Family Holiday in Jordan
Desert Guards on camels roam past the towering rock-cliffs of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan. (Alli Jarekji)
There’s an immutable truth about children and holidays, and, like a boulder on the path to enlightenment, there’s no getting around it. While civilised humanity seeks culture, cuisine and climate alien to common experience, kids just want a pool. And maybe some ice cream.
But mainly a pool, with slides and fountains and bridges with signs saying “Do not jump”. Tour operators are aware of this, which is why, when you open their brochures, all you see is warm blue water full of happy children with kind parents.
So I was economical with the truth when my three hauled me in for questioning over this year’s big trip. “Is there a pool?” demanded Frederick, aged 10. “There will definitely be swimming,” I replied carefully. “And a beach?” asked three-year-old Benedict. “More sand than you can possibly imagine,” I said.
“What about ponies?” asked Annabella, aged five. That’s the other thing kids want on holiday. “You will go riding,” I nodded, beginning to feel like Lord Mandelson.“So where are we going?” they demanded. I looked from face to expectant face. “On a family adventure to Jordan,” I announced.
The children crossed their arms and glared at me. So we went swimming, like I’d promised them. In the Dead SeaIt didn’t start well. As the muezzin’s call to fajr echoed over the roofs of Madaba, south of Amman, Frederick drew the curtains and gazed despondently across the litter-strewn streets. “It looks like Baghdad,” he muttered, switching on his Game Boy.
Breakfast brought more shock than awe: the Middle Eastern mix of flatbreads, olives and ful medames seems both healthy and exotic to grown-up palates, but for kids used to a bowl of Coco Pops, it’s cruel and unusual. They crossed their arms and glared at me.
So we went swimming, like I’d promised. In the Dead Sea. Geographically and emotionally, it was a low point.
Benedict cried because the beach was made of mud, Annabella was curiously offended by the astonishingly high salinity, and only Frederick had the temerity to float out towards Israel, a five-mile swim through the heat haze.
Mine weren’t the only children unimpressed by the deepest hypersaline lake on earth. There were five other kids on our trip: Beth, Erin and Zo, vivacious teenaged sisters from Lincolnshire, and Sean and Robin from Derbyshire, all of whom would probably have preferred something blue with slides.
They had an ally in Yousef, our Bedouin guide, who admitted he didn’t really care for the Dead Sea either, even if the corrupted towers and warped walls of Sodom and Gomorrah lay beneath its oily surface.
Patient, wise and — unlike their own father — trustworthy, Yousef quickly became a surrogate dad to my kids, so the following day we formalised the arrangement.
In the wilderness of Judaea, where the rush-choked River Jordan trickles into the Dead Sea, lies Bethabara, the place where John is said to have baptised Jesus. Lost for decades in a dust-blown corner of the demilitarised buffer zone between Jordan and Israel, this holiest of holy sites is now open to pilgrims and tourists.
As usual, the Greek Orthodox Church was first on the scene, building a church and a simple font down among the rushes. I found Father Georgeos wandering amid the faithful and the curious with the slack-jawed awe of an Elvis fan given custody of Graceland.
Al-Deir (The Monastery) which is largest facade in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. (PA)I asked if he would baptise my youngest and, after checking the paperwork — passport, birth certificate and letter from the local vicar — he agreed, but there was a snag.
“You need a godfather,” said the priest. I dashed out of the church. Yousef was sitting in the shade of an olive tree, and he agreed without hesitation or, I suspect, any real understanding.
It was a moving ceremony, witnessed by our fellow tourists, a couple of Jordanian soldiers and a mysterious Russian blonde, all standing reverently among the Jordan’s rustling rushes.
It was, agreed the Orthodox priest, a most unorthodox situation. “But the principle of giving a Christian child a Muslim godfather is good,” he added. “It bodes well for peace.”
“What time does it close?” “Petra?” “No,” replied Frederick. “The pool.”Next stop was the fabulous Nabataean capital of Petra — the original Lost City and “one of the most precious properties of man’s cultural heritage”, according to Unesco. “We will be staying for two nights in a hotel a short distance from the ruins,” announced Benedict’s new godfather.
“Petra was first mentioned in…” He paused to take a question from my eldest. “Is there a pool at the hotel?” asked Frederick. “There is, my friend,” smiled Yousef. “As I was saying, the Rose City was… yes, Frederick?” “What time does it close?” “Petra?” “No,” replied Frederick. “The pool.”
That night, with a fat yellow moon breasting the broken ridges, we trekked into Petra. The winding route through the narrow gorge of the Siq was lit with thousands of candles, and the cool air smelt of tallow and horse dung. It was way past bedtime, but the kids, who were beginning to realise that this was a proper adventure, and that a genuine Lost City was far better than any theme park could offer, were agog.
Frederick ran ahead to get first view of the Treasury, dashing back wearing an expression of eye-popping astonishment. “Oh. My. God,” he gasped, as schoolchildren do. “God is great,” added Yousef, as Muslims do.
We were back next day for a tour, a good 10-mile hike around the ruins. It helped that Yousef was a history graduate and that there were long-eared ponies — all right, donkeys, but they ticked box two — on hand to ferry exhausted children back to a hotel and pool they were too tired to enjoy.
Baghdad-bound juggernauts were thundering past as we drove south the next morning along the King’s Highway to Wadi Rum. Outside, the land was changing colour from the fag-ash grey of the northern Al Ghor to the dazzling gold of the Wadi Araba, a “proper desert”, according to Annabella, broken by mesmerising sandstone mesas hundreds of feet high.
This astonishingly beautiful landscape is the Arabia of Lawrence — the single-track railway skirting the western edges of Wadi Rum is the supply line El Orens delighted in dynamiting — but don’t be fooled by the mountain they call the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Despite what misinformed guidebooks say, the jebel was not the inspiration for the book of the same name — Proverbs 9:1 is the true source — but was named in the 1980s by the Jordanian tourist board.
As we climbed into pick-up trucks for the long drive east into the wilderness, Benedict stared at a sea of sand that continued uninterrupted from here to Basra, 700 miles east. “Is this the beach?” he asked. I nodded vaguely, tying his keffiyeh tight and mentally ticking box three of three.
Any responsible parent would shudder at the health-and-safety issues implicit in racing across a desert in the back of a pick-up truck. “Tell Frederick to sit down and hold on,” urged Mrs H, holding onto the other two for dear life.
“Your mother says sit down and hold on,” I yelled at the whooping maniac. He stopped punching the air and turned, nearly dislocating his jaw on the roll bar as the truck slammed into a rut. “Forget it,” he cried, “I’m having the time of my life.”
That night, we assembled in the tent of Salah Ahmed, whose forebears fought alongside Lawrence. We sat on lurid rugs, backs resting against camel saddles, and, as Yousef whispered the Muslim grace, “Bismillah al Rahman el Rahim”, we ate from a communal cauldron of mutton and rice.
Sprawled in a postprandial stupor and stupefied by the deep sense of peace, we watched as one by one the kids went out like lights, missing the meteorites streaking across the desert sky.
Next day, as we rode out of the desert on unusually co-operative camels, Frederick steered his alongside mine. “This is the second-best holiday I’ve ever had,” he announced, his leg expertly wrapped around the moth-eaten hump. Second best?
He’d swum in the Dead Sea, seen his brother baptised in the Jordan, explored the lost city of Petra and raced across the empty desert in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia. What, in his brief experience, could possibly better that?
“Cyprus, two years ago,” he said, spurring his camel to join his friends. “I loved that pool.”
By Chris Haslam. First published in The Sunday Times