Our first driver in Jordan, Samir* meets us at the Israeli border crossing at the King Hussein Bridge and delivers us straight to Mount Nebo, the desert ridge where the biblical Moses was granted a glimpse of the Promised Land. The prophet died soon after, never to enter his ancestral homeland. At the summit, we take in a hazy golden panorama of undulating hills and valleys. A directional marker board indicates Jerusalem's Mount of Olives is 46 kilometres to the west. So near and yet so far, as Moses, and more recent exiles, might attest.
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Mount Nebo is a fitting introduction to this country of refugees and wanderers.
Jordan's leader King Abdullah II remarked in September that refugees comprise one fifth of his country's population. Since the outbreak of violence in Syria more than half a million people have come here. And that's in addition to the tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced in the 2003 war and the fresh wave of Iraqi arrivals fleeing Islamic State. Then there's the established community of two million Palestinians, Samir, we would learn, being one.
Stocky and garrulous, Samir seems to fill the van. His signature phrase is "let me be honest with you". As in: "Let me be honest with you. Jordan she is in the middle of the Middle East. She has no petrol. But she has peace and it is good here. The people they come here."
Our two daughters squirm in the back. The passing scenery is an expanse of sandy rock, with occasional villages and parades of goats.
It is dark when we reach Wadi Musa, the village that has sprung up around Petra. We spend the next day awe-struck in the Nabataean caravan-city, scaling peaks on the back of donkeys led by Bedouins. The following day Samir drives us to Wadi Rum, the valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in Jordan's south, made famous by Lawrence of Arabia, who passed through on his travels. The next morning we head for the capital, Amman.
"I am Palestinian," Samir says, one hand on the wheel. "I left when I was five. In 1995 I went back to visit family near Ramallah. I stayed nine months. When I went to cross the border back into Jordan, the Israeli guard ask me, 'Why you stay nine months? There is something suspicious.' I say, 'What is the problem? I have Jordanian passport, I visit my family.' And he say to me, 'habibi'—-you know we say habibi, it mean 'I love you,' my friend - 'habibi, you will never come here again."'
He pauses.
"So I can't go back; my name is on some kind of blacklist at the border. And I had land, more than 50 hectares, inside Israel. It is worth millions of US dollars. After I was back in Jordan my cousin he rings me and says, 'Samir, the Israelis have taken your land. For free.'"
In the desert outside I glimpse a lone cafe with a sign reading, "Like us on Facebook."
"Let me be honest with you," Samir continues. "I told the Israeli at the border, 'okay, I'm never coming back.' I don't want to go back."
Around us, Amman starts taking shape. Car showrooms, supermarkets, mosques.
Samir points to a hilly ridge with a cluster of white apartment blocks. New housing for the refugees, he explains.
"Let me be honest with you," Samir says, "The Iraqis who come here, they very rich. They have money. Jewelleries. They buy house and now house more expensive."
A young man in a poncho weaves through the traffic, hawking crutches and walking sticks. "He refugee," Samir grunts.
"You know why I don't like these people? I cannot say this in front of your daughters, but they sometimes bring young girl 18 or 16 and she says, 'give me money and I can do this and this …'"
We arrive at our hotel and bid Samir farewell.
At the old city that afternoon we devour humus at the sublime Hashem restaurant and explore the Roman amphitheatre. Exhausted, we catch a taxi back to our hotel.
Our driver is Raheem, quietly spoken with a trim beard. His taxi shudders uphill. A keychain in the shape of Palestine dangles from the ignition.
I look out the window. In the distance, a valley and rocky hills splayed with housing estates. Though the guidebooks typically dismiss Amman as lacking character, to me the vista has a utilitarian charm. Raheem follows my gaze down a labyrinth of narrow, densely populated streets. "This is the Palestinian camp," he explains. Raheem says he was born in Jordan, "but I am Palestinian".
"My uncle and grandfather are still in Palestine and I have land there, about 50 kilometres from Jerusalem. My father goes back two times in a year. You know what the Israelis say? That he can visit his land but he cannot live there." His voice drops to a whisper. "It is crazy."
That night we dine at Mood, the hotel's top-floor restaurant. Well, "dine" is an exaggeration; in a Jordanian version of Fawlty Towers ("..we're just out of Waldorfs..") almost nothing on the menu is available. No tuna salad. No pizza. No ice-cream. The only other patrons, a fashionable young couple, luxuriate with a water pipe. From outside, the lights of Amman wink at us. We riff about how "Mood" backwards spells "Doom."
On our last morning in Jordan, another driver, Rashid, returns us to the Israeli border. Rashid twitches with discontent.
"In Jordan all the money goes in a month," he grumbles. "Now the people coming from Syria say, 'well if you will work for 200 (Jordanian) Dinar, we will work for 150'.'
I feel as if any moment Rashid might spring from the cab and beat a path to elsewhere.
"What about Australia?" he peers in the rear view mirror. "I could make money there, yes?"
He slows at the approach to the King Hussein Bridge. Across the road is an administrative checkpoint for Palestinian residents of the West Bank; Rashid flicks his wrist in its direction. "This is for the 1948 and 1967 people," he says. It is a casual reference to the Palestinians displaced during the Arab-Israeli wars of those years and now living under Israeli occupation. In this country of restless people, in this beguiling pit-stop of a place, empathy has rough edges.
Rashid helps unload our luggage, wishes us all the best and leaps back into his taxi.
We sweep through passport control, pay the departure tax and board the bus for the brief ride across the bridge, and on to Jerusalem.
*Names have been changed.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
The Australian Government advises travellers to exercise a high degree of caution in Jordan because of the risk of terrorist attack.
smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Jordan
GETTING THERE
Thai Airways flights to Bangkok from Sydney and Melbourne connect with El-Al to Tel Aviv. Taxis run from Jerusalem's old city to the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge crossing. Visas must be obtained in advance from a Jordanian embassy. Israeli-based Naftali Tours provides drivers in Jordan.
See thaiairways.com, elal.co.il, jordanembassy.org.au, naftalitours.com
STAYING THERE
At Wadi Musa the Amra Palace Hotel has double rooms starting from 55.00JD (Jordanian Dinar).
See amrapalace.com
The Sadeen Amman Hotel has spacious rooms starting from 77 JD.
See sadeen.com
DINING THERE
Hashem at Al-Amir Mohammed St Downtown is an Amman institution.
The writer travelled to Jordan at her own expense.
