Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 8/24/2005: Pastorale

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

Subtitle: A Brief Interlude Before We Get To The Point

Never underestimate how much fun it is to be a tourist again; at least for a little while. What a strange collection of impressions it all leaves: a new place, new people; it feels somehow like waking up from a doze – seeing everything a little clearer. Sure, I’m a junky for novelty. Sue me.

Damascus, of course, has a very different feel than Jordan: Levantine, Greek, European. Even in Damascus, despite the heat, it feels like there’s so much more that’s green. Is it somehow the difference between a landlocked country and one that has, somewhere, a port on the Mediterranean?

I pay a visit to the Syrian Military museum, and spend hours mooning over the rooms full of medieval armor and scimitars of elegantly etched Damascus steel. There’s of whole room dedicated to the 1973 war with Israel – of course, my friends note in hushed tones, they make it look like Syria won.

Outside Damascus, in the desert part of the country, the little villages you pass on the highway look a great deal like the villages you see in Jordan; the same collections of little brown stone and concrete boxes – the biggest difference seems to be that in Syria they don’t all have satellite dishes.

Up north, where you go for the crusader castles and the tourist stuff, the elevation rises steeply. In the mountains, the land becomes green, spotted with grey and brown where promontories of rock peep through the vegetation. From the castles, you can see for miles over rocky clefts and grassy valleys, with not a trace of baked desert in sight.

As I’m exploring the tiny, smoke-blackened rooms of the Ismaeli stronghold at Misyal, wondering what the assassins must have lived like in these cramped quarters, an amazing thing happens. From inside, I see the sky grow dark, and a cold wind blows through the corridors. Surprised, I step out onto the parapet of one ruined wall, and look up. A tiny drop of water strikes me in the face.

It’s the beginning of July; Amman won’t see a drop of rain from February to November. But here, on the heels of the chilly breeze, a tiny shower of rain begins to fall. We drive away from the castle in a continuous, gentle drizzle.

What a sudden relief to see gray skies, and rain!

Up here, suddenly, we could be almost anywhere – Scotland or rural Pennsylvania or the south of France. The narrow roads wind around the mountains spotted with small houses and apple orchards; we drive through tiny villages with fountains in the central squares, where old men in worn suits lean in the doorways of the shops and talk to each other about the weather.

At the height of the range is the Krak des Chevaliers, massive compared to Misyal – a huge stone monster, a dragon curled atop a mountain; its white walls look impenetrable as a glacier. Many of these castles were called back into use during the first world war, for the fight against the Turks.

Then it’s down the mountain again, and north, to Tartous, the port city; one of my friends has an urge to look at the sea.

On the way there, I have one of my few encounters with the other side of Syria, the monolithic state. Of course, it’s in the form of cab driver wisdom. The fellow who takes us to the bus station in Hama indulges in a lecture on the way – about how there is no democracy in Syria, or the Middle East. Assad is a dictator, he says, Saddam was a dictator; all the princes of the Arab world are a mafia, in league with the leaders of the West against their own people.

Why is he telling us this, I wonder; especially in a place with Syria’s bloody history? I have friends with family rotting in Syrian jails for less.

From Tartous, it’s the launch out to Arwat island, a small fishing community where the folks from Tartous go to unwind and eat seafood. The island has a tiny souk that winds through streets barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast; all it seems to sell are children’s toys and prayer beads strung out of seashells.

In the café where we eat lunch, there hangs a sign: “from Assad to Assad flows the blood of the nation.”

On one side of the island is a real, working shipyard. It smells of sawdust, and the sound of power tools hovers in the air like a chorus of voices singing words that can’t quite be made out. An army of cats and chickens stands guard over the wooden skeletons of boats, marching in patrol between their bare ribs.

On the boat back, I’m reading a book by Lawrence Durrell, and thinking how his descriptions of the blending of races, of religions and eras still captures something about the Levant that is different. I wonder, for a moment, if all the talk of “national character” spouted by people I don’t like has some basis in fact. Because how is it that this place feels so varied, tumultuous and free, despite all the little outward signs of oppression, unless it has something to do with the personalities of the people who live here themselves?

- Nicholas Seeley, 8/24/2005

Posted by rjt at August 29, 2005 03:34 PM