Jerash, Jordan

Dodgy internet access and being very busy has prevented me for a while from writing about what I have been up to. I write this from the shore of the Dead Sea in the blistering heat, with Israel and Palestine just 5 km across the water. But I had better start from where I left off last week.

Despite my original intention of travelling by means of land only – to try and experience travel in a more natural way, see the changing landscapes and cultures and so on, rather then get on a plane and magically appear in a different place – I nevertheless flew from Cairo to Amman. It would have meant 24 hours of buses and boats and I needed to meet my friend Nicola who was arriving on the Sunday evening, so I broke my own rule and, I suspect, it won’t be the last time.

Amman is an unprepossessing place, as far as we could tell. It’s not much more than a hundred years old, built on 19 hills and rather hard to navigate or find the heart of. We got a taxi first thing the next day to Jerash, about 45 km away. It might seem rather lush to take taxis everywhere, as we have over the last week or so, but actually they are cheap and efficient. I think we paid 10 or 20 pounds for the ride. Jerash is the most extraordinary set of Roman ruins I have ever seen and they reckon only 10% of the original town has so far been excavated. It grew to prominence around the time of Alexander the Great around 300BC when it had a population of 15,000. Apart from damage caused by an earthquake in the 7^th or 8^th century – and the inevitable ravages of time – you can still walk the paved streets, see where the shops were along the road and visit the public buildings of the town. The oval-shaped plaza, with its magnificent columns – almost all still in tact – the Roman arches, the bath houses – it is remarkably well-preserved and it requires little imagination to envisage life in the heyday of the town. They were the most skilful architects: these enormous columns and buildings of all types were put together without the use of cement – just a very judicious cutting of stone to fit exactly – and are still here over 2000 years later.

The day we were there was “girls’ day”. It wasn’t reserved for girls only, but was one of the days of the week when girls’ schools had day trips there (the boys went another day, apparently). The hundreds, possibly thousands, of head-scarved teenagers walked around in groups singing, banging drums and generally making their presence heard. Western people might imagine middle eastern women in headscarves to be of a modest and conservative disposition – submissive, even – but these confident young women personalised their uniforms in imaginative and colourful ways, marched around the place confidently and loudly, and defied any preconceptions we might have had. The tour guides call them the “green army” and with good reason.

They would often run up to us – or Nicola, more often – and say “Hallo, what is your name?” before giggling helplessly. (I’m not sure where the “hallo” comes from, but I wonder if they are all learning English from a 1930s textbook.) Many of them wanted photos with us – or, let’s face it, with Nicola – and were very excited by the little conversation they could manage. Nicky was almost mobbed by these girly gangs several times. After abut the tenth, I pointed out to the green army that she wasn’t “a bloody film star, you know” and was told by one of the girls, “Yeah but she could be”. I had been put firmly in my place and didn’t mind at all.

One lovely thing about Jerash – and Jordan in generally, actually – is all the goats. These bearded, wanton, ruminant quadrupeds (I think this is how the OED defines them, at least) are to be found clambering over the ruins and generally enjoying themselves amid this Roman splendour. As they were led by a Bedouin shepherd with a staff through this ancient city, it seemed to me that this was a scene which had changed little over hundreds of years which was a pleasingly comforting thought.

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I feel I haven’t done justice to Jerash here. When we left, I thought it was one of the finest places I had ever seen (and I still do). Perhaps it is because some of what we saw later was yet more incredible.