City/City

Madaba is a beautiful place. The architecture, as I have mentioned before, is a blend of old and new, state-of-the-art banks and hotels next to quaint, ancient-looking houses. Surrounding walls are often topped with an Umayyad half-herringbone pattern of brickwork, a pattern that has stayed in use for hundreds of years.

The people are friendly, the streets managing a pace between meandering and bustling. Children wave and call out greetings from the balconies of flat-roofed homes; olive and fig trees spill over the tops of walls, and the countryside is full of young olive groves.  Bedouin tents sit side by side with internet cafes and restaurants, and nobody bats an eye at a man walking his goats next to the mechanic’s shop.

Our hotel is well-ventilated, pleasantly-appointed, with a sizable water tank on the roof (we’ve only run out twice since we’ve been here). The patio has a massive, ancient grapevine thicker around than my forearm, olive trees, and a fig tree off to one side. 

                The sun is bright, the sky cloudless (usually), and the wind brisk enough to take away sweat before people have a chance to become sticky. It is a beautiful city, and a gorgeous, rolling landscape with breathtaking vistas.

                But wait.

                Madaba is an ugly place. The windows of every building are barred, often above the second floor, even, and the shops, when closed, are shuttered with top-rolling garage doors. The streets are filled with trash; in the countryside, it is not unusual to see the wire fences of young olive groves plastered with errant plastic bags, a shock of black and white against the earth. In the early morning, garbage can sometimes be seen burning in its metal bins by the side of the road. 

The people know that we’re foreign and probably here with money, and will be as friendly as needed to get it. Children wave from the balconies of homes that are surrounded by six-foot-high walls, some of which are topped with barbed wire. 

The rampant poverty that affects so many is visible not so much in the tent cities of the Bedouin at the edges of town, but in the back-alley shacks roofed with whatever was handy, held down by rocks; it is visible in the rusted wire fencing, the broken windows, the laundry splayed across that same fence to dry. The smell of open sewer haunts these places, and not everyone has the luxury of a water tank, let alone one big enough to give the illusion that it’s running.

The sun is merciless, and it will suck the moisture from your flesh before you know it has left, the wind carrying away the sweat that might otherwise warn you of dehydration. Everything here, foliage included, is dangerous, poisonous, venomous, or capable of killing you in some other way. It is an unforgiving landscape with steep, treacherous hills and canyons as hazardous as they are beautiful.

There are two sides to every coin.