In the May of 1986 I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks visiting
my friend Stephen in the Middle East. Stephen was working towards his
PhD at the "BIAAH" (British Institute for Archaeology And History) in
Amman, in the Kingdom of Jordan. I was not only visiting Stephen, but
having a holiday. I think that trip was the first time in my life that
I had ever gone anywhere for purely holidaying reasons... no ulterior
motives, no business on the side, no committments to anyone or anything.
I needed a holiday, too. Stephen as my host gave me a superb time,
something that I may perhaps be able to do in return for him one day.
Many a cartoon shows an idyllic scene on a desert island about 10 feet
across, with, of course, one palm tree. Looking from the aircraft window,
the island in the picture at left appeared just a few minutes before the
Alia flight reached Amman. I photographed it, using full zoom
and in spite of the vibration and foggy window, because I wanted
someone to believe that I saw it, that it really existed,
but the photo turns out to have
captured some of the feeling of this expedition: A brilliant, isolated,
calm, fantasy-holiday place.
In contrast, the first view of Jordan reveals its main geographic
attribute: It is mostly harsh, dry, greenless territory, less
plant life than Los Angeles, more sparsely occupied than Dune.
In actual fact it is not quite as bad as as this photo might suggest;
the runways of the airport are just off the top of this photo, so it
is not the best land. However, water is scarce and much of Jordan really
is desert, as you will soon see. It became plain to me that
Frank Herbert had done a good job of internalising and using the
feel of the land, and its people, in formulating his
Dune world and its race.
Amman is build in a "wadi", what might be called a valley in England,
but which is a "dry creek bed". (In fact it is mostly on the shallow slope
to one side, for the obvious historical reason that the occasional
flood would wash away any charlies at the very bottom.)
It is lined on both sides with low
hills, atop which are numbered roundabouts.
These form a chief method of navigation, as in conversation with
taxi drivers, for many streets are not named, and few buildings numbered.
(Post operates to post boxes.)
This is a view of one of the main streets in the downtown area.
Downtown is about 3km by less than 1km, about as built up as you see here.
The airport is about 8km East of the centre. The creek arrives,
accompanied by a railway line, from the North-East; the railway
departs towards Petra in the South, while the creek flows under
the city, appears to the West, and dries up. The University and the
BIAAH are situated about 10km to the North-West.
In the city there is a marvellous mixture of old and new. You see here
your humble author in an amphitheatre, near the downtown area.
You also immediately discover one of the most pleasing aspects of
Amman: Its architecture. I will have much to show you and to say
about this before we move on to other places.
Here is a vertical slice through the Amman Tourist Map.
The grid lines are 1500 metres apart, and run North-South/East-West.
You see close to the right hand side, in the second square down from the top,
the very amphitheatre of the previous image. This is roughly at the
Eastern end of the city proper.
The business district runs approximately along the crease of the map,
visible horizontally aligned in the second grid down.
Apart from the plethora of church symbols (marked with crosses or
cups as appropriate), the most remarkable feature is perhaps the huge
area top centre, the Al Hussein Refugee Camp. Another such camp lies
to the South, off the map a couple of km. In 1986, these places were
pretty full. People flocked into Jordan during the (most recent,
as of 1999) Gulf War. I hope that, in the end, Jordan reaps the benefits
of accepting people; may they find ways to repay the land and her late King.
Of course, Amman is not a huge city, and the drive from the BIAAH to
downtown, though along a wide highway, is close still to the land,
and one is occasionally reminded of this fact in a quintessential way....
I said we should look at the architecture of Amman. I loved it.
Here is a house, typical of the more wealthy suburbs.
It is constructed substantially of concrete. They make very good use
of this stuff, and it is one of the few resources that are plentiful.
The textures, the combination of styles, the almost haphazard
juxtaposition of straight and round edges, the openness and
castle-like aspects together create an interesting and practical
kind of building. Of course there are some very quirky
aspects. This must be one of the few houses that did not have a private
Eiffel-style tower atop its roof. Presumably also the cars in the
garage have either zero or two ski racks on their roofs,
in another significant break with Amman tradition.
Here is a large building under construction.
Note the small tower on the balcony this side of the construction work.
Close inspection reveals the characteristic platforms of the type
employed by M. Eiffel.
Here is the brick house in Amman. As far as my host knew, there was
only one building that employed bricks rather than concrete, as they
would have to have been imported especially. This is it. Note also the
Eiffel-esque tower, orange this time.
(Some were painted in the colours of the French flag.)
Unfortunately, although the person responsible imported the bricks,
they did not import a bricklayer. The building is square,
but the mortar is terribly thick, and each individual brick is far from
square! To some extent this accounts for the "pink" overall tinge to
the wall, despite it being made of red bricks.
As an example of what can be done with concrete, here is a marvellous
house that might be out of a science-fiction movie.
Before moving on from Amman downtown, I present this picture: Ahli Luna Park.
This says a lot; this may not be the safest or the most
beautiful place in the world,
but they have time for a humble fun park, complete with an archway over the
main road.
The BIAAH, as I said, is a few km out of town, across the road, and up the
hill from the University of Amman. This is the view out of the window
where I stayed. I rather liked this view. University buildings, a sports
field (they played soccer at night), and the white buildings of a suburb
rising up the hill on the other side. It looks clean, neat and open.
It looked friendly to me.
Nearby was a beautiful mosque.
I find the Islamic churches rather more architecturally pleasing
than the Christian ones; also, I loved the sound of the call to prayer.
(It sounded much more sincere than the tolling of bells, a dour sound
that like as not heralds some chore or disaster.)
This mosque had gardens, beautiful not through rich foliage or clever
design, but because they were open, and obviously loved and tended.
I suppose it fell to the church to provide parks for solace... certainly
few existed in this desert place.
This photo also captures the sky very well. The "Arabian skies" are
indeed very beautiful, as the song says. Perhaps it is something
to do with the disposition of moisture in the air, or perhaps it is
a psychological effect of the arid land and romantic anticipation...
but the blue is awe-inspiring.
Around Amman, throughout all of Jordan, you see Bedouin camps such as
this one. I was very sorry that I did not get a chance to meet
any of this race.
By all accounts these are noble people.
They maintained King Hussein in power and held faithfull behind this
magnificant monarch. They served as the model for Herbert's Fremen
in Dune.
The (recently-deceased) king was without doubt one of the best
political figures of the century. After his death, stories of
warmth and sadness appeared in every journal from the NY Times to
the Amateur Radio magazines, and his funeral was attended by
a record array of dignitaries including Israeli and Arab, and the US president
and, I think, all the extant ex-presidents.
The Bedouin live simple, nomadic existences,
and with no extreme ambition, but they command respect.
This is a view across the ruins of Jerash.
Jerash was a Roman town. Likely populated by retired army folk (you were
granted a plot for long service), settlers and supporting activities,
things looked good until about the eighth century when an earthquake
half-buried the whole town.
The view here is across the main amphitheatre (it was a two-amphitheatre
town) to the piazza, and one of the main roads, marked by the columns
running away from the circular town plaza.
Not visible in the photo, but the "tide mark" from the sudden burial is
half way up the columns, about 15 feet in the air.
This photo is taken in the second, and smaller, and more buried amphitheatre.
You can just make out a person in the image (putting it all in some sort of
scale). That person is Stephen, who is taking the next photo.
This is your humble author, taking the previous photo.
I am roughly in what must have amounted to the orchestra pit,
which was still being dug out. The dig was a "work in progress",
mostly funded by the French and British.
There are now strong controls on the export of antiquities,
reasonably. Sadly the decent ones are already in the British Museum
or similar establishments. One might argue that they are better preserved there
than they would be in their home countries, and more accessible
to scholars, but it does not change the feeling of having been robbed that
lingers, particularly in places like Egypt.
Jerash was centered about two roads running at right angles.
One, down which you look here, led to the baths.
These roads had sewers dug beneath them, and sported enormous
manholes with square stone manhole covers. Never say that the Romans
didn't do anything for you.
Here is a beautiful sight: The New Chariot Shop next to the old
chariot shop. In the distance a Toyota Dealer, in the foreground
the end of the town's hippodrome, wherein would-be Ben Hurs would have
entertained the punters (Punterus Romanus) of a holiday afternoon.
On the same trip, Stephen took me to see Ajlun. This photograph was taken
with a telephoto lens some 30 miles from the base of a hill, atop of which
you can see a Saracen castle.
This is the sight that invaders and crusaders would have seen two days
march before they reached this marvellous fortress.
By the time they arrived in arrow range (the castle's before theirs)
the sensible ones would have been very depressed indeed.
Stephen and I spent some time in this wonderful place, despite the fact that
it was not large. It would have held almost
as few defenders as the castle at Orford in England, I guess a hundred at most.
This view is of one of the mighty towers. Those with keen eyesight
may be able to make out Stephen, standing on the ledge formed by the
missing corner of the tower. (If you are keen of memory you may recall
this photograph on the wall in the flat in Chelmsford Street. It now
hangs in my cube at work here.)
This castle would have been a difficult seige!
Panning back and moving around from the last picture, observe the steep sides.
In the twilight you may be able to make out the shapes of mountain goats,
about the only things short of spiders and ants that could climb up
this far.
We crossed the (restored) drawbridge and roamed inside the ruins
until it was too dark to continue. The design of the castle was
marvellous, intricate, with the central chamber for the final defense,
in the event the attackers should ever breach the outer walls, and
passages that gave tiered access to continue barrage even as the walls were
breached. Also to provide a marvellous architectural effect... Lutyens
would approve.
On another occasion I was taken to visit a dig in the middle of the "Black
Desert". The camp was literally that, just tents, in the middle of
an enormous expanse of not much at all. Here is the view as one approached.
Approach required a 4WD vehicle. They said that the Land Rovers lasted
three years, the Toyotas two, and the Nissans just one.
Here is the camp a little closer. It is pitched in a region of exposed
sand in the normal black rock cover.
The sand is fine, like powder, not beach sand.
Because water must be brought by 4WD vehicle, the natives washed only
their faces and palms. The sand, after a day, works itself into your
skin and you develop a sheen that is remarkably moisture resistant.
I could only think of the sand trout in Dune... the integrated
sand-skin covering makes you feel uniquely part of the environment.
When I returned to Amman I showered, and I can still see the waves of
brown water running down the bath drain. The feeling was not, however
one of being dirty, merely encased, absorbed, camouflaged almost.
Needing to stay sane required the sort of stuff at which the
British excel: A kind of self-discipline mixed with ritual that
gives rise to songs like Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Here you see evidence
of the mechanism at work, a formal event held in this civilisation-forsaken
place.
This image is perhaps the one to which I cannot do justice in electronic
format, not in a decent file size anyway. (For those of you who do not know,
the images here are reduced by a factor of two in the number of pixels
in each axis and then compressed at double strength to make them a
tolerable size for download across the web by modem.)
The image is magnificant, nevertheless, with Stephen under the moon
and the Arabian sky. I cannot show you have magnificant the image was
in the flesh, asking to be immortalised.
The camp partied on into the dark, still night, surrounded by candles.
Mad dogs and archaeologists....
Those of you who do not remember this picture of the Treasury at Petra
from my wall will remember it from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
The Treasury sits at the bottom of a 30 foot cliff, at the end of a
pass that is as little as 12 feet wide and a mile long. As the pass formed
an ideal position for a tollway on the spice route, it was run as that
for a long time, and a lot of money was collected. Hence the glorious
Treasury facade. Sadly the treasury housed only three rooms, but they
were larger than you would need to hoard a million dollar's worth of gold,
and they are carved into the solid rock of the cliff.
To put things in scale, regard this view of the Treasury taken from the
opposite approach... and spot the person in the doorway!
There is a small and winding path that leads to the top of the cliffs.
The more energetic tourist climbs it to reach some rather spectacular
views, of the sort to which photographs rarely do justice.
This photograph, taken from roughly above the treasury,
looks down to the widening passage. What is impressive here is not
the small horse or ant-like people, but the extensively carved
"buildings". Better called "diggings" than buildings, these
things line the cliff walls of the vast valley.
Imagine not painting your house to beautify it, but carving it from a
rock cliff....
What do I encounter atop this cliff, but an Australian, a guy from
Perth. More dedicated a traveller than I, we roamed together for a day
or so. He had been so roaming for weeks that turned into months, from
London to India to Arabia. Not my cup of tea, such long periods
of nomadic, basic existence.
This view looks further into the valley beyond the pass.
As an indicator of scale, can you see the truck?
The Romans were here, too, of course, though they left less of a mark.
This road led to the temple of Zeus, but no columns, no sewers this time.
They came later. They got sick of it, or got driven out.
The valley was rather sad a place, for all the majesty of the Treasury
and its pass. It was arid, uninhabited, or long long since
deserted, perhaps because of the stream of tourists
and the attendent tacky trade and attitudes that bedevil
places frequented by tourists.
The old and the new juxtapose well here... camel and truck on the road from
Petra.
This thing is very similar to a mile post.
However, it says nothing like "200 miles to Jerusalem", but more like
"200 feet to sea level". That is 200 feet up to sea level.
Where are we?
It is traditional to employ the dense salt water of the Dead Sea
to simultaneously float and read a newspaper.
Stephen went first. He is floating here, completely floating, but sadly his
newspaper got wet in the process of getting balanced.
Dammit, this will never do.
Fortunately Stephen is a man of great resourcefulness and sense.
He had equipped himself with a backup newspaper.
Proceding with more care, he was able to assume the correct
position, with the best of British decorum.
Benefitting from Stephen's recent experience, I repeated the stunt.
The buoyancy is truly remarkable.
Swimming in the usual face-in-the-water style is utterly impossible...
your feet simply rise from the water, and you lose all traction.
This photo is another of me, and I am floating, truly.
The water is still, and remains warm within a few inches of the surface,
and cooler as you go deeper. I took a small medicine bottle of
the water back home with me (I think I finally ditched it as I packed
to leave Oz). The customs man did not know what to do about that one!
The border between Jordan and Israel is perhaps the thing that
most destroys any love a traveller may acquire for the Israelis.
An Arab passport means you must pass through the large tin shed.
People are processed in waves, alternately male and female.
An Israeli or British or American passport leads to a smaller
and less antiseptic looking building where the guards are
meticulously polite but still thorough. They inspect everything;
everyone passes metal detectors, etc. It is less secure passing
through an international airport.
I guess this is what you have to do when you are the race
that most people first think of when the prospect of genocide is
under consideration.
Jerusalem: A city sacred to Moslems and Jews and Christians.
The part most secred to the Jews is The Wailing Wall. Here you see it,
on a fairly typical day, pretty busy. Note the dividing line; women
not allowed beyond it. This author is repeatedly surprised that
religions survive such behaviour... any self respecting person would
wash their hands of any institution that discriminated against them for
no logical reason, but then the religion-affected are not renowned
for having a tremendous amount of that stuff.
The first of these photographs shows the main part of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the second, Stephen lighting a candle
in one of the probably terribly meaningful alcoves.
Notice how dark it is and busy it isn't!
There were people about, but not scads of them. Funny how often
Christianity is portrayed as having a lot of real-estate and a lot
of pomp per visible supporter. Since the time of Henry VIII governments
gave land and all sorts of concessions to the church.
I wonder if history will see a time when we take it back?
This is the "Dome of the Rock", a mosque built over the stone
from which the prophet is held to have ascended into heaven. It lies
surrounded by gardens and in its enclosure, and is truly beautiful.
Anyone is welcome.
In fact it is "unspectacular", except for its openness.
It was reasonably busy, and yet quiet.
In fact Jerusalem the city is divided into the "old city" and the
surrounding "new city".
It is the old city that holds the historical charm and religious significance.
This image is of a street market, closed at this point.
It is one of the many lanes and streets that more resemble burrows
than thoroughfares. These run between, under and around the businesses
and homes and edifices of the old city.
Here are two more of the streets. It struck me how wonderful it might be
to live your daily life in so fascinating a place, going to work
or school as though in a time warp.
Every street an adventure, every walk taking you through stone
passages, ramps, a veritable maze...
Of course the magic would soon wear off: Tourists like chaff, lousy
TV reception if you are in the basement flat, not to mention the charm
of bullet holes in the walls, let alone the frequent arrival of more
bullets.
In truth, I expect life just goes on for the residents.
Many of the residents would not be enjoying the occasional
excursions by the military. Here you see some of the Israeli army
out to get a bite to eat in the local cafe.
This did not bother me, the army out like that, on patrols.
Guys with automatic weapons at airports, apart from the implication
that some nastiness out of the ordinary might be imminent, only
make me feel secure.
What might be a bother is the fact that most of these soldiers
are barely old enough to be out of school. I'm not worrying for their
well-being, that concern is included in theior job. However, had I
been given a job like that when I was that old their is no way I could
have avoided a little blood sport.
In the citadel, near the Jaffa Gate, is David's Tower. It affords (by
no coincidence) a very fine view over the walled city of
Jerusalem and the surrounding suburbs.
This photograph and the next are taken from there.
You can see the golden Dome, across the Garden of Gethsemane, and up to
new suburbs on the hill. The rooftops reminded me of the picture of
London painted in Mary Poppins, and conjured up that friendly
emotion that views across the cumulative roof of closely-spaced
buildings always seems to evoke.
This photograph gives a contrasting view of the old and the new,
stone watchtowers standing along with high-rise apartments or
offices. The newer areas are of course all Israeli, Israel having
a strong policy towards moving into and building on newly
occupied territory.
The older areas are still predominantly Arabic. Things could be
worse, as they have been about Kosovo, but Israel has a very
well developed sense of just what it can get away with.
I took a number of photographs in new Jerusalem, of the people mostly.
I will not bore you with them, but I want to use one to present a comment.
This image pretty much sums up the attitude of the occupants, and
it does not do much for one's love of Israel. Their dogs
are more important to them than another race.
Earlier I used my words carefully; you have to respect and
indeed admire the Israeli nation. They have established themselves
in a harsh land, coming from behind to be in control. You may
not like their methods, you may not approve, but you have got to
admit that, so far, they have played a superb game.