The Writer is Out There.

It’s strange, watching music videos with obvious themes of love, lust, and broken hearts – themes which I guess are ripe, in a land where feelings often can’t be acted upon.

And it’s weird that each music video has full credits at its end – from the person who devised the concept, the singer and director, to the hair stylist and prop-skivvy.

I still miss my mp3 player, but I reckon I’m going to miss Arabic Pop when I’m no longer confronted by it.

—

Seeing the rocks and cliffs rise out of the red desert floor, I long for certain people who can’t be here. For Malcolm, Alice and AJ. They’d love this. And the thought of it almost makes me cry.

I grab a bottle of water and my camera, sun cream and a hat, and take my host’s advice, and walk away from the ruins, through the local farm-lands.

Five minutes later, I’m telling myself that I haven’t gone far enough to stop – The sun glaring overhead, I realise that it’s close to noon; the most ridiculous time to walk anywhere. Fool! Still, I carry on – I have my water, I’ll be fine.

It’s not long before I leave all traces of residential life behind me. The gently downward sloping, twisted roads travel through a tapestry of rich brown earth left fallow, silver-gold wisps of corn, purple flower heads, and a thousand different greens – the most beautiful patchwork I’ve ever seen.

The first few turns of the road are deserted, the only sign of man the 3 sided canvas shelters at the fields’ seams. Alone, I have one of those surreal moments where you step outside of yourself and marvel at how, exactly you came to be here.

I walked for a little over an hour, as far as the road would take me, past groups of men and women toiling quietly away over courgettes and spinach-beet in the midday sun. And my story from Al-Himmeh grew inside my head, only now the main character had something to lose – the idyllic life of Tabqat Fahl.

Twice, I passed large pools, shallowly dug into the ground and lined with black plastic – half filled with water, and stained with a chalky ring where the water line should have been. Pipes led from the pool to irrigate the fields. It struck me as the most ineffective method of water storage. I mean, if they have to store water in the open in the sun, surely they’d be better of with a narrow, deep well. :-S. Or, they could use plastic water-butts. Or, cover their water with a plastic-sheet lid. It’s not brain surgery.

Eventually, hot and thirsty, I reach the end of the road – climaxing in a small, mud and breezeblock village filled with loud children, sliding down the banks of a near-dry river, and hurling clods of damp earth at each other. Every one of them turned to stare as I walked first one way down the street, then back.

The children here, and in Tabqat Fahl, are so full of spirit it almost makes me sad – you just don’t see it at home anymore. Here, the fields and olive groves are their domain. And as they tear about, elegant and happy, their bodies and imaginations healthier than western kids’, I wonder why we do it.

—

I’d searched for shade on the way down, but with the sun almost directly overhead, there was nothing. And it was no better on the way back, until, half way, an elderly farmer beckons towards his cloth roof and offers me a glass of tea. He tells me he’s worked in these fields for 47 years. That he’d rather be here than anywhere else; he could never live in a city, with all that smoke.

A police officer in short sleeves approaches one of the 3 houses at the bottom of the hill, where he exchanges words with a tired woman. Even from my seat, I can see she’s frowning. The officer tips his hat at her, and walks across the yard to two small children. Kneeling beside them, he seems to be delivering bad news. After a moment or two, the larger of the children leads the other one away, towards the house. Angered tears stream down his face.

Slowly advancing up the hill, the officer almost marches, a picture of authority. Trailing behind him, spread out as though they were a human net, were three young men in white lab coats – long whittled sticks in hand, eyes wildly scanning the ground.

In an instant, one of the lab-coats hollers, and darts off to the right, lunging at a low bush. He collides painfully with the bush and a brown, chubby hen is fired out from its branches. The other men give chase, as the policeman stands in the road and observes. One triumphantly snares the animal’s wing with his free hand, and another rushes at it with his stick, striking it several times until its struggling stops and it hangs loose and bloody from his comrade’s fist. Deftly tossing the carcass into the road, the trio surround another bush, and the process begins again.

I can’t decide what to make of it – 3 awkward men, darting this way and that, stumbling, or missing their target more often than not, trailing their coats like nerdy super-heroes in a bid for barbaric slaughter. I’m confused. I want to simultaneously barf, and collapse in a heap of laughter.

The policeman watched as the pile grew steadily larger, and the labcoats grew breathless. Not once, out of the 30 or so chickens, did they snap a neck quickly and relatively painlessly. It takes me a while, but my confusion melts away in place of realisation – bird flu.