Sunset Iftar cruise

While in Aqaba, A decided to surprise me and took me out for dinner. After travelling for a few days discovering the country, she wanted to pamper us with a kind of all-inclusive like tourist experience – a sunset dinner on the boat with a view to Israel.  She booked a dinner at a spot for tourists in Aqaba and came back to me all proud of herself and looking forward to chilling out a bit in the evening.

But as many things with A, it had to be special and so it wasn’t just dinner.

Not really knowing what to expect we dressed up in our best shabby tourist clothes and tried to find the person who would guide us there. The instructions were rather vague and with time passing by, we actually thought we might miss our boat. Stress started to set in as our contact wasn’t replying and so we took it upon ourselves to try and find the pier.

As we walked towards the water, a military gentleman intercepted us. A was very stressed at that point and we thought that we had stumbled upon some military compound so we just moved on thinking the evening had been lost.

It was then that humanity saved the day again. Some kid just playing in the street asked us if we needed help and literally took us to the pier about 200 meters away without asking for anything in return. That kid literally saved the day!

When we finally go to the pier, it occurred to be a family Iftar dinner on the Red Sea and we happened to be the only tourist aboard! I could tell by the look on A’s face how confused she was. A mix between “How cool!” and “There, I failed at being a tourist. Completely”. Moreover, there were mostly well dressed families sitting around us (did I say we were in our best shabby tourist clothes?). I admit it felt a bit uncomfortable but ultimately we were very curious to see how family Iftar actually looked like for the locals and this was THE perfect way to experience it.

That was of course, until people actually started entering the boat and all the men seemed to stay on the lower deck while all the women seemed to go on the upper deck. I honestly thought we stumbled upon a gender segregated dinner.

We were embarrassed to ask the host but when we did we found out it wasn’t and hopped in.

We really didn’t know what to expect and when we finally took a seat we mostly exchanged embarrassed looks with the rest of the people there. I wish we could have interacted more but everyone seemed to either be with their family or in a relatively tight knit group so we were eventually more observers than anything else.

Yet even in that role we were eventually surprised. These people had been fasting for 15 hours and with the sun coming down we half expected a mutiny in order to start eating and drinking. We were very wrong. 

Men, women and children were all at a strange peace and when night prayers started, people headed towards the food with complete calm and respect for each other.

We were especially surprised given their deprivation of liquids. A struggled very much whenever we went over a couple of hours without water and here we were surrounded by fasters in total tranquility.

The food itself was good and I must admit that I was overly ambitious when assembling my dish which meant I was struggling to finish it. That being said, I knew that we were surrounded by people who fasted all day and leaving food on the plate felt entirely disrespectful so I eventually munched it all down and turned my attention to the views from the boat.

On our right hand side was Aqaba and the brightly illuminated port and city. On the left was Eilat and Israel. On a daily basis we think of this region of the world as a tumultuous one but in that moment in time, those were just two cities looking at each other across the bay.

Throughout dinner something else was also happening. The men came to the upper deck and started praying right then and there in the middle of all the other people eating. It was jarring to us but seemed super normal to everybody else and for the most part we just tried to be respectful. I wonder if below deck the women were doing the same thing…

With dinner out of the way, it was time to celebrate!

Loud music began to blast as people walked around the boat and interacted with each other. This was, of course until all were asked to move to the upper deck to enjoy what we understood was going to be “the show”.

Even more party like music started to play and as all guests sat around, children and a few of the men from the crew started to happily dance while all others simply observed.

It dawned on us that dancing is a very public display of emotion that may not always be well seen and that may be especially true in such a religious time as is Ramadan, it is unbecoming to do so publicly. Thus, people watched while only the crew danced.