Some tea drinking while the sun sets on Petra

by Gaia Tomassini (Italy)

Making a local connection Jordan

The best tea drinking of my life? Petra, Jordan. My mind is still filled with memories of that trip I took in March 2013 with a friend. The images are vivid: the sun is setting down, the dunes are gold, the three Bedouins hosting us talk in that broken Italian learnt while travelling around my country. They talk about their amazing life, about the friends they met in Florence and share with us their culture. It is one of those episodes I will never forget. My friend and me were walking down the streets of Petra when two boys and a girl called us from their tent. It was already getting dark, but they insisted so much that we decided to stop for a while. The tea was already boiling, you could see the small cups lying on the floor waiting to be filled. Dust was everywhere, but it didn't seem to matter to them (and of course it would not matter to us, we didn't want to be rude with them). They cleaned them a little bit and served us the tea, which was still fuming. It had an amazing taste, not too sweet but still very rich; it smelled really good and was as warm as was needed in that mid-March afternoon temperature. Both me and my friend asked for more, and you could see they were happy we had liked it. They let us around the small fire in the tent, we could see the great canyons of Petra from above. It was just something I would never expect to live in my life, and the company made it even better! We spent around one hour and a half talking with them, sharing memories and stories about our countries and just enjoying the beautiful view we had in front of us. They had spent two years in Italy working in the street markets that fill our cities every week, and had loved their time there. If you listened carefully, you could still hear that typical sounds you get when you learn Italian in Florence, the letter "c" pronounced quite harshly and the letter "t" oh so delicate. We forgot about time passing, and soon it was already time to leave our new friends and go to the exit of the National Park. Since it was dark, and there were not so many indications as where to go and how to get to the exit, two Bedouins, who of course knew the place as if it were their home (and in fact it was!!) came with us riding their camels, taking us right to the exit as the sun was setting down. On our way out, we took a last glimpse of Petra, of its majestic stone temples and dunes, and saw the two guys guiding their camels up to their homes, settling for the night. It is a sight that will stay with me forever.