Going East: Part 1

There were three of us very early in the morning. We had resolved to rescue ourselves from the rat race of big city living. Pete had lived in the super metropolis of London for a few years. But he grew up on the plains of Salisbury. I had spent all my years until university in the devastatingly quiet suburbs of Chicago. Claudia had spent her entire life in the picturesque, though not particularly bustling, northern Italian city of Turin.

This weekend was a symptom of deep need to leave the white noise behind. We were finally going somewhere other than work, school, and home. And, we had pulled out all the stops in search of a small slice of the quieter life. In comparison to Chicago or London, Amman is not particularly large. But, it gives the sense of being a lot bigger than it really is. It is the capital of more than just Jordan because it acts as a sort of peaceful way station to stop in. A modern caravanserai in which to take shelter in from the desert of Aid Agencies, displacement, war, and inconsistent plumbing. Between the refu

gees of all stripes, and temporarily posted foreigners, the volume and diversity of people we were rotating through on a daily basis could be exhausting. Five days of the week it made everything feel exciting. We are constantly switching between languages and cultures. This Professor is Palestinian. The guy who owns the coffee stand on the way to work is Circassian. Her roommate is Syrian. Then there are all the embassy workers: Spanish, Russian, Pennsylvanian. But, there were normally two days where it was simply exhausting, and they were starting to add up.

So, when we rented the car we had resolved not to go down to Petra, or any of the other uber famous sites in Jordan. Instead we were going out east. We were going to the vast desert that forms the border for Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, and Saudi Arabia. It is a place that was and is still thought of as generally worthless. In fact, the old King of Jordan Abdullah II once swapped 12,000 acres of it for 12 more miles of coastline near Aqaba with Saudi Arabia. It is widely considered to be one of his most inspired decisions. Our inspired decision was to inform or parents exactly where we were going. Solitude was driving all of us, but our stated goal was to go and have a look at the “Desert Castles”.

There are around ten in total. The “Desert Castles” placidly litter the vast desert in the east of Jordan as they have done since they were built many centuries ago. Of course, in the pantheon of places to see in Jordan, ancient ruins an hour outside in the capital which are nearer to the Iraqi border than to a place resembling civilization are not popular destinations. When Jordanians go on vacation, places like the lush forests of Ajlun, or the decidedly not lush Marscape of Wadi Rum are far more enticing. The guidebooks reflect this reality.

Lonely Planet went as far as creating a chart that simply grades the “Desert Castles” in terms of “viewing quality” and “general level of interest”. All the descriptions include unusually low amounts of historical context and unusually high amounts of information about the quality of roads near each castle. One small example: the large industrial suburb of Zarqa received a half page of explanation from Lonely Planet basically explaining why it is of not much interest to the casual traveler. In comparison, the ancient Castle of Burqu with its accompanying oasis was granted a paltry few paragraphs. But, in those scarce words they mention four wheel driving out to an ancient castle near an uninhabited oasis where the local Bedouin will certainly invite you for tea and dinner. What about this place does not necessitate more explanation I couldn't tell you.

In the interest of fairness towards the Guidebooks however, it is important to know that some of these ruins do not actually have much historical context to include. After driving an hour through commuting traffic, and stopping for the least satisfying breakfast in the history of road trips, we damn near drove right by our first stop: Castle Kharana.

Kharana is basically an enigma. There are no major current or historical water sources even remotely near by. Even the water for the modest guard building has to be trucked in. More than that, the utter solitude of Kharana makes it difficult to understand it’s purpose in the first place. There are no trees, no bushes, no cacti.

There are no sheep herds or shepherds refuges. There are power lines near by, but they stretch so anonymously so as to become inseparable from the landscape. You can stand on the top of Kharana, three stories up, and in any direction and as far as the eye can see, see exactly: nothing. It isn’t even on an easily defendable hill.

The scratched and faded informational placard told us that archaeologists guess that it was a sort of desert inn for caravans, a kind of ancient Howard Johnson. But even then, it is not clear to archaeologists what caravan route the castle lay on. Caravan routes were like the interstates of today; they didn’t change very often. Kharana Castle therefore remains a very well built, though not architecturally dynamic enigma. A two story stone rectangle, with knot holes speckling the walls, jutting out of an otherwise uninterrupted desert. It probably could have housed several dozen in its heyday, but now plays host only to pigeons.

Like most ruins in Jordan once you pay the entrance fee to the inevitably bored guard (or in our case simply chatted in Arabic) you are free to do as you please. Climbing, touching, graffiting, and vandalizing, or just sitting for hours and contemplating are fine. We wandered around for a half hour guessing which empty room was the Royal Suite and joking about where we would put furniture.

We contemplated the vastness of the desert around us, and wondered what on earth could make people spend the effort, time, and money to come all the out here by foot or camel and build a fort. But, honestly, after a while there is only so much thinking one can do in a old empty blockhouse. So we consulted the map, Claudia smoked a cigarette, and we climbed back in our rented hatchback heading for Castle Amra.