Roadside Bedouins

Last night I celebrated my birthday in a Bedouin tent made road side attraction. I've been in Bedouin tents made for tourists before, but never one set up on the side of the road, and with three different colors of christmas lights draped over it and a tattered Israeli flag flying from it's central post.

It was on the side of the road on the outskirts of a eilat. Kind of in the position/ place of a roadside diner. Only this is a tent with one side open, filled with couches and real Bedouin rugs on which people (mostly lethargic looking) sit and smoke hooka and drink bedouin tea. We were served beer and then later a hooka (which I now never bother to try) and food by a young Bedouin man with braces, who later asked how many camels one of my friends was worth. I, unfortunately, had already gone home by this point.

I wish I could describe this place better but my powers of analogy/ description/ comparison are failing me. It was such a strange mixture of seediness and authenticity. The men who ran it were actually Bedouins. The food they served us they made on a grill next to the tent and was handed to us by a man with one of those scarf things wrapped around his head... oh god, words carolyn. He then took our pictures... I'm pretty sure that a bunch of the clan were sitting in a circle, drinking tea on one of the big rugs inside the tent when I finally left at 1 am. And wow, the pitas they gave us, were warm and doughey and I was drunk so some of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.

A Bedouin tent, set up as a roadside diner/ pub? Strange. If I were an anthropologist I'd want to say something about the economy of selling one's culture... but I have to admit. It was nice.
We just walked a couple yards off the street and we were treated to Bedouin hospitality. Well, sort of, Bedouin hospitality for paying patrons. Still though... it was not the same as a night at a bar.

What else?

We climbed mountains that looked like large piles of dirt today. We turned off the highway and immediately started climbing, what appeared to be the most random hills. It felt like we were hiking at a rest stop -- one of those middle of no where places with trash in the spokes in the fence and in the ditches, places everyone drives by and never stops at. But no place is like that in Israel I guess. The country's so small they don't ignore any of it. So we started going, and though it was a bit ugly at first, once we got up high we could see Egypt and Jordan, and the red mountains reflected in the Red Sea. So everything's nice if you give it a chance.

I'm too tired to be writing this.