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May 22, 2013, 11:15pm

Any Port in a Storm :: Beyond the Breakwater :: Ports of Call :: Taunting death in Jordan

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Topic: Taunting death in Jordan (Read 932 times)

kerouac2
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Taunting death in Jordan
« Thread Started on Oct 2, 2009, 7:34pm »

Yes, it must be admitted, office relationships are not always the best idea. However, they seem to happen anyway. Let’s not go into the background of all of this, but I have to admit that I took a number of trips with Marie while her husband looked after the children at home. We visited Copenhagen and New York and Rome and Budapest (oh, wait, her husband was with us in Budapest, but it didn’t seem to make much difference), but the most memorable trip was to Aqaba, Jordan.

We had signed up for a special trip at an unbeatable rate organized by Royal Jordanian Airlines. However, a few weeks before we left, a little incident occurred. This was 1980 and it was the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Of course, you all remember that we were on the side of Iraq and its wonderful leader Saddam Hussein, because the Iran of Ayatollah Khomeiny did not appeal to us for some reason. The United States was the principal supporter of Iraq and gave Saddam Hussein lots of nasty weapons.

What about Jordan in all this? Well, Iraq didn’t have much of a secure outlet to receive all of its weapons. The coast of Iraq is in the Persian Gulf and well, that wasn’t practical when you are fighting Persia. So all of the military equipment was coming in through the Jordanian port of Aqaba and then being carried over the road to Iraq.

Marie and I discovered that we were the only two people who had not cancelled this trip. Even the tour leader had bailed out. So we were told that we could still make the trip if we accepted the fact that there were no tours but just the flights and hotels booked. That was fine with us, because the bedroom was sort of more important at the time and the tours were just an added bonus.

Anyway, we flew to Amman and connected to Aqaba, which is actually the only domestic flight that exists in Jordan. There was a big hotel there called the Coral Beach where we were booked, next door to the Holiday Inn. However, due to geopolitics, the two of us represented 50% of the clientele, even though there were about 200 rooms. I remember how immense the dining room was the first night, with about 50 empty tables and us. Oh yes, and the other two people, who I think were Italians and didn’t stay long.

That first night, we had a bit too much to drink (beware of having a bottle of duty free whisky on a short trip) and we went to the beach around midnight. It was an incredible sight, because just about all access to Iraq had been cut, and absolutely everything came in through the port of Aqaba. There were at least 200 cargo ships moored offshore with all of their lights on. We felt an imperious need to go swimming, well actually an imperious need to go skinny dipping (after all, there was not a soul on the beach), so we stripped off our clothes and dived into the warm Red Sea.

I remember that what impressed me the most was hearing all of sounds from the nearby ships – Arabic and Indian music, sailors’ conversations in strange languages, horns and whistles, motors starting up or stopping, faint laughter. At the same time, it had been rumored that Iran might bomb Aqaba at any moment, day, night, whenever, and we watched the stars in the midnight sky to see if there were any planes.

Frankly, swimming in the Red Sea naked that night was perhaps the finest night of my life, because of course the taboo of skinny dipping in such a place just added to the event.

Afterwards, decently dressed again, we walked along the beach but were stopped by the soldiers who needed to make sure that we were not going to Eilat, Israel, only a few hundred meters away.

The next day was when we were nearly taken hostage at Wadi Rum, but that is another story.

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bixaorellana
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Re: Taunting death in Jordan
« Reply #1 on Oct 3, 2009, 1:06am »

Wha' ..........................

?!! I wanna know more!

What was it like flying into Aqaba (& to Amman, for that matter)? Was there enhanced security, more military, or a facade of normality?

That's a wonderful detail about how sound travels over water, especially considering the time and place.

Great story!

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