© Google – Nov 2014

Nadia tried to hide her tears as she witnessed the scene. “Oh, Abdus. Look at what they’ve done. How could they?”

Only a few of the other tourists in their party viewing the Nabatean Theater at Petra noticed the finely dressed Arab woman burying her face in presumably her husband’s chest. They hadn’t the faintest idea why she was upset and decided to ignore her.

All the others were focused on the gift shop at the far end of the theatre and what their young, enthusiastic guide was saying.

“I know, dearest. Our tombs. All gone. Erased first by the Nabateans and then by the Romans. Now the modern Jordanians make sport of our sacred tombs.”

“I need to leave, Abdus. The sight sickens me.”

“Stay, beloved. We were reincarnated to quicken the souls of the others. Someday, we’ll have an army and we will retake these ancient lands.

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to use the Google maps street view image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 149.

Today, Pegman takes us to The Nabatean Theater at Petra in Jordan. Apparently this was originally the site of many ancient tombs, but according to Viator.com a group of Arab people called the Nabateans, who once inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, created the theater some 2,000 years ago, destroying many of the tombs there. The Romans expanded the theater in the early 2nd century CE destroying even more.

I found myself wondering what the dead in those tombs would think if they could see the place today.