February 11, 1999

Mysterious marvels in Jordan's ancient city of Petra

By BETSY HIEL
TOLEDO BLADE

PETRA, Jordan -- A dark-skinned bedouin girl with tangled black hair riding a donkey slowly descends 800 Nabataean steps carved into a rock face in the desert some two millenniums ago.

Near dusk, she sings an Arabic folk song. Her soulful chants reverberate off the rose-colored sandstone face as tourists huff and puff up the ancient stairs to El-Deir. Called the Monastery, for its use during the Byzantine Christian period, this elaborate structure 145 feet high and 160 feet wide glows in a golden shadow cast by the setting sun.

Opposite the Monastery, I sit looking 3,000 feet below to the desert hills of Wadi Araba that stretch from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. A local bedouin guide, Khalil El-Bodoul, wearing a traditional long white robe and red-and-white checked headdress, joins the handful of tourists who silently take in the sunset.

Suddenly the loud ring of a cell phone breaks the tranquility. El-Bodoul grins and reaches under his robe for the ubiquitous late-20th-century device to answer the call, as tourists laugh at the situation.

"Modernity meets antiquity," one visitor says.

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