A backward glance at three pictures I will carry in my mind for a good while:

A late afternoon in Aquaba, after sipping Arabic coffee in a café, a friend and I set off on foot through the city center to find some of the open-air markets (I did not really find them till the next day).  As we meandered in the fading light we entered a small run-down square with shops on all sides and, in the center, a little raised patch of dirt with one or two bedraggled skinny trees.  In the dust and detritus beneath the trees my attention was caught by a pair of quiet eyes staring up at me.  I had not known to expect a long-tailed monkey on the streets of Jordan!  The mystery was quickly solved, however, when  across the square to my right I saw a pet shop and its owner taking his ease on a chair on the sidewalk.  Above his head, in the front window,  a motley chorus of glittering parrots as he inquired politely, in English, if he could help us find something.

Also in Aquaba, mid-day on the beach.  Families enjoying the mild temperatures (air and sea) on a holiday weekend; a few big tankers out in the deep water.   I walked out on a wooden pier and was immediately hailed by three boys (probably aged 10-12) swimming off the pier in the clear green water.  They smiled, shouted questions in English about where I was from and, when I answered “America,” held fingers up in the “V” sign.

Late morning on my last day in Jordan, at the water line of the Dead Sea.  I was dipping my hands in the bowl-shaped  hole in the damp sand, scooping up soothing dark green mud, the better to swathe my pale Wasp body before entering the sea for a good float.  Also scooping and swathing at this hole was a distinguished olive-skinned man who appeared to be in his early 80s.  He was trim in his conservative bathing trunks, with curly salt-and-pepper hair and large dark eyes; he appeared to suffer from a partial palsey of some kind because his left hand was held awkwardly at his side.  He smiled at me and asked, in a monosyllable of some language, if I was French.  (There were several French people at that hotel at that time.)  I smiled, said “No.  American – USA,”  and asked in English where he was from.  This was our conversation:

–  “Syria.” – “I am so sorry for what is happening in your country.” – “It is our way of asking for democracy,” he gently said.  There was no need for either of us to say anything more.

And here are a few miscellaneous photographs; my favorite is the one of the women in traditional dress, warming their bread at the beach.