About tents, scorpions and mafia bosses
Ali, the scorpion, Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, January 2022
Doing something for the first time always entails a certain thrill, until habit sets in and it becomes just some mundane task. Traveling to Jordan by boat from Egypt is no different. The excitement slowly builds up while driving to the port and seeing the ferry in the distance waiting to take you to new shores. But that childlike excitement is replaced with surprise about how similar the procedures are to the ones in an airport. You first go through security then you proceed to the immigration and finally wait in the terminal building for a bus to take you to the ferry. I can only identify three differences: baggage is not checked-in, tickets are bought at a kiosk and the passport stamp has a ship instead of an airplane. What did I expect, I wonder in retrospect. This story is not about the ferry, but the people on it.
After getting off the bus everyone is asked to carry his or her luggage up and put it onto a large pile on the ferry deck. Foreigners, meaning everyone who is neither Jordanian nor Egyptian is asked first to put their luggage on a separate pile and proceed to get a PCR test. While standing in line to embark I notice a young man staring at me, a stare that gives me a feeling of unease. Maybe he doesn’t like the “preferential” treatment foreigners receive. I choose to ignore him and look around me. Some of the foreigners are visibly confused by a nurse waving with swabs and asking them for a “BCR”. After undergoing the ordeal of having your nose pierced by a swab, we are free to go and infect all passengers because the results only come in after arriving in Aqaba, Jordan.
I decide to move outside on the deck to feel the warm winter sun and listen to the waves, as the ferry slowly leaves the Egyptian Port of Nuweiba behind. “Almost like one of those background noise videos on YouTube” I think. The tranquility is interrupted by a man, just like an ad, running across the deck and shouting as if he just had an Eureka moment: “Hey hey, everybody! Listen to me! I have something to say” Some heads turn in anticipation of some groundbreaking announcement. He proceeds “If this is the Red Sea, how did they paint it blue?” And the heads turn back to what they were doing before without paying him any further attention, while he bursts out laughing alone.
I notice the young man from earlier staring at me again. I mean I am handsome, that much I know, but not that handsome to be stared at like this. I feel observed. I ignore him again, while leaning on the railing to observe the Egyptian cost in the west and the Saudi coast in the east both slowly rolling past, while the Levant, the final destination, still hides behind the horizon in the north. You couldn’t tell by the sandy rugged coastline which shore belonged to which country – a reminder how arbitrary borders are.
I see the young man sitting close by. I smile at him, he smiles back.
“What’s up?” I open the conversation “Hi, I am Ali” he introduces himself “And this is my brother Mohamed” he points to his taller brother next him. The ice is broken and we start talking about where we come from and where we are heading to. After while I ask him “If you are Jordanian, why is your accent not Jordanian?”
Mohamed, Alis brother, Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, January 2022
“I am part of the Turkmen minority in Jordan” he explains “My native language is Turkish and not Arabic. We are in fact descendants of the Ottomans.” His introduction to Turkmen culture in Jordan fascinates me particularly that they still live in tents, have a nomadic lifestyle and are secluded from mainstream society.
“But if you live in a tent and are nomadic, what do you do for a living?”
“I am Jacket salesman, most Turkmen men are peddlers like me, we go from place to place and sell our products. I myself only work in Egypt. As a Jordanian I don’t need a visa to travel to Egypt. So what I do is the following: I drive to Jacket factories in Aswan in the south of Egypt and buy the designs I like, fill my transporter to the top and then I start driving to the north, frequently stopping in different neighborhoods and selling them along the way - this way I avoid paying any taxes or import duties. When I am done I go back to Jordan to spend time with my family until I need money again. Being on the street you learn a lot about people and how to deal with different types of personalities. You learn when to avoid police and thugs and when you can talk yourself out of situations – police and thugs are much more similar than you think. One day I was in a shady area in Cairo selling jackets. And a guy came to me and asked me:
“Do you know who I am?” I felt the he was somehow powerful
“I don’t know who you are, but you look like a respectable and good man” I answered
“The people here respect me, indeed” he replied
“I can tell, everyone should respect you”, I responded
He smiled, bought a jacket and made every one walking past us buy one and I was sold out in an hour. Turns out he was the local mafia boss. And I got on his good side. You need to learn to read people and notice who they are just by looking at them. For instance I saw you standing in line and I knew you were a good guy”
“Ehm thanks, I guess” I preferred not to share my first impression of him “Tell me, what does the Scorpion on your hand mean?”
“I like scorpions. I am called Ali, the scorpion. In my free time I catch scorpions, remove their stinger and keep them as pets”
“Really? Where do you put up your tent to have scorpions around you?”
“We usually put up our tents in remote areas. On the one hand we also prefer to stay within our own group and on the other hand we often have problems with the society and police. So we stay away and don’t mix too much.”
I notice two young boys running around chasing each other and shouting in Turkish. Their mother in a colorful dress yells at them to sit down – I might not speak Turkish but some gestures are universal to humans – such as a mother yelling at her kid to sit down.
Two Turkmen boys playing and chasing each other on deck, Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, January 2022
I asked Ali if they were Turkmens as well, which he affirmed and not only that he continued to explain that neither the kids nor their mother speak any Arabic. We prefer to keep for ourselves as I told you, to protect our language and culture. To this day we only speak Turkish in our families – children grow up only speaking Turkish and start learning Arabic later when they start to work. And women don’t learn it at all because they take care of the household. Mohamed, Alis brother, is silently nodding in approval in the background.
The four hours of the journey flew by - a side effect of making new friends out of strangers.
Upon arrival the foreigners are asked to pick their bags from the separate pile and leave first. It is time to bid Ali and Mohamed farewell, we wish each other the best and went separate ways. I was lucky to find a family wiling to drop me of in the city center of Aqaba because the port was 30 km outside of the city. With my backpack shouldered, looking for my hotel and reflecting upon this trip so far I was reminded of three things:
Never judge people to quickly and give them a chance to show who they are
No matter who you talk to there is always something that you can learn from them
One of life’s true delights is listening to a fascinating stranger
“Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions”
