March 19 - April 3 2006 / Egypt and Jordan: In Desert Places
Astonishments of Egypt, Jordan and the Solar Eclipse
Part 3 - Jordan: Jerash and Petra
Last night a sort of farewell dinner, and we all scatter here and there. In a few minutes J and I will be on our way to Jordan, to see Petra. Where at long last I will see Petra.
Again a day of transit, the flight to Jordan is short but the proceedings are long, much showing of passports, screening of bags, somewhat more seriously than in Egypt.
We drive through the night from the airport to Amman. Alongside the road are lots of cars or small trucks, their occupants seemingly having evening picnics on the verge. Here and there a fire and shadowy figures around it. At first I suspect evening trysts (the local parking place?) but most of the groups have multiple members.
What we see of Jordan seems quite different from Cairo! No incessant honking of horns, general polite driving manners, decent cars instead of the small wrecks the Egyptians drive (we do lean that the duty on a car is 250-300%!), and the streets seem more prosperous --less trash about, more lights, fewer crumbling buildings or half-finished ones, no rebar sticking out of the tops of structures. Our hotel is old and the furnishings are heavy and booby-trapping, but it’s okay.
I don't really know where I am. Jordan? The Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan, it's called. What is a Hashimite?
There are six of us in our group. This morning we are met by our guide, Samir, who seems a decent quiet sort. Our small bus is adequate though not made for large Americans. John and I snag the front seats though. People are funny about sitting there so you just go ahead and take them and too bad for the others.
We are going first to a place called Jerash. I have never heard of it, but it turns out to be quite remarkable. Several of us have also seen Ephesus too, and we agree that this is far more spectacular. It is the remains of a Greco-Roman city of the second and third centuries, fantastically preserved. We walk through paved avenues of columns, stand in round marketplaces, climb stairs to a temple of Artemis where a vendor sells cardamom coffee and the spicy sweet smell smites me. The city remains lie all around us, and from this hill we can look around and see many acres of buildings and parts of buildings. There are also rows of stones which the archeologists need somehow to fit into the rest of the puzzle.
The columns rise slightly tapered to lovely capitals of acanthus flowers.
There is a ruined, restored theatre, a half-circle of raised seats partly filled with cheerful school children, and a peculiar performance of bagpipes and a graceful little girl dancing elegantly to this strange music, her tiny little sister toddling after.
We have loved seeing all the school groups on this trip, girls, boys, their harried teachers. The kids all practice their school English on us, Hello, hello, how are you, what is your name, or, more daringly, Hi, in response to ours of same. They giggle delightedly when we respond.
How did all this arise, this highly articulated society, this aesthetic sense? How is it related, a descendant of, the drawings on the walls of the caves? What connects those drawings with the great arts of the pharaohs and with these elegant structures?
How did we get where we are now? I have never before felt much of a big interest in history, I mean really KNOWING history, what came first, second, etc. But now I want to know. I want to try to understand.
I have such a knowledge now of time draining away, just like the light at eclipse. Faster and faster near the end...
Our guide, it seems, is a Christian, and carries a well-worn bible from which to read parts that pertain to the things we see today. We visit a place where Moses is supposed to have died, and he reads passages from the bible to tell about the land we see, from this high place. Breath-takingly, surprisingly, we see the Dead Sea, and the river Jordan, and far in the distance, the skyline of Jerusalem. Ii never expected to see these things, and I am pleased and happy. The land spreads out all around us in a soul-curing array. Soul-releasing, mind-expanding. The mind expands into these vast spaces. I have a faint sense of understanding how these prophets of old saw their visions, saw their truths. Also, the words of the hymn come to me, “They cast their nets in Galilee, just off the hills of brown…” For here are the hills of brown.
There are lovely mosaics in the small 6th century church up here, of fish and birds and animals of Africa, a zebra, an ostrich, various antelopes.
Is it here I light a candle? For Alyson? I can't remember. But I made a picture of the rank of candles, standing in the sand, their flames wavering. Many here before me, and many shall come after.
There is the often-obligatory visit to a charity operation where we are expected to buy, here handicapped people working on making modern mosaics. Some of the designs are charming but we are not in the market. We cannot cure all the world’s ills, and we don't have as much money to spend as they always think we do.
Lunch, the best meal I have had on this entire trip, lots of fresh hot puffy flat bread, with lots of bowls of artfully -presented hummus and other very delicious things into which to dip the bread. I eat with abandon. Lovely food.
At the end of the day we visit an ancient church (in which I see our guide genuflect three times, discreetly, at the hidden altar). On the floor of this church is the world’s oldest mosaic map, from the 6th century, a map of Moses’ journey through the ancient world. It shows Jerusalem and Egypt too. Small buildings line its roads, fish in the Jordan River but not in the Dead Sea, which is of course too salty for them. Ships on the river. Towns and their names in Greek. A wonderful treasure.
Now we are on the way to Petra, and it is a wild drive, through driving black rain and fierce winds, sand clouds blowing against our small bus, fog, and even snow at the summit of our way. Our young driver does a good job, but sitting where we are, right behind him, we see what he is able to see, and it isn't much. We never expected this. Tomorrow we are to spend the day at Petra, and I worry about flash floods through that narrow passage.
Partway there we take a short refuge in a roadside rest stop place, with goods and snacks for sale amid the leaking dripping ceiling. We pass trucks of animals faintly visible through the open slats of the truck bed. How miserable a life! Born to suffer, like the patient-seeming donkeys we have seen here and in Egypt. Can that be? Are there creatures "born to suffer"? I guess not. But they are born, and they must surely suffer.
I fill up with joy when I discover this morning that we get to WALK to Petra right form our hotel! Thick fog fills the air, and it is windy and cold, but I am so happy.
We set out along a paved walkway and soon are at the gentle slope where the Siq begins, the "narrow defile between towering cliffs culminating in the dramatic appearance of The Treasury."
I am beside myself with delight to be walking in the morning, outdoors, birds and plants around me, the outside smelling so good, and I soon leave the group to walk slowly by myself into this enchanting place. The sandstone rises around me in fantastic colors and forms, undulating alongside, rolling up above, cut and curved by rushing water, shades of red, pink, ochre, rose, red, tans, yellows. Higher and higher reach the walls. Underfoot is party modern paving and partly, wonderfully, the paving they made so long ago, large smoothed blocks set carefully in place. Who knows which people have walked here before me? And how astonished they would be to see me!
I make many images. John catches up with me, and we walk slowly together, looking up as the walls close in overhead and on each side. In some places it is very dark, for above is only a narrow defile, indeed.
Suddenly ahead I see a tiny triangle of straight-measured human works that startle amid the roundedness of nature: the pediment of the treasury! We hurry ahead, excited and deeply thrilled. I smile and smile, laugh with delight, here I am in Petra, just as my childhood mentor Richard Halliburton described it. I am here! the way opens up into a large plaza area, where there are a few other visitors, donkey carts, horses, and a camel or two, some vendors, a little place selling coke and cookies, and The Treasury, quite serene and unspoiled amid this commercial array. For one can hardly assume that there was no commerce in this fine open space when it was new.
It is all I had known it would be, magnificent in concept of size and artifice, construction and presence.
I think, I think, that these ancient Egyptians and these Greeks and Romans, these Arab Nabateans, that these people were EVERY BIT AS TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AS WE THINK OURSELVES TO BE.
This puts a new and interesting light on things, one which I shall have to think about some more.
We continue to wander down the avenue of Petra, there are so many other buildings carved into the stone, some complete, some seemingly half begin, some partly melted away out of the sandstone. All is amazing and wonderful. Young boys riding donkeys pass back and forth. Donkey ride? donkey ride? The rock is astonishing, bands of radiant color so that I can't stop taking pictures of it, and small children try to sell us pieces of it, or postcards.
It is so cold! The wind blows and I am chilly. Part way along, our guide brings us into one of the little shelters next to the rock that enterprising Bedouins have made, where they sell snacks and postcards and unattractive jewelry and so on. This guy though is smart--he's built a fire right on the sand and arranged chairs around.
We gather gratefully around the little fire, trying to avoid smoke and sparks, and have tea or coffee.
When we leave, my hair smells wonderfully of smoke. Nepal, rooftops of Kathmadu...Africa…
At the end of the city is a new excavation, a temple, more bits and pieces lying about waiting to be put back in the original places, and all around at a distance, more and more rock buildings, some at great heights, some apparently just hanging on the sides of the cliffs.
There is so much here to wonder about. So much on the earth to wonder about. The older you get the more questions there are, the more things you know to wonder about. What can you do with this? What can I do with this?
I am just reading a book now, that has a place in it I want to put in here.
"What was required, was that people should use their lives. Very few people, he said, knew what they were really capable of. Most were afraid to find out. It was hard for a man to know he had only one life, could do only so much and no more. But such knowledge, like all knowledge, was really power. To know one’s limitations, and then to act, and act again, was power, and engendered more power. A man must use his life, must think how to use it. Take, he told them, take what is there, what is real, the chance to do one thing well. 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.'"
On our cruise a few times ago, Als and I sat one morning at breakfast with a wonderful couple, I'll never forget them. Filled with excitement, I said to them how travel is a sacrament to me. How I needed to lay my eyes on every place on the earth as best I could. The man said, You will lose that urgency.
Well, I damn well hope not.
So then, at the end of the city, a lunch place of course, and then our guide leaves us on our own. J and I climb up a thousand steps or so, some very ancient steps well-worn by so many feet of those gone before us, to what’s called the monastery. Even more stupendous in size. I could not even reach to the top of the threshold.
Salaam, namaste, and languages not known to me, I greet you across the millennia.
Did they ever wonder about us?
So my day in Petra was exactly as I could have wished it, so long ago imagined when a child.
Our last day here and it has all seemed so short. What wonderful things we have seen, what great monuments to human spirit, imagination, capability.
Today was a day of natural wonders, more my kind of wonders I guess though I wonder at everything really.
We drove south to a place, a valley called Wadi Rum, I guess it is a nature reserve. It seems the "real" desert to us, with golden or red sand all around, and fantastical sandstone formations rising out of this sand.
The sky is deep blue, the air is clear and cool, and I am happy all right.
These formations look like the kopjes we saw in East Africa, rising without apparent foundation. No lions on them though, but I bet there used to be.
We are loaded into open-backed jeeps, driven by Bedouins in white robes and red-checked headdresses. We drive, wind-whipped, to a small settlement of low red and cream walls, here and there a large rectangular tent, and then right out into the sand, where the road ends. The sand is red, red, red, red as rust, red as lichen, red as oh I don't know, I'll have to find some red words to choose from! The rain has caused tiny purple flower to bloom, so that the sand has a wash of lavender across it. Everywhere are beautiful forms of nature. A small herd of goats is tended by a lone woman in black, and three sit alone together on the sand. Our guide tells us this is very unusual, that they should be out and about like this. I can't begin to know their lives. But then in the end, as I wrote long ago about my sisters in the prehistoric, they bled, jumped with the seed, gave birth in pain, knew the pinch of the small mouth at the breast. We all share that sisterhood, above everything else.
We get to get out and walk into a narrow canyon which has old petroglyphs in it. I am more excited about the rocks and the bit of climbing than I am about the little images—an ibex or two, strange symbols.
And then we have tea, served by a darkling man, a Bedouin, in his tent which he has set up for this commercial purpose. The tea is sharply aromatic and spicy with cinnamon, cardamom, mint, and other spices I can’t identify. It is served in small glasses and John takes my picture inside the tent, against a red rug wall, with my tea glass.
My eyes are filled with light and distance, miles and miles of distances, thousands and millions of miles of light.
And that's my trip to Egypt and Jordan.