins. In 1812, he disguised himself as a Muslim sheikh and hired Bedouin guides to lead him through the valley under the pretense of finding the shrine of Aaron, where he was to sacrifice a goat. Upon discovering the Treasury, or Al-Khazneh as it is known locally, along with other tombs, theaters and temples of the old necropolis, Burckhardt aroused such suspicion in the guides that he hastily killed his goat in a mock sacrifice nowhere near Aaron’s shrine. But he lived to tell the tale, and introduced Petra to the Western world.

The rose-red city was developed in 300 BC by the Nabateans, a nomadic tribe from the northwestern part of Arabia. Situated at the crux of two trading routes connecting Egypt, Damascus, Arabia, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, the Nabateans initially plundered the caravans that would pass through, for their textiles, spices, ivory and incense. As they grew more powerful they took control of the trade routes, and built up Petra by carving  monuments in a distinctive style influenced by the Greeks and Romans. Petra’s golden age ended when the Roman Empire was Christianized and when sea transportation took business away from the trade routes. Falling into decline and eventually being abandoned by 750 AD, Petra remained a “lost” city, until Burckhardt’s deception.

One could imagine, in Petra’s glory days, the Nabateans sacrificing burnt offerings on one of the high summits to Dushara, a sun deity. Edifices were laboriously constructed with impressive stonemasonry skills, and the water system was itself a feat of engineering. In a place where rain visits rarely, a complicated network of cisterns, canals and pipes were integrated into the stone, and evidence of this can still be seen, through traces of water streaks and rim lines grooved into the walls, like a petrified ocean. The beauty of the shifting sandstones, its colors of sunsets and dawn, the fortitude of rocks — it’s enough to make you feel sedimental.

I walked only halfway into town, sticking to the “main street,” but one could conceivably spend an entire day raiding off-road tombs, hiking up the sculpted mountaintops, and trekking down a processional path all the way to the Monastery, a ridiculously large temple carved right into the face of the mountain at the far end of the city. Young boys will try to sell you camel rides — “Taxi! Taxi! Mercedes Benz, BMW!” — and jewelry allegedly made out of camel bones (I admit I was suckered), but they are a colorful ragamuffin bunch with their own rolled-out-of-Bedouin style, and an endless source of photographic pleasure. You might even spot some authentic goatherding families living inside one of the caves. There’s an old story in every weathered turn and climb, and a slumbering deity in the distances between each stone. But there are also new tales, layered like rock strata, to be discovered as you recreate those steps.

* * *

Petra is a three-hour drive south of Amman, Jordan. Emirates flies to Amman from Manila via Dubai.

E-mail me at audreycarpio@yahoo.com.