Mr. Hakel Gets Very, Very Hot

Day 2 blog 2
This afternoon I am sitting in my upstairs hotel room in the Azraq Lodge, which at one point in time was a military hospital. In the back there is still a Jordanian Air Force Base. There are signs at the back of the hotel informing us, politely, that pictures may not be taken of the base. So far, I’ve managed to comply. I could see a half dozen or so jet fighters sitting out in the sun. Before I go into the impressive sights we’ve seen today, I must comment on the heat. In Amman yesterday, I thought a number of different times that it was pretty darn hot out, but it wasn’t actually. This is hot. It is 101 degrees outside the window I’m looking through and it looks it. If you are a person who understands the beauty of the American Southwest then you would marvel at what I am looking at right now. We are in Al Azraq, an oasis. We are 20 miles north of the border with Saudi Arabia and I am looking in the direction of Iraq, which is a comforting 160 miles or so off. The map indicates no other settlements between here and Iraq. This is the closest we will come to that troubled land.
Today, after picking up our “Tourist Police” officer who will ride with us, we visited three different Qasr. The easiest translation would be castle, but I found that a little misleading. The first was Al Alhareena. This castle was perched besides the road in the middle of the desert. It is quite large and features something like 63 rooms. The purpose of the structure is still in dispute, but the literature inside the structure has settled on the Qasr being an “inn” of sorts. And in fact the size of the rooms does indeed seem to back up that idea. The slits in the walls that appear from the outside to be for shooting turn out to be impossibly high above the floor on the inside. So their purpose would be for ventilation and in fact most of them had a decent breeze flowing through them. Desert, in at least this part of Jordan, does not mean sand. It means small rocks compacted by time and wind into the ground. Around this castle that left very little room even for scrubby plants.
This was not quite as true at our second Qasr of the day, actually this one was considerably smaller earning it the title “Qasrya”. This was Qasrya Amar. It was built in 7th century as a hunting lodge for the Caliph. The Caliph would visit to escape the hustle and bustle of court life in Damascus. The Qasrya is situated beside a dry wadi that occasionally in the springtime has water in it. Most distinctive at this site were the frescoed walls and ceilings of the buildings. The paintings were designed to be welcoming and happy, which I suppose explains the number of naked women in the frescoes.
For reasons not understood, these frescroes escaped destruction when the following caliph ordered all such images to be destroyed. Also at this site was a deep well that we could just barely see the bottom of. Water was fetched up by an ingenious spoke and axle crank that looked remarkably like giant tinker toys. Towards the end of our visit I wandered to the back of the property to see what I could of the wadi. It turned out It was still far from me, but not so far from a couple of dogs that they didn’t give me an earful for wondering too close.
The third castle, Al Azraq Castle, was built for defensive purposes. It was originally built by the Romans and then rebuilt by the Ummayads in the 700s. The castle is constructed of black basaltic stone and was clearly intended for defensive purposes. The most interesting thing to me was the ceilings of therooms that still have ceilings. One of these ceilings, by the way, is believed to have been the room that Lawrence of Arabia and Sharif al Faad planned the defeat of the Ottomans during the Arab revolution in 1915ish. In any case, the lack of wood in this area necessitated the use of roughly hewn stone girders that overlap each other to create the skeleton of the roof. Other rocks are then carefully placed between these girders to fill in the holes. It’s fascinating to look at, but even more so to realize that it has lasted 700 years plus.

I’ll stop a moment to describe the scene I am looking at out the window. We are on top of a small hill overlooking the junction of two highways. If you turn right, you wind up in Saudi Arabia in short order. If you turn left you have a long haul to Iraq. From that direction, at the momen,t a convoy of trucks is coming through that has already been coming by for several minutes now. Our guide, Emjab, tells us that this is in fact a convoy coming from Iraq. There have been several buses mixed in with the trucks. Jordan, pretty much alone amongst countries in this area has maintained itself as a haven for refugees. The two largest refugee groups would, of course, be from Palestine and Iraq. Asalaam, the owner of our tour company, Petracaravan, described this as both a blessing and a curse as Jordan’s population went from two to six million in just twenty years. The caravan is still coming by and I am not a fast typist.
Two more stops to describe today. Our very first stop this morning was at the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. What’s that you ask? Were they still asleep? Did I get any zzzzs in? I shall try to answer. During the period of persecution of Christians by the Romans, seven slaves/Christians escaped the city known as Amman today. They were pursued by the Romans. Thus, they took cover in this cave. Alas, I didn’t catch the rest of the story, but it is mentioned in the Quran if you want to look it up. Above the cave are the ruins of an ancient chapel. Next to the site a mosque was built by King Abdullah II just two years ago. We were able to visit the mosque. This was an interesting experience by itself. We had dressed with respect in the morning. For me, that meant wearing long pants. For the women in our group it meant wearing skirts, long-sleeve shirts and a head scarf. This turned out to be not quite sufficient and they were asked to wear full-length robes with hoods that were helpfully located at the gate. They looked tremendously hot to me. (The caravan is still passing btw….) the women reported that it wasn’t that bad. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, but I have to say that I am still having a very difficult time seeing at as anything other than a wrong-headed idea. As much as we scoff at political correctness in our country I say that it is considerably more good than stupid.
The final stop before arriving at our lodge was visiting the Al Azraq Wetland Preserve. Al Azraq is an oasis, which is why it is such a crossroads. Before me I see trees and even a green field. The wetlands are very small, but there are three ponds. Within these ponds swim killifish, the only killifish of their particular species in the world. (No, I can’t tell you what’s special about a killifish) We also observed a herd of grazing water buffalo. The water buffalo are not native to the oasis, but have been around for the better part of a thousand years and besides they eat enough that water doesn’t get completely choked with vegetation. A visitor’s center ably described in Arabic and English the perils the wetlands face in a country that is the tenth most water poor in the world.
That’s gonna be a rap for now. More later if it is worth noting!
Dad/Lane/Mr. Hakel