Jordan Trip 2010

Shortly before the dawn of the "Arab Spring" I made a visit to two Arab countries, Jordan and Egypt. Did I learn anything to help me understand today's news? Perhaps it was just a reminder of how far back this region's history goes. How many Springs, how many glorious Summers, how many bleak Autumns and desperate Winters these ancient lands have known!

My husband John had commitments that kept him home, so we were a foursome: my brother Donn, my sister Caroline, her husband Alan and I.

We started in Jordan (I'll write about our time in Egypt later) where it's like traveling through the pages of the Bible. What to us were only place names became lively towns, at historic wells we watched women fill, not pottery jars but plastic containers. We stood on the bank of the Jordan River at the spot where tradition says John baptized Jesus.

Donn, me, Caroline and Alan standing on Mount Nebo from where Moses is said to have viewed the Promised Land just before he died.

This is the view Moses would have seen. Caroline spoke for all four of us - and probably everyone else who climbs Mount Nebo - when she said, "That is the Promised Land??" We saw only a parched and desolate wilderness just like the landscape we'd been driving through all day. Maybe faithful Moses saw the land not as it was but as it would become.

The beautifully preserved stage in the amphitheater at Jerash. A musician was playing the bagpipe - that ancient instrument of shepherds everywhere - in hope of tips from a mere scattering of tourists. We wondered how much he'd take home at the end of the day.

I'd never even heard of Jerash, which had the most extensive Roman ruins I've ever seen anywhere. In the ancient Hippodrome local actors staged a chariot race, a gladiator contest, and this display of Roman military precision.

Colonnade surrounding the paved piazza where Romans shopped. The Roman empire, which seems so old to us, was a johnny-come-lately among occupiers of Jordan. Sumer, Akkad, Egypt, Assyria, all built their triumphal monuments here. And long before there were empires, human cultures have developed here in unbroken succession from the Stone Age till today.

Though only 6% of Jordanians are Christian (92% are Muslim), they lovingly maintain their jewel-like Eastern Orthodox churches with their fabulous icons and mosaics. Candles were burning in each one we visited.

At Petra are the ruins of a fabulously wealthy Nabatean city, built on the trade route linking China and India to the Mediterranean. We approached it hiking through a long, narrow gorge hemmed in by 2,500 foot-high cliffs. Here we got our first glimpse of the towering facade of a Nabatean king's tomb.

As the site widens, paved roads lined with columns lead to a theater and other buildings.

But the marvel of Petra is the scores of tombs cut into the red sandstone.

In Petra camels do the work of cars and trucks. No wonder they're cantankerous, I thought, seeing this one tethered to a stone by a string through its tender nose.