Married to a Bedouin
Marguerite van Geldermalsen

The Bdoul Bedouin no longer live in Petra, that ancient city in the south of Jordan. They no longer set up their tents of woven hair on the long, wind-catching ridges and invite passing tourists to share the shade, a cup of tea, an evening meal, or even a place to sleep as they did when I met my husband there in the summer of 1978. I was from New Zealand; Mohammad had been born in one of the caves. Seven years later when the Bedouin were resettled to a brick village on a barren hillside I was a part of the tribe.

Married to a Bedouin is the story of how I fell in love with Mohammad and married him; how I settled into his cave, and slept with him on the ledge in front under a sheet of stars; how I fetched water by donkey, baked bread daily and ran the local clinic. And besides that it describes the most recent history of Petra; through our stories and the stories of the people we shared the valley with comes a picture of the site when it was alive, and when I was the Bedouin from New Zealand.