Sweimeh

The northern end of the Dead Sea has been inhabited far longer than the resorts suggest. The plain around Sweimeh sits at the mouth of the Jordan River, in a valley that carried traffic between Jerusalem, the Moabite plateau and the desert, and the area has been identified with several biblical episodes: the village itself is commonly identified with Beth-jeshimoth, and the crossing of the Jordan and the baptism of Jesus are placed a short distance north, at the excavated site known as Bethany beyond the Jordan. Byzantine hermits and pilgrims lived along this shore, leaving churches and cave monasteries behind them.

For most of the Ottoman period the settlement was small: a farming village on the valley floor, dependent on springs and on the irrigated land behind the beach, in a place too hot and too salty to attract many people. After 1948 and again after 1967 the Jordan Valley became a militarised frontier, and the shore was largely closed to ordinary travel for years, with farming disrupted and villages emptied.

The modern resort strip dates from the 1990s, when peace agreements and government investment opened the shore to tourism. Large hotels were built along a short stretch of beach, a spa industry grew around Dead Sea mud and mineral salts, and Sweimeh became the address for conferences and summits, with the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre built beside the hotels. Since then the lake itself has become the story: its level has fallen by more than a metre a year as the Jordan's water is diverted and minerals are extracted, so hotels that once stood on the beach now look down at a shoreline some way below them.

Sweimeh has two overlapping cultures. Inside the hotel gates it is international: staff from across Jordan and beyond, spa treatments, poolside service, buffet dining, conferences and weddings, with swimwear and alcohol taken for granted. Outside, it is a Jordan Valley village, Muslim and conservative, where families farm, work in the hotels and follow the rhythms of prayer, Ramadan and Friday rest like the rest of the country.

The public beaches are where the two meet. On Fridays and holidays Jordanian families arrive from Amman for the day, spreading mats, cooking, smoking shisha and floating in the water fully dressed; the atmosphere is sociable and noisy, and quite different from the quiet of the hotel beaches a few hundred metres away. Mud is applied communally, left to dry to a grey crust and washed off with a great deal of laughing, a ritual that everyone performs regardless of background.

Pilgrimage runs alongside tourism. Groups visiting the baptism site, Mount Nebo and Machaerus often stay on this shore, and coaches of Christian pilgrims are a common sight on a road that also carries potash lorries. The usual Jordanian courtesies apply everywhere: greetings before business, insistent hospitality, the right hand used for eating, and modest dress once away from the beach. Bargaining is not expected in the hotels but is normal with beach vendors selling mud, salt scrubs and souvenirs.

Sweimeh itself is a village of about 5,000 people in the Balqa Governorate, and the resident population is far smaller than the number of visitors on a busy weekend. Most working residents are employed by the hotels, the beaches and the businesses that supply them, or farm the irrigated land behind the shore, where the warmth of the valley brings tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, citrus and bananas to market in winter, months before the plateau.

The working day starts very early and pauses in the afternoon heat, which for much of the year makes outdoor work impossible between late morning and mid-afternoon. Many hotel staff commute from Madaba, Amman or valley towns on shift buses rather than living on the shore. Potash and bromine extraction at the southern end of the lake is the other major regional employer, and heavy lorries use the shore road throughout the day.

The falling level of the lake shapes everything here. Jetties and steps built for bathers have been left high above the water, hotels have extended paths and shuttle buggies down to the new shoreline, and sinkholes have opened around the basin where fresh water dissolves underground salt layers. Water supply is a constant concern in a place with almost no rainfall, and the future of the shore depends on schemes to bring water to the basin that have been discussed for decades without resolution.

Eating at Sweimeh means, for most visitors, eating in a hotel, and the kitchens cook a mixture of Jordanian and international food. The Jordanian half is mezze: hummus, mutabbal of smoked aubergine, tabbouleh and fattoush, labneh with olive oil, stuffed vine leaves, and warm flat bread, followed by mixed grills of lamb kofta and shish taouk, or maqluba, the pot of rice, aubergine and meat turned upside down onto a tray.

Mansaf, the national dish of lamb cooked in jameed — dried fermented sheep's yoghurt — over rice and shrak bread, appears at Friday lunches and celebrations, often as a buffet centrepiece. Musakhan, chicken roasted on bread with onions and sumac, and galayet bandora, tomatoes fried with onion and chilli, are the other familiar dishes. Farmed tilapia from the Jordan Valley is the fish most likely to be served, since the lake's salinity keeps fish out of it altogether.

The valley's own produce is the pleasure of the place: tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs picked nearby, citrus and bananas from the plantations north of the shore, and dates from the palms grown along the valley floor. Roadside stalls sell them by the crate in winter and spring. Tea comes strong with mint or sage and coffee in small cups with cardamom, while the resorts serve arak, the aniseed spirit drunk with water and ice, alongside Jordanian wine and imported drinks — a licensed island on an otherwise dry stretch of coast.