Big white lines

Three guest posts, three illnesses, a handful of midterms, and two papers later, I'm back!

It's been busy, to say the very least. I didn't do the country-hopping that a lot of my friends did over spring break - Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, France, and Ireland, to name a few - but I have clambered over a good bit of my own country. I've been a tour guide at Petra, Jerash, Umm Qais, the Dead Sea, a handful of Biblical sites, and right here in good old Amman. Even though Jordan is a small country, that's still a lot of traveling. Just to give my own quick review of the good times that my guest bloggers wrote about...

Most of those trips were do-overs for me. Let's be honest here. As far as the sights I'd already seen, the coolest part for all of those trips was seeing other people's reactions to them. My parents kept asking if I was bored by doing the same things over again. Well, no. Even if I've already explored all of it and know what to expect from the ruin/natural environment/historical whatever, I don't know what to expect from my companions. And I love that. For matters of personal interests, though, Umm Qais was easily the most exciting.

I loved Umm Qais for the reasons that my parents mentioned - the very local feel, the wonderful view of Lake Tiberias - but also for a much more modern-day one. We could see the Golan Heights. History lesson: the Golan Heights are a disputed territory stolen by Israel from Syria during the 1967 war. It consists of plateaus in the south and mountainous regions in the north. The Golan Heights are rugged. They're sparsely populated. It seems like it could be such an inconsequential region, but it's not. I've spent a lot of my weekends around Jordan looking at history from thousands of years ago - and that's wonderful. But, as one of my classmates expressed this week, you can get tired of ruins. They're magnificent. They're breathtaking. But it's easy to get tired of something that's around you so much and in such close proximity. The Golan Heights are different. It's history of a more current sort. This sort of history is what I'm studying here in Jordan. Really, it's what got me interested in the Middle East in the first place. And it's not altogether history: it's today as well. I was struck deeply upon first looking out at the view from a hillside on Umm Qais. Directly below us was Jordan, those last few kilometers before the border. To the left was Lake Tiberias. And straight ahead - the Golan Heights. Amazing.

Let me digress for a moment. In the second grade, Mrs. Sharo assigned our class a project on one of the states. We each pulled the name of a state out of a hat; I got Utah. (I still remember that its state tree is the blue spruce.) When I read about the Four Corners, I was fascinated. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in four places at once. A few years after that, most likely while staying at my grandmother's cabin one summer, our parents took my brothers and me to some state or national park. It was on the border of two states - come to think of it, I can't even remember which two. I do remember the white line painted on the asphalt walking path, there in the middle of the woods. There was really nothing remarkable about it. I stood with one foot on either side of the line and remember thinking, "Maybe it would be more impressive if there were three of them." You see, I couldn't find a difference. The line really didn't change anything; without it, I'd never have known if I was in one place or another.

Similarly, up on that hill, you couldn't distinguish one place from another. It was easy to guess where Jordan ended - maybe where the buildings stop, perchance? And even easier from the ground. Security forces would let you know. But from up top, we couldn't be sure. And where's the line between the disputed Golan Heights and that land which is considered Israel for real? We couldn't see it. As far as we could tell, there was a lake with some cities on its banks, cuddled up next to some high plateau land, at the foot of which rested another small town. Are these really three different places? Is this really what we're fighting for?

Maybe it would feel different if the governments painted big white lines all over the land. Then from above, we would see what belongs with whom. But from up where my parents and I stood, it looked like everything could be one. And I like it much better that way.

The best part of having guests here was knowing that I was witnessing, maybe even causing, a change in perspectives. But I like knowing that my own perspective on things is still up for grabs, too.