Stay in a desert a few months, deprive yourself of alcohol, food (if its during Ramadan), short-sleeved shirts and even water and electricity (on occasion)… and you’re bound to get a little loopy. My loopyness manifested itself in two ways:
1. I became obsessed with learning new words in English (parsimonious, pecuniary, prevaricate) and 2. I became devoted to a game called backgammon.
Board games come and go. Usually, I play a game for a while then forget it forever. Backgammon is special. Backgammon isn’t addictive. It’s a way to break past the “I’m a woman and you’re a man and I’m not covering my hair” phenomenon. It’s a way to talk without actually using words (a big plus as my Arabic blows). It’s an outlet for passing hours and hours, half-fried, wobbly-minded under a desert sun.
I started playing Backgammon (or Tavla as its also called) in Turkey. There, I smoked a lot of argileh, sipped tea by the barrel and rolled the dice as a form of amusement. What was then a habit became the equivalent of TV, magazines, radio, internet and newspapers when I showed up in Wadi Rum, a desert in Jordan that lacks all of the above.
I taught Tavla to my little neighbors. I taught Tavla to my students, my friends, my colleagues. I would have taught camels how to play if I thought they showed interest (“one snort for roll, two for move, spit on me if you want to move these chips”).
Recently, my friend Adam taught me how to bet on Backgammon. At first, his idea seemed harmless (“start at 2 cents, the number goes up exponentially every time you role doubles”). “Exponentially” sounds like an innocent word. In fact, 2 to the power of 15 is A WHAD of money; especially if you’re counting in Jordanian Dinars, not American dollars.
Now that I’m 40 dinars in the hole, my love for Tavla has waned. Exponentially.
xo
Shannon
