Later, Iyid and I go for a walk on the beach, and as we stand on the dock, I look into the blue water of the Red Sea and wonder whether to go swimming or not. I tell him that some Russians swim in winter.
“We go down to the river, break the ice and jump into the water.”
If I could have photographed Iyid’s face at that moment it would have been the most unique shot of the entire trip.
Khalil comes back late that evening. We hang out with Iyid. He has an excellent sense of humor and we laugh the whole time. Still, it seems to me that for some reason his eyes are sad.
“Can you whistle?” Iyid asks me as we were walking out of the house early the next morning.
“Yes, but not loudly.”
“I can’t whistle at all, so I always ask my friends to hail cabs.”
Iyid wants to show me the office. A green cab whisks us to the center of the city.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I ask him on the way to the office.
“Yes, sure…”
“You have very sad eyes. Why?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“I have many sad thoughts. And I think them all the time.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“If I tell you about them I won’t think them anymore.”
“So wouldn’t that be better?”
Most likely not, because Iyid doesn’t answer.
Such a familiar situation: when melancholy lives inside you for a long time, in the end it becomes a source of pleasure and you won’t give it up for anything.
Once I have the stamp in my passport we go for a walk.
“Let’s go to the beach,” Iyid suggests. “I’ll show you my sand bottles.”
“You can make them too?!”
The table is covered with these wonderful handcrafted objects, but there’s no one to look after them.
“Nobody looks after them?” I ask in disbelief.
“No. But no one will take them. I leave them like this even overnight.”
“And what if someone wants to buy something?”
“They’ll give the money to them,” Iyid says and points to some venders nearby. They are his friends, and offer us some of the sunflower seeds they are selling.
“I’ll make one for you, OK?”
“Why don’t you sell your little bottles like Ibrahim?”
“You make too little money this way. And I have to pay for the gym. I work out for a couple of hours almost every day.
After Iyid makes me a present for me we take a walk along the embankment. To the right the noise of the sea seems to gently push us towards something.
“So why do you spend so much time at the gym?” I ask. “Is it really so important?”
However hard we try to talk about something general and simple the conversation keeps coming up against locks impossible to open, and I see that there is no way to free him of his sad thoughts, no way for him to let them go.
Iyid stops and leans against the low stone wall. I sit next to him but he turns away and crosses his arms on his chest as if holding on to something inside. In a little while he says:
“Because I want to be strong. I think that there is strength in this. I am really weak. Part of me wants to cry, but I can’t cry because I’m a man.”
I see his face and I hear his pain. Talking about this brings tears to his eyes.
“Several years ago I had a girlfriend. I loved her very much, I did everything for her. But she turned out to be… She was just after money. We went to nightclubs, I began drinking. I stopped praying. In the end I began taking drugs because of her. The last thing she made me do was get this tattoo… I never want to trust anyone ever again… And I think that I’m terribly weak. That is why I go to the gym.”
I touch his shoulder. Iyid straightens up and I jump off the wall. We slowly walk on. I take his big warm hand and it feels like I’m holding a child’s hand. The warm clear rays alight in his eyes. The keys and the lock click goodbye to us from the low stone wall left behind. All is well, there’s no need for them any more.
The funny Dead Sea
Today the sun rose for the tenth time to illuminate my road. But am I on the road? I spend every night at someone’s home and this usually becomes much more than just a roof over my head. It becomes a home in itself, hard to leave every time. I’ve never been hungry on this trip and I’ve not spent any money on food yet.
I already have more than ten new numbers in my phone beginning with un-Russian 0s and 2s. Every day I receive text messages from my new friends. They worry about how I’m doing and regret that I only stayed with them for a short while. They are all people whom I’ve met during this journey. I even have a Jordanian brother now! He writes more often than the others and in almost every message says how grateful he is to have met me and that he will never forget me.
So am I on the road? Or am I at home, a home with dimensions larger than I could ever imagine?
I’m striding along a paved road; to my right is a village. Beyond it lie the Jordanian mountains: low, with peaks painted in pink, orange and red. The sun paints them every day with its hot touch at sunset. They are its trusted harbingers and even in daytime they carry a promise of the unusual color feast of the sunset.
I look at these mountains, at the sky, at the desert to the left of the road. All this is mine, native to me. So many times I have heard people say to me with complete sincerity: “Make yourself at home!”
Like on the first day of my trip, when on the road from Trabzon in Turkey I was picked up and carried, so I’m still carried by people.
The driver takes me to within fifteen kilometers of the Dead Sea before he has to turn. But that’s for the better: I need to find out where exactly on the shore the hot springs are. After swimming I’ll need to wash off the salt in their warm fresh water so that I don’t dry up to a crisp from all the salt.
I’m walking along the side of the road looking back at the one-story concrete houses stretching out close to the road and thinking, “How can I meet someone in this village who speaks English well enough to explain how to get to these hot springs?” On a road to the side of the main one a car slows down and a young Jordanian man in his early thirties with skin the color of chocolate gets out and addresses me in excellent English:
“Hello! What do we Jordanians say when we meet a foreigner? Welcome! Can I help you in any way?”
Of course, I’m not going to lie to him. The hospitable Jordanian knows where to find the hot springs but agrees to tell me about them only after I have tea at his house and meet his family.
My new friend’s name is William. Not only he tells me all about the hot springs, but also offers to take me there.
We leave the car on the side of the road and walk through a field of tomatoes. I look carefully at the smooth surface of the sea opening out before us trying to discern what is unusual about it. Only when we get to the beach do I notice the enormous rocks covered with a thick salt crust like white icing. The sea rolls onto them in licking waves but the waves do not, like cows or elk do, lick the salt off but rather leave the rocks even saltier.
The beach is completely deserted. William brings his family here so his wife can swim just wearing a bathing suit rather than the long shirt that Muslim women wear on public beaches.
I’ve heard many a horror story about the danger for one’s eyes of even tiny drops of water from this sea. So the first thing I do is head off with a mug to a stream of warm fresh water coming down from the mountains.
With a mug of water in place of a first-aid kit waiting on shore and with William waiting for me a little further off I can finally explore the most unusual sea in the world.