14: Expanding the Borders of Bedouin Possibilities: Planting Trees and Taking Root

Roots are antithetical to being Bedouin. Roots require entrenchment. Entrenchment begets sedentarism. There is no motion—no migration—when life is confined to the dictates of taking root and tending the land. Herding demands detachment. Nomadism necessitates wandering. The pastoralist is a seeker searching for water and sustenance, searching for a life without borders or restrictions. Those who tend to their flocks are enmeshed in a way of being that is proudly self-sufficient and unwaveringly communal. Or, so they say.

These truisms about Bedouin existence are not fictions yet they are too limiting. Bedouin do not participate in a petrified existence. Bedouin communities do not exist outside of history. No eternal mode of being Bedouin is found in Jordan. People announce that they are Bedouin even as their proximity to livestock and the desert is increasingly distant. These people are still fully Bedouin even as their communal lifestyle changes. Definitions and expressions are always in flux, responding to forces—seen and unseen—and filtered through individual desire and personal will. I learned this lesson in the desert with Qais and Majed. My co-teacher, Mahmoud Abu Saleh, reminded me of it again in spring 2010.