Aqaba is HOT. Very hot. The temperature in this Jordanian port flirted with 110 degrees for nearly my entire stay.
There was once a time where I’d take my chances with a merciless sun over say, a long Central New York winter, but those days have long passed. If given the choice, I’d rather throw on a scarf than a pair of flip flops.
Funny how what you’re willing to tolerate evolves over time.
The day before arriving in Aqaba, I was invited to join some of the men who worked for the hotel back in Petra for a meal. I passed on dinner but pulled up a chair as the five of them wolfed downed a communal bowl of chicken and pasta during the tail end of Ramadan.
The men were cordial and far less interested in me than the orecchiette on their forks. Two were from Jordan and the others from Egypt.
“Can you ask them if it’s safe to go to Cairo now?” I asked. “I’d really like to go.”
The gentleman, who I gathered was the unofficial leader of the crew, promptly vetoed my request telling me,“My friend it is very safe. But very hot.”
I wonder if he’s ever been to Aqaba.
The ride from Petra was mostly uneventful, which is not always a bad thing. I waited an hour and half for the bus to leave but in fairness was forewarned departures in this town had no set schedule.
“It just leaves when it is full of people,” the concierge had told me.
When the muddy Toyota Coaster was finally en route I was jolted several minutes into the journey when a woman sitting behind me began screaming at a man seated across from us. I knew almost instantly she was uncomfortable with his constant ogling because even I’d felt the heat of his eyes more than once.
He looked to be in his mid-30s, sat lazily, the same way a bully might on some yellow school bus in middle America where everything shuts down to watch a little pigskin. I saw in my periphery as he used his touchscreen as a front to take inventory of the crowded bus.
The woman managed to put him in his place but at the cost of making the rest of the ride rather awkward, if not tense.
Of course, there was a brief respite when we were stopped by a Jordanian military officer who took the ID’s of all the men on board. I was calm even as the whereabouts of my passport remained a brief mystery, allowing me time to theorize why we were being stopped in the first place.
As the bus pushed off, I remembered how the night before I’d missed the deadline for a reputable film festival I wanted to submit two of my short films to. I was kicking myself well into my sleep as the melodic sounds of “Allah Akbar,” echoed as an improvisational score just beyond my window.
When we finally arrived I decided to take a stroll through Aqaba. Practically seconds after my feet touched the scorching pavement I started reflecting on virtually everything about my life, particularly my shortcomings.
I thought a great deal about my failures as a son, a brother, which is to say as a man.
For some reason as I sat underneath a canopy facing the Red Sea, regret after regret seemed to pile up like a stack of unpaid bills.
I felt indebted, but to who or what remained as foreign as the street signs written in Arabic.
Still, I figured whatever fictional mess my mind had suggested I ruminate on would likely be gone the next day.
Sadly, I couldn’t say the same about the heat.
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