Jordan January 13-23, 2005

Madaba, 1/13/05. A special moment

Whenever I travel to a new place, I reach a special moment, and the vacation hasn't really begun until I reach that moment. The trip doesn't start when I leave home. It doesn't start when I get to my destination. The real beginning comes later. After the first rush of excitement, after the preparation and anticipation, after the initial confusion, I reach that special moment. It's that moment when I stop, look around and think, 'Dear god, what have I gotten myself into?'

That's the special moment. After I leave the airport and its big, clear, English signs. After I check into the hotel with the cheerful staff that are so happy to see me. At about the time I go out into the streets, where nobody speaks English, there are no street signs and there's not a single Anglo-Saxon face to be seen. That's the moment. It's a thrilling experience, and I really do enjoy it. But for just one special moment, it scares the shit out of me. And for a while after that, I go into a panic. I walk in circles looking for the right street. I search maps and guidebooks for any clue that will help me survive the next two weeks. God help any poor soul who speaks English to me in that moment, because I'll latch onto him the way a drowning man latches onto a life preserver.

I reached that moment in Madaba, my home for the next three days. I flew into Amman in the late afternoon. I picked up my rental car at the airport and turned off the main highway and got completely lost. It was a miracle that I found Madaba. Once there, I was still hopelessly lost. I spent an hour driving around at 10 kilometers an hour, leaning out the window to look for street signs that didn't exist. Drivers honked. Pedestrians laughed. I ran stop signs that I didn't see. I stopped at intersections when I should have kept going. I was clueless. The only English sign I ever saw was one that said I was driving toward the Iraqi border. I was 300 miles away from Iraq, but I didn't want to take any chances. Half a mile past that sign, I turned the car around.

By the time I reached my hotel, I'd forgotten all of my Arabic and half of my English. I stared blankly at the lady behind the desk and mumbled, "Michael Cornn." Thankfully, she spoke Arabic and English, and both better than I did. I found my room, I found my bed, and I curled up like a refugee seeking shelter from a war.

I woke up in the middle of the night and went over my plan. I had three days in Madaba including today. I would visit the mosaics for which the town is famous, and I would make day trips to Bethany and Mount Nebo. The fourth day was a road trip to Wadi Moussa, the town outside of Petra. Days five and six would be spent in Petra, and days seven and eight in Wadi Rum. From Wadi Rum, it's a short drive to south to Aqabba and the Red Sea. After two days in Aqabba, I planned to return to Madaba, then to the airport, and then home. I was still in that special moment when I fell back asleep.

Madaba, 1/14/05. History Lessons

Today I toured of Madaba, a small city south of Amman. Madaba's central location makes it a good 'home base' for exploring Jordan. Its main attractions are the Byzantine mosaics built on the floors of wealthy homes and Orthodox churches.

My first stop was the Church of St. George (the one who slew the dragon). The Church is over 1,400 years old and has been active off and on up to the present day. I got there a little too early and had to wait outside while a morning service finished up. The original floor of the church was a stone mosaic map of the then-known world: south to the Sinai, west to the Mediterranean, east into Arabia, and north to Asia Minor. Jerusalem is at the center of the map, and to the people who made it, Jerusalem was the center of the world.

After St. George, I walked down to the Madaba Archaeological Park in the center of the city. The park is an active archaeological site, part of which was closed during my visit. The park is similar to the Forum in Rome-it was the center of the city for over a thousand years, and visitors can see how Madaba grew and changed over time. I walked down an avenue paved by Romans in the 3rd century and viewed mosaics from a Roman mansion, later converted to an Orthodox church.

The Madaba Museum on the southern edge of the city was a nice site worth a quick visit. The museum has artifacts on display from Jordan's long history. I saw 4,000 year old pottery-pre-Islamic, pre-Christian, pre-Jewish, pre-Everything-that looked freshly made. One large display was dedicated to Bedouin jewelry, mostly rows of Roman and Nabattean coins strung together or sewn into clothing. I guess that was a good way to show off wealth-wear your disposable income. But pottery shards and old necklaces aren't as impressive as mosaics and ancient columns. I left the museum after just a few hours.

My favorite site in Madaba was the Church of the Apostles. This church is no longer active. It's just several large mosaics under an impressive modern shelter. But it's bigger than the Church of St. George and any single site in the Archaeological Park. Unlike the other sites, you can walk on the mosaic, so I got photos of every part from every angle.

The mosaic in the Church of the Apostles is the largest and best preserved in Jordan, maybe the best in the Middle East. Parts of the mosaic are new, products of a restoration in the mid-1990s. But most of it is made of the original tiles laid down in the sixth century. I can walk in that church, kneel down, and touch the tiles that a Jordanian artisan laid down 1,500 years ago. I can see him sprawled on the floor next to baskets of brightly colored stones. I can see him arranging the stones along a pattern. And I can see the shapes the patterns made-a young boy, an old man, a cat, a plant, a bird.

I can see the church a century later, when the Umayyads drove the Byzantines out. The Muslim Umayyads saw the Christians as heathens, heretics who worshiped a prophet as if he were God. But they allowed their subjects to keep their religion, and I can see black-clad Orthodox priests leading the Christians in prayer. Five hundred years later, my Catholic ancestors would invade this place and slaughter Muslims, Christians, and Jews across the Levant.

A thousand years after that, the Arab Muslim King of Jordan worked with a team of Italian Catholic archaeologists to restore the mosaic to its former beauty. And now people of all faiths (or no faith) can see a work of art that a Jordanian artisan painstakingly made 1,500 years ago. It's a lesson in tolerance, and reverence, that I didn't really learn until I knelt on that mosaic and touched that artisan's tiles.

Madaba, 1/15/05. Moses, Jesus, and Osama bin Laden

What a day. What a way to start the day. Reliable Rent-A-Car only gave me enough gas to reach Madaba, so the first task of the day was to fill up the tank.

The nearest gas station was a tiny cinder-block building with no glass in the windows and a single rusty pump out front. The first time I drove past it I thought it was closed. The second time I pulled in just to look at my map, and a teenage kid came out and asked how much gas I wanted. So it really was open. Good.

I didn't know the Arabic word for "full" so I tried to pantomime. By the way, if you're ever playing Charades and the word you draw is "full," just give up. It's impossible to explain the term "full" with hand gestures and weird postures. I wasted ten minutes pointing at the car, the pump, the kid and myself and repeating, "fool, fool," with no success. The kid just stood by the pump and tried not to laugh. There were four other guys in the cinder-block building, one of whom spoke a little English. While I was pointing at the fuel pump and holding my hand over my head and jumping up and down, he called me over to have a drink. I gave up my pantomime and went inside.

Inside the building I found: a mattress covered in blankets, three plastic chairs, an old car seat, a kerosene heater, and four very cheerful young men (plus the one pumping my gas outside). They were chattering away in Arabic and having a great time. One of them was sprawled out on the mattress. Two sat in the plastic chairs. The one who spoke English squatted next to the heater and filled a teapot with water. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, “Soon we have tea.” Gas Pump Guy ran in and asked my English-speaking friend something in Arabic. "How much do you want?" he asked me. "Fill it up," I replied. He translated, and Gas Pump ran back outside. I flopped down in the car seat and waited for the tea.

The four guys talked to each other in Arabic, and I had no idea what they were saying. They kept looking at me and gesturing toward me, so I guess I was the subject of the conversation. After a few minutes English Speaker turned to me and asked, "Where are you from?"

"The United States.”

"United States?" All four of them burst into Arabic. They talked to each other, looked at me, and laughed. Talked some more, looked at me again, laughed again. After a minute, English Speaker said, "Let me show you a picture." He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. The background picture was a photo of Osama Bin Laden. The room became very quiet, but they all kept smiling.

"So what do you think?" English Speaker asked.

"Um, it's a nice phone."

"No, the picture."

"Yes, it's a picture of bin Laden."

"What do you think of bin Laden?"

I couldn't come up with a good answer. "I think he's in Afghanistan?"

"Where do you visit in the Middle East?"

"Just Jordan this time."

"Syria? Lebanon?"

"Lebanon next time. I want to visit Beirut."

"Israel? Iraq?" Laughter all around.

"I don't visit Iraq."

"Why not?"

"I don't think...Americans should...be in Iraq." I hoped that was a good answer. It made him laugh, so I took that as a good sign.

"What about Israel? What do you think about Israel? Israel no? Do you like Israel?”

Gas Pump came back in and asked me for forty dinar. I gave him a fifty and told him to keep the change. "No," he said in English, "Forty. Ten and four. Forty." I shoved fifteen dinar in his hand. English speaker asked me to sit back down and have some tea, but I mumbled something about seeing Mount Nebo at sunrise and rushed out the door.

In hindsight, the guy probably didn't mean any harm. He and his friends were just bored and felt like scaring a tourist. Well, it worked. I was on edge all day, but later I was more pissed than frightened. I couldn't really get angry at him for messing with a tourist. That's what tourists are for-entertaining the locals. Still, I feel like I lost a day of travel to paranoia. If I ever see that son of a bitch in the States, me and four of my redneck friends are going to corner him in the back of a gas station and ask him what he thinks of Jesus, George Bush, and squealing like a pig.

So with my gas tank full and my bladder empty, I went to Mount Nebo. According to legend, Nebo is the last place Moses saw before he died. Because he lost faith in God in Sinai, God let him see the Promised Land but not enter it. From the top of Mount Nebo, you can see half of Israel, and you can imagine Moses standing there at the end of his life.

After Nebo, I drove to Bethany, where Elijah went to Heaven, John the Baptist preached, and Jesus was baptized. My tour guide told me that Bethany comes from two Aramaic words-Bet Ain-meaning House of Crossing. The town was a popular place to cross the River Jordan, and it seems that every major Jewish, Christian, and Islamic figure stopped off in Bethany before going to Israel.

There's not much to see in the way of ruins, but it is a really beautiful natural setting. I was intrigued to stand on the east bank of the Jordan River and know that Israel was on the other side. I was tempted to jump over to the other side, just as a “fuck you” to Kuwait, which won't let me back if I ever visit Israel.

Wadi Mussa, 1/16/05, Road Trip

I've spent the whole day on the road, driving from Madaba to Wadi Mussa, the little tourist town outside Petra. I got a late start this morning. The dry cleaner that had my laundry opened late. There was a language barrier when I dropped off my clothes last night. I don't think he understood my English when I said, "I need these back at 8 am tomorrow." And I didn't understand his Arabic when he said, "We're not open tomorrow." Thankfully, my hotel manager knew the owner and called him on his day off. I gave him a few extra dinars and took off four hours later than I had planned.

I was delayed again and again on the drive south. This time, however, the delay was caused by the scenery. South of Madaba on the King's Highway, I drove through Wadi Mujib, a beautiful valley surrounded by steep, stark mountains. It had the look of a desert in bloom, just like highway 40 east of San Diego. I drove highway 40 many times, and Wadi Mujib made me homesick for California. I stopped the car about every few miles to take pictures and admire the view.

After Wadi Mujib, all the road signs were in Arabic, which I can't read. I had a cheap tourist map that didn't show all the roads, and I quickly got lost. After an hour of wandering, I made out the Arabic letters 'K' 'R' and 'K' on a road sign, guessed that it spelled 'Karak,' and drove off in that direction. I guessed right. After a few minutes I came around a bend and saw the biggest, crudest, meanest looking castle on the biggest, steepest, most evil looking mountain I'd ever seen.

The only other castle I've seen is Salzburg Castle in Austria. That castle looks like something out of a fairytale, more like a big palace than a fortress. Karak is nothing like that. Built by a French crusader, conquered by Saladin, and later occupied by Mameluke soldiers, Karak is a structure built exclusively for war. It's an amazing sight, but not in a beautiful or romantic way. Karak is powerful and imposing, an ugly and brutal monument from an ugly and brutal time.

I got to Karak at 3:15 and found that it closed at 4:00, so I couldn't spend much time there. I had to leave almost as soon as I'd come, and I didn't make it back later. Karak is at the first place I'll visit when I return to Jordan.

Karak was great, but I had a problem: I was still lost and over a hundred kilometers from my destination. I couldn't find my way out of the town, and I certainly couldn't find the main highway. I met a man at the castle who spoke a little English. I explained to him that I was on my way to Petra, and I was lost. I hoped he would give me directions or show me where I was on the map. He did much better. First, he led me out of town. He walked through the street while I followed him in my car. At the base of the Karak mountain, where the town ended and a main road began, he flagged down a friend of his. This friend didn't speak much English, but he said he would drive to the King's Highway in his car and I could follow in mine. Halfway there he picked up a hitchhiker who lived about 40 km down the highway. When we got to the highway, the driver got out and said he had to go back to Karak. He explained that the hitchhiker didn't speak any English, but he could ride with me to make sure I didn't get lost. I thanked them both and drove off with the hitcher in my passenger seat.

So my passenger didn't speak English, but he was going to give me directions. I took the chance to practice my Arabic. I tried some really advanced Arabic phrases: "You house this town?" "What street this?" "I go Petra." He got a kick out of it and taught me a few Arab words, specifically 'left' (shmall) and 'right' (yameel). His house was pretty far off the highway, and I wasn't sure how to get back. When I dropped him off, he gave me directions, which to me sounded like, "Yadda yadda left, yadda right, yadda yadda not left yadda right." I smiled and told him I understood and wished him a good day.

Fortunately "left, right, not left, right" were all the directions I needed to get back to the highway. I rolled into Wadi Mussa a little after sunset, something I couldn't have done without help. I couldn't believe it. After being lost for hours, I met three total strangers who worked together to help a stranded tourist find his way. I had hoped they would give me a few directions and send me off. Instead, they stuck with me to make sure I got out of town, got on the highway, and didn't get lost again. I always hope to find that kind of courtesy wherever I go, but so far I've found it only in Jordan.

So now it's the middle of the night and I'm curled up in the Petra Moon Hotel. I'm about a thousand meters higher than I was this morning, and it's about 10 degrees colder. Assuming I don't freeze to death tonight, I'll visit Petra in the morning.

Petra 1/17/05 - 1/18/05 Dumbstruck

I finished my tour of Petra today. For two days, I've been trying to write an acceptable article about the place, but I can't think of any original way to describe it. That's partly because so much has been written about Petra. It's very difficult to write something that doesn't repeat what a dozen other writers have already said. But mostly it's the sense of reverence that Petra put into me. It's the feeling that Petra deserves more than just a few quick notes in a journal.

When I see beautiful sights in other places, my reaction is impulsive and exuberant. I yell to my friends, "Hey, look at this!" Or I grab my camera and line up a good shot. Or I just start scribbling in my notebook. Not in Petra. So many times here, I looked up at the ancient walls and just stared, dumbstruck. I didn't shout to anybody; I didn't reach for my camera; I didn't even think. The beauty of Petra paralyzed me, and every time I turned a corner or reached the top of a staircase I had to stop for a few minutes just to stand in awe.

Petra has an amazing sense of majesty and nobility. All the ancient buildings feel timeless and alive. The city is of course abandoned, but in Petra I'm not sure if it's dead or just sleeping. While I walked through tombs and theaters and temples and caves, I felt old ghosts watching me, demanding that I pay my respect.

And maybe that's why I can't write anything about Petra. On some subconscious level, I don't think that anything I write will show sufficient respect to such a rich and noble place. Maybe I might offend a few of those old ghosts. It's better that I just tell you to go there and see it for yourself.

Wadi Rum, 1/19/05, Climbing

I drove from Petra to Wadi Rum, a rugged desert nature reserve a short drive south. I checked in at the Visitor's Center, where I had to pay a 2 JD fee for entry. I gave them the name and phone number of my guide, whom they called and who said he would meet me at the guest house down the road.

The guest house was little restaurant with a few one-man tents out back. I spent my first night in Wadi Rum in one of those tents, and it wasn't a very happy experience. The temperature dipped below freezing, and a strong wind blew frozen rain through a hole in the top of my tent. But there aren't any other accommodations in Wadi Rum. Call it trekking or eco-tourism or just "roughing it," that's what Wadi Rum is all about.

After the first night, I met my guide, Radi, and started a two-day tour of the desert. Wadi Rum looks like Mars and feels like the ocean. Years ago, I spent a few days in Baya Concepcion in Baja California. It was a big, crescent-shaped bay, fairly shallow and dotted with tiny islands. The islands were only a few hundred meters across and about a kilometer apart from one another. I spent most of the day in a kayak, paddling from one island to the next. Wadi Rum reminded me of that bay. It's a desert filled with red and yellow sand. And scattered across this desert are small mountains, little islands of rock in a red desert sea. While Radi drove us between the mountains in an ancient Toyota pick-up, I had the same feeling I got when I paddled between the islands in Baya Concepcion.

I got my first taste of rock climbing in Wadi Rum. Radi, took me to a stone arch at the eastern end of the park. It was about 100 meters tall and not very easy to reach. The arch's sandstone sides were smooth and steep, almost vertical. They didn't have any obvious hand holds, just small divots a few centimeters deep-deep enough to grip with fingers or toes, but not big enough to plant a whole hand or foot. Radi showed me the easiest climbing path and sent me up. I got up about ten meters before I lost my nerve. I stopped and looked down and thought, if I fall right now, I'm going to die. And it was true. There wasn't any soft patch of sand beneath me. It was solid rock. Falling ten meters onto a slab of rock doesn't result in a broken arm. It results in a corpse. That thought became a fact. Then it became a certainty. I couldn't get it out of my head. So I pressed my body against the rock and crawled back down. I was defeated.

Radi was disappointed. He thought I would make it to the top, but I didn't even get halfway. He didn't say anything to me. He just shook his head and walked back to the truck. I looked at him, and I looked at the arch. I looked at the climb path, and I looked at the arch. I looked at myself, and I looked at the arch. And then...god dammit, I didn't care if I fell anymore. I didn't care if I fell twice. I wasn't going to pussy out on what ought to be the greatest physical challenge of my life. Whatever it took, I was going to get to the top of that god damn arch.

So I went back to the arch's base. I spent a long time just looking at the climb path, mapping out the divots in the rock. I jammed my right hand into one divot, wrapped my left hand around a jutting rock, dug in my feet, and pulled myself up. I slipped a few times. I scraped both my knees and tore some skin off my hands. Step by step, I pulled myself up that mountain. Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the arch and looking out over the whole desert. I was so thrilled that I spent half an hour just staring at it all. In fact, for the whole trip, the only picture I have of myself is at the top of that arch. I wanted to take a picture just to prove I'd been there. By the time I got back to the ground, I was hooked. I climbed up, on and over every boulder, crevice and hill I could find. Rock climbing is my new hobby.

I learned a new word in Wadi Rum-friable. That's what the brochure says. "Many of the stone formations in Wadi Rum are friable." I had never heard that word before. I was 50 meters up the side of a mountain when I learned what friable meant. I had my left hand jammed into a large hole and my left foot planted on a tiny ledge. My right hand was wrapped around a fist-sized chunk of sandstone that stuck out from the rock face. My right leg was hanging loose and trying to get traction on a small divot about waist high. I couldn't quite get my right foot into that divot. So with my three other limbs, I heaved and pulled myself higher.

And then the rock broke loose. The rock in my right hand became...friable. It snapped off from the mountain and broke into three pieces in my hand. I dropped all three pieces and swung out from the mountain. Now I had my left hand and foot planted, but the whole right half of my body was swinging in space. I hung that way while the chunks of rock fell fifty meters down and shattered at the base of the mountain.

Friable [adjective] Loose and large-grained in consistency. Easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder. Ex. 1:"The rock in Wadi Rum is friable." Ex. 2: "Climbers who don't pay attention to Ex. 1 may become friable."

Wadi Rum, 1/19/05, Nightfall

In the afternoon, we went to Radi's father, Haoud. We would spend the night in Haoud's tent and finish the tour in the morning. Radi went to get fresh water, Haoud looked after his flock of goats, and the rest of the family started cooking supper. There was a little daylight left, and I had some time to kill.

Haoud's tent is a big rectangle about twenty feet long and ten feet deep, divided into two rooms-a living/sleeping room and a pantry/kitchen. The walls are black cloths propped up with wooden sticks. The floor is dirt with a few throw rugs arranged around a campfire that burns day and night. There's a small pen with about twenty goats outside. There's also a donkey tethered to a post and three guard dogs who bark and howl at the slightest noise. The tent is built on the east side of a high stone hill, so it warms up quickly in the morning and cools off in the afternoon. It wasn't built by wealthy people, but it has so much dignity to it that, when I stayed there, the word 'poor' never crossed my mind.

I had about an hour of daylight left, so I took a hike around the hill. I scrambled up to the top and watched the sun go down behind a distant mountain. Everything was red. The sunset was red. The stone was red. The sand between the mountains was red. I climbed back down, hiked back to the tent, and said hello to the animals.

The donkey didn't like me at all. He was bigger than me and looked ready for a fight, so I left him alone. The goats-well, goats look like mutant sheep and smell like day-old shit. The only time I interact with a goat is when it's on my dinner plate. That left the dogs. Two of them were friendly but skittish. I couldn't get within ten feet of them. The third looked and acted like a golden retriever. When I knelt in front of him, he obediently came up for a scratch. So I wound up sitting on the red sand, petting a friendly mutt, facing a little southwest. I was watching the mountains, watching the light fade. One of those moments of clarity in Wadi Rum.

I didn't hear Haoud come outside. I didn't know he was standing beside me. I just heard the first notes of his prayer. "Allahuaaakbar, Allahuaaakbar." It came out of nowhere, but it didn't startle me. Haoud was facing south, toward Makkah. His prayer was somewhere between a song and a shout. Strong, so God would hear. Lucid, so God would be pleased. I paused in reverence, in respect, in awe. In this open and empty space, in the last of the light, I held my breath while the father of the house gave his sunset prayer to God.

The maghreb prayer lasted about two minutes. Haoud went back inside. The dogs ran off to get supper. The sound of the donkey and the smell of the goats and the rest of the world came back. A little breeze kicked up, and the moment was gone. We're just not meant to stay trapped in those little moments forever. I think we can only feel at peace for two minutes at a time. But I'll keep that moment with me. I'll keep it with me for the rest of my life.

Aqabba, 1/20/05, God Bless McDonald's

The nicest thing about being an American on travel is that you can find a McDonald's just about anywhere. In super-Sunni Riyadh, where non-Muslims are shunned, you can buy a Big Mac. In New Delhi, where the Hindus don't eat beef and the Muslims don't eat pork, you can eat Chicken McNuggets until you burst. In Berlin you can get a beer with your Quarter Pounder, and in Mexico City they give you packets of salsa for your fries.

The rest of the world hates this American export. At least, the snobbish, intellectual people of the world do. The rest of the rest of the world chows down on burgers and fries as much as we do. So for those outside America, I guess McDonald's is a blessing and a curse. For Americans, it's a gift from god.

See, when a person-any person, any nationality-travels to a foreign country, he has to speak a different language, eat a different cuisine, drive a different way. Sometimes he has to dress differently or walk or talk at a different speed. After a week or so of this adjustment, culture shock sets in. He longs for his own country. He wants to speak his own language, watch his hometown sports team, gossip about neighbors next door. And he especially wants to eat his national cuisine. Because eating in a foreign country means strange textures and unusual tastes. Sometimes it also means projectile vomiting and violent diarrhea. Hometown food is comfort food, especially when you have a live oyster squirming down your throat, or when you learn that your hard-boiled egg holds a half-formed fetus.

McDonald's has given Americans a great advantage in this area. I feel for the poor Japanese man who tries to find sushi in Morocco. I pity the German who orders a plate of wurst in Taiwan. I shed a tear for the Mexican in Egypt who doesn't know the Arabic word for tortilla. And I laugh at them all as I bite in to a hot, fresh Quarter Pounder with Cheese, wherever I happen to be.

After 8 long days, hiking through ruins, studying mosaics, climbing mountains, sleeping in leaky tents next to pissed off goats, after beheading, butchering, and eating said goats, I have finally arrived in Aqabba, Jordan's port on the Red Sea. I would like to thank the McDonald's corporation for building one of their fine restaurants here. For if they hadn't, I might never have had a decent burger and fries. I might have reached my breaking point, and I might have run off into the desert and never been seen again. Totally John the Baptist style, living on locusts and wild honey.

Madaba, 1/22/05, Aqabba Sucks

I've been in Aqabba for two and a half days. I was ready to leave two days ago. I had hoped Aqabba would be the relaxing part of my trip. I thought I would stumble into town completely exhausted, with sore muscles and skinned knees. And I would roll into a 5-star beach-front resort, and I would slap down my Mastercard (unlimited credit, of course) and rent the penthouse suite, 200 floors up, with a view of the entire Red Sea, an open bar, 24 hour room service, and a personal masseuse. I would spend my days in a jacuzzi bubble bath drinking champagne. It would be three days of luxurious pampering. After a week of scrambling, scraping, falling and walking all over Jordan, I had earned it.

It was a disaster, a total disaster. Everything that could go wrong did. The one place where I should have been completely relaxed was the only place where I was completely miserable.

In Aqabba's defense, the town wasn't really the problem. If I'd arrived two days earlier or two days later, I probably would have had a blast. Instead I arrived on Eid weekend, the biggest holiday of the Muslim year. Aqabba was packed with tourists from all over Jordan. It was like Tijuana on the Fourth of July. Traffic was awful. The people were pushy. Those 5-star resorts were fully booked. The only hotel that had vacancy for two nights was Aquarmarina I, a shitty one-star dump that was built in the '70s and hasn't been touched since. The air conditioner blew hot air, and the TV remote had a range of about three feet. The walls were so thin I could hear a stereo in one room and a couple humping in the next.

The locals (I should say, the other tourists) made me feel distinctly unwelcome. It wasn't anything specific, just a feeling, a vibe. The friendly smiles were replaced by angry glares, and the enthusiastic service I got elsewhere was a short and spiteful here. Bush's inauguration speech was Thursday night, and CNN was playing the highlights during breakfast the next morning. A man at the table next to mine glared at the TV, then glared at me. Sneered at Bush. Sneered at me. I finished my meal early and retreated to my room.

The dive trip was another disaster. I went to Aqabba International Dive Center. I asked if they had any snorkel tours. They said they only did scuba tours, but I could tag along on a shallow water dive. The divers would go into ten meter water, and I could swim over to a five meter zone.

The next morning there were no customers at the shop, just one employee. He told me I was the only person on the tour today. He drove me to a local beach, pointed toward the shore, and dropped me off. He didn't even get out of the car. I found out later that after he dumped me on the beach, he raced back to the shop and led a crew of divers on another tour.

He dropped me off at 9 and agreed to pick me up at 11, but by the time he was twenty meters underwater. I gave up waiting at 11:30 and decided to hitch hike home. At noon, I was still trying to catch a ride when the shop owner picked me up and drove me back to the shop.

A word about the water: It was my first swim in the Red Sea, so of course it was exhilarating. I saw sea urchins for the first time. I saw my first flounder that wasn't cooked. First lionfish, first puffer fish, first shrimp. Everything I saw was new.

And insightful. From a distance, the bottom looked like big gray rocks spotted with bright coral. At a closer look, I saw that the gray rocks weren't rocks; they were dead coral. Only about a quarter of the coral was alive. It looked like a bombed-out city with collapsed buildings and shelled-out hulls. I remember seeing a large sphere about twenty feet across. One end was bright orange. The middle was a dull yellowish orange. The top was gray. The other side had collapsed. Long cylindrical columns lay flat on the sea floor. It was like watching different stages of decay. After touring so many ruins on Jordan, now I was touring ruins underwater. It was the last remains of a once-vibrant reef, and the few living spots of color were not beautiful; they were just reminders of how beautiful it used to be.

I drove out of Aqabba as fast as I could. A storm came in just after I left. Five solid hours of driving through rain, snow, and sand have brought me back to Madaba, where I started my vacation. A hot plate of schwerma, a warm room, and a friendly staff that's happy to see me again. Aqabba is just a memory now, and I'm anxious to fly back home.

1/23/05, Kuwait City, No Place Like Home

I thought I might never get home. Trouble started last night when the schwerma I had for supper went into reverse. I spent the night puking my dinner into the toilet. In the morning I was famished, but I ate a small breakfast to go easy on my stomach. I figured I would catch a bigger meal in Amman.

I drove around Amman for an hour, but I was lost most of the time, and I never stopped for lunch. I decided to just go to the airport early and grab a meal there. But when I got there, the security guard wouldn't let me check in. I arrived at noon though my flight left at five, and the guard said I couldn't check-in until four. I asked if I just go past him to get some lunch, but he refused. So I sat in the lobby for four hours while I waited for the guard to let me pass.

At the Kuwait Airways check-in counter, the agent asked why I didn't make a reservation for the flight. I told him I made a reservation when I bought the ticket. He told me they had overbooked the flight, and I wouldn't be allowed on. I made a big fuss, but they wouldn't budge. Finally, about twenty minutes before takeoff, they let me buy an upgrade to first class for an extra $200. I paid with my now maxed-out credit card and got on the plane just before they closed the doors.

So I almost missed my flight, I had to pay an extra 200 bucks to get home, and my only meal for the last day and a half was a slice of toast. By the time I touched down in Kuwait, those first-classes flight attendants hated me. I was buzzing that damn call button every five minutes. Tea! Coffee! Water! Peanuts! Where's my dinner? Get me a pillow! Bring me that newspaper! No, the English one! Now! I feel sorry for them, but, dammit, if I had to buy a first-class seat, I was determined to get first-class service.

So now I'm home. I never thought I'd refer to Kuwait that way. I thought I would finish this trip with "So now I'm back in Kuwait." But Kuwait feels different now. Everything I own is here. All my friends are here. I know the roads, and I know the people. Every night I've spent in Kuwait, I've dreamed of being back in San Diego. But every night I was in Jordan, I dreamed of being back in Kuwait. Now I'm laying in my own bed, in my own apartment, and I don't care about moving back to San Diego. Kuwait is where I live now; it's where I want to be. I saw a lot of amazing things in Jordan, but maybe the most amazing thing is that, for me, Kuwait is now my home.