Desert Experience: (left to right, all taken in Wadi Rum Desert, Jordan) Camel ride, hospitality tea, tourist camp site, tourist tent, interior of tourist tent.
sha’ar (house or house of hair), the Bedouin tent consists of poles, guy ropes, and a roof and walls made of strips of goat hair. It is easy to erect, dismantle, roll up and load onto a camel. It expands and becomes waterproof when wet, and is warm when a fire is lit inside. 6 The tent remains as an ideal representation of the former Bedouin way of life and can be found in many tourist camps, souvenir markets, festival grounds, anthropology museums and lobbies of five-star hotels. It provokes romantic nostalgia towards the old way of nomadic life, and signifies a reconstructed authenticity of the Bedouin culture that matches common stereotypes. A newly erected Bedouin tent no longer houses a desert family, but instead, it offers a physical shelter that accommodates a kitsch Bedouin experience for tourists that includes a brief camel ride, a couple of cups of mint tea, a mutton dinner, the desert sunset and a star gazing night.
Many pastoralists in Syria switched to commercial ranching after the droughts. Instead of a return to pastoral migrations, they turned to supplementary fodder and piped water supplies to raise their animals. In Saudi Arabia and Libya, many settled Bedouin became workers in the expanding oil industry. In Jordan and Egypt, the former nomads took advantage of the diversification of regional economies and made a new living from industries such as transport and tourism. A 1998 study in Egypt’s western desert documents four brothers from Awlad ‘Ali: all their 24 sons were settled, ‘four (17%) engaged in farming and herding, four (17%) were merchants, seven (29%) worked in transport, and nine (38%) were employed as professionals… twelve (50%) completed primary school, five (21%) finished secondary school, and seven (29%) university’. 5 Today, most Bedouin live in houses or apartments with televisions and refrigerators. The few Bedouin tents that remain in the deserts are mainly for touristic purposes. Called al-bayt or bayt al-
Primary school near Siwa Oasis, Egypt
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