A Second Shufti at Jordan September 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Airlines, Damascus, Hotels, Museum, Tour , trackbackThe Queen beat me to it — she got to Petra first! But I doubt if she had as much fun. There was she, a horse- loving woman, bumping through the Siq in a Land Rover, wearing a skirt and hat. Whereas touristy me — town-bred and with no more knowledge of nags than a few donkey- rides sixty years ago — I rode high and proud on Suzy, a two-year-old Arab who was full of wind and nervous at moving so slowly.
Holding my back straight and clutching the plaited strings that had once been reins, I felt as intrepid as Stark, as hardened as Lawrence, as much the explorer as Burckhardt. I was there — at last!
Petra to me had been listed with the Pyramids, Timbuktu, Venice, Hadrian’s Wall and Troy as places that I had to visit before I died. Some of these have been ‘ticked off and none has failed me. But Petra! Petra surpassed anything that I had visualised in my kitchen fantasy- life. That ‘rose-red’ cliché rang true but Burton hadn’t gone far enough in hyperbole.
Here were all the colours of the pink-side of the palette, from blush- veined ivory to the deepest purple. Layer upon layer of shot-silk sandstone soared skywards in the warmth of the sun.
However, not everyone sees Petra so romantically! Edward Lear’s Albanian cook declared — ‘0 Master! We have come into a world where everything is made of chocolate, ham, curry-powder and salmon!’
Well, we can’t all be poets; some of us get no further than alliteration!
I’d done my homework in advance. I knew I’d see the facades of Nabataean temples chiselled into the rock and that the cliff-walls would be riddled with empty tombs. But I hadn’t realised that there were extensive Roman ruins as well, and that the wide valley waited for archaeologists to dig deeper.
At this karavanserai merchants had bartered Damascus brocades for Chinese spices; camels and goats for slaves; thin, brittle pottery for water or weapons. Only when Red Sea dhows replaced camel-trains of the Dead Sea, when seen from Mount Nebo; from ‘the Place of Sacrifice’ in Petra, the white tomb of Aaron is a gazelle’s leap away. Such sightings prove that those ancient wanderers actually lived. And what hardships they endured! For this is a land without water in the desert. Only around Jerash and Amman in the north is there the year-long green of vegetation. But when rain does fall, then the desert blooms and the parched earth sings, as the shepherd-boys sang in the Psalms.
On my first visit Amman was an overgrown, untidy Arab village, surrounded by seven hills. The palace of ‘Black Ab’, the grandfather of King Hussein, overlooked the mosque, the bazaar and the huddle of insanitary buildings that made up the capital. Only the musty Hotel Philadelphia was considered fit for Europeans. Opposite the Philadelphia was an almost perfect Roman amphitheatre; other Roman ruins lay scattered on the hills, barely investigated by the experts. Camels, goats, pye-dogs and donkeys scavenged the verges of the dusty, rough roads.
The British officers of the crack Arab Legion entertained us for our weekend. Off-duty, the subalterns took to their Jeeps and accelerated into the desert to shoot antelope. Their Arab legionnaires galloped behind, firing their rifles exuberantly into the sky like extras in a Beau Geste film.
Today, that ’sport’ is banned. Conservation is ‘in’ and wildlife protected by order of the King. Oryx and ibex are scarce, but they are there. Rare blue lizards scurry among the rocks of Petra; clumps of black lilies grow beside the King’s Highway; the few oases teem with birds.
Now the old Philadelphia is to become a Museum for Antiquities and Amman has superb hotels offering all the amenities of our TV culture — but, beware the muezzin at 4am. I flung open my double-glazed windows before I went to sleep and the first call to prayer of the Muslim day was a strident awakening.
The hills are built over with Royal Palaces, villas and apartment- blocks. The civic services work, the new trees and flowers are well tended, the Greek and Roman remains are catalogued and cared for. Jordan’s airline is reliable, the medical services are efficient and the government rest-houses are clean. Within five years, it is claimed, every house in Jordan will have electricity. And the nomads are not overlooked — Jordanian army officers try to bring a smattering of schooling to the children who live in the goat-hair tents. Jordan is catching up with the Western world.
The Crusaders also left a legacy to the Arabs, as did those other invaders who came and went. Crusader castles cling to jagged crests or rise up from barren plains. The bones of Christian soldiers who did not return home lie beneath the stones of the desert, sometimes disturbed by the foraging goats.
T. E. Lawrence was a hero to my generation — a hero who is debunked today. A railway line, built by the Turks to link Muslim pilgrims with Mecca, parallels the asphalt of the Desert Highway. As the Turks cut down the oak-trees to fuel the trains, so Lawrence blew up the track. This line is to be reopened soon for tourists and again the steam-trains will chug to Aqaba on the coast.
Shanty-towns of refugee Palestinian Arabs keep the King’s Army on the alert. ‘Peace’ is a fragile word, but the King has said — ‘I want to hear the tracks of bulldozers, not tanks . . . the footsteps of travellers, not troops.’
He is a man of vision, whose Bedouin roots give him respect for tradition and the belief that the pursuit of peace must come through diplomacy.
His countrymen show a natural courtesy. Their hospitality is genuine. Their food is good, their coffee, spiced with cardamom, is delicious. And they laugh, so that you laugh too.
See for yourselves, and when you leave Jordan it will be with the words — ‘Go in Peace, with God’s protection’ following after you. Jordanians mean it.
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