On our first evening in Amman, I ventured to a supermarket with a few others.  One was a middle-aged lady, who was shopping for a notebook.  The store reminded me greatly of time spent in China.  The first floor was a supermarket, the second was everything else.  Upstairs, every little section had a man at a desk.  If you wanted an item from his section, he filled out a bill for you.  You then walked to a cashier who manned all the money on the floor.  Once he was paid, you were set free with your goods.

So my companion, having never been in this place, approaches the till with her purchase.

“Two and half dinars,” he totals.

“Two and a half dollars,” she muses to herself, more repeating the total with her familiar currency attached than actually trying to adjust the price.

Disdain-filled face and wounding voice, he replied flatly, “Dinars, not dollars.  This is Jordan, not America.”

Without even looking up, he made change and handed it to her.

The whole encounter happened quickly enough to snap our heads back and make us wonder.

I’ve never known anything but exceptional hospitality in Jordan, but this moment showed something else: Maybe a Jordanian tired of tourists, maybe a cashier in need of a holiday, maybe little more than a crusty fellow, or maybe something altogether different.

Whatever the case, he’s locked himself into a few bytes of my mind’s memory, in less-than-flattering fashion.

This is the first point along our trip when we have stayed in the same spot for two consecutive nights—there’s something luxurious about that simple detail.  That meant we had fewer miles to cover today, and a less-demanding-than-usual itinerary.

With breakfast finished, we departed at 8:00 AM.  An hour on the bus, and we arrived at “Bethany Beyond the Jordan”.  Yes, that’s the name on the maps.  The tradition of this as the site of Jesus’ baptism is very strong.  Continue reading →

From Jerash, we “backtracked” northwest into the very tip of the Jordanian map.  The site to be visited: Umm Quais.  Umm Quais used to go by the name Gedara, and it was one of the ten cities comprising the Decapolis.  From the peak of these ruins, some Roman but more Byzantine built on top of the Roman, one could see the east side of the Sea of Galilee, the northern stretch of the Jordan Valley, and the peaks and plateaus of the Golan Heights.  Biblical connections aside, it was a lovely landscape.  It is also one of the areas that gets plenty of mention in any present-day discussion on the Palestine-Israel conflict.

After our Jordanian guide Rami showed us around, we sat down in a shady corner of the outdoor museum as Dr. Paul shared some thoughts.  On an aside, our guide Rami’s middle name is Issa, which is the Arabic name for Jesus.  He is a Christian, as well as a very charismatic young man, skilled in English and well-trained as a guide.  Charles says that he’s apparently “a rising star” in Jordanian guide circles, and I wouldn’t doubt that it’s true.

On a further aside Continue reading →

We woke up to a desert wind whipping through the ruins of Palmyra.  After a quick breakfast, our bus departed for Deir Mar Musa (Monastery of St. Moses) near the city of Homs.  This monastery was recently featured in National Geographic (June ’09) for the efforts made there towards Christian-Muslim dialogue.  The building itself dates back to the 6^th century and is named, not for “Exodus Moses”, but for Moses, the son of a king in what is now Ethiopia.  He chose monastic life over the throne.  The monastery functioned in varying capacities until the 1830’s when it was finally abandoned.

In the 1980’s, it was rediscovered by an Italian former Jesuit.  With help from local community and foreign funding, he renovated the site and had it reconsecrated for use.  Today it draws in everyone from Christian pilgrims to backpackers to curious Muslims to groups like our own.  Picturesque and isolated, it was worth our short visit… and the steep, stone, 380-step hike required to get there.

Another hour down the road Continue reading →

Back to Malula, Syria for a moment…

Before leaving home, I photocopied some of Syria’s Lonely Planet guide to bring along.  One blurb about Malula and its Aramaic legacy went like this:

“So was the Aramaic spoken in Mel Gibson’s epic, ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ accurate?  Malula’s locals say that the first time they saw the film, they were so  moved they didn’t pay attention.  On a second viewing, however, they realized they could barely understand a word of the dialect that Mel had used…”

I asked our Aramaic-speaking, from-Malula guide if this were true.  He said that he could understand very little of the movie’s speaking.  So that confirmed it.

“Not so fast,” he replied.  “My uncle understood everything.”  Apparently, the movie was done well enough even to include words and forms that are long since outdated and uncommon among today’s tiny Aramaic-speaking population.  Our guide, Hanna, has been away from Malula for many years, and his Aramaic has taken a hit as a result.  But his has-spoken-Aramaic-his-whole-life-and-never-left uncle, who has also has a better grasp on the older language… well, that’s another story.

So to Mel Gibson, from an uncle in Malula, I say, “Well done.”