my My Wandering

The idea of going to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan emerged sometimes in spring 2005. At first it should have taken place in October, but – as the Ramadan was to occur during that period of the year, we decided to postpone the trip a little and to go in November. Bogdan, the friend I had gone to Iran with, wanted to come too and we started with the preparations. The visas took 2 months to be ready and incertitudes were not out of the question, as the approval from Beirut for the Lebanese visa arrived just when we were about to change the flight tickets because of the fact that there had remained only a few days until the departure. “Traditional Romanian” situations were there as well, as Romanian and Czech citizens were about the only in Europe not to be granted visas upon arrival in Beirut, probably because of the dolce far’ niente surrounding the people in the foreign affairs ministries of the two countries, that resulted in a lack of an agreement with the Lebanese Surete Generale. But all was fine when we finished with formalities, which, as always, made one want even more to get on the Beirut-bound flight.

We were to cheat this time and fly instead of doing a gradual approach of the countries visited, as I would have preferred. While getting close to the Lebanese capital city, one could almost feel its “beat”, with its busy streets, its packed restaurants and cafes, its multitude of colours and fragrances. After a quick and brief passing through the passport checking, we waved a car that stopped, taking us to Beirut. Similarly to Iran, there were both official (i.e. bearing plates saying “taxi”) and unofficial taxis working as “service taxis” (i.e. going in a specific direction, price fixed, and taking people along the way, provided their destination matched that of the taxi) or as “private taxis” (i.e. going only with the person(s) that first waved them, price varying upon route). The city and its immediate neighbourhood were as heterogenous as possible. As we were to see later on, Lebanon was developing at a very fast pace. Because of the rocky ground that allowed it, people could set up relatively high buildings on an otherwise quite steep slope or on an abrupt sea shore.

After checking in at our hotel and dropping our luggage, we went for a long (and very welcome) walk through the city. As it was Sunday, the traffic was lighter than usual. There were people doing jogging along the palm tree-lined Corniche facing the sea. Merchants were selling boiled corn, others were “renting out” narghiles. Fancy hotels and restaurants looked very promising for a city which had disputed the “best party atmosphere in the Middle East” title with Dubai and was back in this competition after a long civil war. However, even though there were still many 15 year old war scars scattered across the city, Beirutis were certainly up and working hard for their future; the beat they granted the city with was an overwhelming one: just 100 m. from the place the former Prime Minister, Mr. Rafiq Hariri, had been killed half a year before our visit, an imposing high rise building was being completed. The restored and glamorous Intercontinental stood next to the desolated, shelled building that had hosted the Hyatt. Beautiful pieces of French colonial era architecture had been restored in great detail and some streets around them hosted elegant cafes and restaurants. People dressed up in smart clothes were driving fancy cars, but every now and then there would appear a Mercedes from the 1970s, speeding up and horning pedestrians: a taxi in search of passengers. I could not say whether I liked Beirut or not, but one thing I am sure of is that it was extremely impressive, striking the visitor with a life beat which was unique in its own way.

In the afternoon, we took a taxi (the “private” version) to Beiteddine, just to change the scenery. Beyond the concrete “rush” in and around Beirut, this was a good way to have a well balanced day, with smaller residences set up in lime stone, bearing a simple, but nevertheless beautiful architecture line. We visited the palace there, a fine and well restored building providing beautiful views over the valley beyond. More than anything, the collection of mosaics hosted in the palace (even though they did not originate there) was pretty appealing. Speaking French proved to be useful, as we were to see further on while in other parts of Lebanon: while many people (especially in larger cities) spoke English, others would speak French very well, and that applied also in the case of many museum caretakers and local guides.

We got back to Beirut, back to Cola “transportation hub”, as the guidebook called one of the two bus / taxi terminals the city had. Actually this was about a quite big crossing under a long bridge on the valley exiting the city proper. We walked from Cola to the centre: this side of the city was different in a way, with main avenues, bordered by fine buildings and fancy-looking shops, surrounded by narrower streets where both buildings and their inhabitants looked poorer. Even cars would tell the difference: while in Tehran, the agglomeration of motorbikes was proof of poorer areas, in Beirut these were shown by a large number of old cars, some of which looked basically reconstructed. The difference between otherwise quite close areas was striking. However, just like in other countries I had visited, the best food was to be found with the poor, with a quite good variety of Oriental foodstuffs to be eaten in the street. In these neighbourhoods, locals would just hang around the entrance to the apartment building they lived in, or next to a green grocer’s, smoking narghile, drinking tea or coffee and chatting, while in the other part of the city (or, sometimes, just around the corner), people dressed in the latest trends of world’s haute couture designers, would smoke the same water pipes, enjoying the same tea or coffee, but in an apparently different environment.

The thing that would keep the city together, as a whole, was the traffic. In the whole city there were only a dozen (if ever) of crossings endowed with traffic lights (some of which did not work). In most cases, drivers would not stop at the red light and the whole traffic would be a matter of mutual understanding between drivers, which relied on being bold, horn blowing and different gestures. Except for those living in that very neighbourhood, and for shopping or cafe / restaurant – filled areas, pedestrians had no reason to exist, as most people seemed to rely on service taxis, vans or driving their own car, motorbike or scooter. Crossing the street was a matter of being self-possessed, bold and nevertheless fast, sliding among the car flow of Beirut. However, having visited other cities with a fairly similar traffic, as well as coming from the city we lived in, made the whole thing look rather familiar and – up to a point – funny. After all, the streets of Beirut had a music of their own, granting the city with a unique beat, starting with official or ad hoc taxi drivers horning pedestrians as a sign that they were available, and ending with everyone horning everyone else for matters linked to traffic priority. In the evening, we were back in our small hotel near the sea shore, but it soon started raining. The following was dedicated to Saida, where we went from the same Cola “hub”. We took a bus, and it seemed to be the fancier version of a bus, with a TV set, elegantly dressed (unlike us) people and no stop all the way to the destination. We were to return in a cheaper (i.e. older) bus, which did not even go along the highway, rather going through villages and stopping quite frequently for people to get on and off. The reason: it was 2000 LL for the “fancy bus” and 1500 LL for the “regular bus”, and the difference in price meant something like 30 cents, an amount that mattered to some.

Saida had an interesting souq area, with a lively crowd and picturesque small shops. It was one of the couple of places we visited in Lebanon which did not seem greatly affected by tourism / visitors, or maybe this was just my impression. The fortress by the sea was picturesque and people living or merely transiting the place accomplished a fine scape.

We went back to the big city and the many planes passing along its fancy hotel-bordered promenade in order to land on its airport by the sea. The day came to and end after walking in the streets bordered by recently restored French mandate era buildings. These were well lit in tones of light yellow that nicely met the beige stone their facades were made of, and only echoes coming from the busy avenues score meters away would bring one’s senses back to the city he / she really was in.

Another day meant yet another trip, this time across the mountains, as we took a van to Aanjar, near the Syrian border. This early Muslim site which used many Byzantine and Roman architectural elements made it for a different visit, while the fact that the town was nowadays inhabited by many Armenians, only showed once again (if needed) the extent to which Lebanon was diverse and therefore unique in its own way. The afternoon was dedicated to Baalbek and its impressive temples. Strangely, the site did not impress only through the proportion of its structure, but mainly through the images that would come to one while walking in the shadow of those huge columns: scenes from Ismail Kadare’s “The Pyramid” unwillingly came to my mind. History is indeed repeating and everything, as large it might be at a certain moment, turns into an archaeological site and into a line in a history book in the end, or at a certain moment of its existence, to put it in a more optimistic way. The way those people carried and lifted stone pieces weighting up to 1000 tons was irrelevant at that moment, as long as we were looking at a motionless picture, using our cameras only to immortalize reflections of past millennia and former glory.

When we were about to start on the way back to Beirut, we witnessed a “minor” accident, as a car rushed and hit a van running “regularly” (whatever that could mean given the traffic). Without shouting or making any fuss around the matter, the two drivers got off their vehicles and shook hands, then one called the police, while the other one was looking for his documents. In a place buzzing of drivers blowing the horn every minute for various reasons, that “event” showed in the best way that balance does exist, should we take the time and open our eyes to see it. Back to Beirut for the last night there, we took a long walk, just to discover the place we had been told to visit as the main attraction of the whole city: Hamra. It was a busy and trendy quarter, I reckon, the cosmopolitan air was impossible to miss, but – with all risks implied by this statement – I preferred the area around the noisy and grill smoke – filled Cola crossing. Maybe it was about the people, I could not and would not either ask myself or attempt to say because this is what I felt there and then.

The last full day in Lebanon was dedicated to the North. While on the bus en route to Byblos, at a certain moment, many passengers rushed to the windows to the left: there had been a car accident with two casualties: an old woman and a little girl had unsuccessfully attempted to cross the highway and now they lay in a pool of blood. Life, or rather the day went on and we reached Byblos with the picturesque quarter made of stone-made dwellings by the sea, with its tourist-oriented commercial area near the entrance to the archaeological site, and with its fortress providing fine views over the surrounding area. The history shown by different layers of archaeological finds was impressive, however, as far as the town itself was concerned, I personally preferred Tripoli we visited later that day. Tripoli was gleaming with life, it was noisy, dusty, crowded with people selling and buying, filled with what some might consider as rubbish, while others might take for the results of the living. The main square, hosting a once “elegant” park was bordered by buildings on the facades of which, if carefully looked at, one could have noticed great elements of decoration. Some score taxis, all of which were Mercedes models from the 1960-1970s, were waiting for customers, while their drivers were shouting their destination every now and then: “Jbail!”, “Beirut!”, “Homs!”…

The local fortress was raising over the older part of the town, with its small and crammed houses, with its twisted, narrow streets filled with children shouting and playing, with a very poor (if poverty is of any relevance here) neighbourhood, standing just across the river… As evening came, I had a water pipe on a terrace boasting green plastic chairs in front of a once superb building now partly abandoned, partly ruined one could freely dream upon the past of, in the only music there was, provided by the horning, the loud talking and that trading only life can be about.

The following day, after the large coach slowly made its way among all types of vehicles to the small office facing the main square, we started towards Syria. The traffic to the border was relatively relaxed, but, once on the other side of the frontier, it got very busy: the simple, one lane per way road was definitely not enough, as one lane of the road was taken by many trucks parked, probably waiting for documents to be done. Therefore, vehicles both coming and going had to “share” a single lane. Cars and smaller lorries or vans could cheat here and there, going through the nearby field, among someone’s feeble crops, through mud and rubble, but trucks and coaches like ours could not do that and complicated manoeuvres had to be done. At a certain moment, an old bus full of passengers and heavily loaded with heaps of merchandise on the roof, almost turned upside down while trying to pass by our coach. As As Bogdan and I were to see for ourselves later on, many things were considerably cheaper in Syria than in Lebanon, hence the reason for all that merchandise traffic and / or smuggling.

Learning our next destination (i.e. Krak des Chevaliers), an English-speaking gentleman on the coach gave us some directions and, after talking to a few other passengers, a boy in his 20s decided to come show us around. He was going to Hama, just like us, but going with us to Krak and then to Hama took him at least 3 hours more than going straight. The sense of hospitality these people showed was impressive and this way we had a great introduction to the country we had just entered. After getting on a van from a quite large and crowded bus station in Homs, we reached the Crusader fortification at Krak des Chevaliers. It was imposing and all those passage ways, together with the Gothic arches and stone carving works in the central part, granted the place a touch of mystery, hence its being a pleasant site to visit. While walking around and telling our ad-hoc guide about our itinerary, when I reached the part involving Jordan, he said “no!” and made some strange gestures. We were to find out later that day that there had been explosions in three hotels in Amman, the results of which being about almost 60 dead and around 300 injured. However, like in any other situation, both to the good or to the bad of it, the world we live in goes on, at least as long as this piece of earth, water and fire we call Earth keeps on spinning around.

We reached Homs again and then we got to Hama where, after showing us to the centre, our recently made friend left us. He spoke no English at all, and we communicated through gestures, mimic and the very few words we knew in Arabic, but his generosity and simple smile were more than anyone could have ever asked for. Later on we realized we we did not even introduce ourselves and that we did not know his name. However maybe it is to the better, keeping memories linked to facts rather than to names and / or pictures.

The next morning, I had a long walk along the Orontes and around the fortress hill (or rather around the hill, as there were hardly any remnants of the fortress). The city, despite the events in February 1982 and the destruction then, had preserved an air of its own and, provided someone was willing to look over the sometimes desolated houses by the rather smelly river, there were interesting things to see, starting with some beautiful stone decorations or with the impressive wooden norias, and ending with several houses perched upon or carved in rocky cliffs. Then we had a tour to Apamea and to two of the so-called “Dead Cities”. We were given the tour by an old and charismatic man in his lightly younger car: “Pontiac 1951”, as he proudly said. It had been very well maintained and, when visiting Apamea, it was to turn into a tourist sight competing with the Roman ruins, as the members of a German group of tourists turned towards us and started shooting pictures at the large, white limousine shining in the sun. Unlike the site at Baalbek, Apamea did not impress one through size, but rather through its location and its setting, as one goes walking on a column-lined ancient street stretching for about 2 km.

Later on we went on a scenic ride, crossing stone-dotted hills covered with extensive olive tree orchards. One of the two “dead cities” we visited, the one at Serjilla, was the most impressive. Incredibly well preserved Byzantine decorations, great columns and household or public edifice walls lay among rocks, and olive trees scattered on a couple of hill sides. There was a sheepfold hosted in a dwelling set 15 centuries ago, while sheep could be seen among the ruins. The other city, Al Bara, was more mysterious, with ruins lost in an olive tree orchard, with bushes making the whole place even more shady. Only a handful of children granted the site with life and light, with their running around and playing. Our driver eventually dropped us close to the highway and we took a van, reaching Aleppo in the early evening.

“Ce faci, mă?” (Romanian, approximate English translation: “How are you, dude?”), the receptionist at Syria Hotel greeted us smiling. He had learnt some phrases in Romanian from “people doing business in Romania”, as he put it. As we were to see for ourselves, the city of Aleppo was a quite cosmopolitan place, with many tourists, but even more merchants that kept the trading tradition alive in this place. Signposts in Russian and Turkish, cargo companies promoting fast deliveries of merchandise to remote destinations, as well as the different lifestyles we met in the street were only mere proof for the statement above.

That evening we enjoyed a fascinating sunset over the minaret of the Great Ummayad Mosque, with the sun throwing a reddish, dim light over the stone decorations which had survived over almost millennium. We were to see the following day that Aleppo was simply captivating. It was impossible for one to break free from this city, it was impossible to ignore it, to avoid its fragrance and sound. Traffic was bad, there were many construction sites (including streets meant to be repaired), people were running around, merchants were calling for customers. Everything was for sale and everything could (and should) be negotiated. Life, beginning with buying a piece of cloth and ending with crossing the street, was a matter of looking at the other person and trading one’s negotiation skills.

As the sun got up in the sky, the extensive bazaar area with all its souqs was continuously growing. It grew bigger and bigger, more shops were being opened, , more people were coming and going, more things were sold and bought. Small carts, donkeys bearing heavy loads, large and small plastic bags, motorcycles and even, where the width of the souq passage way allowed it, vans and cars, all of these would bump into one another, providing one of the liveliest places I had visited so far. Apart from the souq, other historical sites could not live on their own and they were overwhelmed by the agitated life of the city: just off Bab Antakya (the Gate of Antioch), a baker was drying down about a dozen of bread loaves directly on the sidewalk, while, on the other side of the souq, another baker was doing the same thing, but he was using the hot engine cover of his car in the process. Lost in a thick cloud of dust coming from the working sites in the streets around it, the local fortress provided broad – even though foggy – views over the city, while its throne hall made it for a great contrast with the rest of the ruins. Meanwhile, Al Jdeida Quarter provided a totally different (in looks) souq, with its different life approach and with its Armenian church. The city’s being so diverse, so captivating and rich in life scapes made it for a never-to-be-forgotten moment of a lifetime.

We woke up very early the following morning, as we were to part: Bogdan was on his way to Damascus, on the 4 AM train, in order to get on a flight to Bucharest, while I was going to spend one more week in Syria and another one in Jordan. It felt strange, but nevertheless welcome to leave the big city and get on the first morning train to Lattakia. The scenery was dramatic while the train crossed the mountains. The pine forest and eventually the blue sea made it for a good change after the so many colours and languages of the souq in Aleppo. I briefly crossed the town and eventually took a van to Al Haffa, then a taxi to Qala’at Salah ad-Din. Even though impressive from a distance, once up there, the fortress did not ‘move’ one too much, but the natural scenery was more than a comfort. The mass of pines, dotted from place to place with other trees full of nowadays reddish or yellow leaves due to the fall, the distant sea shore, as well as the rocky cliffs shining in the sun completed a day of its own on my tour, even though there was nothing “outstanding”. Back to Lattakia, I wandered through the town, which proved to host a “normal” commercial area – where locals would go for their day-by-day needs. There was nothing special about the town at that moment (dislike its history), but it was pleasant and intriguing at the same time (e.g. the sea front, the “Corniche”, which in Beirut made it for one of the city landmarks, in Lattakia was blocked by the busy harbour. Strolling along busy streets, once again crossing construction sites and watching people go on with their ancient occupations, I slowly made my way to the station, with a railway guard that approached me and only wanted to shake my hand, respectively wish me a pleasant journey.

I reached Aleppo again and got on the train to Deir ez Zur, reaching my destination at 4 AM. The relatively small station was dark and it was rather cold outside, but the station clerk on duty invited me in his office, a rather poor room that looked like the Temple of Jupiter to me, given the hot stove near the desk. Hassan, the clerk there, spoke very little English, but, just like many other Syrians I met – he was a great host. As we had a few cups of tea and as we talked about my trip in his country, time passed by and the sun got up in the sky. As his morning shift arrived, we both got on the bus to Deir and, when reaching the town centre, the driver would not accept my money: “guest”, he said. Deir looked like a poor town, with a commercial area that was slowly waking up at that time of the day. After walking for a while, I reached the microbus station and got on a van towards Abu Kamal. The ride was interesting and, the closer we drew to the Iraqi border, the more flat and arid the desert got. I got off a few kilometers before Kamal, to visit Tell Hariri at Al Mari, the ruins of a Mesopotamian palace, which were not impressive through their dimensions, but rather through their age.

Back on the road, I got a ride with a car driven by a mid-aged man and his 63 year old very funny uncle, eventually reaching Tell Salhiye and its archaeological site, providing vast and wonderful views towards Euphrates Valley. In the opposite direction, there lay the desert with its being flat, dry and overwhelming. In the afternoon, I was given a ride by a young man that defied all other vehicles, pedestrians and animals on the road, almost having us both killed when he tried to take over a van that was already taking over a tractor on a road on the sides of which children were going home from school. Back in Deir, I was lucky to have a bus going to Palmyra right away. The road the bus took on its way justified the growth and wealth of Palmyra as a stop on the trading routes of the ancient world: the desert that would stretch for as long as one could see and far beyond that. Once in Palmyra, while crossing the town, children would approach me saying “hello, mister”, while some people tried to convince me to go for one of the hotels they worked for or got a commission from. Eventually I found the place I had been looking for and got a room I hadn’t been looking for (which had no window, but which had a shower where I was to almost die electrocuted). Then I had a walk across the site: it was impressive because of its being vast and because – differently from other sites of its age – one could actually realize the initial dimensions of the ancient town. The vicinity of the Arabian fortress on top of a hill overlooking the ruins, as well as the tomb towers on the horizon line with the sunset light fading behind them, all these made it for a great end of the day.

The following day was dedicated to the site and its surrounding area, with coaches and groups of tourists going around the main places, local people trying to make a living out of the “Bedouin souvenir, Bedouin souvenir, postcards and table cloths, mister!” they were trying to sell, with the sun, the desert and paths crossing it that seemed to go on forever. In the afternoon I went on top of the hill overlooking Palmyra, and spent a couple of hours on the highest level of the Arabian fortress there, turning it in my own “qala” that would provide a perfect shelter against groups of tourists and against noise, respectively enjoying the silence that was only pleasantly interrupted from time to time by the muezzin in some mosque down in the town, or by the sound of trucks and coaches crossing the desert below on their way to the horizon line. I was to get back to life in its noisiest and busiest shape, as the morning was to take me to Damascus, with its music, richly coloured fabrics and captivating life.

The city with so much history behind it was gleaming with a very vibrant lifestyle. More than any other place, Damascus gave one the feeling that nothing had changed during the last millennium or more. Leaving aside the shops meant for tourists, souqs were filled with a moving mass of people and goods. People were coming and going, merchandise – filled carts were pushed from stall to stall, bags, from small ones containing head scarfs, to large ones containing everything from clothes to carpets, were dragged, while cars, vans, motorbikes and bicycles were slowly making their way through the crowd of people and merchandise. One could not ignore echoes, broken fragments of conversation, car horns or the noise made by the hand shake upon an agreed deal. Compared to this atmosphere, any building, any palace or residence faded away. Even though the merchandise sold and bought was most times common (basically, with the tourist-focused items exception, and definitely not outstanding, the souqs in Damascus were unique in their own way, if compared to similar places in Iran, Turkey or Lebanon.

Following the crowd and the call of the muezzin, I eventually got to the Ummayad Mosque, which provided a refreshing place with the vast spaces and the faithful inside. Beyond the inner courtyard and the indeed beautiful golden mosaics, the large praying hall inside was far more impressive for me: it hosted a whole city of its own in the heart of Damascus. People would pray, they would meet acquaintances or family, children would run around or play, tourists would shoot pictures, some of the young would even talk on their mobile phones. This atmosphere was maybe not what one would have expected, but it was so pure in its being natural, that it would have indeed moved mountains. The same day I visited Azem Palace, a quiet and pleasant oasis of silence and delicate decoration, however I was to find Dahdah Palace to be more beautiful or, to put it in a different way, more touching. I spent the evening walking across old Damascus, which had preserved a fine city – fortress touch; its quarters were still visibly delimited and the architectural difference from one house to the ones a few streets away, was a joy.

In the morning, getting to a large bus station and asking around, someone took the time to walk with me and show me to the right bus and this way, after a bus and a taxi ride, I reached Mar Musa Monastery, located on a barren hillside surrounded by the desert. Without being a stunningly beautiful building (it was rather simple, built of stones), it hosted some old, simple and therefore touching frescoes, as well as a quite interesting, heterogenous group of people: the monks, people working to restore the building, as well as travelers from a few countries, one of which was on a 6 month trip “in the world”. Hitching a ride and later on getting on an “official” van, I got back to the big city, to explore some of the old residences it hosted.

The sun rose once again, this time over my last Syrian day. In the morning, I went to Bosra, the granite fortress which rose like an imposing, dark cloud in the clear blue sky of white stone fortresses and castles I had seen so far. In the old theatre, one could feel the Roman rule as if it had ended the day before, while there were echoes of voices, restoration works and children’s playing. Especially as it was Friday and they were not at school, the latter were to be found everywhere, greeting me, running after me, asking where I came from or simply smiling. If it weren’t for these creatures, the old town would have had a ghostly touch, with its half-ruined walls of black stone and with its dark columns. Time passed by and I had to go to yet another big, bustling city with a long history behind: Amman.

An old bus with Jordanian plates, some passengers with a lot of luggage (as prices seemed to be higher in Jordan than in Syria), a mid-aged French couple, two Japanese young men, a German girl that had studied Arabic and we set off. Unlike the one on Syria and Lebanon, the guidebook on Jordan I had bought proved to be full of mistakes and to lack a lot of directions, beginning with the bus station in Amman, going on with mistaking the left for the right, a church for a Roman column way and the East for the West. Such matters, however, were to push me into a more direct and intense contact with the local people, which proved to be, just like in Syria, helpful, friendly and always eager to meet or talk to the obvious stranger.

Once arrived in a remote bus station in Amman, a handful of taxi drivers approached the few yawning foreigners, asking whether they needed a ride here or there, while most of the locals had been waited by relatives or friends. I started walking, enjoying the cool evening breeze. It was 8 PM on a Friday and most shops or offices were closed, while streets looked rather deserted. Only a few soldiers were guarding a barricaded building with official looks. Rare cars, mostly taxis, would break the silence every now and then. The city spread on several hills and many buildings only had two – three floors, providing the place with a more relaxed and quiet (at that moment and only apparently) atmosphere. After wondering through the city for a while, after going up a hill just to get down again, I found my hotel and went for a good night’s sleep. Quiet that was.

Waking up rather early and starting towards Jerash, I did not have a chance to see Amman in depth at that time. Just like Palmyra in Syria, but lacking its great location in the desert, Jerash had a few very elegant pieces of decoration, while the town around it seemed to be more like a fortification than like a community developed in contemporary times. After being told by a couple of drivers that there was no bus to Irbid (and being offered a ride which bore a price tag), I found a helpful soul which showed me to the bus station (which was in the opposite part of the town than specified in the guidebook) and I got on a seemingly non-existent bus. I met a young man which lived in Umm Quais; he wanted to tell me a lot of things about his town while showing me to the right bus. In the end of the ride, he refused to let me pay for my ride and made a detour to show me to the entrance to the archaeological site. More than the site itself with its beautiful black and white (i.e. granite and limestone) Muslim village, views were superb, towards the Sea of Galilee, Golan Heights, a corner of Syria and a great blue sky above them all. The Roman site itself was like fallen asleep, with a large part of it yet to be excavated and cleared; however, for that very reason, it was enjoyable.

Time passed by and I still had to change three minibuses to get back to Amman. I was to find the city crowded with cars and people. The central streets were full of sound and light. There was no real souq in Amman, mostly because the once grand Roman city had afterwards turned into a village and it had redeveloped only in the 20th century. However there was no need for a souq either: one could buy or sell anything in the very streets of the city. The Oriental beat of music could be heard all along the main avenues, merchants would call for customers, selling them all, from cheese or socks, to vacuum cleaners or water pipes. The young would wander around, shout at each other, sing or enjoy a handful of pistachio, while the elder would chat, play backgammon, watch the young with a somehow regretful smile, or simply sip some strong coffee from a plastic cup. All sorts of vehicles would rush here and there, while crossing the street in central Amman at 9 PM proved to be at least just as difficult or easy (usually depending on the country one had come from / traveled to before) as it was at noon. In the hotel I was staying at, located in a side street, one could still very well hear (or rather listen to) the sound of downtown Amman, and for once I enjoyed this very much, as it was nothing but the proof that the city was alive and the way a 21st century souq looks, tastes and sounds like.

As I started a bit later than the day before, the city had woken up before me and all the rush had already begun by the time I got out. Everything was still there, except for that fantastic music the night before. Only somewhere, at a distance, someone had turned a radio on and there was some music playing, hence keeping the spirit alive. The local citadel was located on a hilltop and it provided fine views towards the forest of shorter or higher concrete buildings. However the time to go had come and I got on a minibus to Madaba, a town which bore the fame of the mosaics discovered in churches or residences of the area. These ones were beautiful through their being simple and straight-forward, however the many tourist-focused mosaics on sale everywhere in the streets of this town gave one a strange feeling. The town lived on, respectively for tourism, and only by going down / around the main road I could get back to real life, enjoying a felafel and buying some oranges from a man with a great smily face. Going to Mount Nebo, instead of seeing the Promised Land, all there I could see was a thick cloud of smog through which one could hardly think of noticing Jordan Valley and a corner of the Dead Sea. Back in Madaba, I settled in a guesthouse away from the tourist trade centre of the town. Tourism was too industrious, too much of a business concept in Jordan and, even though back in university I had learnt that this is “the way” to success in this sector, I did not like this for myself as a traveler. However, Jordanians were thankfully among the warmest and friendliest people I had met (if one could ever generalize nation-wise), and this made the whole trip much better for me.

In the morning, while having an early breakfast, I met two other tourists staying in the same guesthouse: two retired ladies from Denmark, which had also come from Syria: “after hearing so much about poverty, this and that about Syria, it is interesting to actually go there and see for oneself, to have a personal experience”. It started raining and I had to go. I took a minibus followed by a van across the impressive (especially with the black, thick clouds above) Wadi Mujib, then another minibus and I eventually reached Karak and its castle in a pouring rain. Even though I am not too fond of museums, the local archaeological gallery was warm and dry, therefore providing great shelter from the elements. After visiting the castle in a pouring rain, soak wet, getting on the “only minibus out”, I reached Tafila, where I was given a piece of news even better than the weather outside: “bus to Ma’an tomorrow at 7; today taxi to Wadi Musa, 15 JD”. Asking for a hotel, I was directed to the only one in town, which was located half a kilometer to the South according to a police officer, respectively two kilometers to the North, according to some other local people. The good piece of news was tat in both cases they said it was on the main road. The bad piece of news was that the hotel had been closed down. Asking here and there, a young boy showed me to a building located a few blocks away from the main road: it was more like a basic, poor inn for the merchants that would come with business at the local market. In the evening I had a walk up the hill providing great views towards the neighbouring area, with steep, barren slopes, winding roads and a pine forest at a distance.

Early the next day I took a minibus to Ma’an, followed by a taxi driver’s “there is no bus to Wadi Musa, only taxis”, followed by his “1 JD to the bus station, but no bus, believe me”, followed by my “put the meter on and let us see”, followed by 0.65 JD to the bus station, no tip granted and a bus to a university near the city where I got a connection to Wadi Musa not even 5 minutes later, with a helpful student that offered me a tea during the short wait. Dropping my “heavy” stuff in a hotel, I started to Petra. It would be both useless and actually impossible to even attempt to describe Petra, for one has to see for himself / herself this place in order to understand ts being simply stunning, simply superb. There were hundreds of tourists walking around, making the whole Nabatean site look like inhabited once again by a colourful, multiethnic crowd. The only rather sad side of the picture was granted by the former Bedouins, ancient inhabitants of the place, most of them removed from their original “houses” (i.e. caves, Nabatean tombs and temples) to a modern village, respectively nowadays trying hard to survive by selling souvenirs along tourist trails, or offering people a donkey, cart or camel ride.

The day passed by with magnificent views and a great weather. After watching the sun sinking over the rocky ridges, I went down and ended the day with a welcome narghile and a chai at a simple coffee shop, watching the street pass by and listening to some loud music coming from a TV set inside, where some people were playing cards. The wind blew strongly all night and it continued to do so in the morning too, stirring the dust and making many tourists stay inside. I started towards Jebel Harum, just to see the other side of the coin: there were still (only a few) Bedouins living in “houses” carved in the sandstone walls, or in old graves, going with their goats up the hills. Slowly – slowly the government was to move them all to the new village though. For the time being though, happy children would run after me, greeting me. After a while, I reached the top of the Jebel and the shrine there, providing a superb view to the neighbourhood. Probably because of the relatively bad weather, there were only two other people over there: a French mountain guide and his German wife. We went down together and we were to go to Wadi Rum the following day.

Rum is yet another place I would not dare describe. There is nothing in this world like the desert and one cannot get into its atmosphere until reaching it. Only in the middle of that stillness one could see there are moments in his or her lifetime which are simply touching, but that it does take a long way and a long time to get to these moments. Only there, in the wadi, far away from anything, where all there could be seen and felt was the sun, respectively its reflection on rocks and sand dunes, there where one could only hear the dim wind once in a long while, I could “see” the reason and the source of the noise and crowd of the souq in Aleppo, Damascus or Tehran. Only the lack of life can generate such a boom of life, such a music, such an intense movement of things and people, such an appetite for being alive…

After wandering across Wadi Rum for two days with Selim and his beige Toyota from the 70s, after hiking sandstone cliffs, building a fire out of very precious dry bushes, after spending a couple of nights in a Bedouin tent, and nevertheless after taking a moment to “breathe” while walking barefoot through the desert, the time to go had come. I briefly crossed Aqaba without enjoying it at all, with its crowd heading to the beach, its fancy shops and “cute” scapes. It had a strong touch of being artificial and built to please. I got a bus to Amman and, after having a final walk though the city, I took the midnight bus to the airport, before my 5 hour journey to Bucharest: a few Romanians working in Jordan and going back home, a few Jordanians working or studying in Romania, a whole family which had gone to Baghdad to welcome their son returning home after a long time of serving in Iraq… After the stop over in Cairo, the plane would be packed with people and a lot of hand luggage which could hardly fit in the shelves above the seats. People would run along the plane trying to find space for their luggage, they would talk loudly, make jokes, just to eventually fall asleep and be quiet. After a glass of half dry (as always with Romanian wines) red Murfatlar for breakfast, I was getting home.

There were -3C in Bucharest and it was Sunday, a foggy and wet one. However there was nobody to offer the traveler a cup of hot black tea like the railway station chief in Deir-ez Zur.