5-23-15. Amman, Jordan
I left Wadi Musa around noon yesterday. Almost as soon as I set out, my GPS sent me down an isolated country road, just wide enough for two vehicles to pass. Numerous hairpin turns held my speed down to about 50 –which, for once, I didn’t mind, as the landscape was remarkably beautiful. Fields of wheat lapped the road on both sides, and overspread a world of rolling hills with gold. Within twenty kilometers, however, gold gave way to the tan of sand and rock, and the hills flattened into featureless desert. My road soon joined the Desert Highway, Jordan’s only real high-speed highway. The drive swiftly became something of an ordeal. A high wind was sweeping across the road, jogging my steering and sending huge dust devils across the pavement. The right lane, virtually reserved for trucks, was badly broken up, and dangerous to drive at the posted speed limit of 110 Kph. The smoother left lane was the reserve of cars whipping along at dangerous speeds; a handful must have passed going 150 or more. I was thus shunted more or less constantly between the hazard of being rear-ended in the left lane and the risk of popping another tire in the right.
About halfway through the journey, I turned off and drove fifteen kilometers west to the isolated site of Lejjun. The legionary camp at Lejjun was the largest Roman military installation on the Arabian frontier. Built under Diocletian, it featured an imposing wall fortified with towers, a series of imposing administrative buildings, stone barracks, and a full-size bath. Sixteen centuries of neglect, however, have reduced the complex to a vast rubble field, vaguely defined by the grass-grown mound of the circuit wall. Portions of the site have been uncovered by recent excavation (both legal and illegal), but I had a hard time making out more than the broadest outlines of the former camp. The strong wind whistling over the barren hills on all sides left me little taste for sustained inspection, and I was back in my car within an hour, headed back along the desert highway to Madaba.
I was scheduled to return my car around noon today, and, foreseeing that I would need plenty of time to navigate the tangled streets of Amman, limited my morning’s exploration to two sites in the immediate vicinity of Madaba. The first and more famous of these was Mt. Nebo, the biblical Pisgah, site of Moses’ dying glimpse of the Promised Land. On a clear day, much of Palestine is visible from the summit; but my own Pisgah prospect was veiled by a morning haze and overcast sky. A smudge on the horizon may have been the Mount of Olives – or it may very well have just been a particularly thick patch of fog. Already disappointed by the lackluster view, I was further dismayed to learn that the Church of Moses –a modern reconstruction of a sixth-century building, now run by the Franciscans –was closed for remodeling. Part of the famous mosaic floor was on display outside, but this was meager compensation.
My second stop, a cluster of late antique churches in the village of Mukhayyat, was initially almost as disappointing. A tall barbed wire fence with a locked gate barred access to the ruins, with no custodian in sight. I was just on the point of giving up when I heard snoring from a small whitewashed building a few meters from the gate. Repeated knocks brought to the door a hefty older gentleman, who proved (or claimed) to be the son of the Bedouin who discovered mosaics there seventy years ago. Waddling over to what I had taken for a storage building, he unlocked a metal door, switched on a light, and revealed the floor of a small but beautifully mosaicked Byzantine church. Lush garlands of olive leaves separated and linked dozens of panels depicting scenes from daily life: the harvest, hunting, fishing, planting, etc. The fine tesserae were skillfully laid and (despite a layer of dust) brilliantly colored.
From this place of peace, I descended into the madness of Amman. Although the weekend traffic wasn’t terrible, the street layout was perversely complex, the main arteries splayed and compressed by steep hills, and my GPS worse than useless. At one point, about an hour into the ordeal, I actually come within sight of my hotel, only to be whisked by traffic down a series of one-way streets that left me miles away. Finally, with five minutes to spare before the scheduled dropoff time, I parked about a kilometer from the hotel, jogged to the reception, and led the puffing rental employee back uphill to the car.
Left with a half day in Amman, I walked through the bustling city center to the new Jordan Museum (good, not great), to the Roman theater and odeon, and finally up to the citadel. The ruins there were impressive enough – I wandered for a while around the massive columns of a Roman temple to Hercules and was duly impressed by the intricately carved entry hall of an Umayyad palace – but the real highlight was the view over the endless white houses of the modern city, which formed a striking backdrop to any photos of the ruins. As I sat in the ruins of the Umayyad palace, trying to puzzle out my guide book’s map of the downtown area, the mid-afternoon call to prayer sounded from dozens of mosques across the city. Distorted by a strong wind, the sound was almost haunting.