The No Surprise Sex Tent Girls, along with Fares, decided to stay up to watch the sunrise. We hiked up a little bit of mountain and settled, with a lantern and Fares for entertainment.
Meanwhile, Waleed decided to skip the sunrise that he had been talking about for three weeks and go to sleep.
"Where are my cigarettes?" asked Fares. "Did I leave them down at the tent? Damnit." He placed a call to the tent below, where the others were drinking and playing cards. They laughed at his suggestion for them to bring up the cigarettes and hung up on him.
To Jordan's credit, the sunrise was beautiful. The stillness of the morning combined with the sunrise was just calming. The weather wasn't too warm, the company was good.
After sitting there for about a half hour or so, Fahed and Ziad joined us.
"Do you have cigarettes?" called Fares, frantically.
We stood for a few moments, watching the sunrise and taking photos, before heading back down the mountain to our tents.
We settled in, with Sally and I attempting to sleep while Erica and Rula immediately passed out. Before long, we heard voices outside the tent. Fares and Ziad were awake and didn't care who heard them.
"Peekaboo," said Ziad, walking into our tent.
Fares walked in after him. "We don't have beds," he said. "Where are we supposed to sleep?"
Sally and I shrugged and kicked the boys out. They walked around some more outside of our tent, giggling, before pausing outside one of our "windows" and blowing smoke into it.
"Hey!" called Sally. "This is the no smoking tent!"
More giggles.
More smoke.
We both sat up in "bed" and looked at each other. From the entrance to our tent, we saw the boys' shadows, Ziad's shadow holding something long and broom shaped.
sweep
We saw sand being swept into our tent.
More giggles.
Sally and I gave up on sleep and went outside to join them. "We're bored," declared Fares.
"I can see that," I responded.
Ziad's face lit up. "I know!" he said. "Let's open up all the tent doors to let the sunlight in. Then everyone will wake up."
Sally and I started laughing in disbelief. "You guys," I said. "It is like, 6:30 in the morning. Everyone just went to bed about an hour ago. They might kill you."
Fares looked at us again. "But we're bored."
Ziad, in the meantime, had gone to each tent and opened the tent flap.
Nobody had stirred.
Fares sighed. "Fine. We'll give them till 8:30. Then, I am personally going to go and wake them up myself."
Sally and I rolled our eyes, and went back to our beds.
The boys continued to wander.
Then, we heard something hitting the tent. "Are they throwing rocks at us?" I asked.
I peered outside the tent, carefully, and saw the boys holding stones. "What, are you Palestinian now?"
"We're bored!" said Fares.
Ziad then wandered over to Waleed's tent. "Ohhh, man," he said. "I have a great idea."
He started lacing up Waleed's tent, locking it up from the outside and securing the flap in place with a broom. "This is terrible! I wish I could see him when he wakes up."
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, as Ziad spotted a pile of bamboo sticks and made a beeline for them. "We have to use these!" he said excitedly.
As I made my way back to the tents, a cold fear had gripped me. "Oh god," I said to myself. "They've taken my bed."
Sure enough, as I approached my tent, I found that it had been locked from the inside. I peered inside, and saw Ziad passed out on my bed and Fares attempting to make himself comfortable on the floor, in a sleeping bag.
"Are you kidding?"
I somehow managed to untie the door, entered the tent and found that I had nowhere to sleep. I tried nudging Ziad, but he wouldn't move. Knowing that he has Deena-phobia, I decided to just sleep on top of him, thinking he'd freak out and move off the bed.
Unfortunately, Ziad was gone to the world. As a result, I had about twenty minutes of sleep, since I was sharing a 2 x 4 cot with him. I gave up sleeping around 8:30 and decided that I would just sleep on the bus.
Breakfast was just as appetizing as dinner. I made a move to put some hummus on my plate, but Waleed and Sally stopped me.
“I wouldn’t eat that,” Sally said.
I looked to Waleed to confirmation. “Yeah,” he said, peering at the hummus. “It’s a million degrees outside. I wouldn’t touch it.”
I settled for some bread.
Before long, we got back on the bus and headed to the Wadi Rum Retreat, where we were to take 4x4 pick up trucks (“SUT’s”, as Sally called them) around the desert. We saw the Seven Pillars, where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed and other cool rock formations.
All of us, that is, except for Ziad.
“I want to tan,” he said and promptly lathered himself up with baby oil and removed his shirt. He decided to forgo exploring the rocks and instead lay down on the back of the truck and soaked up the sun.
Our driver was about 100 years old, leathery and brown from the sun. “He’s so sweet,” murmured Rula, taking photos of him. On our way back, however, our “oh-so-sweet” driver decided to up the ante and race across the sand going about 100kph. Including bumps.
“I really don’t think he’s so sweet,” grumbled Sally, clinging onto the back of the truck for dear life.
After eating at the retreat, we made our way back onto the bus. Hisham promptly put in the tape of Egyptian music, while the rest of us fell asleep, only waking when we reached rest stops.
At one rest stop, while the majority of the bus was outside stretching, Sally shook her head. “I can’t believe our Bedouin driver in Wadi Rum,” she said. Those of us on the bus looked at her, confused. Our driver was about 95 and had one good eye. What was so shocking about this?
“You mean you didn’t see the ‘surprise’ he almost gave Samer?” she asked.
Surprise?
“Yeah,” she said. “There was one point where Samer was standing up in the back of the truck, facing forward and taking photos. And the driver casually stretched his right hand back towards the window and towards Samer’s um, region.”
Right as she finished the story, Samer got on the bus. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Awkward silence.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually,” said Samer, looking more and more concerned. “I DO want to know.”
Sally recounted the story of the Bedouin driver’s love to him. Samer slumped down in the seat, holding his head in his hands. “I can’t believe you told me this four hours after it happened,” he said. “I’m traumatized.”
“Surprise!” said Sally, meekly.
Part One
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