"Go up this mountain."

13 September 2008
“Go up this mountain.”

There was a strange quiet on the summit of Mount Nebo, a stillness which settled across the beautifully desolate landscape and settled over me. As much as I tried to refrain from holy-land travelogue, I couldn’t help but think of all the biblical stories set in this barren expanse of rust-colored rubble and scrubby shrubs which meet the sky in a distant hazy horizon. Stillness. Toward Palestine, the Dead Sea, like a thin, silvery film, seemed applied to the landscape like a sticker, as if I could grasp it between my thumb and index finger and peel away this shrinking sea from a dry land. In this moment, all the biblical water-desert metaphors are realized for a girl who’s grown up in a lush, deciduous landscape.

*****

The Ma’in hot springs, an hour outside Madaba: Through the roar of thousands of gallons of water pouring over the cliff onto my head, I can still sense the stillness in the land. In this gorge with savage cliffs towering above me, I’m knee-deep in a steamy, mineral-rich hot springs, with natural saunas in the caves above streaked green, blue, yellow and white from the mineral deposits. A few friends and I have hired a van driver to take us along the winding highway along the cliffs of what was once called Moab to the deserted springs (deserted because of Ramadan and the heat – only four other tourists are there). The six of us are packed in the van’s only backseat, myself facing backwards and feeling increasingly dizzy from repeatedly watching bottomless ravines suddenly appear out my window and lurching every time the driver slows for a curve. Road signs read, “Reduce speed now.” The Dead Sea reappears on the horizon. Between my legs is my backpack still dusty from Mount Nebo. As I’m struggling now to even begin to describe to you the awesome beauty of this landscape, the best comparison I can come up with is the Western United States – seemingly desolate places like Death Valley and the Grand Canyon (you just have to look closely for the sparse wildlife). As the water pours over me, I imagine what discovering the springs after traveling for days across this wasteland would be like. No wonder the springs are ordinarily packed in this country with one of the worst water shortages in the world.

*****
Those high moments make the scene in front of me bearable: an almost bare mattress doused with sand and crowned with a boulder of a pillow; a broken fan (ironically labeled “high class fan” in English); a broken toilet, sink and pretty much everything else in this sketchy hostel. Of course it’s cheap, and the service isn’t that bad: a television in the lobby plays the best (and by best I mean worst) of American programming, and moldy cheese, dehydrated pita and a decent hardboiled egg on the house for breakfast. That and a complementary can of coke with straws fished out of the manager’s greasy shirt-pocket. A woman in a ragged nightshirt appears in the doorway bearing an old skeleton key. “ You like the room?” she chuckles deviously, exposing her dentist’s nightmare of a mouth. My immune system is definitely getting a workout this weekend.
About an hour southwest of Amman, Madaba is an early Christian community whose ancient churches boast mosaics – including the oldest and largest most comprehensive map of the Middle East - worth crashing in a sketchy hostel for a night. The town’s narrow streets brimming with stalls are pleasant to stroll through, and with Madaba as a base, one can visit Mount Nebo, Ma’in hot springs, and Bethany (home of the “baptism site”). We finished off our visit devouring the only meal of the day at the reputedly best local restaurant (why do I feel like I’m writing for a travel guide?). The air is thick and sweet with sheesha, the low rumbling of voices, warm, golden lights, and live music; we’re lounging on the floor pillows teaching Leith, our guide-friend-of-a-friend-of-an SIT student’s host brother, how to play Egyptian rat screw, which is, to his bewilderment, not an Egyptian card game. That I had an Arabic test the next morning, I successfully pushed to the back of my mind; Madaba deserved my full attention.

*****

“That very day the Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and view the land of Cannan, which I am giving to the people of Israel for a possession. And die on the mountain which you go up, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people, because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, and because you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the people of Israel. For you shall see the land before you, but you shall not go there, into the land that I am giving to the people of Israel.’” - Deuteronomy 32: 48 – 52.