Mount Nebo

"As you might have noticed, there are a lot of sites in Jordan which have religious significance. This is part of what makes Arabs nervous when extreme hard-liners in Israel talk about reclaiming Israel's full Biblical heritage - they tend to include everything connected with people like Aaron and Moses, who were of course prophets of Islam as well as leaders of ancient Israel. In any event, perhaps the most widely venerated site in Jordan is Mount Nebo, site of the death of Moses where he looked upon the promised land which he would never enter.

"Today Mount Nebo is under the control of the Franciscan friars, and on the summit of Pisgah you find a medium-sized stone church, as well as clearly marked artifacts from the summit's previous occupants. You enter the summit through a small gate after paying about 75 cents; there is also an expensive gift shop and restaurant just outside. Also present are various monuments connected to the Jubilee year 2000; the number of times I saw Pope John Paul II's name carved on various stones called to mind name deleted's comment in the Vatican three years ago that you can tell the current pontiff intends on being remembered. One of these stones is a large statue which is perhaps the ugliest sculpture I have ever seen and that you'll have to see the picture of to believe.

"On a clear day, you can from Mount Nebo see Jerusalem and even glimpse the Mediterranean Sea. On a hot day in mid-July, though, you can only see a bit past Jericho across the Jordan River on the Dead Sea. People following the Jordan Valley pilgrimage trail were undoubtedly a bit disappointed, though people from the area such as the gang of little kids being led there on a field trip will probably simply come back some winter if the spirit moves them. For to them, such things I have described are simply part of their neighborhood, about 30 minutes from Amman and 90 from Irbid, a place to go on a weekend day trip like Hannibal from Quincy or Chicago from Madison.

"What you can do, however, as a traveller just passing through, is when the view of Israel disappoints, simply turn around a look at Jordan, the hilly farmland of which stretches as far as the eye can see. For while too often its religious significance is what draws people to this hot, dry country, there lies within and beyond these things a living world all around, visible to one who knows to look for it and who has the interest to look beyond the places where people say God left his mark to the people God has made all around us.

"In the far north of Jordan, half an hour from the Syrian border, you find Irbid, home of the Yarmouk University the physical features of which have been described previously. In the orientation packed, the UVA program directors - admittedly one of them an Irbid native - judged that Yarmouk University was a highly conservative school. I reverse. Yarmouk University is so liberal it juts out of the conservative background like steam rising from the stream name deleted nicknamed 'The Blazing Hot River of Fire and Death' where it tumbles onto the rocks at the Hammamat Ma'in.

"This is not so much because of any political opinions on the part of the students; I've somehow gone for a month only getting into one political discussion outside of our group. It is instead an observation based on the lifestyle when compared with the surrounding community and standards of dress, social interaction, etc. that prevail in different locations. Perhaps it is best to just think of it in standard university terms: During orientation the student who had done this program last year was asked to comment when he thought it appropriate, and when the program director was explaining that any romantic liaisons would be difficult due to the conservatism of Irbid, the guy indicated that actually at Yarmouk nobody would really care, an observation which can be verified simply by noting the dense population along the Street of Love or its noticeably less proper counterpart across campus outside Al-Kindi Hall (the humanities building).

"The girls have far more friends than we do. It was so crazy - about a week into the program they couldn't walk anywhere without people they had met going up to them and "catching up." stuff deleted (Incidentally, the bookstore here sells Vol. II of the Norton Anthology of English literature for about $6.) Once I also stumbled into what turned out to be the music music and theater building, where I found that the relative oddity of music/theater people* appears to be one of those universal constants. The university was supposed to be locked, and there they were surrounded by some sort of modern art painted murals doing impropto improv skits and humming chords.

"I'm wandering off topic here, but my point is that if you want to see a 'real Jordan,' you probably won't. The real Jordan consists of a lot of different things all of which are tied to each other and which interact with each other and the world outside in a number of complex ways. I say, rather, 'the Jordanian world,' probably no better a term, but hey. And this is a world which consists of the Bedouin, and the professors, and the Iraqi refugees, and the traditional Jordanian families, and the Westernized youth, and the street dogs of Irbid, all part of a world in which ideas and people mix around, tumbling through time and space forming communities of souls and cultures of behavior as they try to make a living and live their lives just as people have for centuries and will in the future.

"This awareness of community is perhaps the strongest thing I will take away from my stay in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. There is an old Jordanian proverb one professor used to help us remember some vocabulary: 'The neighbors before the house.'** As I look out from our cheap hotel accomodation in Madaba, I think of this as I survey the street below, with the children playing, a group of girls laughing over some pictures, and the older people sitting on the balconies so close across the narrow street you can actually talk to them, say its a nice evening, etc. Some may complain that as a developing nation Jordan is uncomfortable, things fall apart or break down all the time, etc. But more important is to note the comfort with the people, to feel secure in a neighborhood where kids are the responsibility of everyone and where neighborliness and hospitality are values as strong as any others. For more than anything I've actually seen, I will remember the people I've met and the ideas they've shared with me, seeing in the face of humanity the face of the world which gives rise to all else.


*I was a music person
**The second part, "the friends before the road," is also cool
(This was pretty heavily redacted, partly for the usual reasons, and partly because I've excerpted it before. Unfortunately we really couldn't see much at all, and the pictures of the mosaic inside the church didn't turn out, so there's not much more I can do.)