The rumours are true! It’s virtually impossible to drown in the Dead Sea. Even with toes pointed and hands raised, a swimmer bobs at about chest-depth in the hypersaline water. With spas, pools, and plenty of mud to make our skin silky-smooth, it was a relaxing end to a fast-paced, whirlwind tour of the country.
But it was a little strange to end our trip by this lake where nothing can live, and at the lowest point on Earth still on dry land.
As we all sat together in the dark paneled bar and looked back on the week, people and places bobbing on the surface of all our minds, some of us wondered what we would say when we got back home. We were offered a fleeting glimpse of so many things, yet so little of the day-to-day realities that punctuate life in this part of the world. Would it be strange not hearing crackling loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer five times a day, and to return to a skyline dotted by a few steeples instead of countless minarets? Would we have a different response to the polarizing rhetoric that dominates discourse about the Middle East? Certainly the issues were no simpler.
But one thing resonated with all of us: beyond the rhetoric and the images of suicide bombers, flaming wreckage and war-torn cities, there are real people living real lives as best they can. Regardless of the circumstances, the politics, the religious divisions—beyond all the ways we keep the issues in the foreground and the people in the background—we share a common humanity.
