"Hello!" Mohammed said. "Hello," I responded. "HELLO!" Mohammed exclaimed. "Hello," I grinned. "Hello." Thoughtfully now.

I waited. There was no more. Having thoroughly exhausted his English vocabulary, the 6-year-old dissolved into giggles and resumed wrestling his older brother on the floor of the beautiful cave.

Watching sheep in front of Mohammed's cave

I met Mohammed on my way back down Wadi Farasa. As enjoyable as the hike had been, the best part of the day was happening right now. As I made out the Royal Tombs in the distance, realizing my hike had brought me back to central Petra, I came across adorable young Mohammed playing at sheep-tending. While he fearlessly grinned at me, his sister, the real sheepherder, approached.

Mohammed's sister was the English expert in the family. She spoke in rough staccato bursts, with equal emphasis on all words. For a 10-year-old literally living in a cave, her foreign-language skills were pretty spectacular.

"DRINK SHAI?!" she demanded.
"Um, OK."
"YOU COME NOW. DRINK SHAI. SIT!" Smiling, gesturing, yelling.

I sat on a rock in their cave swirling with trippy bands of red and white while Mohammed stared at me, ever smiling, occasionally throwing a soft "hello" my way. His sister ran around gathering twigs to make a fire.

"Where is your mother?" I asked, mystified by the girl's domestic drive.
"MOTHER THERE." Pointing. "MOTHER." Pause. "SISTER."
"Where...?" I saw nothing but the rugged landscape of Petra.
"MOTHER COME NOW."

Mohammed

I took her word for it, and soon enough, "MOTHER COME ON TAXI." With a second little boy, apparently this was "SISTER." "Taxi," of course, was the sweet donkey they rode in on. Just another normal day for mom, she smiled graciously at the appearance of a random foreigner in the cave; said hello; pulled tea, teapot, and cups out of the donkey's saddle; and began making the fire.

Mohammed's brother was shy but just as smiley as Mohammed. With the mother tending the fire, the children were free to pick through their boxes of Petra chunks (which they attempted to sell for 1JD each in town) and offer me gifts. ("GIFT. YOU TAKE.") I really didn't need seven more striped blocks of sandstone, but one was not sufficient for the children, so I accepted them all.

Preparing to pose for me

Loving the attention!

As I drank the sugar-laden tea, taking note of the mother's missing teeth, another couple of tourists walked past from Wadi Farasa.

"COME! DRINK SHAI!" the girl bellowed.

The tourists smiled but did not come near.

"BAD PEOPLE," she boomed knowingly. "ONLY BAD PEOPLE NO DRINK SHAI."

The mother fed me with a soft crepe-like bread while my teacup was constantly refilled. Mohammed and brother played with each other and their dog, but were very easily distracted by my presence. They would stop whatever they were doing to giggle at me. They posed happily for photos even, though I had no digital results to share.

Everything I did made the children laugh. I was cajoled into riding the "taxi." I realize a donkey is only half the size of a horse, but it's the motion that scares me more than the height, the rise and fall of the hipbones that convince me I'm about to tilt off to my doom. Also, the land around the cave was very slanted. I don't know if this justifies the screams I emitted while small children led me around on the donkey. I did notice with some embarrassment that tiny Mohammed had no qualms about jumping up and going for rides, though.

The afternoon couldn't last forever, of course. I was booted out abruptly when the girl told me:

"NANCY! YOU GO NOW. WE GET SHEEP."

It was entirely possible they wanted me to go pick up the sheep with them, or she meant, "We go now," but either way, I gathered my rocks, thanked the family profusely, and walked out of Bedouin life and back into the tourist heart of Petra.

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