a Geographer's Place

The day in Petra began like other days: walking through the siq in early morning light, coming out at the Treasury to find it devoid of people – only a couple camels, their owner, and a local “street sweeper” (one of the people who comes in before Petra opens to make sure the grounds are clean). Petra’s magnificence still almost overwhelms me every time. And even more so when the spirit of the Fulbright program occurs – that “...promotion of goodwill...” they mention . With only one day in Petra this time, our plan was to do what most single-day tourists do: wander through the main valley on the way to the Monastery, spend some time there, and then spend the rest of the day wandering around other various monuments in the valley. We stopped by our Bedouin friend’s tent in the valley to chat quickly, and let her know we’d be back later that afternoon to purchase items from her shop. She was super welcoming as always, and had tea ready for us – as if she expected us....

The most famous set of ruins in Amman are the Citadel, Roman Odeon, and Nymphaeum – all of which I’ve blogged about previously ( here and here ). What many people fail to realize, is that Amman is home to a lot more ruins. There are active dig sites (archeologists actually excavating sites) in around the city. For this entry, I want to show you an off-the-regular track place called Iraq al-Amir . Roughly translated, it means “Cave of the Prince”. But there’s more than caves! The village proper lies a scant 35 km or so from downtown Amman. That’s about a 40-minute drive from our house, depending on traffic. The road drives through Wadi As-Seer, a village originally settled by Circassians in the 19 th century, but that has since been usurped by Amman (a wadi , pronounced, wah-dee , is basically a catch-all term for a canyon of any size). Circassians are still prominent in Wadi as-Seer. You may know them from T.E. Lawrence (the Brit) tales: to initially gain the trust of Arab...