Saturday, January 17, 2004

10:45 – Baghdad. Amman was totally not Baghdad. Nice hotel, nice sites, mostly nice weather, nice folks, and no guns.

Our stateside bosses decided to send us out of Iraq as sort of an xmas present mixed with a mid-tour vacation. Sure. Absolutely. It wouldn’t be as nice as going to Kuwait, mostly because Kuwait means Europe then home, but it was still an anticipated break. Not in the least restful, since the two overly short days we spent there were spent on excess.

There aren’t many ways to get out of Iraq. Driving is one, but Amman is ten hours away on a bandit-strewn highway, and really, you can see most of the countryside of Iraq in about ten minutes. Endless sand is pretty much endless sand,… until you get to the rocks.

We took Miltrans (MILitary TRANSport) instead. Not a crowded flight either, only four of us Ungrateful Whiney Prima Donnas (the first wave) and six or eight PMO wheels who were going to a conference in Amman. Just a dozen passengers and our bags on the entire C-130 allowed us to put up our feet and relax a bit more than when there’re forty passengers, crammed shoulder to shoulder so that cargo pallets can be maximized.

Departures from BIAP, like the arrivals, are tactical. However, there are some limits to the rate of climb of a C-130 so, instead of zooming straight up from the runway, we zigged and zagged at treetop level until we had enough speed to climb. With each zig, I was looking nearly straight down out of my little porthole, not seeing the trunks of the date palms due to the view through the fronds. With each zag, looking straight up into the desert sky. A few zigs and zags later, and we began a steep spiral ascent to an elevation out of rocket range.

After a more traditional landing, we were met on the tarmac by armored Suburbans from the U.S. Embassy and shuttled to the Four Seasons (your tax dollar at work). My holiday group went to the Four Seasons. The wheels went to the Sheraton so we’d have no further contact with work until we left.

Now what?

Drinks in the bar. A red Thai curry, perhaps, and another drink. Nice start. I could do this all day long. But sightseeing was the order of the days. Eating well and drinking well were orders as well, and who was I to contradict an order?

Lots of old stuff in Jordan. Two Roman amphitheatres in downtown (old) Amman. The temple to Hercules and a seventh century restored mosque on the citadel above town. The spectacular ruins of Jerash north of Amman. Mount Nebo, where they say Moses looked over the Jordan River valley to the Promised Land. An incredible mosaic map of the Middle East on the floor of a Greek Orthodox church in some little town somewhere between Amman and the Dead Sea.

And the Dead Sea, where we had mud baths and bobbed like fleshy corks in the hyper-salty water.

I went juza shopping one day, but the best I could do was a small zarib and an oud. “Fine”, I thought, the zarib I can pack, but I really wanted to ship home the oud, since they’re a little large sometimes. Armed with the information that I could ship my oud home for around twenty Dinars a kilo, I left the thing with the concierge to deal with.

After supper, I found a note on the desk in my room, informing me that FedEx was going to charge the princely sum of 437 Dinar and 50 Piastas (over 600 USD) to box and send the thing, plus the 5% take for the hotel. The result is that I’m traveling now with an oud, which is sure to make interesting carryon for the trip home.

The highlight, though, was just walking down the street. We took the opportunity on our first afternoon to see some of the downtown sites. Once visited, we set off walking towards the hotel. We’d never make the five uphill miles, but there were plenty of taxis and English-speaking taxi drivers that we could flag down whenever. There were plenty of shops downtown. Trinket shops were mixed in with the small restaurants, bakeries, clothing, luggage, jewelry, electronics and miscellaneous business concerns present in a thriving city center. We spent a couple of hours nosing a round, and it was well past dark when we finally hailed a cab.

But I had walked freely and casually amongst the souqs and citizens of Jordan. No guns. No Humvees. No desert camouflage uniforms. I was still a target, but the target symbol was no longer a bulls eye but a dollar sign.

Absolutely fine.