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53 and a half hours of footage.

And it’s all over bar the shouting.

Wednesday and Thursday saw us return to the village to attend a Bedouin wedding and film the events. Wednesday night witnessed the traditional (or not depending on who you ask) all-night dance-a-thon with the guys spinning in circles and the girls ululating out of sight in a house nearby.

The next morning, we set off early with the guys to sacrifice 13 goats for the wedding feast. We stopped in a beautiful shaded valley where the guys promptly started sharpening their knives. Then they got to work… and the peaceful bird songs and cricket chirps where, for the next hour, drowned out by soft prayers to Allah, shouted instructions, gurgling and bleating goats, and the spray of arterial blood on hot rocks…

Later, the valley was filled with the sound of knives slamming into flesh, as the men quickly drained the animals, skinned and disemboweled them, then hacked the meat into small chunks. The meat was then transferred to humungous pots, and loaded onto the back of the pick-ups. (Check out the goat skin stretched across the bonnet of the pick-up below).

It was all over in an hour – 13 goats killed, dismantled and prepared for cooking. The mood throughout was festive and happy, filled with jokes and singing and dancing. Afterwards, we drove back into town, blasting car horns and waving at passersby.

That night’s feast – as hundreds of guests tucked into the delicious goat and rice mansaf – was the last footage we shot. A fitting celebration upon which to end our little adventure into the fascinating world of the Bedouin of Petra.

We made many, many friends in our time in the village. Everyone – with absolutely no exceptions – was exceptionally kind and made us feel right at home. We felt deep sadness to leave them on Friday and will miss everyone, in particular Mahmoud Abdullah and Fatima and the twins and Mahmoud Habu and Scotch and Mohammed and Ahmed Johnny Depp and Tall Ahmed and Suleiman and Mohammed 360 and Ghaieth and Ghassab and Ahmed Saksoukay and the crazy kids outside the falafel shop and and and…

From next week, we’re back in Europe… back to the mundanity of finding jobs and catching trains and attempting to raise completion funds. Please keep checking back on the blog for updates on our fundraising progress, and don’t feel shy in sending this link to anyone who might be able to get our vision onto a screen near you!

Thanks for reading, and we’ll speak again soon,

Carl and Touf

(Our Bedouin camera)

Anyway, we made the most of our time in the Big City, working long days at the Royal Jordanian Film Commission digitizing our footage. We only managed to get through 23 hours, but we’re pleased to say that it’s all looking very good so far (despite the occasional bit of wobbly or lopsided camera work). Thanks to the Film Comm. for letting us work there for free! It’s most appreciated.

Here’s a pic of our set-up:

We also struck it lucky in terms of our accommodation in Amman. Instead of being confined to flea-bitten 5JD hostels in downtown, we’ve been invited to stay at the very exclusive home of our friends James and Amal. Here, we have our own bedrooms, a massive garden to run around in, and a very welcome pool. Thank you very much for this kindness, James and Amal! It has really been the luxurious cherry on top of an amazing two-month experience.

Here are some pics of the house:

Well, it’s nearly all over. On Saturday we leave for Amman where we will spend a week digitising as much footage as possible. This leaves us only 4 days left to enjoy village life. It’ll be a sad day for us when we leave…

Last week we decided to rent a car and do some travelling. We checked out the crumbling Crusader castle Ash Shawbak (see pic above), the vast views from the old city of Dana (see pics below), and the sand-swept dunes of Wadi Araba where we managed to locate a few local Bedouin with some surprising things to say about Bedouin life.

But the biggest news is that we’ve decided to change the name of the film. We arrived in Petra with certain preconceptions about the place. At that time we figured Erosion of a Tribe was a pretty good title. Having spent a month and a half with these people, however, we’ve come to realise that the title’s negative connotations don’t gel with the actual situation.

As such we’re now calling the film After Tomorrow for reasons that will quickly become clear when the film is finished and the article written. The blog title will stay the same for now (‘cos we can’t be bothered to change it at the mo!), but the new title has been created in a sand bottle for us to stress its permanence:

The next few days will see us scrambling to arrange interviews with the constant barrage of interesting people we continue to meet every time we walk down the road, so this will probably be the last blog entry till Amman.

We leave you with a slightly different sunrise view of the Treasury in Petra. A lot of sweat went into getting to that particular spot for the shot, so let’s hope it turns out okay in the film!

Ciao for now,

Carl & Touf

We invited some of the children from the village and the special friends we have made since we started this documentary. Everybody helped out with marinating the chicken, cooking, making salads, inflating balloons… etc (check out Carl burning his fingers by trying to flip chicken the Bedouin way)

We dressed Bilal up in his mini dish-dash and it took about 5 minutes before the dish-dash turned from beige into all sorts of colours – from dust, soil, chips, chicken and juice.

Kate, who dressed like a Bedouin lady, baked two delicious cakes, a chocolate one that looked like a lion (well, sort of ) and another banana cake. Unfortunately Sheikh Bilal was too exhausted to wait for the cake blowing ceremony and passed out at 8pm. We all had to make a wish and blow out the candle(s) on his behalf.

Here are a few snaps of the birthday.

“And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the branch; water gushed in abundance, and the community drank and their cattle too.”

As with most famous biblical landmarks, this particular location of Moses’ spring is hotly contested by another located in Mount Nebo. Nonetheless, it still draws a small crowd every day, and continues to pump forth sweet water that is collected by the locals and channelled into the green valley below.

As for the rock that Moses struck? Well, it is now used mainly as a spot for tourists to pose for their new Facebook profile pictures (as demonstrated by a couple of locals, and Kate & Bilal below):

In other news: we’ve moved to a new place in the Bedouin village. For the first month we stayed just outside the village in a tiny and rather overpriced 1-bedroom flat. Through a succession of happy coincidences, we now find ourselves staying in the massive house belonging to Atallah AlBdoul, in a separate section containing 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and living room. We also have two huge balconies on which to chill and brainstorm. Major thanks to Attallah for allowing us to stay!

And that’s it for this week’s update. We only have 2 and a half weeks left in Petra before going to Amman to start digitising the footage, but till then, I leave you with this lovely image of Tour Guide Touf pointing the way to Petra from our new balcony.

Ciao.

We were ecstatic about this offer, a perfect opportunity to capture their stories on film.

Half an hour drive through beautiful mountains and we arrive at Ghassabs 2,400 year old cave.

After chat and filming and fire-cooked mansaf, we decided to sleep outdoors to give some privacy to Ghassab and Ans and of course to experience the “7 star hotel” that all the Bedouins have mentioned.

The sky was incredible and it was so quiet but after hearing stories about wolves going on a rampage and killing 50 sheep and other horror stories of murderous scorpions we struggled to fall asleep. In the end, it was the frenzy of mosquitos that kept us awake till the break of dawn.

When I woke up I saw Carl’s empty sleeping bag, and his shoes were still in place but there was no sign of Carl anywhere.

After walking around a bit I saw him in this little shaded hut escaping the sun.

He looked like a POW in Yemen.

Yesterday we trekked out beyond the main tourist area of Petra to the Snake Monument where some families are still allowed to live in their caves. The pic above shows the cave home of Abdullah, one of the guys we often bump into in the village.

On the way to the monument, we went up to meet the oldest man in Petra. Check this out: he’s 125 years old (approx.), still has long(ish) hair, walks along at quite a clip with only a flimsy cane for support, and once chopped his own toe off with a knife after being bitten by a snake, and cauterised the wound with a burning piece of wood… what a dude! The below pics show him pottering off to his cave to show us around. Toufic got portraits of him on the still camera, and you’ll hear the full snake story (and get a close up of the missing toe) when we complete the doc…

Apart from that, our shooting pace has slowed as we near completion of the general footage. Plus, we’ve already shot over 27 hours which is going to seriously weigh our pockets down on digitising and editing costs. We’ve started a ‘paper edit’ now and are figuring out shots we need to fill the narrative gaps of our story.

Will leave you with some more pics from the last two days. Ciao for now.

Wednesday’s chicken feast for which Carl paid a 2-day price… the less said about that the better!

We met the driver at the scene. He was fine… just needs some driving lessons, and a new tire!

The massive Monastery

The tourist trail

Eroded sculpture of a camel driver and his herd

More Petra

The new member of Mahmoud’s family

Mahmoud’s little brother and two sisters

Habu, Scotch and Mahmoud taking in the sunset over Little Petra; and sunset over Wadi Mousa

Touf about to get lucky

On Thursday we finally did our first full day of filming inside Petra. It was worth the wait… but man it was a long wait.

Here’s a summary of the path we travelled to Petra:

• February – Got filming permissions from the Royal Jordanian Film Commission
• Mon April 19th – Petra Ticket Office said it’s cool for us to film, but we have to pay full price of entrance for each visit (33 JDs), which is too much for our broke selves. So, off to…
• Tourist Development Board. They send us to…
• Tourism Authority where we speak to the Head of Film who  refers us to the Commissioner who offers us a deal which, unfortunately, is still beyond our means. So we go to…
• The Police Station to see if we can get National status. They say yes, but first we have to go to…
• Tue April 20th – The city of Ma’an, where we give blood for a ‘health’ test. Results are due on Saturday 24th.
• Sat April 24th – Off to Ma’an, health is good, back to Petra Police Station, get passports stamped and signed, then off to Petra Ticket Office… but no dice. Apparently we don’t have visas for a long enough period. But we’re told of an NGO who can help, so…
• Sun April 25th – We go to Beit Al Anbat, the NGO, and meet the especially kind Mohammed Hasanat who says he’ll put in a few calls.
• Mon April 26th - We do some volunteer work for Beit Al Anbat, designing a poster against child labour in Petra. Mr Hasanat says we should speak to the Commissioner again.
• Wed April 28th – We meet with the Commissioner, Dr Emad Hijazeen, and finally… SUCCESS! We’re allowed entrance for 1 JD and get reduced rates for a park ranger to follow us around in the site. Carl spends the afternoon as a tourist climbing over tombs and almost dies of heatstroke, but all is good.

So what of Petra? Well, it’s an incredible place, beautiful and strangely peaceful despite the columns of tourists that march through the Siq every few minutes. The whole place has the relaxed vibe so redolent of the Bedouin way of life. You definitely won’t find the stress and sales aggression of Egypt or Morocco here.

We’re off to film in Petra in an hour or so will sign off for now. But first, big thanks to Dr Emad Hijazeen for smoothing the path, Dr Basim Twissi and Mohammed Hasanat of Beit Al Anbat for their support, and to all the locals for their continued hospitality despite our camera’s constant and undoubtedly annoying presence. Oh, and extra thanks to Touf’s tea-stained teeth for giving us a little local credibility!

Pics clockwise from the left:

The impressive Treasury that has provided us tonnes of shots of tourists oohing and aahing

Tomb with a view

German Tourist Carl and one of the locals – Abu Bilal

Ahmed – Petra’s answer to Johnny Depp