Pt1 - 13: NEARLY CACTUS IN KERAK

 

We swerved off the road to Kerak for a squiz at Shobek Castle, famous as the first of a chain of fortresses stretching from here to Turkey built by the Crusader king Baldwin 1 in the early twelfth century. The castle is largely rubble but its position on the trig point in the landscape offered 360 degree views of the desert hills which looked through the heat haze like currant buns in an oven. In a narrow valley below the castle entrance lay the modern settlement of Shobek, its cubist houses surrounded by cedar plantations and citrus orchards planted on wide terraces sculpted into the gently sloping sides of the valley. We took tea with the Bedouin who had a trinket stall at the gate and he explained that New Shobek is a model community established by the government to test the feasibility of reclaiming these lunar hills for the people of Jordan. Good luck to them, I say.

At the crowded, grubby town of Taffila we took another, unscheduled, detour when I missed the turnoff to Kerak. You’ve seen that losing my way is not something I ordinarily admit to, but in this case there were mitigating circumstances, like the fact the road signs were all in Arabic. One white squiggle on a green background is the same as the next to me and it wasn’t until we veered left onto the Desert Highway we realised we’d gone more than 50kms out of our way. I hate that.

What you see with the Desert Highway is exactly what you get, a highway in the desert. Flat, sandswept and utterly bleak, it runs straight through the middle of Jordan from Aqaba to Amman and is the main artery for all the commercial traffic from the Red Sea port to the capital. It probably should be called the Desert Dragstrip because convoys of alarmingly ancient trucks roar along here in a deranged derby that reminded me of the movie Duel. It is nobody’s idea of a Sunday drive and not for the faint hearted.

Fortunately, as someone who spent too long driving cabs in Sydney traffic I have nerves of steel behind the wheel. I needed them. For 50kms all I could see in the rear view mirror were huge, rusting oil-streaked radiator grilles and I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of maniacs with bulging, bloodshot eyes bearing down on us. Our tiny overloaded Feroza swayed in the slipstreams of these rattling behemoths as they sped past spewing black smoke, so that sometimes it was almost like driving underwater – no matter which way I feathered the wheel the car just went its own sweet way. I had to stay calm and focused and jolly the little beast along. We were all inordinately glad to arrive in Kerak alive, although when the time came we were all even more glad to leave Kerak alive.

Kerak was the capital of the biblical Land of Moab; today it is a large bustling town clinging to the sides of a hill dominated by the most impressive and best preserved of Baldwin’s fortresses. We followed the one-way traffic to the top where we ended up in a small carpark clogged with tour buses. I had to reverse out and squeeze into a spot in the gutter.

The mound of Kerak is laced with a labyrinth of secret passages, hidden chambers and a network of narrow vaulted ceilings. The empty Long Hall deep in the bowels of the castle is ethereally lit to evoke a medieval atmosphere, which is about as close to theme park schtick as Jordan gets. I like the fact there is no fake furniture, no taped madrigals, no kitsch suits of polished armour or lances on the wall, and you could wander around the maze of tunnels for ages without seeing anyone else. Alas, if we were going to make Madaba tonight we’d have to push on soon.

The gods were against us in Kerak though. We returned to the car to find a rear tyre all but flat, with just enough air in it for us to coast down the hill in search of the red asterisk that denotes gas stations in Jordan. I spotted one wedged between storefronts about half way down and pulled up to the battered, oil-smeared, 1950s bowser. No, said the young male attendant, we’d have to go to the tyre shop further down, but we needed benzene – they don’t sell petrol in Jordan – so I told him to fill the tank anyway. I unlocked the cap and stood back while he stuck the hose in and started pumping. Suddenly, all hell hit the fan.

I heard screaming and immediately thought someone had been run down in the busy street outside, but it turned out to be Micha wedged in the back seat of the Feroza. His apoplectic face was pressed to the window and he was making cutthroat gestures as though the car had suddenly filled with poisonous gas. He banged the glass with his fist, scrambled out of the car and began yelling at the attendant, who’d stopped pumping and stood there slack jawed.

“You cheat!” Micha screamed, “You think we fucking stupid! I saw!”

“Wha…” was as much as I could get in edgewise. The attendant muttered something in Arabic, but Micha ploughed on.

“I saw! There was 4JD (about A$8) on the pump before you started. Cheat!” The plot thickened.

Within seconds we were surrounded by young Arabs who’d come from nowhere, all shouting and gesticulating wildly. The attendant was just a kid, maybe 16 or 17, and it could’ve been an honest oversight, but when I tried to intervene my voice was swallowed in the verbal chaos. I was overwhelmed at Micha’s ferocity as he held his own against the gathering crowd like a man possessed.

“You think because we tourists you can fucking rip us off! We not stupid! You stupid! Here, we pay you right money and you piss off!” I had to admire his grasp of the subtle nuances of the English language. He slapped two notes on the bowser and we retreated to the car. The seething scrum followed us, gathering around my door and threatening us through the open window in Arabic and broken English. I couldn’t drive away without fear of dragging some of them with us. Then lo, this being the holy land, a saviour appeared.

A dapper middle-aged man in a crisp suit had overheard the commotion from the street and, as Arabs everywhere tend to do, come to investigate. He took control, singled out the ringleader and quizzed him calmly. There was a brief discussion, then the young man stuck his hand through my window and slammed Micha’s money on the dashboard in front of me.

“You think we cheats? You cheats. You take you fucking money and piss off. Now! Go!” he snarled right in my face, all the while fixing Micha with a glare that said fatwah on you, pig.

He didn’t need to ask twice. With heart thumping furiously and a nod to the saviour I kicked the Feroza over, threw it into gear and flew out into the street.

The tyre place was a greasy hole in a greasy wall and while we waited for them to fix the flat it gradually dawned on Micha how close he had brought us all to disaster. “I am sorry,” he said, his hands shaking as he spoke, “I couldn’t help myself.”

“It was only a few bucks,” I said.

“Yes, but it is the principle. But you are right, I was a bit too mad.”

“Well, we got a tank of juice for nothing,” I said, trying to convince myself it was all worth it.

“No. I will take the money back to them now. It is right that we pay what we owe, is it not?”

I agreed and he disappeared up the street. I wasn't entirely sure he'd come back alive, but he did just as the wheel was going back on the Feroza and we were outta there pronto. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed about a near death experience so soon after the event but as we left Kerak behind we were already making dumb jokes about Jordanian gas stations, like:

Q: How many Jordanians does it take to fill your car?

A: Twenty – one to pump and the rest to collect the money.

Q: Why are Jordanian gas stations marked with a red asterisk?

A: So ambulance drivers know where to collect the bodies.

Next time: Goodbye Moses...