The guide explained that we will make a stop to pick up ice,
juice and some other stuff and then we will on our way. As he was talking I could tell that he did not
have a native Arabic accent and I had heard that accent before. As he walked into the store, it finally
clicked. His walk reminded me of a guide
I had met when I was in Jordan last time in Feynan.
I remembered a guide who stopped by the Feynan Eco Lodge a
few times as he took his hiking party down to Petra. I had talked with him briefly when he stopped
at the lodge. I was pretty sure it was
him.
When he came back to the bus he sat across the aisle from
me, so I asked him if he took hiking parties through Feynan.
“Yes,” and he looked at me with recognition.
“You were the guy who spent a couple of months at the Feynon
Eco Lodge.”
It is kind of strange
that the only guide I know in all Amman would be the guide on my first hike
from Amman.
We got to talking joined by the English professor. The guide explained that he is originally
from Chechenia. His grandfather migrated
to Jordan in the 1800. He mentioned that
some tribes from Chechenia migrated around that time with some settling in
Turkey, others in Syria and a couple in Jordan.
This was before Jordan got independence so they were considered as part
of Jordan.
He explained that Chechens are proud of their heritage,
culture and language. He said his
daughter, five years old, had just started speaking Arabic because they only
spoke Chechen at home. But now she had
started school and so had started picking up Arabic. He also spoke Chechen with his friend Hamadi. It seems quite remarkable that the language
and I assume culture had been preserved for three generations.
I also learned that there were a number of Circassian tribes in the area as well. However, they had mixed much more with the
other groups and did not preserve as much the culture and language.
It is quite
interesting what you learn when you engage people in meaningful conversations.
As I have
mentioned before, the terrain in Jordan is quite rugged with mountains
everywhere. The roads snake and wind up
and down the rock littered mountains, most of them barren with no trees or
vegetation. The valleys, give a glimpse
of green vegetation with fields that grow surprisingly plenty of vegetables in
the poor rocky soil and the limited supply of water painstakingly, pumped, siphoned and brought to the fields. It
is quite amazing how these vegetables are coerced out of the ground.
The slender roads have been carved into these mountains
winding endlessly up a mountain along the ridge to eventually descend rolling
rapidly towards the bottom just to cross over to the next mountain and start a
new journey on a new hillside.
The ravines on the edge of the roads are deep with no
barriers. It is easy to imagine tumbling
down and rolling and rolling; sometime seeming scary and other times feeling
like just another event written in destiny on a land that has seen many tribes
and nations come and go; that has seen many battles; that has seen much cruelty
through the ages and much generosity. A
lively mix of history buried in the mountains.
The never ending history winds just like the roads and one is lost in
imagination and day dreaming tumbling towards the destination or is it towards
destiny.
