JO Magazine

Jordan's government is hoping to expand the country's appeal in 'niche' tourism sectors. But maybe some niches are best left unexplored.

Words by Hamza Jilani.

THE GROWTH OF TOURISM is expected to provide opportunities and jobs for Jordan's young people. But for some, particularly the Bedouin of the south, the opportunities it's providing are not quite the ones anticipated.

"I've been in the tourism industry since I was 18," says Khalil Halalat, 29, a Bedouin who works as a tour guide in Petra and Wadi Rum. "I lost my virginity on my first trip, to a girl from Belgium. It happens a lot here: women from outside come to Jordan to pick up guys."

Since that first trip it hasn't stopped, he says. "Just last week a woman from Belgium openly told me that she wanted the ‘Bedouin experience'-while stroking my leg. She followed me later, while I was getting into my sleeping bag, and told me she couldn't sleep."

In the heavily touristed areas of Jordan's golden triangle-Aqaba, Petra and Wadi Rum-female sex tourism seems to be flourishing, both as a "lifestyle" and as a business. And while the young Jordanian men involved may not exactly be innocent victims, many say getting involved with sex tourists has challenged their social role and even their traditional identity.

MANY YOUNG MEN WORKING in the tourism industry tell similar stories of being approached frequently by female travelers of all ages and either seduced or simply solicited for sex.

It's an offer that can be hard to ignore, Khalil says. "Before that, for me and every other Jordanian, we knew that we could only have sex after getting married. ... Most guys here can't dream of sex before marriage, but tourism allows them to do anything-and no one will ever know about it."

"Some of them will do it with anyone and some do it for business," he adds. "I know guys who have relations with an average of 30 different tourists in a three-month season."

Mostafa Al Saleh is a 23-year-old Jordanian who was raised in North Carolina and now works at a hotel in one of Aqaba's luxurious residential developments.

"Women come up to me and the staff all the time. They aren't that good looking, and they come off as really desperate-you can tell they don't get that much action in their lives back home," he says. "They come here and just go wild."

Some of what these young men describe is simple prostitution.

"The rich old ladies are the worst," Mostafa says. "They offer a hundred euros as if it's nothing. A lot of us try to say no, but you know, everybody has his price. ... They'll also offer the high life to guys during their stay, giving them access to their rooms [in expensive hotels] and buying them fancy meals."

But other stories suggest some more subtle relationships as well.

Zaid, another tour guide who asked that his real name be withheld, says he often encounters younger women for whom sex seems to be just part of the vacation plan.

"They get guys to fall in love with them and in turn get free trips, Bedouin sex and room and board," he says. "If they break up, they won't leave Jordan unless they have another guy fixed to come back to."

He says he doesn't always like the attention, but feels he has no choice.

"Girls come here trying to forge relationships with us," he adds. "If we show them a good time and cater to them, they come back every season and bring more friends with them." Sex tourism, in other words, has become the staple of Zaid's business. "I have four girlfriends living abroad in different countries right now," he says. "I know it's wrong, but I can't do anything about it, really. This is how I feed my family; this is how I take care of my parents. There aren't any other options out there for me."

And then there are times when the tourism industry just offers a space for "naughty" behavior.

"Take last week, for instance," Mostafa says. "This 29-year-old Canadian girl kept calling me up to her room. It was either room service or complaints or questions. She had me going back up there for a couple of hours. When I told her I was getting off work she asked me to come up for a drink. It didn't take more than an hour."

Even if some of these stories contain elements of exaggeration or braggadocio, it's clear that sex tourism is common enough to have become an everyday topic of discussion and speculation in Jordan's tourist towns.

SO WHAT IS IT that Western women find so attractive about Jordanian men?

Scholars who study sex tourism say the lure of the exotic may be a refuge from "modernity," which comes with its own set of restrictive gender roles. Jessica Jacobs, a former manager at the Council for British Research on the Levant, in Amman, has written extensively on the subject. In the book Travels in Paradox: Remapping Tourism, she writes about sex tourism in Egypt:

"The representation of the Sinai as premodern ... was reinforced for many women by a perception of Egyptian and Bedouin men as ‘real' men, conforming to traditional stereotypes of masculinity. It was explained to me by several women I interviewed that, because their men were ultra ‘masculine,' this made them feel like real women. Consequently, this allowed the women to perform a version of femininity in response, something they felt they could not do in Europe."

Through the local man's presumed connection to "nature" and "religion," Jacobs writes, women can "connect to a time gone by, a time and place no longer found in ‘modern' Europe."

Jennifer, 40, would be offended at being described as a sex tourist-but she says she can relate to foreign women's interest in the Bedouin and their lifestyle. Coming from California, she worked at a camp in Wadi Rum for three months in the summer of 2008, during which time, she says, she fell in love with a 24-year-old driver. She explains that there are certain traits the desert people have that Western men don't.

"They know what they want and don't feel shy about it," she says. "If they want to ask you out over a kettle of tea, they will. They won't say, ‘I don't know, what do you want to do?' The people down there are very courteous and sweet, not grabby and desperate. It's almost like dating back in the 1950s."

And while working at the camp, she says, she found a sort of peace-a refuge from the need to constantly plan and organize her life. "There's no need-you just live in the moment. It's almost like what people achieve through meditation. Being in the desert does that to you."

Cassie, 22, is an American woman who recently visited Wadi Rum. She says that the "Bedouin Male" is advertised in the States through cheap romance novels, the kind you buy in the checkout line at the grocery store. Titles like Mistress of the Sheikh and The Sheikh's Revenge may be laughable in their overzealous depictions of the smoldering desert warrior, but they "melt women's hearts with the raw masculinity that their heroes are portrayed as having."

"When I was camping in Wadi Rum, there was a dude there I had the hots for instantly," Cassie adds. "He worked at the camp and wore the costume and I was so turned on. ... He was in a beige dishdash with a belt and a sword and a hatta. ... He seemed like an authentic desert Arab of the books; the type that's manly and strong, takes care of his woman, and knows how to do stuff.

"Then the next morning at breakfast he was wearing regular clothes, no hatta, and all the magic disappeared!"

And for others, of course, sex tourism can be a refuge for those who do not feel sufficiently desired in their own cultures-for example, older women who, in the West, are often expected to have outgrown having sexual desires.

SEX TOURISM GOES ON in countries all over the world. There are even websites devoted to offering travel advice to the aspiring sex tourist. Often, it seems to be gender divided according to geographic areas. In news reports, Southeast Asia is said to be the most popular destination for male sex tourists-particularly places like Cambodia, where child prostitution is common. However, Latin America is catching on as well, and wealthy Gulf Arabs will trawl the poorer Arab countries or the Indian subcontinent for child brides. Female sex tourists, on the other hand, often come to the Middle East, according to Jacobs' research. Recent news stories have also highlighted female sex tourism in the Caribbean and in African countries like Kenya and Ghana.

But while male sex tourism is usually seen as exploitative, often criminal, female sex tourism is looked on more kindly. "It's not evil," the chairman of Kenya's tourist board told Australian newspaper The Age, "But it's certainly something we frown upon."

In 2006, The New York Times gave rave reviews to the film Heading South, about a group of middle-aged women who go to Haiti in the 1980s looking for sex. Film critic Stephen Holden called it "one of the most truthful examinations ever filmed of desire, age and youth," while style section writer Elizabeth Hayt explored how it touched a chord with many American women "of a certain age" who felt they had been forced into early sexual retirement.

But setting aside this relatively idyllic interpretation, Jordanians close to the industry say sex tourism in its various forms can also cause serious problems for the men who become the objects of so much affection.

Bedouin tribal elders, Khalil points out, know that sex tourism happens and are firmly against it-but they don't know who is engaging in the practice. And even if they did, he adds, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it: "This is how tourism is being sustained here."

Social censure is another problem.

"A lot of people will claim that we have diseases because of our practices," Zaid says. "We don't, though. We do get tested, without letting people know, and they still make all these accusations. They talk and talk and talk, but when we challenge them to show us people who are sick or to give us a name, they shut up."

More than that, though, it can play havoc on men's emotional lives and their ability to relate to women.

"It didn't take long for me to fall head-over-heels for a girl who was working at the Dutch embassy, who I met when I first started working in tourism," Khalil says, angrily. "I gave her everything, only to find her cheating on me with one of her colleagues. My confidence remained shattered for quite a while."

Cab driver Ali Yasser has a tale that illuminates the borderlines between sex tourism and love, between exploitation and cultural misunderstanding.

The 32-year-old from Zarqa used to work at an embassy he until fell in love with a French-Canadian diplomat. They got married; he bought her an apartment; she started wearing the hijab and Ali says he thought it was forever.

“She would tell me she loved that I was Palestinian and that I was a fighter,” he says mournfully. “I treated her like a queen.”

But his wife, Ali says, had previously been married to a Moroccan man, had a child by him, and then left him—after she “got what she wanted,” and toured all of North Africa on his account.

It wasn’t long after the wedding before Ali’s marriage was also in trouble.

“She started lying about her relationship status with other men and when I questioned her about it, she just bailed,” he says. “I put a travel ban on her passport to keep her from doing this to me, as she did with her previous husband.”

But it didn’t work—his wife made plans with another foreign woman, who smuggled her out of the house in a borrowed car and took her to her country’s embassy, Ali says. The embassy, he continues, helped her leave the country—possibly believing she was being abused or imprisoned by her husband. Embassies do not comment on such cases and Ali’s wife did not answer calls trying to get her side of the story.

Ali says he never tried to control her, he just wanted her to be faithful to him and put him first.

“This isn’t a game,” he says. “When a man gets divorced in this culture, his community laughs at him. What face do I have now? I’m not a catch anymore.”

For some of the young men who get involved with sex tourists, the possibility of liaisons with foreigners offers them a chance for a taste of the “MTV life,” as they call it. But others, like Ali, come away hurt, angry and scarred from trying to juggle their notions of tradition and honor with the desires of sexually and emotionally hungry Western women.