Article Title
Monday, April 16th, 2007
FRAME | beyond the image
PASSIONS | Sa’ad Darwazeh savours the delights of a wedding dinner with the Ammarins.
PASSIONS | Sa’ad Darwazeh savours the delights of a wedding dinner with the Ammarins.
Revsiting Beidah
| On my way to Beidha one Thursday afternoon, I noticed tents, fires and signs of a cookout in the village. Such large-scale preparations could only mean a mansaf to celebrate and announce a wedding - a summer evening feast to which the extended family and a good chunk of the tribe are invited for dinner. Keeping the scene in mind, later in the evening when I heard Faisal Ammarin mention he was going to a wedding dinner, I asked: “Can I join you?” “Of course, you are welcome,” he answered immediately. “They will be glad to see more people, that’s what they want.” Ziad and I drove the short distance from the camp to the Beidha village in his pickup. Shaking hands with the many men we saw at the entrance of the main tent, we were greeted by their ever-welcoming bedouin notes and remarks: “Ya Hala… Tfadaloo, please sit down.” |
The groom, a young man in his 20s dressed in a suit, was framed and the only one seated on a large couch in the heart of the main tent. We shook hands with him and wished him luck for the future! Naturally, there were no signs of any women - they must have held their own celebrations in separate tents. We sat on mattresses laid down on the floor in a very long bedouin tent with two parallel rows of elderly men facing each other, about a couple of hundred people in total. As one sits down, it is polite to look around, salute the men in both directions while saying “Salamu Alaikum.” The men were engaged in conversation, chatting politely and quietly. They examined me sceptically probably asking themselves: “Who’s he?” In the bedouin culture, communication is mostly non-verbal. This is the place where one realises how much can be said through the eyes only. In general, bedouins are very quiet and calm, but extremely observant and have an amazingly sharp natural talent and insight when it comes |
to human relations. It is inherent and part of their lives and environment. Sit in the desert for a few hours and your senses become razor-sharp, you notice every sound, smell and the slightest movement around you. And that’s how the Bedouins are, they have this very natural gift of sharpened senses. |
Comments:saad@cycling-joprdan.com
Thursday, September 7, 2006
Thursday, September 7, 2006