skip to main |
skip to sidebar
176.
Amman, Jordan:
Six young Palestinian men meet me on the street my first night in town and invite me to share a good chicken dinner with them at one of the nice restaurants.
After dinner we adjourn to a teashop for conversation. They all speak excellent English. The stories they tell me are more than interesting. One thing is perfectly clear. They want to return to the land that they consider theirs but which is now the State of Israel.
Next morning, when I visit the ruins of Amman’s old Roman theater, I meet a pair of congenial young Canadians, Sandy and Rob, who are making their way, very slowly, to Australia. They are staying at a cheap hotel and I move my things into the same hotel.
Since today is the final day of the Moslem holy month of Ramadan, the hotel owner invites us all to join him and his family for an after-sunset dinner of mutton, rice and a powerful alcoholic beverage called “arrack”. Of course, drinking alcoholic beverages is forbidden to Moslems, but not all Moslems obey this law.
Later the same evening a Palestinian guest in the hotel takes Sandy, Rob and me for a drive around the city. We visit the university and then a large permanent settlement of Palestinians. He completes his free city tour at a disco on the edge of town where we dance to American rock and roll. When the DJ plays some traditional Jordanian music, a local girl does a belly dance that knocks me out!
The next day, after much talk, joking and even some chess, the Palestinian drives us over to the ancient Roman town of Jarach.
On the stage of the ruined theater, we perform an imaginary scene from my unwritten drama: “The Map of Edge City”....
175.
The highway to Amman reminds me old Route 66 in Arizona except for the co-ed gangs of workers repairing the road by hand. The girls wear long skirts of bright red, purple and green satin and laugh as they pass baskets of pebbles to each other. The hard work in the hot sun hasn’t broken their high spirits!
At the border the Jordan customs policeman spots a copy of Playboy magazine I picked up somewhere in my stuff. “Why do you carry this?” he asks. I really don’t know why I carry the stupid rag, but improvise: “Because I like beautiful things.”
He feels this kind of literature will corrupt his countryman's morals, so he confiscates it and tucks it under his ammunition belt for safekeeping....
174.
Damascus, Syria:
The taxi driver drops me in the heart of the city.
Uniformed soldiers, beige and olive camouflaged trucks and jeeps swarm in the street.
World War Three may have started and it looks like I am right in the middle of it, but the clerk in the bank where I change some money says that I should not be alarmed; this is “business as usual”, he says, in Damascus.
Damascus is too exciting for me though, after the relative calm of Magic Valley, so I stay only one night and depart by bus in the morning to Amman, Jordan.
I have heard that it is possible to enter Israel from Jordan near Amman if you don’t have any visa stamps from Arab countries in your passport so I have been carefully getting my visas stamped on separate sheets that I can remove from my passport.
Obviously, I will come from an Arab country when I cross the border from Jordan, but there will be no Arab stamps in my passport and that is what counts. Absurd isn’t it? Well, I don’t make the rules and I would like to visit some of the usual touristic places in Israel....
173.
It’s Sunday. This must be a Christian enclave in Lebanon because village churches, which I have not seen, but must be scattered scattered along the canyon rim, all start ringing their bells. The sounds of the echoing bells blend into a single lovely chord; after the intimidating gunshot’s din, the soothing bell’s hum; Yin and Yang. I break camp, pack and hike back up the canyon to the trail-head and to the little store. It is still very early but the store is already open. The proprietor offers me a cup of coffee and I watch with him two other old men and a cat as the village awakens. Three beaming housewives escort a tiny girl dressed in black cap, cape and skirt into the store. One of the old men buys the child a piece of candy and gives her a hug.I watch the spirits of these old men twinkle from eyes set deep in aging flesh. In a short lifetime this budding child will no doubt also be transformed into tired meat slouched in a rocking chair petting another generation’s child.
The black and white cat wants a fish from the ice-cream freezer. I catch the little country-style carryall bus back to downtown Beirut where I find one of the taxis that carry passengers to Damascus. When the driver, wearing a yellow polka-dotted shirt, collects a car full of passengers, we depart Beirut and a few hours later drive into Damascus.
172.
At midnight, rain begins to fall. My cave is not waterproof, so before I get too wet, I light a candle, pack up and hike through the dripping, shadowy trees up the zigzag path to a stone shelter I noticed earlier.
Under the shelter’s dry and cozy dome I spread my blanket and immediately fall asleep.
Very early next morning I am fixing coffee on a little campfire at the shelter when two hunters appear. They seem surprised to find me and I am surprised too because they are the first humans I have seen in the valley. They are soon banging away at birds in the olive trees. Soon five more city dudes in shooting togs arrive and start blasting away at the birds in the trees near the shelter.
I suppose maybe they are not just hunting, but trying to scare me away and they’ve sure got the firepower to do it!
I pack and scurry back down to my cave and the shooting soon stops....
171.
Magic Valley, Lebanon:
My campsite is still vacant and I spend a couple of days doing nothing much. But when I begin to explore my surroundings some more I discover that not only are there mysterious sealed caves in this valley but some of the house-sized stones have wooden ladders fixed to them so they can be scaled and used as look-outs; I note that the foliage between one big stone and “my” cave has been trimmed so that a clear view into “my” cave is afforded to anyone watching from the stone.
Hmmm.
I begin to think that my perfect “Magic Valley Camp” may be part of some larger design.
How did the Australian know about it anyway and why did his friend the dope farmer offer me a “job” picking up a fancy car for him in Europe—in fact, why did that attractive French girl meet me so conveniently in the Baalbek ruins and the taxi man drop me off at the “church”? And why were the thugs waiting at the village store to drive me the last few miles to the valley?
Man, among these worldly-wise, cynical, radio and telephone connected dopers and dealers, I am truly a “babe in the woods”; all innocent and newly hatched! Full-blown paranoia strikes!
...
170.
With great relief, I hurry away from the strange "church".The empty road passes under some huge overhanging trees and by now there is no light at all from the sky--but I can hear the pavement under my feet as I walk and if I get too near the shoulder of the road, I hear the crunch of gravel so, quickly and fearfully, I navigate the next couple of kilometers by “sonar”.Finally the friendly electric lights of the tiny village store at the rim of the valley near my campsite appear—and the store is still open! I bought a soda from the store man when I left for Baalbek this morning and he seems happy to see me again. Three big men are with him. One of them invites me to come and rest at his home nearby. No, thanks. The other two, who look like movie gangsters, offer to drive me to the trailhead leading to my camp. They say it is a four-kilometer hike. I am bone-weary from this long day and have been so paranoid and frightened that nothing seems to matter anyway so I get into the back seat of their big, black American car. If they are out to get me, they could easily follow and snatch me off the highway, so what the hell…We reach the end of the road and I get out of the car. The men wish me a pleasant stay and drive noiselessly away.
Too tired and freaked out to hike down the canyon path to my campsite or to experience any more “adventures”, I roll up in my blanket and crash where they dropped me--beside the road.
...
