Beach burqa bingo.

---

There’s a mild melee outside the ferry terminal in Aqaba, where the taxi drivers are gathered with snarling faces and what looks to be hostile intent. It doesn’t take long to figure out why, with just a dozen or so stray tourists to choose from and everyone jockeying for their business. Two groups have started negotiations over the fare to Petra, and tensions are running high. Considering what’s at stake - a fare of close to 30JD, at around US$1.40 to the dinar - I’m tempted to try for a piece of the action myself. A heated argument ensues, a savvy German provoking the drivers with the lower prices of their rivals. Things threaten to get ugly, and I duck into the first free cab I find, a smiling young driver gesturing out the window with his eyes and offering a dubious, “Welcome to Jordan.”

It’s an inauspicious omen on my first night in the country; this isn’t what I expected at all. After a clamorous departure from Egypt that was, in retrospect, distinctly Egyptian, Jordan - an oasis of calm in this otherwise turbulent region - was meant to welcome me with open, hassle-free arms. But nothing about the chaos at the port suggested the orderly monarchy that’s a darling of the West. Things hardly look encouraging at the hotel, the optimistically named “Jordan Flower,” where an institutional paint job and crumbling walls imply this is a very grim blossom indeed.

But a quick walk around town helps to soothe my jangled nerves. The sidewalks are paved, the traffic laws earnest, the Jordanians promenading along the corniche with a contentment that sets my heart at ease. At a sidewalk café, digging into a plate of warm kanafa - a syrupy dessert of shredded wheat and goat cheese - I’m approached by a genteel old Englishman in a checkered shirt and canary-yellow pants. He’s puffing aromatic smoke rings from his pipe and wearing spiffy brown loafers, looking as if he’d feel right at home with a brandy snifter and a pair of foxhounds at his feet. Improbably, he introduces himself as a Liverpool native, though his dress recalls that gruff industrial town in the same way that the Huxtable family recall the South Bronx. When I note that his fine BBC accent doesn’t have a trace of the Scouse about it, he huffs, “I never knew anyone who spoke like that” - the implication being that if he did, they’d be busily scrubbing the bathroom tile as we speak.

He’s traveling aboard a cruise ship that’s docked just outside of town, two months into a sojourn that began in Cape Town and ends in Athens. He fusses about some of his fellow passengers: the men perched on the brink of dementia, the women (to paraphrase) a bunch of uncouth harpies who, even in their 60s and 70s, are looking for the sort of action he probably hasn’t doled out since the Suez Crisis. “Most of them could be cleaning ladies for your mum,” he notes, though I’m reluctant to admit that for most of my life, my mum’s cleaning lady was, in fact, my mum.

Fortunately, there’ve been a few bright spots. A German woman - fluent in five languages - has been a delight at the dinner table, while a former Norwegian ambassador has proven to be a worthy companion at bridge. “The old fellow’s not too well,” he admits with a sigh. “Parkinson’s.” He’s been laid up in his room for most of the trip since Mombasa - a name my British friend pronounces with regal pomp, as if he’s just wrapped up the business of putting it on the map himself.

Things went downhill in Egypt, though, where the relentless touts around Luxor were more than he could stand. When they weren’t busily clutching at his wallet, it seems most of the Egyptians - “useless” and “bovine,” in his objective opinion - would just “sit around and do nothing.” Holed up aboard his ship, terrified of the Hottentots on shore, he spent most of his time shuttling from one five-star hotel to the next, propping himself by the bar and desperately searching for some refined company.

It’s no surprise that such a civilized gent would feel more at home here than across the Gulf. Jordan prides itself on being one of the Middle East’s more forward-looking states, though with Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, and Saudi Arabia to the south, the bar’s admittedly been set a bit low. It’s a conservative country nonetheless, the women modestly dressed and donning the hijab, the men hurrying to the mosque for afternoon prayers. Even on Aqaba’s beaches, there’s a restraint that suggests this place is a far cry from MTV’s Spring Break. When you see a young wife sitting in the shade beneath a straw umbrella, her face concealed by a veil, her hands sheathed in black gloves, nothing but the thin slits of her eyes catching the sunlight, the first thing that pops into your mind isn’t exactly, “The weather is great, wish you were here.”

In fact, there’s little about Jordanian culture that seems all that conducive to a day at the beach. On the waterfront promenade, guys are hawking steaming bowls of chickpeas. Men sit in the shade with sheesha pipes and hot cups of tea; the cafés along the beach - their tattered canopies suggesting a Bedouin tent in the sands of Wadi Rum - seem built to repel as much sunlight as possible. Everyone’s dressed less for a day of fun in the sun than for the somber funeral of cousin Mahmoud. Yet there’s a care-free spirit that’s decidedly surf ‘n’ turf, even if we’re a long way from Rio. Two boys in tank-tops and blue jeans are horsing around in waist-deep water, their mother lecturing with stern but forgiving eyes. A circle of girls in chadors chatter and splash away, their soggy sleeves hugging their slender arms. A father gathers his sons for a family photo, wading into the water in a pair of slacks and loafers, while the kids smile and mug in long-sleeved shirts.

It’s a far cry from the beach resorts of Egypt, though not coincidentally, towns like Dahab and Sharm are all but overrun by Europeans. Aqaba’s slowly been positioning itself to be the top beach retreat for the Arabian Peninsula, but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure that a bunch of Saudis and Kuwaitis - even on a stag weekend - are going to bring a certain buttoned-up aesthetic in tow. You see them around town, their white dish-dashes flapping in the wind, their red-checkered kuffiyahs ducking into the back of a late-model Mercedes. Money might be pouring into Aqaba by the boatload, but there’s work to be done if this place is going to cast a wider net.

I get a glimpse of the city’s plans in an Internet café. The owner, a Swiss transplant who’s lived in Jordan for close to a decade, shows me some computer images of the Aqaba of the future. It’s a sleek metropolis of glass skyscrapers, all swooping curves and daring designs that look less Middle East than Far East. The ambitious hope is that Aqaba can be the next Dubai, the Duty-Free signs plastered around town reflecting the first bold steps. But most of the buildings in the computer model haven’t even broken ground, and there’s little indication that they’re much more than a starry dream in some developer’s eyes - a pet project for King Abdullah as he chases his father’s legacy.

The king’s already kept a conspicuous presence these first few days. His benevolent, mustachioed face beams around town, though with little of the irony that greeted Mubarak’s smiling visage in Egypt. People seem to genuinely hold this young king in great affection, praising him with little provocation and not a single wary glance over the shoulder. True, at times it gets laid on a bit thick. The Op-Ed page of the Jordan Times runs an embarrassing piece praising Abdullah’s “words of wisdom” - about as scathing as things get in these parts - and the king can hardly greet a foreign dignitary without seeing his mug plastered to the front page. It takes a bold leap of imagination to consider headlines like “King Meets with Sultan of Oman to Discuss Import/Export Agreement” hard-hitting journalism.

But Jordanians of all stripes gush for young Abdullah; sitting beside me on the bus one morning, a student flips through the images of the king stored on his cell phone. Here he gravely holds court over assembled dignitaries; here he postures in a pair of ill-fitting fatigues, a rifle casually slung over his shoulder. For this bright-eyed kid, the king is a mythical figure on par with Ronaldinho or Michael Jackson: a celebrity of the highest order. It’s only natural that images of Abdullah should share the same fantasy space as Lebanese pop stars, Italian sport cars and the odd pictures of dew-covered roses, a frenetic montage that suggests, in at least one writer’s eyes, the very confusing love affairs of adolescence.

---