Walking along the street of downtown Aqaba, my nomadic friend, Louis, and I were taking in the sites of this Red Sea port. It had been about an hour after our crossing into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and twenty-four hours following our arrival in the Middle East. The day prior was spent exploring Tel Aviv by foot. A blend between a laid back New York and a bombed out Beirut, this Israeli metropolis was truly the Manhattan of the Middle East. But after a night of cocktails on the Mediterranean beachfront, and a five-hour bus ride through the Negev Desert, we were now in a whole other world. The temperature was unbearably hot, as it tends to be in this region late August. And other than the few clusters of local men, soberly sitting on
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