In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian Age

In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian Jordan – In an Antique Land

Arriving in Jordan is supposed to be a hassle free, visa-on-arrival convenience aimed at bestowing  a charmingly Arabic welcome to  the harried, cattle-class fatigued visitor. Mine, didn’t quite fall in that category though, preceded as it was with an encounter with a suspiciously  querying visa officer, followed by three senior ones,  before my passport was stamped.  Enough to put a dampener on one’s mood one would agree.  But I decided to shrug this irritant aside, attributing the  brusqueness to the region’s currently troubled reality and instead  decided to concentrate  on the country that lay beyond its Immigration Section.

And that was a revelation. Jordan is in many ways a matchless confluence of ancient stories replete with the whispers from empires long lost, Biblical  allusions and a  kingdom of the modern world. Roads with glass like smoothness wind through the vast tracts of often uninhabited land and its ever changing topography  and landscape.  Flat and dehydrated for a stretch, the   land  can quite  suddenly veer off to embrace the   brooding magnificence of  mountains  polished smooth through millennia, or abraded with the random chiseling effects of the wind,  and then just as   unexpectedly open into a fertile green grove of olives or palms. Driving on   the Desert Highway or an offshoot of it,  had even more unanticipated pleasures in store,  as  it  wound down to ever deepening depths to kiss the shores of the Dead Sea, which is bordered by hills shorn bare of any vegetation and of life.   Yet, the Dead Sea  offers  singularly unique experiences. Bobbing in waters, whose salinity makes  swimming an impossible feat, one could practically read a paper, while sitting on it and pose for an unforgettable camera moment, or plaster oneself in its mud famed for its minerally rich  magical properties, reveling in the thought at an average of 300 metres below sea level, these were some of the lowest areas on earth.  From there to Mount Nebo and to step onto  the hillside from where Moses revealed to   his followers the sight of the Promised land, ushered one instantly to remembered scenes from the film : The Ten Commandments, injecting a certain awe too at the thought of its scriptural significance for large swathes of believers. And then there was the desert of Wadi Rum  with its silken sands coloured in powder pink  and mountain faces sculpted and  calligraphed  with  nature’s tools.  This was  Bedouin country  and the quiet of its often intractable stretches echoed the songs  of the winds and a people who had made its harshness their own, travelling across it with their camels and sheep, their kohl ringed eyes fierce like the desert sun.

Moving away from the glorious  wadis and  the vast undulating plains  of the land one was filled  by the sense of its antiquity.  There were rock carvings which were  dated 6000 years old and more,  even while  the trajectory  of history had taken this country  through  the Hellenistic and Roman eras too, their imprints beautifully preserved in some of its old towns. . The city of Jerash or Gerasha, a very do able drive from Amman, is one of the most well preserved sites of a provincial Roman town anywhere in the world. Occupied by a continuous chain of human habitation for over 6500 years, the place, boasts of splendid remnants of Roman architecture which had lain buried in the opacity of sand and neglect until its discovery and restoration in the last 70 years. Its colonnaded market place with the silenced gurgle of its fountain, the temples to Zeus and his daughter Artemis  with Corinthian columns in intricate leaf and  inlay work that paid their silent obeisance to the faith that had played its beat in  the hearts of the ancient Romans, was quite spectacular.  While  there  we went to the amphitheatre to view the enactment of gladiatorial fights and chariot races –  the gory spectator sports, so beloved of the Romans. Moving away from the resonant cries of the Romans legionnaires saluting the audience with the ominous promise of earlier days: Those who are about to die, salute you!’ one is seized by the plaintive music from the bagpipes being played at the Roman theatre by state appointed musicians. The acoustics are marvelous and could be an inspiration for our technicians at some of our own  auditoria, where the sound quality could be certainly improved.  Moving away, we walked the  main colonnaded street, still gabled  in stones some of which bear the grooves  of the chariots, which would have once hurtled down that busy street – the sight instantly transposing one into ancient times. 

And now we were eager to visit Petra –  voted as one of the seven wonders of the world.  Earlier,   thumbing through the many pages of the Lonely Planet one  learnt about    Johann Burckhardt, the Swiss explorer’s wondrous  trail in 1812 when he had chanced upon the lost city while travelling with his Bedouin companion, disguised as a Muslim traveler himself .  Yet, this wondrous place seemed to be several things at once, leaving one  rather  unclear about the  focus of a forthcoming visit. Was it a marvel of nature, a monument or some religious relic, the questions kept coming. The answers it seemed could only be found at the site itself. And so at Petra, we left for the ruins  as the early sun kissed the tops of the town’s flat buildings  laid out like   Lego land. We went across to the Vistor’s Centre to pay the steep price of 50 JD, which promised an entry and a  short  horse ride   to enter the Siq the Arabic term for shaft, which was really a  narrow path walled in by the mountains burnished a deep rose pink. This  passage however, was not cleaved by a triumphal river as one might have  imagined, but had been wrought by the tectonic shift of natural forces.

Amman - Roman Amphitheatre taking some space there  

The SIQ- chariot teethering  dangerously 

Petra - the edifice of the temple cut on the rock face 

Standing atop the naturally sculpted bridge 

The desert of Wadi Rum 

Sunset over the Dead Sea

In the morning  light as the sun spilled through the narrow openings, the hillsides were painted in a remarkable palette  of coral, while  stria in different shades of deepened colours calibrated its ceaseless geological activity. A still-cool desert air whooshed through the cavities, while history unrolled.  The quiet was annoyingly shattered as a  horse-drawn carriage went  through at break neck speed, one of several in the time we were there,  as if it were competing in the chariot races from ancient times. Shrugging at the compulsions of modern tourism, we resumed our walk, taking in the  sights of the rock face carved with the scenes of passing caravans on the ancient silk route and obelisks marking the burial chambers of the Nabateans , an ancient Arab people from pre Islamic times.    After about fifteen minutes one came to the end of the Siq and paused to take in  that first tantalizing glimpse of  the monument, that epitomized the  fabulous imagination and skills  of an ancient people, and one, which now fired our romantic, movie -inspired notions of  lost cities discovered by intrepid explorers. And so we stepped out into the sudden, abrupt opening and took in, in a long shuddering breath  the  spectacular magnificence of the Treasury or the Al Khazneh. Carved on the rock face, perhaps in the 1^st century BC, it was probably a place of worship or burial chamber, with beautiful Corinthian style pillars,  and perhaps the image of  Al-‘Uzzá, a goddess similar to the Egyptian goddess Isis, carved on its façade.  

As the day advanced the place was transformed into the melee of a tourist circus, as bus loads of tourists and school parties   disgorged  into the open space before the Treasury and the Bedouins went into an overdrive of offers for  rides on horses, donkeys and camels and what-have-you.   The way  to the Monastery, a bit of a misnomer since the Byzantium monks inhabited much later,  was a steep uphill climb along an ancient path.  Approximately 800 steps were cut into the rock face, the   donkey  in my case coming in handy, and led one to a temple dedicated to another Nabatean god Obodas, which at  a height of 50 metres cut into the rock face, was at least as breathtaking as the one left behind.

Petra and Jerash  in many ways epitomized the changing shifts of the civilizations   cradled in this region, but it was in the capital Amman, that one was touched by the cross streams of the ancient and the modern, that have sculpted  the land. With its  juxtaposition  of the old and new quarters, the ruins of the Citadel presiding over the city, its exciting modernity and the changeless culture of its cafes with Arabic music wafting out of  dark interiors –it arches its welcome to a land of ancient glories and  their inevitable trajectories.