The ambassador of Belgium, which has lodged us for a small week in its residence in Amman, returned to lowland for the holidays. Its departure rings the knell for us, of the last days in the Jordanian capital. We thus leave Amman Friday August 29, 2 days after my short incursion in France for the marriage of my older friend of which I was the witness.
The road that we borrow to go always more to the South to Aqaba, makes us pass by places as symbolic systems for us Chrétiens as the Dead Sea and the fortress of Kérak, but also, for the pleasure of the eyes, on sites like Petra and Wadi Rum.
However, our wife with the rafters starts to show the blow of these kilometers with repetitions, 10 000 kilometers already from Paris. It is besides in brass band that we will pass the bar so much awaited of the 99 999 kilometers and the 00 000 kilometers. We do not believe of them our eyes, it is here in Jordan whereas for much it was not to cross the Bosphorus. Honest Adrienne!... It which works so hard, twice as much as one car 4 cylinders. Also, to open the cap, to incline towards the engine the serious air, to move two three hose connections and to make mine be an expert are not any more of the sufficient gestures to relieve its sufferings.
After a short pause on the edges of the Dead Sea, where we benefit innocently from the joys of weightlessness, Adrienne falls in roads. The engine categorically refuses to take, in the car it is a drying oven, outside a baker's oven; we sweat like oxen. Roof of happiness, the battery returns the heart at the end of 20 minutes.
"Aces salâm ' alaîkum, Welcome to Jordania"... nous shout of Arabic, happy to provide to finally come to help us. For better examining all our actions, they are organized in circle around us raising of only one blow the temperature of 2 additional degrees. We claquons teeth so much it makes hot and suffocating.
One of them absolutely makes a point of rendering comprehensible to us by gestures and an imitation of English, that the 2 CV do not have a secrecy for him... We are dubitative. The deuch is so rare with the Middle-East!
Not to offend it, but especially, by curiosity, we let it make. After will all can be have an artful thrust? Also will succeed where can be we failed?
Full with good intentions, it is put at the work, tripotant Adrienne without much decency for its great age. It will however quickly be necessary for us to put a term at its frolicking with our car before the irrevocable one is not made and to go to the obviousness, that our new friends do not know anything with mechanics and even less to the 2 CV.
It only at the end of 45mn, assisted by this college of curious is not piled up around us, that we will come to end from electric deficiencies from our car. Arrived at Kérak, we are obnubilated by only one thing, to find a mechanic sympathetic in measurement to help us and on which we can count. It is very right if seat of our car, we pay attention to the powerful cross fortress which is drawn up there in front of us in overhang of the city.
Higher, in the sky, a star takes care on us, because with the foot of the ramparts of the city, a Armenian mechanic agrees without sourciller to give us a blow of hand. He instinctively puts the ear in the engine then rectifies himself while indicating without hesitating the guilty reel of all our misfortunes. We had taken care to take of them one with us in our spare parts. We are saved and can continue without fear our search of the faces of water. The offusque mechanic when at the time to leave we want to pay it: "You know I like France" says us it in his more beautiful Franglais "and my brother-in-law lives in Marseilles. I will thus agree never to make pay a service rendered to French "
The kindness of this Christian mechanic, comforts us not to have been able to visit the cross citadel where sat formerly the famous Renaud de Châtillon then Saladin.

At Aqaba extenués, dehydrated, the forces we arrive missing us. Inevitably, on the road, Adrienne still did us miseries. Not average to differently start it than by pushing it... the battery does not take care any more. But, so much worse, this time the priority is not any more to occupy themselves of it, since it can still roll, but to go to buy the tickets for the boat which must take us along on banks of the Sinai in Nuweiba to Egypt.
On paper, the departure is envisaged with 16h30, we will leave in the facts to 21h30, with dimensions of a crowd of pilgrims to shaven craniums and the black task on the face. They are Moslems of return of Mecque. Intrigued by this black task, we take language with one of them to know some a little bit more about the question. We learn that it is a perpetual hématome with the successive pressures that they exert on the ground at the time of the prayer. The devotion of a Moslem, says us one, is recognized with this mark of piety.

Other places, other people, other manners, but always the same problems of motor which poison us the life. It by pushing Adrienne like is dératés, under the amused glance of the passengers, that we make it return in the ferry. In order to make up our ridiculous as well as possible, we launch large smile to everyone, the air of saying "do not make any you has the things in hand". But in the content we pestons to be private to make an entry triumphing at the wheel over our car.
On the boat, a German couple manages to comfort us. They are filled with wonder with the account at our epopee and propose to us to tractor draw Adrienne with their 4x4 with our arrival with Nuweiba, which we accept without balking.
During the crossing, I poster in observation on one of the gangways of the higher bridge in order to will have fuller knowledge with these strange people who surround us. Loïc, as for him, benefits from it to prick a snooze in the air-conditioned cafeteria of the first class.
There high, the spectacle is worth the turning. I realize with amazement which the boat is stuffed to crack. There are people everywhere, upright, squatted with Turkish, laid down or softened. Not a space of free is not left with the abandonment. The ones sleep vautrés on the benches containing the "life-jackets"... the others pile up and sleep that and there with the feet of rambardes of protection. Rare are besides the women who have the privilege to be able to sleep lengthened on a bench. Most of the time they fall asleep accurately with the feet of the bench on which their husbands whirr. Strange thing aucuns without exceptions does not take the trouble to throw their egg refuses and other tomato cores, with the dustbin or the sea. They let them floor rot with their feet and fall asleep above. Result hello odors of the refuse in decomposition...

On this same bridge, always amazed by what surrounds me, of Palestinian, truck-drivers of their state, invite me on their straw mattress to share the traditional ritual of the tea and to roast in their company dry of a completely Egyptian mark, "Cléopatra"; infumable of the remainder. Us lions of friendship around this tea. They speak to me about their respective life.
Riad, tell one of them, I that it results from a family of 17 children. A little astonished by the figure, I ask to him whether only one woman is responsible for such a line or several.
"Two only" answers me it with pride.
With the gleam of its accounts, its life seems to me attractive. In 1994, full war of Balkans, it was in Croatia for God knows which reasons... In 1996, here it is in Central Asia then in Daghestan. Stupidly, I did not dare to ask him for the reasons which justified it to also undertake such forwardings far from its home port, Palestine.
After a few minutes of silence, it declares me: "You know among Russian, there are bad people, the Maffia. Made attention with you when you go over there... "
I speak to him in my turn about the problems of Adrienne. The accident in Beirut, the reel with Kérak and maintaining a problem of battery. It outlines me a broad smile and says to me "I know I know we have you all considering pushing the car..." We laugh together at our mishaps. With his comrades, it proposes to put Adrienne on its semitrailer to repair us. The ferry sounds the foghorn to announce our arrival to Nuweiba.

Newspaper of August 21 to September 2, 2003 by Geoffroy

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