Emails from the Edge (20 page)
Read Emails from the Edge Online
Authors: Ken Haley
DAY 258 (25 JANUARY): SALALAH
Believers in the clash-of-civilisations theory must be feeling vindicated today. Another suicide bomber has blown himself up, this time in Tel Aviv: casualties number nineteen.
You can almost feel East and West drifting further apart, the gulf growing by the day. That seals it. Much as I would like to see the world entireâand much as I know 99.9 per cent or more of Israelis go through every day without any untoward incident occurringâthe idea of visiting Israel or Palestine now defies my rule of not visiting countries at war or on the slippery slope to it. Let them get their house in order: I will go another day, another year. (And, come March and April, when Bethlehem is under siege, my caution will look positively clairvoyant.)
DAY 260 (27 JANUARY): RAS AL-JINZ
By bus to Sur, and thence to the easternmost shore of the Arabian Peninsula by hire car, paid for by the Ministry of Information. I am the proud owner of a turtle permit, but dusk has fallen and a precious hour is lost when our driver, well off the nearest paved road and unfamiliar with these backblocks, misses the turn-off to the coast.
For another half hour it seems possible that, despite the best-laid plans, we are going to miss one of Nature's more reliable spectacles: the nightly waddling ashore of giant (one-metre-long plus) sea turtles to lay their eggs. The turtles, who don't wear watches, nevertheless time their arrival between 9 and 10 pm every night of the year, and it is 9.15 when our car parks near the beach.
A ranger, who has been expecting us, treads across the sand in front of what must be a strange sight in itself: three people, one perched on a chair while two carry it over sand impassable to its wheels, we move in sedan-like procession beneath ghostly moonlight.
Our ranger stops, having found one of the turtles. He spews out statistics the way a geyser gushes water: 95 kilograms to 155 kilograms, mature at 25 years, 70 to 140 eggs buried at a time, the turtle can live to be 100. Exhausted though she must be from her haul out of the sea onto the broad sandy strip, the mother, with her pleading eyes reacting to the glare of torchlight on her face, hunkers ever more closely over her eggs. Forget the statistics, this is a sight to warm the cockles of the heart, one that amply justifies my own hard trek to this magical rendezvous.
DAY 263 (30 JANUARY): BACK TO THE UAE
Thank God for the BBC. Now it tells me George W. Bush has called Iraq, Iran and North Korea the Axis of Evil. I'm glad I went to Iran when it was just a ârogue state'. To be roguish is kinda cute but from evil, we pray to Heaven, deliver us.
SAUDI ARABIA: 31 JANUARYâ4 FEBRUARY
DAYS 264/265 (31 JANUARY/1 FEBRUARY): UAEâSAUDI BORDER
I'm on the night bus to Hofuf, an oasis town in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Owning that hard-won visa only because I persuaded those reputed hearts of flint that it would be impossible for me to stay on a bus long enough to cross their vast land, I am now fastingâas always on long bus journeysâso as to avoid an all-round embarrassing emergency.
By the time we cross the border, February is 50 minutes old. Wait a minute: no, it isn't: there are ten minutes of January left. Saudi Arabian time is one hour behind the Emirates.
We are still at the border post when February comes round for the second time. Normally, at borders the bus driver explains my non-ambulatory status to a more or less understanding immigration officer who lets me stay on board while my paperwork is processed. Not here. The officers are insisting I get down from the bus.
I'm tired and a bit cranky. âWhy?' I protest. Because, they say, pointing to a row of eager-looking Alsatians, these dogs are so new we haven't had time to train them for restraint, only for aggression. I'm down those steps in a flash.
DAY 266 (2 FEBRUARYâ02.02.02): RIYADH
On arriving in the Saudi capital, I notice for the first time that the bus-ticket collector's right hand consists of a solitary thumb and four bleached knuckle stumps where the fingers should be (or were). I ask no questions.
Modern tower blocks don't surprise. A swimming pool with a sign saying âNO SWIMMING' does. As does a diversion sign on a four-lane highway advising âCAMEL OVERPASS'.
Heading off to dinner at the Riyadh youth hostel, a Saudi hostel resident inconsiderately leaves the refectory door wide open. I am about to call out âHey, were you born in a tent?' but, just in time, remember where I am.
Perhaps it is not so strange, considering the vast inequalities of wealth distribution in this oil-rich kingdom, that it is in Saudi Arabia where buses seem to have risen most effectively to the challenge of air travel. From a new terminal in Riyadh, which has its own supermarket and whose arrival and departure lounges bristle with security guards, to the coaches themselves in which refreshments are served, this is a bus system with its wings outspread.
And, as we barrel north into the heart of Arabia, the view is not as barren as I had envisaged. Were it not for the Arabic script on the side of the wheat silos, you could mistake the irrigated farmlands of central Arabia for the cultivated drylands of the Wimmera. Solar-powered telephone booths stand, lonely roadside sentinels, hundreds of kilometres from towns and villages. Whoever uses them?
DAY 267 (3 FEBRUARY): MADAIN SALAH
The bus drops me in Taima, a piddling 230 kilometres from Madain Salah, the ruins of my dreams. No public transport goes anywhere near it and, as luck would have it, my visit coincides with the
hajj
, just when a million Muslims are coursing through the kingdom bound for Mecca.
What to do? The likes of Sir Richard Burton and Charles Doughty, the first Westerners to clap eyes on this lost city of the dead, in the 1880s, joined the pilgrim throng in Arab disguise. This gives me an idea: gingerly, I approach fellow diners at the Taima HotelâNorth Africans who, I have heard, are leaving today for Meccaâand cadge a lift with them to a highway roundabout the size of a space station. From there I plan to hitchhike my way to Madain Salah.
The highway junction has a name (al-Jawrah), which is somewhat astounding given that it is in the middle of nowhere. I cycle round to the east-west road and spend an hour unprotected from the broiling sun. Just as I am conjuring up the headlines that will inform my furthest and dearest of my demise (âAntipodean Culture Vulture Gives Thumbs Up to Death') Providence sends the first vehicle for what?â hours? days?âalong my chosen road. Saudi student and Formula One aspirant Sami Musa must be shocked, too. With a screech of brakes he reverses his utility, and agrees to drive me to al-Ula, in the western Saudi province known as the Hejaz.
This speed freak, who freely admits he is driving home after a night without sleep, somehow gets both of us alive to the modest town just 22 tantalising kilometres from my objective. Knowing that no one may visit Madain Salah without a police permit, I proceed immediately to al-Ula's constabulary headquarters, guarded by swaggering types with Mexican-style bandoliers, holsters and live ammunition.
Just as I am wondering where all this is leading, down the front steps of the station comes a portly aristocrat to whom all bow low. I am briefly introduced to Prince Ahmed, son of King Fahd. No sooner has his Cadillac borne him away than I am told that the Prince, on hearing of this rare arrival's wish to see the local 2000-year-old ruins, has signed the permit with his own right royal hand.
And that's how I meet Sultan. As near as I ever make out, he is a police detective gone to seed: flatulent, fulsomely friendly and unashamedly uncultured. We make an odd couple for the outing to this open-air museum.
As Sultan drives the police pick-up out of the compound, he mentions for what will be the first of a dozen times that I should not forget (and he makes me write it down) that his full name is Sultan bin Hamud bin Salhan al-Thawab al-Bedawi. This impressive pedigree does not prevent him dropping into the local mini-mart like any pleb and stocking up with three kilos of rice and a similar quantity of grilled chook, water and Pepsi, for what he regards as a first-class picnic opportunity.
Followed at a discreet distance by our police Jeep shadow, we take the Madain Salah turn-off and present our precious permit to the soldiers at the Department of Antiquities hut outside the wire-fenced site.
Ten minutes later we are seated in an empty chamber carved out of the rock, featuring ledges halfway up the interior wall where dead bodies lay nineteen centuries back. To picnic here would be an act of desecration, I reflect, had they not been dispossessed of their resting places long ago.
In this ancient necropolis raised by the Nabataean civilisation, most of the chambersâincluding the one where Sultan and I dine alfrescoâ were mausoleums for the exalted rich.
Sultan, I sense, has no idea of, let alone interest in, this fact as he tosses his Pepsi can onto the sand in front of the cave.
First stop after the picnic is Qasr al-Farid, a tomb whose impressive frontage thrusts 30 metres skyward and which is carved in its entirety from a single majestic outcrop of sandstone.
Altogether, there are 110 tombs here. And that is not all: you can explore a reasonably intact Islamic castle from the 13th century and marvel at a rusty locomotive in the 1906 Hejaz Railway sheds, although the tracks have long since been swallowed by the sands.
Madain Salah is so remote that after dark I have to beg the police to extend their escort duties to guaranteeing my safe return to Taima, ready for the next bus to Jordan.
Prince Ahmed's writ runs further than I would have guessed. But then Sultan drops his guard and tells me that Prince Ahmedâdespite his resplendent black robe lined with gold braidâis not a prince of the realm, merely the Mayor of al-Ula. Calling him a prince was a sneer, a leg-pull, a desert mirage. I return the prankster's smile good-humouredly: at least Madain Salah was for real.
Believers in the clash-of-civilisations theory must be feeling vindicated today. Another suicide bomber has blown himself up, this time in Tel Aviv: casualties number nineteen.
You can almost feel East and West drifting further apart, the gulf growing by the day. That seals it. Much as I would like to see the world entireâand much as I know 99.9 per cent or more of Israelis go through every day without any untoward incident occurringâthe idea of visiting Israel or Palestine now defies my rule of not visiting countries at war or on the slippery slope to it. Let them get their house in order: I will go another day, another year. (And, come March and April, when Bethlehem is under siege, my caution will look positively clairvoyant.)
DAY 260 (27 JANUARY): RAS AL-JINZ
By bus to Sur, and thence to the easternmost shore of the Arabian Peninsula by hire car, paid for by the Ministry of Information. I am the proud owner of a turtle permit, but dusk has fallen and a precious hour is lost when our driver, well off the nearest paved road and unfamiliar with these backblocks, misses the turn-off to the coast.
For another half hour it seems possible that, despite the best-laid plans, we are going to miss one of Nature's more reliable spectacles: the nightly waddling ashore of giant (one-metre-long plus) sea turtles to lay their eggs. The turtles, who don't wear watches, nevertheless time their arrival between 9 and 10 pm every night of the year, and it is 9.15 when our car parks near the beach.
A ranger, who has been expecting us, treads across the sand in front of what must be a strange sight in itself: three people, one perched on a chair while two carry it over sand impassable to its wheels, we move in sedan-like procession beneath ghostly moonlight.
Our ranger stops, having found one of the turtles. He spews out statistics the way a geyser gushes water: 95 kilograms to 155 kilograms, mature at 25 years, 70 to 140 eggs buried at a time, the turtle can live to be 100. Exhausted though she must be from her haul out of the sea onto the broad sandy strip, the mother, with her pleading eyes reacting to the glare of torchlight on her face, hunkers ever more closely over her eggs. Forget the statistics, this is a sight to warm the cockles of the heart, one that amply justifies my own hard trek to this magical rendezvous.
DAY 263 (30 JANUARY): BACK TO THE UAE
Thank God for the BBC. Now it tells me George W. Bush has called Iraq, Iran and North Korea the Axis of Evil. I'm glad I went to Iran when it was just a ârogue state'. To be roguish is kinda cute but from evil, we pray to Heaven, deliver us.
SAUDI ARABIA: 31 JANUARYâ4 FEBRUARY
DAYS 264/265 (31 JANUARY/1 FEBRUARY): UAEâSAUDI BORDER
I'm on the night bus to Hofuf, an oasis town in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Owning that hard-won visa only because I persuaded those reputed hearts of flint that it would be impossible for me to stay on a bus long enough to cross their vast land, I am now fastingâas always on long bus journeysâso as to avoid an all-round embarrassing emergency.
By the time we cross the border, February is 50 minutes old. Wait a minute: no, it isn't: there are ten minutes of January left. Saudi Arabian time is one hour behind the Emirates.
We are still at the border post when February comes round for the second time. Normally, at borders the bus driver explains my non-ambulatory status to a more or less understanding immigration officer who lets me stay on board while my paperwork is processed. Not here. The officers are insisting I get down from the bus.
I'm tired and a bit cranky. âWhy?' I protest. Because, they say, pointing to a row of eager-looking Alsatians, these dogs are so new we haven't had time to train them for restraint, only for aggression. I'm down those steps in a flash.
DAY 266 (2 FEBRUARYâ02.02.02): RIYADH
On arriving in the Saudi capital, I notice for the first time that the bus-ticket collector's right hand consists of a solitary thumb and four bleached knuckle stumps where the fingers should be (or were). I ask no questions.
Modern tower blocks don't surprise. A swimming pool with a sign saying âNO SWIMMING' does. As does a diversion sign on a four-lane highway advising âCAMEL OVERPASS'.
Heading off to dinner at the Riyadh youth hostel, a Saudi hostel resident inconsiderately leaves the refectory door wide open. I am about to call out âHey, were you born in a tent?' but, just in time, remember where I am.
Perhaps it is not so strange, considering the vast inequalities of wealth distribution in this oil-rich kingdom, that it is in Saudi Arabia where buses seem to have risen most effectively to the challenge of air travel. From a new terminal in Riyadh, which has its own supermarket and whose arrival and departure lounges bristle with security guards, to the coaches themselves in which refreshments are served, this is a bus system with its wings outspread.
And, as we barrel north into the heart of Arabia, the view is not as barren as I had envisaged. Were it not for the Arabic script on the side of the wheat silos, you could mistake the irrigated farmlands of central Arabia for the cultivated drylands of the Wimmera. Solar-powered telephone booths stand, lonely roadside sentinels, hundreds of kilometres from towns and villages. Whoever uses them?
DAY 267 (3 FEBRUARY): MADAIN SALAH
The bus drops me in Taima, a piddling 230 kilometres from Madain Salah, the ruins of my dreams. No public transport goes anywhere near it and, as luck would have it, my visit coincides with the
hajj
, just when a million Muslims are coursing through the kingdom bound for Mecca.
What to do? The likes of Sir Richard Burton and Charles Doughty, the first Westerners to clap eyes on this lost city of the dead, in the 1880s, joined the pilgrim throng in Arab disguise. This gives me an idea: gingerly, I approach fellow diners at the Taima HotelâNorth Africans who, I have heard, are leaving today for Meccaâand cadge a lift with them to a highway roundabout the size of a space station. From there I plan to hitchhike my way to Madain Salah.
The highway junction has a name (al-Jawrah), which is somewhat astounding given that it is in the middle of nowhere. I cycle round to the east-west road and spend an hour unprotected from the broiling sun. Just as I am conjuring up the headlines that will inform my furthest and dearest of my demise (âAntipodean Culture Vulture Gives Thumbs Up to Death') Providence sends the first vehicle for what?â hours? days?âalong my chosen road. Saudi student and Formula One aspirant Sami Musa must be shocked, too. With a screech of brakes he reverses his utility, and agrees to drive me to al-Ula, in the western Saudi province known as the Hejaz.
This speed freak, who freely admits he is driving home after a night without sleep, somehow gets both of us alive to the modest town just 22 tantalising kilometres from my objective. Knowing that no one may visit Madain Salah without a police permit, I proceed immediately to al-Ula's constabulary headquarters, guarded by swaggering types with Mexican-style bandoliers, holsters and live ammunition.
Just as I am wondering where all this is leading, down the front steps of the station comes a portly aristocrat to whom all bow low. I am briefly introduced to Prince Ahmed, son of King Fahd. No sooner has his Cadillac borne him away than I am told that the Prince, on hearing of this rare arrival's wish to see the local 2000-year-old ruins, has signed the permit with his own right royal hand.
And that's how I meet Sultan. As near as I ever make out, he is a police detective gone to seed: flatulent, fulsomely friendly and unashamedly uncultured. We make an odd couple for the outing to this open-air museum.
As Sultan drives the police pick-up out of the compound, he mentions for what will be the first of a dozen times that I should not forget (and he makes me write it down) that his full name is Sultan bin Hamud bin Salhan al-Thawab al-Bedawi. This impressive pedigree does not prevent him dropping into the local mini-mart like any pleb and stocking up with three kilos of rice and a similar quantity of grilled chook, water and Pepsi, for what he regards as a first-class picnic opportunity.
Followed at a discreet distance by our police Jeep shadow, we take the Madain Salah turn-off and present our precious permit to the soldiers at the Department of Antiquities hut outside the wire-fenced site.
Ten minutes later we are seated in an empty chamber carved out of the rock, featuring ledges halfway up the interior wall where dead bodies lay nineteen centuries back. To picnic here would be an act of desecration, I reflect, had they not been dispossessed of their resting places long ago.
In this ancient necropolis raised by the Nabataean civilisation, most of the chambersâincluding the one where Sultan and I dine alfrescoâ were mausoleums for the exalted rich.
Sultan, I sense, has no idea of, let alone interest in, this fact as he tosses his Pepsi can onto the sand in front of the cave.
First stop after the picnic is Qasr al-Farid, a tomb whose impressive frontage thrusts 30 metres skyward and which is carved in its entirety from a single majestic outcrop of sandstone.
Altogether, there are 110 tombs here. And that is not all: you can explore a reasonably intact Islamic castle from the 13th century and marvel at a rusty locomotive in the 1906 Hejaz Railway sheds, although the tracks have long since been swallowed by the sands.
Madain Salah is so remote that after dark I have to beg the police to extend their escort duties to guaranteeing my safe return to Taima, ready for the next bus to Jordan.
Prince Ahmed's writ runs further than I would have guessed. But then Sultan drops his guard and tells me that Prince Ahmedâdespite his resplendent black robe lined with gold braidâis not a prince of the realm, merely the Mayor of al-Ula. Calling him a prince was a sneer, a leg-pull, a desert mirage. I return the prankster's smile good-humouredly: at least Madain Salah was for real.
Chapter 16
YOU ARE WELCOME IN JORDAN
I
SLAM IN
M
ODERN
H
ISTORY
FEBRUARYâMARCH 2002
If Israel-Palestine lies at the crux of conflict in the Middle East, it is Israel's neighbours Syria and Lebanon, and the shadowy groups that fight for sub-national causes thereâHezbollah, the Druze, the Kurdsâ who have given the region much of its reputation as a no-go zone.
Those who read only the latest disasters in the news pages could be excused for dismissing the cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Amman as destinations of choice. But, whether or not you buy the idea that we are taking part in a war on terror, those who shun the region are cutting themselves off from a pillar of wisdom we can all lean on: the wisdom of how to recover from the loss of one's known world. Six thousand years after humans settled down in west Asia and started growing crops, these people know something about continuity. Believe me.
JORDAN: 4â18 FEBRUARY
DAY 269 (5 FEBRUARY): AMMAN
It's 3 am and our bus, whose journey began in Dubai and which I joined in Taima, draws to a stop in Amman. Against my better judgment I let the co-driver stow my wheelchair in the hold of the bus and, now as it comes back with him holding one of the brakes up separately from the chassis, my patience snaps. If not quite a frosty parting, it is as cool as the damp night under this leaden winter sky.
Knowing that the late hour means I must hastily find a place to stay, I am grateful that the night-duty receptionist at the first
funduq
we come to is understanding enough to charge me a half rate for an empty room.
I've reached the far edge of Arabia, but the article I filed after my visit to al-Jazeera's studios in Qatar has stalked me across the desert. An email from the foreign editor of the
Sydney Morning Herald
informs me that wire services are running a story that Tayseer Allouni, the ex-Kabul-bureau chief, actually interviewed bin Laden. The foreign editor is speculating that the Americans would have known about this and waited for it to be aired. Maybe the decision to bomb al-Jazeera's Kabul centre was linked to this.
He asks me to activate my al-Jazeera contacts to get their side of the story. I spend most of today phoning Doha from the crowded cubbyhole of a phone-call vendor but, by evening, I'm in an Internet café writing for publication:
A year and a half later, Allouni will be arrested in Spain over his al-Qa'eda links. In October 2005 he will be jailed for seven years by a Spanish court that ruled he was an active collaborator with the Islamist movement.
But even now I can see the amusing side of things. For months I have been telling the folks back home how I ran into âOsama bin Laden' in a Tehran bazaar, while the more dramatic meeting was with a television journalist who had met not a look-alike but the man himself.
DAY 272 (8 FEBRUARY): AMMAN
Amman, known to the ancients as Philadelphia, is a rabbit warren of narrow streets linked at crazy angles. As a wheelchair user I find that this city, like Tehran before it and Minsk yet to come, is one where the old adage âIf you can't beat 'em, join 'em' applies. When there is no way to cross a street by waiting for the ceaseless flow of traffic to clear, I take up position by the kerb (facing the oncoming traffic, an important safety precaution) and ârow' against the tide.
The local citizenry is almost unfailingly friendly, a phenomenon I have come to conclude is directly related to the scarcity of foreign visitors.
DAY 273 (9 FEBRUARY): SUWEIMEH, DEAD SEA
An hour's ride by minibus from Amman and I'm deposited at the Dead Sea Rest House. It's what you might call a going concern: going to be demolished, to make way for a more upmarket resort by the shores of the lake that occupies the lowest point on Earth (398 metres below sea level).
Just a few kilometres from the River Jordan, where Jesus once turned the tide on John the Baptist, the Dead Sea is famous for its salt content, which turns the body into a flotation device, and for its curative properties: those associated with the green clay that is smeared on bathers' skin. This day, though, is no seaside frolic for, as it happens, my plan for a private dip in the water coincides with the arrival of another, far more famous visitor: Her Highness the Princess Alia, sister of King Abdullah.
But all I know as the minibus pulls into the Rest House car park is that the phalanx of 20 or so green jackets, not to mention another score of tourist police, all of whom greet me as I alight, seems just a tad excessive. As do the metal detector and table for the reception of luggage. Nevertheless I deposit my two bags and address one of the green jackets, who, I later learn, is a Royal Guard. âPlease inspect,' I invite him.
âWhy have you come here?' his commanding officer quizzes me with an unmistakable edge of hostility.
âTo float in the Dead Sea,' I reply, trying not to sound like a smart arse, but I might as well have said, âTo view the flying saucers.' Unimpressed, the chief of the Royal Guard counters, âYou will not be allowed to.'
At this point, perhaps sensing the need to lower the temperature, the head of the tourist police, Sergeant H. Magdidi, blurts out that familiar refrain which is music to the ears, âYou are welcome in Jordan.'
âSomehow I don't feel it right now,' I say, turning to the Royal Guard leader (whose name I am later given as Tariq). Keeping my voice as measured as possible in the circumstances, I continue, âI've come 16 000 kilometres to be here, my papers are in order, and I
will
be entering the Dead Sea.'
My jut-jawed determination is too much for Tariq's
amour propre
, and he shouts at close quarters, âFuck you. Fuck you ten times.'
To his credit, Tariq immediately apologises, but remains tight-lipped about the royal visit, which is common knowledge among Jordanians.
Hasty whispers are exchanged with hotel staff, and 20 minutes later I am triumphantly offshore, watched over by a Royal Guard marksman in possession of a semi-automatic and (I hope) no orders to shoot.
DAY 276 (12 FEBRUARY): AJLOUN, JORDAN VALLEY
Most of today was spent on a wild-goose chase, but it ends in the lap of outstanding hospitality, if not luxury.
The idea was to visit Pella, a northern archaeological dig being supervised by Australians (an embryonic âEmail from the Edge' article beckoned). However, by the time we find Pella's excavations (at dusk) we learn that the Australians won't be back until May and the site itself is locked up. So I rely on the driver to find me lodgings for the night and, as this isn't his part of the country, that's a tall order. About 7.30 pm, we pitch up to the only hotel in Ajloun, andâas best I can estimate itâthe only one within an 80-kilometre radius.
A less propitious abode for the wheelchair-inhabiting guest it is hard to conceive of. Two long flights of stairs separate the street from the three-storey hostelry perched on one of the town's two hills (a castle occupies the other). Nor can the two brothers who manage the hotel have been expecting any guest, let alone one in my situation, this cold February night. But, within seconds of the driver explaining my predicament, they bound down the stairs, ask what they can do to help and, despite an expenditure of energy that would put an Olympic weightlifter to shame, proceed to make me feel at home.
Once safely in the foyer, I discover that the guestrooms are on the third floor and even I quail at putting mein hosts to further trouble. No problem: they bring a bed down
from
the third floor and set it up in the ground-floor restaurant. The restaurant toilets are accessible.
So thankful am I for this extraordinary welcome I stay an extra day. This time the stock phrase is not trotted out, but the truth of it is deeply felt: I am welcome in Jordan.
DAY 278 (14 FEBRUARY): PETRA
Majestic Petra is your answer to those who would say that Arabs are shiftless, unproductive nomads. For desert dwellers, survival comes before everything elseâbut look at what these Bedouins built here in âthe rose-red city half as old as time', and such stereotypes crumble before your mind's eye.
Yesterday I travelled south to overnight at a rest-house in the town of Wadi Musa, separated by a rift valley from Israel, a bare 15 kilometres distant. As luck would have it, heavy rains fell yesterday, and the resulting flash floods forced the authorities to close the site. So I set off this morning not knowing whether my once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Jordan's most popular tourist attraction is about to sink without trace.
Where the taxi drops me off, by the entrance at which horsesâ carriages in towâwait patiently, water is rushing down a normally dry wadi but the ticket-sellers reassure me Petra is open again. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Spurning the horses (BYO transport is my rule), I push off down a long road that will take me further than I can see. But the morning sun is pleasant, and this is not a race, so I lapse into a leisurely rhythm.
The Nabataeans built Petra originally, in the third century BC, as a refuge from hostile desert warriors. Over the decades it grew into a cityâ today we can make out houses, temples, tombs and theatresâ but retained the character of a fortress, being carved entirely out of the massive sandstone rock formations that dominate the area.
Each marvel is named as well as we moderns can accomplish on the basis of what has been dredged up from antiquity: here is the Winged Lions Temple, over there the Roman Soldier's Tomb. Then the road forms a long defile. Tectonic changes have created this fissure in the rock, a path along which every visitor to Petra must travel for more than a kilometre. This literal rite of passage cannot be taken quickly, even on foot; if you're on wheels, it is excruciatingly slow. As if forcing my way over pebbles weren't hard enough, I soon find they give way to irregularly shaped rocks, and at times passing from one to the other leaves me teetering perilously. The passage, called the Siq, seems never-ending. At one point another traveller retraces his steps to ask if I need help. I do, but am too proud to accept it. Traversing the Siq is something I'm determined to do in my own time, at my pace, if it takes my last ounce of energy.
Half an hour laterâjust as I'm ruing my stubbornness and wondering why more fellow travellers can't see the straits I'm inâthe roughest surface I've travelled on since leaving home twists to the left, and the sight that makes the Siq worthwhile lies straight ahead, in all its celebrated glory. This is al-Khazneh, the Treasury, the city's most impressive public building, familiar from the film
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
.
DAY 279 (15 FEBRUARY): WADI RUM
One spontaneous moment is worth a month of plans. Reading up about the Arabs had sown in my brain the dream of spending a night under the stars, Bedouin-style. But, given the practical difficulty of being 24 hours away from any Western toilets, I had consigned it securely to the brain cell labelled âDreams Never To Be Acted On'.
This morning the dream bursts into a realistic prospect. As I am leaving the rest-house, I find my fellow passengers in the minibus are a mixed assortment of Australian, New Zealand and English backpackers. They have all booked a night in a Bedouin tent out in the desert near Wadi Rum, and are happy for me to become a last-minute extra paying guest. Deciding that if I can fast 20 hours to survive a long-distance Kazakh train journey this challenge should not over-extend me, I dispel all misgivings and abandon myself to the adventure.
A four-wheel drive awaits us by the roadside, and the driver is equally welcoming. As we pause for breakfast at the tourist centre just off the Desert Highway, I head off to do my ablutions (and incidentally to avoid the too tempting sight of others eating).
We speed past the Bedouin shanty dwellers and out into some of the most pristine desert imaginable. Across the sands we bounce, to the northern side of a
jebel
(Arabic for âhill'), where my fellow passengers troop off with the guide to inspect Bedouin rock carvings and Kufic inscriptions in its cool interior.
Our next halt is Lawrence's Well. These days it is stagnant but once it was fed by springs cascading from another jebel high overhead. To general amusement, our guide tells us that even today older Bedouin can clearly recall meeting Lawrence, who retains a legendary place in their memory. Only the Lawrence they recall is not the Englishman himself (that was before their time) but Peter O'Toole, whom many of these peopleânot cinema-goers even nowâsaw bestriding Wadi Rum when it was converted into a film set back in 1962.
As the sun approaches its zenith we head out into the desert, lunching (well,
they
do, and there is no escaping the sight this time) in the shade of a convenient hollowed-out rock, before driving ahead to the shade of a larger rocky outcrop. Right next to it is an imposing dune, 20 metres high, and with some trepidation I let the two strongest members of our party lift my chairâdespite the sands shifting under our combined weightâso that the promised rich orange sunset can be enjoyed by one and all.
By now, I am steeled against hunger pangs well enough to endure close-up observation of the evening meal. The organisers have barbecued a goat, and a local Bedouin who plays the oud has joined us for the occasion. A star field as rich as any in Africa or Central Australia mesmerises our party, so you could hardly say it's lights out, but we all manage to sleep soundly in this desert idyll.
YOU ARE WELCOME IN JORDAN
The Arabs are a proud and sensitive people ⦠some appreciation is needed of how much they have in their past of which to be proud, and how much in their present about which to be sensitive
.
WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH.
I
SLAM IN
M
ODERN
H
ISTORY
FEBRUARYâMARCH 2002
If Israel-Palestine lies at the crux of conflict in the Middle East, it is Israel's neighbours Syria and Lebanon, and the shadowy groups that fight for sub-national causes thereâHezbollah, the Druze, the Kurdsâ who have given the region much of its reputation as a no-go zone.
Those who read only the latest disasters in the news pages could be excused for dismissing the cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Amman as destinations of choice. But, whether or not you buy the idea that we are taking part in a war on terror, those who shun the region are cutting themselves off from a pillar of wisdom we can all lean on: the wisdom of how to recover from the loss of one's known world. Six thousand years after humans settled down in west Asia and started growing crops, these people know something about continuity. Believe me.
JORDAN: 4â18 FEBRUARY
DAY 269 (5 FEBRUARY): AMMAN
It's 3 am and our bus, whose journey began in Dubai and which I joined in Taima, draws to a stop in Amman. Against my better judgment I let the co-driver stow my wheelchair in the hold of the bus and, now as it comes back with him holding one of the brakes up separately from the chassis, my patience snaps. If not quite a frosty parting, it is as cool as the damp night under this leaden winter sky.
Knowing that the late hour means I must hastily find a place to stay, I am grateful that the night-duty receptionist at the first
funduq
we come to is understanding enough to charge me a half rate for an empty room.
I've reached the far edge of Arabia, but the article I filed after my visit to al-Jazeera's studios in Qatar has stalked me across the desert. An email from the foreign editor of the
Sydney Morning Herald
informs me that wire services are running a story that Tayseer Allouni, the ex-Kabul-bureau chief, actually interviewed bin Laden. The foreign editor is speculating that the Americans would have known about this and waited for it to be aired. Maybe the decision to bomb al-Jazeera's Kabul centre was linked to this.
He asks me to activate my al-Jazeera contacts to get their side of the story. I spend most of today phoning Doha from the crowded cubbyhole of a phone-call vendor but, by evening, I'm in an Internet café writing for publication:
Qatari-based al-Jazeera television has muzzled its staff amid renewed controversy ⦠âI cannot give you any details about this matter,' Allouni said.
My dream of becoming a foreign correspondent has never died.A year and a half later, Allouni will be arrested in Spain over his al-Qa'eda links. In October 2005 he will be jailed for seven years by a Spanish court that ruled he was an active collaborator with the Islamist movement.
But even now I can see the amusing side of things. For months I have been telling the folks back home how I ran into âOsama bin Laden' in a Tehran bazaar, while the more dramatic meeting was with a television journalist who had met not a look-alike but the man himself.
DAY 272 (8 FEBRUARY): AMMAN
Amman, known to the ancients as Philadelphia, is a rabbit warren of narrow streets linked at crazy angles. As a wheelchair user I find that this city, like Tehran before it and Minsk yet to come, is one where the old adage âIf you can't beat 'em, join 'em' applies. When there is no way to cross a street by waiting for the ceaseless flow of traffic to clear, I take up position by the kerb (facing the oncoming traffic, an important safety precaution) and ârow' against the tide.
The local citizenry is almost unfailingly friendly, a phenomenon I have come to conclude is directly related to the scarcity of foreign visitors.
DAY 273 (9 FEBRUARY): SUWEIMEH, DEAD SEA
An hour's ride by minibus from Amman and I'm deposited at the Dead Sea Rest House. It's what you might call a going concern: going to be demolished, to make way for a more upmarket resort by the shores of the lake that occupies the lowest point on Earth (398 metres below sea level).
Just a few kilometres from the River Jordan, where Jesus once turned the tide on John the Baptist, the Dead Sea is famous for its salt content, which turns the body into a flotation device, and for its curative properties: those associated with the green clay that is smeared on bathers' skin. This day, though, is no seaside frolic for, as it happens, my plan for a private dip in the water coincides with the arrival of another, far more famous visitor: Her Highness the Princess Alia, sister of King Abdullah.
But all I know as the minibus pulls into the Rest House car park is that the phalanx of 20 or so green jackets, not to mention another score of tourist police, all of whom greet me as I alight, seems just a tad excessive. As do the metal detector and table for the reception of luggage. Nevertheless I deposit my two bags and address one of the green jackets, who, I later learn, is a Royal Guard. âPlease inspect,' I invite him.
âWhy have you come here?' his commanding officer quizzes me with an unmistakable edge of hostility.
âTo float in the Dead Sea,' I reply, trying not to sound like a smart arse, but I might as well have said, âTo view the flying saucers.' Unimpressed, the chief of the Royal Guard counters, âYou will not be allowed to.'
At this point, perhaps sensing the need to lower the temperature, the head of the tourist police, Sergeant H. Magdidi, blurts out that familiar refrain which is music to the ears, âYou are welcome in Jordan.'
âSomehow I don't feel it right now,' I say, turning to the Royal Guard leader (whose name I am later given as Tariq). Keeping my voice as measured as possible in the circumstances, I continue, âI've come 16 000 kilometres to be here, my papers are in order, and I
will
be entering the Dead Sea.'
My jut-jawed determination is too much for Tariq's
amour propre
, and he shouts at close quarters, âFuck you. Fuck you ten times.'
To his credit, Tariq immediately apologises, but remains tight-lipped about the royal visit, which is common knowledge among Jordanians.
Hasty whispers are exchanged with hotel staff, and 20 minutes later I am triumphantly offshore, watched over by a Royal Guard marksman in possession of a semi-automatic and (I hope) no orders to shoot.
DAY 276 (12 FEBRUARY): AJLOUN, JORDAN VALLEY
Most of today was spent on a wild-goose chase, but it ends in the lap of outstanding hospitality, if not luxury.
The idea was to visit Pella, a northern archaeological dig being supervised by Australians (an embryonic âEmail from the Edge' article beckoned). However, by the time we find Pella's excavations (at dusk) we learn that the Australians won't be back until May and the site itself is locked up. So I rely on the driver to find me lodgings for the night and, as this isn't his part of the country, that's a tall order. About 7.30 pm, we pitch up to the only hotel in Ajloun, andâas best I can estimate itâthe only one within an 80-kilometre radius.
A less propitious abode for the wheelchair-inhabiting guest it is hard to conceive of. Two long flights of stairs separate the street from the three-storey hostelry perched on one of the town's two hills (a castle occupies the other). Nor can the two brothers who manage the hotel have been expecting any guest, let alone one in my situation, this cold February night. But, within seconds of the driver explaining my predicament, they bound down the stairs, ask what they can do to help and, despite an expenditure of energy that would put an Olympic weightlifter to shame, proceed to make me feel at home.
Once safely in the foyer, I discover that the guestrooms are on the third floor and even I quail at putting mein hosts to further trouble. No problem: they bring a bed down
from
the third floor and set it up in the ground-floor restaurant. The restaurant toilets are accessible.
So thankful am I for this extraordinary welcome I stay an extra day. This time the stock phrase is not trotted out, but the truth of it is deeply felt: I am welcome in Jordan.
DAY 278 (14 FEBRUARY): PETRA
Majestic Petra is your answer to those who would say that Arabs are shiftless, unproductive nomads. For desert dwellers, survival comes before everything elseâbut look at what these Bedouins built here in âthe rose-red city half as old as time', and such stereotypes crumble before your mind's eye.
Yesterday I travelled south to overnight at a rest-house in the town of Wadi Musa, separated by a rift valley from Israel, a bare 15 kilometres distant. As luck would have it, heavy rains fell yesterday, and the resulting flash floods forced the authorities to close the site. So I set off this morning not knowing whether my once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Jordan's most popular tourist attraction is about to sink without trace.
Where the taxi drops me off, by the entrance at which horsesâ carriages in towâwait patiently, water is rushing down a normally dry wadi but the ticket-sellers reassure me Petra is open again. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Spurning the horses (BYO transport is my rule), I push off down a long road that will take me further than I can see. But the morning sun is pleasant, and this is not a race, so I lapse into a leisurely rhythm.
The Nabataeans built Petra originally, in the third century BC, as a refuge from hostile desert warriors. Over the decades it grew into a cityâ today we can make out houses, temples, tombs and theatresâ but retained the character of a fortress, being carved entirely out of the massive sandstone rock formations that dominate the area.
Each marvel is named as well as we moderns can accomplish on the basis of what has been dredged up from antiquity: here is the Winged Lions Temple, over there the Roman Soldier's Tomb. Then the road forms a long defile. Tectonic changes have created this fissure in the rock, a path along which every visitor to Petra must travel for more than a kilometre. This literal rite of passage cannot be taken quickly, even on foot; if you're on wheels, it is excruciatingly slow. As if forcing my way over pebbles weren't hard enough, I soon find they give way to irregularly shaped rocks, and at times passing from one to the other leaves me teetering perilously. The passage, called the Siq, seems never-ending. At one point another traveller retraces his steps to ask if I need help. I do, but am too proud to accept it. Traversing the Siq is something I'm determined to do in my own time, at my pace, if it takes my last ounce of energy.
Half an hour laterâjust as I'm ruing my stubbornness and wondering why more fellow travellers can't see the straits I'm inâthe roughest surface I've travelled on since leaving home twists to the left, and the sight that makes the Siq worthwhile lies straight ahead, in all its celebrated glory. This is al-Khazneh, the Treasury, the city's most impressive public building, familiar from the film
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
.
DAY 279 (15 FEBRUARY): WADI RUM
One spontaneous moment is worth a month of plans. Reading up about the Arabs had sown in my brain the dream of spending a night under the stars, Bedouin-style. But, given the practical difficulty of being 24 hours away from any Western toilets, I had consigned it securely to the brain cell labelled âDreams Never To Be Acted On'.
This morning the dream bursts into a realistic prospect. As I am leaving the rest-house, I find my fellow passengers in the minibus are a mixed assortment of Australian, New Zealand and English backpackers. They have all booked a night in a Bedouin tent out in the desert near Wadi Rum, and are happy for me to become a last-minute extra paying guest. Deciding that if I can fast 20 hours to survive a long-distance Kazakh train journey this challenge should not over-extend me, I dispel all misgivings and abandon myself to the adventure.
A four-wheel drive awaits us by the roadside, and the driver is equally welcoming. As we pause for breakfast at the tourist centre just off the Desert Highway, I head off to do my ablutions (and incidentally to avoid the too tempting sight of others eating).
We speed past the Bedouin shanty dwellers and out into some of the most pristine desert imaginable. Across the sands we bounce, to the northern side of a
jebel
(Arabic for âhill'), where my fellow passengers troop off with the guide to inspect Bedouin rock carvings and Kufic inscriptions in its cool interior.
Our next halt is Lawrence's Well. These days it is stagnant but once it was fed by springs cascading from another jebel high overhead. To general amusement, our guide tells us that even today older Bedouin can clearly recall meeting Lawrence, who retains a legendary place in their memory. Only the Lawrence they recall is not the Englishman himself (that was before their time) but Peter O'Toole, whom many of these peopleânot cinema-goers even nowâsaw bestriding Wadi Rum when it was converted into a film set back in 1962.
As the sun approaches its zenith we head out into the desert, lunching (well,
they
do, and there is no escaping the sight this time) in the shade of a convenient hollowed-out rock, before driving ahead to the shade of a larger rocky outcrop. Right next to it is an imposing dune, 20 metres high, and with some trepidation I let the two strongest members of our party lift my chairâdespite the sands shifting under our combined weightâso that the promised rich orange sunset can be enjoyed by one and all.
By now, I am steeled against hunger pangs well enough to endure close-up observation of the evening meal. The organisers have barbecued a goat, and a local Bedouin who plays the oud has joined us for the occasion. A star field as rich as any in Africa or Central Australia mesmerises our party, so you could hardly say it's lights out, but we all manage to sleep soundly in this desert idyll.
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