In November 2025, Alessandro Scarano, Ludovica Crescente and I crossed Jordan from north to south along the Desert Highway — the country's easternmost road, a long straight stretch connecting Amman to Aqaba, used mainly by heavy freight and serving as the main artery into Saudi Arabia.

Unknown and perdition

Stopped at a service station, men pushing a van. Blood dripped from the back, falling drop by drop onto the dry earth. A goat had miscarried: viscera coiled around the dead bodies, born without ever having lived. The mother's eyes, filled with a grotesque fear, accepted death as something that has always belonged here.

This road allows passage where man, through the centuries, has stopped. The desert stretches and fades beyond its edges, while the road goes on, straight and in the only possible direction. Dust and sand have smoothed its shape and hidden the horizon. Beyond, there is nothing — only distance, repeating itself, always the same.

The desert has always been, for man, the unknown and perdition — a place to get lost, a place of abandonment and death. Carcasses of dogs and goats rest along the roadside, shelters for flies that watch, motionless, all those who pass through. Lean and dying strays stand guard over the road and the lay-bys where village men gather to sell their coffee, tomatoes or animals to travellers. Along the road, the remnants of existence burn in the sun: worn-out old sofas, car tyres and the skeletons of objects consumed by man cast their shadows on the sand. At night, strange signs of small cafés, bazaars and petrol stations light up in the dark. They are the only sign that someone, somewhere, has chosen to stay.

But there is not only death here — there is also life. At times, flocks of sheep and shepherds cross the scorching asphalt to reach the scarce patches of pasture that have struggled to grow in the desert. The heat and the smoke of heavy trucks coat the sweating faces of mechanics and workers that use the day's traffic to sell, to repair, to get by. The smell of shay and coffee mingles with that of cigarettes crushed on the tarmac.

And in the midst of all this, the road keeps moving, dragging everything along in its restless flow. The reality of things around slips away fast, dissolving in confusion into the past. One learns, this way, to let go of what is lost, of what slides away along the journey. The scraps of our lives will be left on the road, returned to those who come after. In this place that seems to refuse life, life nonetheless finds a way to go on. Fragile, stubborn, without making a sound.

Written by Ludovica Crescente

Piero Corvo / Alessandro Scarano - Desert highway
Jordan. 2025.