Fifth Journey Day 103: Shout That Did Not Return

Date: August 19, 2025
Location: Aqaba, Jordan

I arrived in Aqaba this morning, and the change from Petra's stone silence to the sea's edge was immediate and surprising. I felt the air, thick with heat, yet softened by the faint smell of the Red Sea. It felt different from the dry air of the desert; it was lighter and more refreshing.

I walked along the shoreline for a few hours. The light was harsh, almost blinding, but the water caught it in small, fractured ways—blue giving way to silver, silver slipping back to blue. Pebbles scattered the sand, which was sharp underfoot. I found myself tracing the lines where water left thin, white threads of salt. Each step made me go slower, but not because I was tired. It was because the scene was so interesting that I wanted to look at it closely.

There were fishermen mending their nets on the pier. They moved with quiet certainty. A boy ran along the shallow edge of the lake, his shouts absorbed by the open air before they could echo back. I watched the patterns the waves made on the stone, thinking of brushstrokes. I thought about how movement and pause exist together in the same line.

The heat was so strong that it made me stop moving. I sat on a low rock, letting the sun and the sea communicate with each other without me. The body felt heavy, but the mind felt light. For the first time in days, I stopped thinking about the past and the future. Only the sound of water against stone seemed important.

When I returned, the salt had left small traces on my clothes, and my notebook contained a few small sketches of rope and the shape of a wave, but they weren't complete. Today, it wasn't about making something new. It was about remembering how to stand at the edge and listen.