Sweet Water
There’s a killing sun high in the sky. The wadi is a chasm, a dry river valley, cracking straight through millions of years of rocks and history, separating the two sides into distorted mirrors of each other. It’s been eight hours since the crash and the mercury is still climbing. Wadi Ram is open and baking, a crooked sandy grin. He’s here somewhere.
In the past eight hours I’ve suffered a million tiny anxiety attacks, striking like summer tantrums of rain, passing quickly, soaking the ground I walk on. It feels like rushes of caffeine in my head and heart, shocks of adrenaline and poison. I move to shake them off, walk, run, push them through the lactic acid in my legs. There’s no one else out here to find him, and it occurs to me as I nearly lose my footing in a sandy snag, that there’s no one out here to find me.
I took a photojournalism assignment that brought me to Jordan, and what was supposed to be a month-long tour yawned and stretched into 24 months and counting. I live here now, I think, even though I haven’t said it out loud yet. My brother came along because he’s the one with derring-do, not me, not the one hiding in darkrooms with developer. He came along because the Army does things to people, at least that’s what I’ve heard, and besides I needed a way to get from place to place. He came along because home isn’t home without Mom and Dad.
There’s a saying here, scarcely sentiment enough to call it a proverb: the desert makes us rude. It rubs and chafes, it pushes and pulls and wears you down, turns the skin of your face into a cracked heel to walk on. The desert forces you to engage in grim logic. It’s 115 degrees now. To survive out here in this heat you’d want at least four liters of water to make up for what you lose in perspiration and respiration. How many hours does that give someone? How many hours does that give Alan?
To minimize my sun exposure, I slide through the broken apart cliff faces, eaten away by a legacy of wet salt. Water is not just generative. It eats away, it carves even the hardest stone. If I were made of stone, I’d have two river valleys running parallel down my face. No one would want to drink from it and I can’t imagine any life would spring forth. It’s not what they call sweet water.
Mom and Dad’s funeral was the last time I’d seen Alan cry. We sat on the back stoop after the service, numbly drinking beer and pulling out handfuls of grass. He cried then, all broad stooped shoulders and big wet tears. He told me that he remembered every person he’d killed on tour. Told me because he couldn’t tell them. Told me because he’s the strong one.
Below my heart I feel the pace of my legs accelerate. I keep anthropomorphizing the rocks, seeing features, eyes and cheeks and mouths in the cliffs. It’s left over from when I was a child. It’s an adaptation for survival. Babies look for faces everywhere, which is why so many children jam their fingers into the open mouths of North American electrical outlets. We are made unsafe in our desire to find humanity everywhere. Ambling through the canyon, I see people living in the two opposing cliffs, their jagged sandstone faces echoing one another imprecisely. They had been forced slowly apart by a current of water. Now they are learning to be unlike one another, so tourists can hike through and take photos and leave garbage. I wonder what these cliff faces thought when the first crack appeared on the tops of their heads. I don’t have to wonder what it is like to be split in half.
I will never be alive long enough to understand my brother. Three years younger than me but always so much further ahead. Popular at school, towering over me the second he reached puberty. And making Mom and Dad so proud by enlisting for combat while I went to school and put photos in matte frames. I don’t know why someone would get up in the middle of the night to fly over the desert alone. I don’t know why someone would leave the flare gun, the geolocator, the stupid fucking map, among my tripods and reflectors. And for the life of me I don’t know why he would call me on the last few minutes of his battery life at five in the morning to tell me he had crashed on purpose in Wadi Ram and could I please come find him.
The deceptive nature of this heat is that you don’t ever know how much you’re sweating.
Despite my thick dry tongue and miserable accent, I managed to croak out to Jordanian authorities that there’s an American man who crashed his helicopter somewhere out in the valley of Wadi Ram. They said they’d send someone shortly, before sunrise. But it’s past 1pm and it’s just me out here. Even the scorpions are hiding under rocks to stay cool.
In my bag I have instruments of civilization, a compass, my satellite phone, half a canteen of water. Every few minutes I pause to hold one of these in my shaking fingers. Why does someone crash on purpose? All of the crash landings I’ve ever made were entirely by accident. When Diana left, when Mom and Dad died, each new trauma eroding new holes in my foundation. My body does not metabolize the salt of panic. Why does someone crash on purpose? I want to dig inside him, open his head and poke around in his brain. I want to shine a flashlight in his dark places. I want to strike the stone until water pours out, something I can drink, something I can use. Why does someone crash on purpose? Why did Alan force me to come in here after him?
I dial his number one more time, getting the same straight to voicemail response, “Hey, um, or Salaam Alaikum. It’s Alan. You know what to do.” Except I don’t, and I leave a full 90 seconds of silence on his machine until my hand goes to hang up. Nothing I have with me helps. I hold on tight to my phone and wind up and throw it as far afield as I can. I hear it strike rock in the distance. I put my compass on the ground and step on it, once, twice, until something inside of it pops and then it’s ruined. I unscrew the canteen and pour it out on the sand. It’s 117 degrees and someone like me would need at least four liters of water to stay alive. The desert makes us rude. The desert strips flesh from bone. I have another few hours before my own crash landing.
Without something in my hands, my fingers stretch out at my sides and play upon the hot air like a harp. The wadi is a collection of sighs, generations of travelers passing through under the watchful gaze of the cliff faces. I don’t even wish I had my camera. I don’t even wish. There is me and sand and rock and soon there will be just sand and rock. So for now I stop and breathe and squint in the hot red light. I respire and perspire.
The canyon has come to a mouth. There’s a second buzzing in my ear, one that’s not the gritty wind. It’s the sound of burbling, water maybe, or the murmur of voices underground. Right now there hardly seems a difference. The desert makes us hallucinate. I run towards the sound.
Between two stubborn boulders there’s something coursing between. Sweet water. Gasping, I heave aside rocks and shove my hands in. It’s cold, strange and alive and cold. I toss handfuls of it down my throat, replenish it with my own salt tears. I throw some on my face and soak my shirt in it and look up. Glinting in the distance is the twisted cubist wreckage of Alan’s helicopter, and maybe the twisted cubist wreckage of Alan. I run until that’s not possible, walk until that’s not possible, and then I crawl, childlike and helpless in the shadow of the helicopter. It’s all crumpled in on itself like a spent dinner napkin. It doesn’t look like there was a fire, or even that much of an impact. Just a nasty fall, just gently dropped out of the sky.
“Alan!”
There’s silence, a terrible empty silence. In the distance I hear the coursing of water and in my head I hear the coursing of blood.
I start to rearrange the debris, pulling out jagged corners of metal, bits of sand that have fused into glass.
“Fuckin’, I’m right here.”
Underneath what used to be a door I hear his voice, weak and frayed apart at the edges. I catch sight of his face, banged up and smudged but very much alive. With my two hands I wedge up one corner of the door and offer him my arm so he can pull himself out. He heaves his body out of the sand. His mouth opens to form words but before he can speak I’ve pulled off my shirt and twisted it, wringing out water into his mouth. It’s I don’t know how hot outside and you need I don’t know how much water to stay alive. Alan drinks and sputters, then nods a few times to himself.
“I’m sorry, dude. This shit is killing me.”
It’s my turn to open my mouth with nothing to say. The space between our faces is the wadi, and we are a reflection that doesn’t line up anymore, because of the interference of water, tears, oceans. We are two faces of sandstone, too soft and porous to maintain our structure. In the shadow of the wreckage in the dry river valley in the desert in Jordan, we fall apart. As if there had been a seismic tremor, we rush towards each other and the rocks fall into the valley and the chasm is filled in, imperfectly, when we embrace again for the first time.
In the past eight hours I’ve suffered a million tiny anxiety attacks, striking like summer tantrums of rain, passing quickly, soaking the ground I walk on. It feels like rushes of caffeine in my head and heart, shocks of adrenaline and poison. I move to shake them off, walk, run, push them through the lactic acid in my legs. There’s no one else out here to find him, and it occurs to me as I nearly lose my footing in a sandy snag, that there’s no one out here to find me.
I took a photojournalism assignment that brought me to Jordan, and what was supposed to be a month-long tour yawned and stretched into 24 months and counting. I live here now, I think, even though I haven’t said it out loud yet. My brother came along because he’s the one with derring-do, not me, not the one hiding in darkrooms with developer. He came along because the Army does things to people, at least that’s what I’ve heard, and besides I needed a way to get from place to place. He came along because home isn’t home without Mom and Dad.
There’s a saying here, scarcely sentiment enough to call it a proverb: the desert makes us rude. It rubs and chafes, it pushes and pulls and wears you down, turns the skin of your face into a cracked heel to walk on. The desert forces you to engage in grim logic. It’s 115 degrees now. To survive out here in this heat you’d want at least four liters of water to make up for what you lose in perspiration and respiration. How many hours does that give someone? How many hours does that give Alan?
To minimize my sun exposure, I slide through the broken apart cliff faces, eaten away by a legacy of wet salt. Water is not just generative. It eats away, it carves even the hardest stone. If I were made of stone, I’d have two river valleys running parallel down my face. No one would want to drink from it and I can’t imagine any life would spring forth. It’s not what they call sweet water.
Mom and Dad’s funeral was the last time I’d seen Alan cry. We sat on the back stoop after the service, numbly drinking beer and pulling out handfuls of grass. He cried then, all broad stooped shoulders and big wet tears. He told me that he remembered every person he’d killed on tour. Told me because he couldn’t tell them. Told me because he’s the strong one.
Below my heart I feel the pace of my legs accelerate. I keep anthropomorphizing the rocks, seeing features, eyes and cheeks and mouths in the cliffs. It’s left over from when I was a child. It’s an adaptation for survival. Babies look for faces everywhere, which is why so many children jam their fingers into the open mouths of North American electrical outlets. We are made unsafe in our desire to find humanity everywhere. Ambling through the canyon, I see people living in the two opposing cliffs, their jagged sandstone faces echoing one another imprecisely. They had been forced slowly apart by a current of water. Now they are learning to be unlike one another, so tourists can hike through and take photos and leave garbage. I wonder what these cliff faces thought when the first crack appeared on the tops of their heads. I don’t have to wonder what it is like to be split in half.
I will never be alive long enough to understand my brother. Three years younger than me but always so much further ahead. Popular at school, towering over me the second he reached puberty. And making Mom and Dad so proud by enlisting for combat while I went to school and put photos in matte frames. I don’t know why someone would get up in the middle of the night to fly over the desert alone. I don’t know why someone would leave the flare gun, the geolocator, the stupid fucking map, among my tripods and reflectors. And for the life of me I don’t know why he would call me on the last few minutes of his battery life at five in the morning to tell me he had crashed on purpose in Wadi Ram and could I please come find him.
The deceptive nature of this heat is that you don’t ever know how much you’re sweating.
Despite my thick dry tongue and miserable accent, I managed to croak out to Jordanian authorities that there’s an American man who crashed his helicopter somewhere out in the valley of Wadi Ram. They said they’d send someone shortly, before sunrise. But it’s past 1pm and it’s just me out here. Even the scorpions are hiding under rocks to stay cool.
In my bag I have instruments of civilization, a compass, my satellite phone, half a canteen of water. Every few minutes I pause to hold one of these in my shaking fingers. Why does someone crash on purpose? All of the crash landings I’ve ever made were entirely by accident. When Diana left, when Mom and Dad died, each new trauma eroding new holes in my foundation. My body does not metabolize the salt of panic. Why does someone crash on purpose? I want to dig inside him, open his head and poke around in his brain. I want to shine a flashlight in his dark places. I want to strike the stone until water pours out, something I can drink, something I can use. Why does someone crash on purpose? Why did Alan force me to come in here after him?
I dial his number one more time, getting the same straight to voicemail response, “Hey, um, or Salaam Alaikum. It’s Alan. You know what to do.” Except I don’t, and I leave a full 90 seconds of silence on his machine until my hand goes to hang up. Nothing I have with me helps. I hold on tight to my phone and wind up and throw it as far afield as I can. I hear it strike rock in the distance. I put my compass on the ground and step on it, once, twice, until something inside of it pops and then it’s ruined. I unscrew the canteen and pour it out on the sand. It’s 117 degrees and someone like me would need at least four liters of water to stay alive. The desert makes us rude. The desert strips flesh from bone. I have another few hours before my own crash landing.
Without something in my hands, my fingers stretch out at my sides and play upon the hot air like a harp. The wadi is a collection of sighs, generations of travelers passing through under the watchful gaze of the cliff faces. I don’t even wish I had my camera. I don’t even wish. There is me and sand and rock and soon there will be just sand and rock. So for now I stop and breathe and squint in the hot red light. I respire and perspire.
The canyon has come to a mouth. There’s a second buzzing in my ear, one that’s not the gritty wind. It’s the sound of burbling, water maybe, or the murmur of voices underground. Right now there hardly seems a difference. The desert makes us hallucinate. I run towards the sound.
Between two stubborn boulders there’s something coursing between. Sweet water. Gasping, I heave aside rocks and shove my hands in. It’s cold, strange and alive and cold. I toss handfuls of it down my throat, replenish it with my own salt tears. I throw some on my face and soak my shirt in it and look up. Glinting in the distance is the twisted cubist wreckage of Alan’s helicopter, and maybe the twisted cubist wreckage of Alan. I run until that’s not possible, walk until that’s not possible, and then I crawl, childlike and helpless in the shadow of the helicopter. It’s all crumpled in on itself like a spent dinner napkin. It doesn’t look like there was a fire, or even that much of an impact. Just a nasty fall, just gently dropped out of the sky.
“Alan!”
There’s silence, a terrible empty silence. In the distance I hear the coursing of water and in my head I hear the coursing of blood.
I start to rearrange the debris, pulling out jagged corners of metal, bits of sand that have fused into glass.
“Fuckin’, I’m right here.”
Underneath what used to be a door I hear his voice, weak and frayed apart at the edges. I catch sight of his face, banged up and smudged but very much alive. With my two hands I wedge up one corner of the door and offer him my arm so he can pull himself out. He heaves his body out of the sand. His mouth opens to form words but before he can speak I’ve pulled off my shirt and twisted it, wringing out water into his mouth. It’s I don’t know how hot outside and you need I don’t know how much water to stay alive. Alan drinks and sputters, then nods a few times to himself.
“I’m sorry, dude. This shit is killing me.”
It’s my turn to open my mouth with nothing to say. The space between our faces is the wadi, and we are a reflection that doesn’t line up anymore, because of the interference of water, tears, oceans. We are two faces of sandstone, too soft and porous to maintain our structure. In the shadow of the wreckage in the dry river valley in the desert in Jordan, we fall apart. As if there had been a seismic tremor, we rush towards each other and the rocks fall into the valley and the chasm is filled in, imperfectly, when we embrace again for the first time.