In 1997, when there was at least some hope left that Francis Fukuyama’s prophecy of an “End of History” could yet materialise, I went from Jerusalem to the West Bank and crossed Allenby Bridge into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Being an island of stability with no earth-shattering news like its neighbours, my favourite newspaper once nastily called it the Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom. I liked it though, as my stomach was not bored at all. While visiting a friend in Amman, my wife and me dived into lemony hummus, fattoush with crisp flakes of pita, mouttabal, a smoky variant on baba ghanoush, Manzaf, pull-apart lamb cuts soaked in a yoghurt sauce over paper-thin bread called “Shrak” and Musakhan, a yummy chicken dish seasoned with an olive-oil-onion-marinade served over ta thicker flatbread called taboon.

In the northern town of Jerash, I followed the footsteps of the Romans through a great colonnaded street to even two roman theaters. Further south in the epic landscape of Wadi Rum, I rather followed the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia. In one of the greatest movies ever made, Lawrence, eager to unite Arabs to better deal with the Ottomans, was quoted a saying: „It takes great talent to bring unfocused elements together for a great purpose.“ So true. Lawrence’s movie friend Prince Faisal, commander of the Northern Army, missed the great opportunity to unite all Middle Eastern Arabs under one nation after he had become, in real life, the first King of Iraq. Instead, at least in the movie, he found: “The English have a great hunger for desolate places.“ 

Few places in the desert are so far from being a desolate place as the Nabataean masterpiece of Petra. In its heyday in the first century AD, 20.0000 inhabitants had been living here in a dreamy landscape amid rose-red cliffs, benefitting from the proximity to lucrative incense trade routes. Embarking on a dramatic walk through Petra, we traversed the narrow, towering Siq canyon, Petra’s only access. We could first not see more than sheer rock walls which flanked our path on both sides. After almost two kilometers of walking through shifting sand, the canyon was gradually unveiling the first columns of the Treasury. Each of our further steps unveiled more, until we stood like dwarfs in a huge amphitheatre of stone, the iconic Treasury with its six mighty columns just in front of us. For hours we were now wandering through a honeycombed landscape of tombs, carved facades, pillars and golden sandstone cliffs. Using hundreds of rock-hewn steps, we climbed on soaring cliffs and descended into deep gorges. Next to pur rocky paths a sophisticated water conduit system was often running in parallel.bearing witness to the Nabataean talent of harvesting rainwater in barren desert. All grandeur culminated in our last climb, a jouney of 800 steps, which led to the massive cylinder-like pinnacle on the roof of the equally-famous Monastery. 

Writing these lines, I am struck by my sudden discovery that apart from the great Pyramids of Gizeh in Egypt, all man-made wonders were actually divine:  the temple city of Angkor Wat in the Cambodian Jungle, the temples of Hampi in a surreal boulder landscape in Indian Karnataka, the underground churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, and of course glorious Petra.