"THE SIGN OF THE SCORPION"
By Claude Gardien

In the heart of that furnace that is the Middle East, Jordan is like an oasis. A fragile but determined peace clings to this small country making its beauty still more attractive.

For the climber, a stay in Wadi Rum cannot be summarized in just a series of gradings, followed by the usual recital of the lengths of the rope. Meeting the inhabitants of this country, Palestinians or Bedouins, is part of the experience which mark definitively the career of a "global-climber".

* * *

My plane had landed at midday. In Aqaba, at this time of day, it is better to be in the shade. The last to leave the airport, I missed the taxis. No problem, I would wait. Except that the weather was really hot, and the taxi drivers had gone off for a siesta. I no longer remember how many hours later I set my enormous bag down in front of the rest-house in Rum. In the end everything turns out well in this country.

The young Bedouin on duty came to sell me an entry ticket. As I sought a few dinars in my pocket, he asked me what I was going to do in Rum. He quite certainly had a brother or a cousin who could take me out into the desert in a dilapidated Toyota. I answered: "To see some friends".

- You have friends here?

- Yes, Sabbah Ataeq, Dayfallah Ataeq, Sabbah Eed, Ataeq Ali, Ataeq Odeh, Mussalam?

- Keep your money, this is your home". He stowed away the ticket.

- I'm also looking for some French friends: Wilfried, Bernard, Philippe.

- They are in the desert, come and drink tea."

Lying on a carpet, I sipped the tea.

Friends arrived. Mazied, the brother of Sabbah and Dayfallah, took me to the tent of Hadji Ataeq. The old man was now almost blind. I had not seen him for several years.  The last time he paced around the desert with great strides. Today he only left the tent to pray. "Hadji Ataeq never goes to the mosque", his grandson Mussalam explained to me, "he wants no roof between God and him".

Sabbah entered the tent. We embraced each other. After the first glass of tea, he said to me: "Come, we will go and see Philippe (Gleizes) and Bernard (Domenech)".

We drove through valleys that I did not know. In a hidden place, bags, sleeping bags, remains of fires attested to the presence of climbers. "They are over there", said Sabbah, with a wave of the hand, before settling down on the ground.

At the bottom of the canyon, I discovered a large smooth slab of coloured sandstone stretched out like a cloth. A hundred meters up, I made out a red spot: a climber! I called. No answer, no movement. I tried again, then I brought out my binoculars. A bag, I had been calling to a bag! I was already caught by the magic spells of Rum.

"Aquarelle" on the left hand side -  6c - Photo B. DOMENECH

In the evening, Philippe and Bernard came down from the first ascent of "Aquarelle".

Sabbah, who has lit a fire and made tea, took us back to the village where we celebrated our reunion and their new route with a number of beers.   After spending the night at Sabbah's house, we ate a solid breakfast at the rest-house. Then I went to recover my bag, which I had left on the sand in the car park, 24 hours before. Nobody had touched it.

We headed out towards Um Swassa. Bernard had noted a marvellous pillar several years back. It certainly was marvellous. We found the attack, a perfect corner. We moved back, we could see the continuation: one of the finest routes in Rum.

We just needed to go down again to our bags, to collect the equipment and to start off. The first pitch was already making us salivate: a pure structure, climbable with a handle of friends.

 Bernard and I had started down. A terrible cry stopped us in our tracks. Philippe, white-faced, with his trousers down to his knees, was feeling his buttock. An adult sized scorpion ran across the red sandstone slab. We were two and a half hours in Toyota from the village. But the Toy' had left…

"Philippe, keep calm, lie down in the shade, I'll go and get the Aspivenom" Desperately worried, we ran down the chaos of the scree. Found the necessary. Rushed up the slope again. Philippe must have looked in better shape than his rescuers when we got back. We used the pump, the poison came out as a few drops in the tube.

After an hour of rest, nothing worse happening, we went down again to the camp.

The next morning, the "stricken one" did a few exercises to loosen his thigh which had been stiffened by the venom. And he proceeded to open three pitches worth of an anthology. Firstly the long dihedron which kept its promise, then more subtle cracks, before attacking the compact slabs, where there only a few rare handholds, on the grain of the pillar.

The following day, struck by an old tendonitis stirred into activity by the desert, I let the two stalwarts fight it out with Um Swassa.

In the evening, a sound of a engine approached the camp. Headlights pierced the night, disappearing behind the dunes. A truck stopped in front of the tent. It was Wilfried, the only European able to find his way in the night through the labyrinth of Rum. Tea was ready for the two above. I had seen them close to the exit. Time passed, they gave no sign of life. We went up to the foot of the tower in the light of our headlamps. Behind a block, I came to a stop in front of a carving on the ground, which stood out in the circle of light from my lamp. A Thamudic inscription? Nabatean? We moved around the engraving, trying to see which way up it was. Suddenly, the truth struck us: It was a scorpion! An warning signal carved by a Bedouin to warn visitors that this corner was stuffed with them.

In the morning, Philippe and Bernard came down from one of the finest climbs of their career, that they named: The Sign of the Scorpion.

* * *

Shortly after my family arrived, my wife and my three year old son. Sabbah's family treated their arrival like a precious gift. We climbed with Mussalam, Sabbah's son, grandson of Sheikh Ataeq, on a road opened by Tony Howard and Di Taylor. It was a marvellous day

My Israeli friend Doron Erel came to join us also, together we climbed the long and aerial Bedouin route, "Rijm Assaf". His anxiety over being in Jordan, in an "enemy" territory, was obvious. But he had come, and I began to believe that peace was arriving in this part of the world. That was only a short time ago…..

Hadji Ataeq - Photo B. DOMENECH

At our departure Mussalam brought his grandfather, the old Sheikh, to take leave of us in the house which Sabbah had found for us. I stammered, ashamed of my ignorance of how to treat him with honour.

Fawzi, the immensely kind Palestinian, came to collect us. We were going to finish our stay in Jordan with him. Before taking the plane, he had invited us to a fabulous fish barbecue, on the shores of the Red Sea.

I often think of the pink bay-trees of Sabbah's house, and of his ironic jokes when he is happily, leading a trek in his desert, of Mussalam's cordial and proud friendship, of the feline-like elegance of the Bedouin dashing past on their mountains, of the extravagant shapes of those crazy towers where we are always imagining dream climbs.

I have often been there, I will go back there again. A part of my passion for climbing and of my vision of a better world remain over there, I shall have to find them once more.

Claude Gardien

Guide, journalist and editor of the magazine "Vertical" (France).