"We will have to kill you now." For a brief instant, the tent is filled with the kind of silence usually reserved for the kind of places that have people who are already dead in them. We are not dead, however, and a quick glance at my travelling companions reveals the sharp focus of men who have no intention of going quietly into the proverbial long night, yet all of this is masked by the placid composure of their faces.
    Minutes earlier, we (Kent, Chris, Mike, Jeff, Doc, and myself) had been taking photos of the remains of an old Turkish fort, the only one we hadn't already photographed during our five-day survey of the long-defunct Hejaz railway (thanks to T. E. Lawrence's adventures in World War I). We had already seen as much of the railway as we could manage within the time we had available to us, so on our way home to the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, we'd simply pop into Al-Ula, get our shots, and be back on the road in a matter of minutes.
    Light rains the night before had sprinkled the area, in places turning the fine red dust to a mud which now squished between the treads on our tires and spattered the thorn-scratched quarterpanels of our trucks as our four-vehicle convoy began to roll out in the direction of the paved road back into town, and then on to the highway and southward-bound. Just as the last truck was about to pull out, a young Arab man approached them from the walled compound facing the fort, just across the sticky dirt track from it.
    Jeff's steady voice crackled from the radio, "Hey One, we've got a guy here waving us down. I'm gonna see what he wants."
    "Roger that, Four", Kent replied. "We'll wait up for you." After a minute or so of wondering what this was about, Jeff radioed back that the guy spoke English, and that he wanted us to join him in his tent for tea and gawa (a heavily spiced coffee). A short radio huddle was followed by the decision to spare an hour from our drive home for a brief cross-cultural encounter.
    We were met at the gate of the compound by our host, Mohammed A., and several other men, as well as a few boys. Mohammed greeted us warmly in his thickly-accented English, "Come, come inside my friends. We would like to show you our culture. Eh, then you can see, in Saudi Arabia, we are not all terrorists."
    To call it a tent would be slightly misleading, although not entirely. Inside the compound, there were a few white-plastered, low buildings, and the tent was set up on a foundation of concrete with short retaining walls around the outside. The whole tent was hung and carpeted inside with huge rugs and tapestries, black and deep maroon in color, with intricate geometric patterns worked over white stripes. The front of the tent was dominated by a white wall with a faux red brick hearth in the center. Flanking the hearth were arched, backlit shelves, white with gold trim, holding silver, brass and ceramic tea pots and a black-and-white framed photograph of an important clan ancestor. The mantel of the hearth stood at about head level, with a row of seven large brass teapots, arranged in order from tallest to smallest, looking like a formation of proud, golden birds, their beak-like spouts upheld in a haughty attitude of disdain. At the foot of the hearth lay a tray with tiny cups for tea and coffee, a dish of sweets, a bowl of dates, and off to the side, a fancifully ornamented bellows, patiently awaiting the need for its services. In the corner next to one of the shelves sat a large, four-horned altar used for burning incense. Over this scene burned the incongruous pale light of evenly-spaced fluorescent fixtures.





    This particular day marked the end of Eid Al-Fitr, the week-or-so-long celebration coming on the heels of the month of Ramadan fasting. Our hosts looked their traditional Muslim best, with plain white or gray robes, the freshly shaven heads of those that had made their pilgrimage to Mecca, shaggy beards, and some sporting red and white checked keffiyehs. After a quick round of introductions, Mohammed asked the seemingly innocuous question, where were we all from? Until this point in our travels, we had jokingly debated whether or not to answer this sort of question with the predictable and convenient lie that we were Canadian, but it simply had not come up until now. Because our initial impression of our new friends was a favorable one, we decided that "toss the maple syrup, hockey and the bloody queen of England; we can't let the Canadians take all the credit for the goodwill we're sharing here." It was our reply "America" that killed every smile in the room, followed by Mohammed tossing his conversational hand grenade into the middle of the tent.
    As we sat sipping our coffee, outnumbered and with the only exit covered, the thought flashed through my mind:
"Well, this is quite a pickle we've gotten ourselves into."

      

    This is a map made by Jeff, one of the guys that went with us on our Hejaz Railway excursion last year. This was our proposed itinerary, but it ended up changing a bit. The Day 1 leg is actually Jeff, Doc, and Chris coming from Riyadh to meet me, Kent, and Mike in Medina (we were coming up from Jeddah, which was 'home' for us). A little context for those that are lost here; Kent's my brother-in-law; he's an infantry officer in the U.S. Army and he was the one I went to Saudi to visit. The other guys are all Army officers as well. They all had jobs there for a year advising various parts of the Saudi military. You couldn't ask for a better crew of guys to go exploring the history of a semi-hostile foreign nation with.
    So, Day 1 had us camping just a few miles outside of Medina, on Day 2 we camped somewhere around the Wayban or Tuwayrah train stops (I don't recall exactly which; I'll have to double check that one. All I remember is, it was in the middle of nowhere, with some great red mountains that were made of a gnarled, weathered lava rock that was murder on tires.)
    Day 3 saw us make it through Al Ula and Mada'in Salah, and we stopped for the night somewhere in the vicinity of the Mutalla station, on a vast flat plain, with our camp behind one of the only hills to be found. Day 4 was a long, tooth-rattling day along the rail bed, through lava plains with small, knife-sharp rocks and gravel that were at various times red, gray, or black, and then the pumice would give way to hard-packed dry lake beds, and some stretches of sweeping dunes. On the last stretch before we came to a real paved road again, the rail bed threaded its way in and out of a Saudi military firing range. Needless to say, everyone's eyes were peeled for any unexploded ordinance that might have been laying around, or worse yet, a barrage of live rounds. Finally we made it to Tabuk, where we stayed at a western housing compound (I think it was mainly British oil workers and military types) in some of their guest villas. One of Kents's Army buddies from their days at the Armor Officer Advanced Course hooked us up with the villas. By the way, remind me to tell the story of Kent's and my airborne "onramp" experience sometime. Good times.
    On Day 5, we went back down to Mada'in Salah via a much faster paved highway, and managed to squeeze in the Nabatean ruins there before the sun went down. For those not familiar with the Nabateans, they're the ones who built the city of Petra in Jordan, which was featured prominently at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That night we camped near a huge elephant-shaped rock a few miles down the road from the Nabatean ruins, much to the chagrin of the officials there. They were either worried for our safety camping out in the open, or thinking that we might think them inhospitable. They really, really wanted us to stay in one of the local hotels, but we really enjoyed camping out under the stars, especially near something as cool as the Mammoth (or Elephant Rock as it's also known). That night as we assembled skewers with shrimp, goat, peppers and onions for our bbq, a rain storm blew through to the south of us, giving us front row seats to a brilliant display of lightning, and the rain gave the air a refreshing humidity and a sweet scent.
    On Day 6, we made one last stop in Al Ula, so that we could take a picture of the one train station that we had missed on the way through the first time. We had only intended to do a drive-by and then hit the road for the long trip back down to Jeddah, but as we pulled out to leave, some guys from the house across the muddy road from the station and the mosque stopped us and invited us into their tent for some tea and coffee. We hesitated at first, as we had a lot driving to do (and we'd done an awful lot of it already that week), but they were insistent that we come inside and experience some genuine Saudi hospitality. We spent an enjoyable hour with them, and then it was back on the road and home to Jeddah. So that was just a brief synopsis of our Hejaz Railway trip. I've left a lot out, like more cross-cultural experiences, history of the Hejaz Railway, etc. Don't worry, we'll get to that. Time allowing, I'll be posting all the stories bit by bit.