The Road to Aqaba

That night we camped by the ruins of Babylon. Winter nights in the Iraqi desert were cold. Camping consisted of throwing our sleeping bags on the ground and climbing into them. Jim and I slept like the dead but Paul coughed all night long. He caught a chest cold when we were in Baghdad. The poor guy was still getting his road legs. Fresh over from the States he joined Jim and I three weeks earlier in Beirut. The two of us were already veterans, toughened up from months of rough traveling through southern Europe and then across the mountains and deserts of North Africa. ‘The Oven’, a rusty old beat up Volkswagen, was our trusty means of conveyance. It was the Sixties and the three of us were on the loose, wandering far and wide. We were young and it was our time.

Three days later we made our way west, back into the Kingdom of Jordan. It was late in the day when we passed through the capital city of Amman and headed south toward the port of Aqaba. Jim was driving, I rode shotgun and Paul laid prone across our packs in the back seat. As we left the outskirts of the city we were on a narrow, two lane road heading into the desert. In twilight the glaring headlights of oncoming big-rig trucks were momentarily blinding. As one of the big rigs went by there suddenly appeared the figure of a man walking away on the road directly in front of us. Jim slammed on the breaks but we hit the man from behind. The sloped hood of the VW buffered the impact but he trajected directly at me then glanced off the right side of the car into the darkness. At that moment it was hard to believe we didn’t kill the guy.

Jim pulled the car onto the narrow shoulder. For a moment we all sat in silence. Then Paul said, “I’m not getting out of the car.” I whispered, “…goddamn it.” Jim didn’t hesitate. He jumped out of the car and ran back to the prostrate figure. It took me a few moments to collect myself and then I joined Jim in the ditch. 

The Arab man was semi conscious and moaning. Big rig trucks kept passing in both directions. Looking across the road there was a solitary building up on a hill about fifty yards distant. It had a dim porch light and a white cross on the large wooden door. Above the door were red Arabic letters spelling something out. Jim stayed with the man while I ran up to the building. It turned out to be a Baptist convent. The mother superior answered the door. She spoke English and said she would call for help. Within the half hour an ambulance and two police cars arrived. They put the Arab man in the ambulance and the police escorted us to a police station back in Amman. At the station the three of us were given chairs to sit on and we waited to see what would happen next.

After a short time the police captain arrived. He had come from the hospital where the Arab man claimed he’d been walking on the shoulder and said we drove off the road to intentionally hit him. We protested that it didn’t happen that way. The officer spoke fluent English and said he would return to the site of the accident to investigate any skid marks. Jim went with him while Paul and I stayed at the precinct. 

There were a half dozen uniformed officers in the squad room, which was roughly thirty feet square and brightly lit with overhead lights. At one end of the room were holding cells with vertical bars. The policemen gave no indication that Paul and I should go into one of the cells. There was an air of camaraderie among the officers and three of them were playing a card game at a table in the center of the room. Another officer was making tea. He offered Paul and I the brew in tall shot glasses with little spoons. Each cup was half filled with white sugar. He indicated that we should stir the sugar into the tea. At first sip I almost gagged from the sweetness. 

Paul was gregarious by nature. His illness seemed to abate and he walked over to the table to watch the card game. Very soon the officers invited him to join in. He sat down on an empty chair and they accepted him like an old friend. Within minutes he picked up on the game and joined in a raucous celebration. I sat quietly, wondering what would be our fate that night. 

When Jim and the police captain returned he let us know that the skid marks on the road proved out our story. We were told we would spend the night in custody and attend a trial in the morning. In an adjacent room we were given cots to sleep on. 

In the morning we were taken to the nearby courthouse for the proceedings. Modeled after the British judicial system the hearing went in an orderly fashion. The Arab man was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair, looking the worse for wear. He proceeded to repeat his story that we had tried to murder him. An advocate sat with us and translated. Jim got up and told his story. Then the police captain gave in the evidence. Justice was swift. In a summary judgement the Judge spoke angrily to the Arab man and ordered that he pay Jim for the damages done to the VW from the accident. And there was a greater irony to the whole affair.

The man we hit was Jameel al Ass (seriously). He was a celebrity in the Arab world, a renowned Jordanian pop singer with a string of hit records to his credit. But he was also a notorious philanderer, unfaithful to his wife and children, and an infamous drunkard. His claim that we tried to kill him followed a pattern of degenerate behavior that this man was well known for. Still, Jim felt sorry for him and gave him twenty dollars (about $200 in today’s money). Within the hour we were back on the road.

We continued south toward the ancient port of Aqaba. In 1962 this town was made famous in the movie, “Lawrence of Arabia”. Along the way, around sunset in southern Jordan, we stopped high on a promontory and got out of the car to gaze across the fabled Jordan Rift. For the longest time we stood there speechless, looking out across the vast, dramatic geography with it’s other-world palette of colors. It didn’t seem real. It appeared like some mystic vision from a dream. I took a picture of the scene with my 35 millimeter camera. But it was one of those occasions when a photograph couldn’t do justice to the reality.

The next morning in Aqaba Paul’s cold had turned for the worse. He was in bad shape. At an apothecary in town a pharmacist directed us to a hospital that might take him in. Following the directions we arrived at a large, metal Quonset hut. The facility was primarily for Palestinian refugees but they let Paul in telling us that he had pneumonia. Inside the structure were thirty military style cots, which lined up along both walls. The place was grey and dingy. Most of the patients were old and frail.

They gave Paul a cot to lie down on and began caring for him. Right away a doctor approached him with a syringe and put the needle up to his left eye. Paul panicked, thinking he was going to get a shot in his eyeball. The doctor assured him he only wanted to squirt some penicillin onto Paul’s eye to determine if he was allergic.

For the next four days Jim and I camped north of the town on a deserted shore by the Red Sea. On the second evening the two of us went to see a film at Aqaba’s primitive movie theater. We bought our tickets from a kiosk outside the structure, then entered through an open archway. What we saw was a dirt lot roughly fifty feet square with high, whitewashed adobe walls on all sides. The structure had no roof. Above us was a moonless, starry sky. The seating consisted of long wooden planks set on concrete blocks. Each ‘bench’ seated six to eight people. The movie projector was set on an old wooden table at the back wall.

We sat down amidst young and old Arab men. Most were dressed in the traditional burnoose – long, loose hooded cloaks. The movie was “Hercules Unchained” starring Steve Reeves. It was projected onto a smooth, white wall. When the movie started it showed Arabic sub-titles at the bottom of the screen. The young Arab man who sat next to Jim began translating the Arabic titles into his imperfect English, not realizing the soundtrack dialogue was already in English. Jim tried to tell the youth that he could understand what was being said. But the young fellow apparently didn’t understand him and kept translating throughout the entire film. 

On the fifth day Paul was back on his feet. The next morning we packed up the VW and got on the road heading north to Jerusalem, a two hundred mile journey. About 80 miles north of Aqaba there was a small, weathered sign post pointing up a dirt road. In faded white letters, the sign read, ‘Petra 36km’. Not knowing anything about Petra and because the three of us had been so disappointed with the ruins of Babylon we didn’t want to take the time to see what might be up there. This was a blunder. It turned out that Petra is among the most remarkable archaeological sites on the Earth.

We arrived in Jerusalem late in the afternoon and found a hostel to stay in. Hot showers and cots to sleep on were a luxury for us. The next day was my twenty-third Birthday, February 11, 1967. The three of us spent the day visiting Biblical sites. Paul took a photo of me in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Long ago.