ABSTRACT
The king Abdullah II of Jordan alludes to Iraq as a rock, and Jordan's neighbours, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as the hard place. Such a description illustrates the complex, contested and affective relationships in that part of the Middle East, which pervade any socio-economic and political endeavours, including tourism. This chapter focuses on affective routes in 'Middle Eastern' tourism, death drives and the overlaps with affect, in what regards the binary opposition - life/death. Both psychoanalytical and psychological nuances affects and death drives escape and syphon off into Lacan's Symbolic and Imaginary, impacting more conscious ways of knowing and experiencing the world. Hinterland Travel capitalises on adventurous fears, with which danger-zone tourists engage affectively while travelling in areas of ongoing conflict. The familiarity of the landscape marked by the neighbouring conflict through the presence of tourist policewomen and armed soldiers made them 'immediately at home - not at all like a foreigner'.
