Oh, what is it with me and deserts? I don’t know, I just don’t know but they pull me, they pull me, inexorably. They soothe my heart and they scour my soul. I had been promised desert on this trip and so it was to be. But I wondered, I wondered. We were a large group. Deserts are solitary places. I needed time. I needed to be. I needed to meditate and get back in touch. Was it possible?
We drove to the Dead Sea, past Jerusalem (I still can’t quite get my head round glancing out the window and seeing a road sign to The Mount of Olives) and, strangely, we weren’t talking on the bus. There was an easy silence so I put on my iPod and let it go on shuffle and – hmm – it landed on my shamanic drumming track and I figured, well why not, it’s as good a place as any to journey for guidance… and it was a strange journey for sure.
When I opened my eyes the dust had began. Past Bedouin settlements, dust-coloured shacks blended into dust. Past dust-coloured camels, gazing with total disinterest from dust. The Judean Desert. Midbar Yehuda.
And then the rock began…striated sculptures, Lego of the gods. And then, oh, and then, a haze, a shimmer of blue. Sky? Sea. The Dead Sea. The lowest point on the Earth. Jordan on the other side. I love these water boundaries – it reminded me of a very different one on Lake Ohrid in Macedonia – with the Albanian border snaking through the waves.
But this was Ein Gedi. And we met Giora and Barak who loaded us into LandRovers and we bounced our way up and into the desert…
Scrambling down the banks of a wadi; walking along the arid bed of a sleeping river until we came to a sheer cliff face, a natural auditorium with clear acoustics…sat on rocks and then – magic. This guy who’d appeared pretty well out of nowhere, hitching a lift on our bus, took out a guitar and started to strum and sing. Beautifully.
He sang this…
And then he sang Faith...
And then A Horse with No Name (of course)...
And Barak carved open a water melon and it was the sweetest flesh I had ever tasted. And, truly, I could have sat there and dreamed for ever…
The guy’s name? Raphael. Hmm…
PS
He didn't play this one but it's a damn good desert song, no?
