I joined some new friends and headed south for the weekend. Not to a specific destination really. We just took the GPS and started out across the desert, somewhere near the Saudi border. We were looking for Bedouin tents, people who live nomadic lives in the desert. My friends specifically wanted to find some people they had helped with flood relief last year to see how they were doing. But since these people are nomadic and travel different routes around the desert (so that their sheep and goats can graze), usually crossing national borders, they are always on the move and sometimes hard to find. We didn't find them but we did meet a few random people out there. It was so refreshing to be out in the middle of nowhere, one of my favorite places to be. The above photo is of a large village we stopped at for schwarma before we set out into the desert.
3 comments:
so do the Bedouins have passports that they must use to cross the country borders???
Actually, up until very recently, they were not required to carry passports and were never stopped at the borders because the borders were not patrolled. They could roam as they pleased. A few years ago, police patrols were added to the borders (especially along Iraq and Saudi) and were obviously encountering Bedouin who had been roaming out there for years. The surrounding countries decided that they needed to identify with a particular country and forced them to get passports. The Bedouin, in turn, had to choose where they wanted to be from. There are about 4 basic but different Bedouin routes so some chose Syria, others Jordan, some Saudi, and so on. And now when they cross an invisible line somewhere out in the desert, where two countries decided to draw a boundary, they have to show their passports. Of course, they don't cross at an official border crossing but they do have to make it official someway, particularly if a police patrol comes across a Bedouin camp. Interesting huh.
Very interesting history. ~tracy
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