My story? I think it will start with the Dead Sea," I said, prompting a huge roar of laughter from my friends as we waited at the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman to board the flight back home. The five days in Jordan had been full.
The Dead Sea was a talking point, not just because we found that the vast, inviting expanse of water had no living creature in it, but because I nearly drowned where nobody supposedly does. We were floating around, easy on our backs when I decided to turn over and try swimming. The water got into my eyes, ears and nose, leaving me breathless and nearly blind. The Dead Sea, after all, has a salinity of 30% (most other seas have only 3%) and tourists are suitably forewarned against splashing around. I couldn't even swim. What was I thinking?
Still, this isn't the only reason I start here. At a scary 410 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea also happens to be the lowest point on the earth. And what better way to build a story than go ground up?
Kebabs and Amman
"Ahlan wa sahlan," a stocky guy called out as we got out of the airport after a five-and-half hour flight from Mumbai to Jordan, all tourists during the off-season. "Welcome to Jordan. I am Basel, your guide," he said with an accent polished over 15 years or so, the Arabic shining through. Over the next four days, he took care of the sights and sounds as we toured it, barely 450 km head to toe and less than half of that sideways.
"We'll have lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and go downtown," he said.
Why Lebanese? Wasn't there a place that served Jordanian food? "Well, Lebanese and Jordanian… the food is the same."
And a tad tricky, too, we found out. We gorged on the spread of pita bread, mezze, hummus, baba ganuj, falafel, moutabel and salads of rocket, fattoush and olives, little realising they were all starters. The main course, a huge assortment of kebabs hidden under a thin sheet of dough glistening with butter, arrived later. Did anyone care for the dessert after?
At Jerash that afternoon, it was time to burn the calories, as we surveyed the ruins of a grand Graeco-Roman city ravaged by time and successive earthquakes.
Around the third century BC, Ammon, as Amman was called during the Iron Age, was renamed Philadelphia after its Ptolemaic ruler Philadelphius, said Basel. Seleucid and Nabataean rules followed before Roman general Pompey ran over Syria in 63 BC and made Philadelphia a part of the Decapolis, an alliance of 10 free city states with overall allegiance to the Roman Empire. Under Byzantine rule later, it became the seat of a Christian bishop, though by the seventh century, the land had embraced Islam and returned to its original Semitic name.
Jordan of Eden
That pretty much says what one could expect in Jordan, situated midway between Mecca and Jerusalem. The country is 93% Sunni Muslim, nearly half of them refugees from Palestine and elsewhere, and the rest Christian. And it's holy land for both. The Quran cites it as a part of the 'blessed neighbourhood', while in the Bible, it is a well-watered valley "like the garden of the Lord" (it's a veritable Garden of Eden for some).
The garden bit isn't lost on a visitor. For a country almost entirely landlocked by strife-torn neighbours — Iraq to the east, Israel and the West Bank to the west, Syria to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south — Jordan is surprisingly tolerant and peaceful, even modern. Indeed, the capital Amman and the port city of Aqaba on the Red Sea — where we went coral sighting on a glass-bottom boat, though one could as well have donned scuba gear or gone snorkeling — are pretty cosmopolitan. Still, one can sense an eagerness to hold on to the past, not let it succumb to influences modern.
And it's an engrossing past, too, reminding us of our own.
Heart of the sea
Indians, particularly like the Dead Sea, Petra and Wadi Rum, we were told.
It was an understatement.
At Dead Sea, I felt baptised, reborn.
At Petra, by the night, the master of ceremony took me back thousands of years while on a candle-lit road: "India and the Arab world… two great civilisations. There is so much to share, cousin, so much."
At Wadi Rum, the Bedouins who offered us coffee laced with herbs, delivered a sealing conviviality: "Yalla Habibi (Come, my friend).” You are from India? Aha,Amitabh Bachchan!"
Only at the souvenir shops did the bonhomie fall apart as we haggled for a vase or mosaic board. At Rs67 to a Jordanian Dinar, my money counted for so little here.
What keeps Jordan prosperous, considering the unlikely Arab nation has no oil of its own? "Mainly tourism, but we also export phosphates and chemicals, machiner and handicrafts. We have many people working in other Arab countries who send money back home," we were told. Aha, the Kerala touch!
Bottomline — if you are Indian in Jordan, feel at home.
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