Wadi Weekend

I've been itching to put the lipstick red Chevy to the test ever since we rented it. There's enough to do in Amman for a couple of weeks, but there's a whole country to discover on our dusty doorstep, and I've been longing to break out into it ever since we arrived.

So when I was given the chance to go and interview a Dutch horse whisperer and artist in Wadi Rum, the nearest town to Petra, I jumped at the chance. She was busy for most of March so the only option was this weekend. Since I'd left the boys for 5 days already this month, I didn't want to leave them again, and thought it might be fun to venture there together. I looked into where we might stay, but the whisperer herself said we'd be welcome to stay at hers. Since it's easier to get the real picture of someone if you spend time with them in their home, and we had the impression, as J put it, of, 'sea grass matting, scented candles and horses whinnying in outdoor paddocks' - this seemed a great idea, and J was game.

We packed the Chevy to the rafters with my camera kit, luggage and bedding in the usual end of week haste, and shunted, low slung, out of the gate of our house to the soundtrack of Peppa Pig and her animal friends coming from the boys' DVD in the back. The days are already fairly hot, particularly in the car on the motorway, and after a few wrong turns in the mad highway planning that is Amman, we made it onto the road to Aqaba about an hour later. The Lozenge's mantra began in the back as the scenery either side flattened, and turned to desert - the long straight road heading south. 'I want to turn awound. Turn awound and go back Mummy. I don't like this woad. I don't want to stay with the lady. I want to go home.' We managed to cajole him with pretzels, and after a couple of hours turned off the King's Highway onto the road to Petra.

It was getting dark by the time we got to the edge of Wadi Musa. The mountains of Petra cast an impressive but eery shadow over the town in the half light, and the whisperer's directions led us up and down steep roads and one way streets, culminating in us getting completely lost, the Lozenge and Rashimi exhausted and sweaty in the back. After a few garbled phonecalls we made it to a semi-detached on the end of a dusty street. A few warning bells rang in my head at this point,  wondering where the horses might live for a start. I heard some louder alarm bells ringing from my left too, as J had been on the receiving end of the garbled directions which in no way corresponded to his own logic. This was already an unpromising start.

I think it would be unfair to go into too much detail, but to sum it up - here's the idea: lone female, cats, empty fridge, greasy surfaces and indecifrable kitchen smell, wafer thin sponge matress on the floor in one room…by 9.30 no dinner had appeared, and we'd finished the wine we'd brought between the 3 of us. Fortunately, in a last-minute-mother-hen-flurry I'd raked the contents of our fridge in Amman into a plastic bag, since heading to the desert with a 3 and 1 year old, you want to be prepared. So we ate the pasta which was meant for the boys' lunch. All I was aware of as the whisperer started her life story, were Jamie's eyes through the plume of jostick smoke on a cushion opposite, that seemed to be beseeching to me: 'Get us, the hell, outta here.'

All night, I lay awake listening to the fitful restlessness of my 3 boys in the room, thinking what have I done? This is the stupidest idea yet. How had I thought it would be a good idea to come and try to gather photographs, interviews and all other material for a feature and a photofilm about the whisperer and her Bedouin bag business, with the boys - J exhausted from wall to wall Arabic, the Lozenge still feverish from a strange virus, and Rashimi just your average 1 year old (the one saving grace for him being the cats). The dream of a bucolic, adventurous weekend together in the desert popped and dropped, as a little shred of damp balloon  through my doze. The muezzin's call came bursting in from the mosque 10 metres away at 5am, and J whispered, 'I can't do another night of this. We have to leave today.'

So, explaining to our hostess, a delightful dreamer, who obviously doesn't have house guests, let alone small ones, often, I said I'd made a terrible mistake trying to combine my boys and my work in one weekend and would have to leave that afternoon. Together we bulldozed our way through the day trying to get everything we'd planned for 2 days, done in 1. We spent a feverish 6 or 7 hours in the baking heat driving between stables and Bedu weavers, recording her in the car as she downloaded her life's tale to me. I still haven't been through my photos or notes, but I'm praying that tomorrow morning I have enough material to make sense of it all. The poor woman, who spends most of her days in the stillness of Petra on horseback, or chatting with her merry gang of female Bedu weavers, had to go from 10mph to frenetic urban speed, and I felt guilty on all accounts. Harried and flustered under what I endeavoured to make veneer of calm, I was so intent in getting everything done, smiling and looking relaxed (as the Bedu ladies decided they must go and make lunch for me which would take 3 hours), and being able to leave with the boys in the afternoon before J filed for divorce, that I forgot to put on suncream or drink water, so I was the colour of the Chevy by the time we saw the twinkling lights of Amman in the distance, and my head thumped. Ah, the delights of being a woman in 2013. If only the Bedu ladies knew what was involved…And let's hope I do them justice.

We drew up at our gate at 7.30pm, only to discover that J had left his keys in the flat, and I'd leant mine to Grace, so we couldn't get in. St Grace arrived with the keys 40 minutes after my phone call. I took the Lozenge to the bottle shop to make the time pass quicker while we waited for her, thinking I might creep my way back into J's heart with a couple of cold Amstels.  L's sticky hand clasped mine and he said: 'But that wath a nithe lady and I liked her catth and her houthe. Now are you going to buy beard for you and Daddy to drink when I'm athleep?'

So next time, I'll remember that combining work and awladi (my boys in Arabic) on a weekend is a no go zone. But there's something to be said for going to a place that's so far from your idea of comfort, that your new home suddenly feels as cosy and familiar as somewhere you've lived all your life.