Walking the Bible

by Bruce Feiler

  “And there’s another thing,” Avner said, more puckishly now. “Why would I want to be in a stuffy lecture hall?” He spread his arms, lifted his eyes, and looked around as if he were the luckiest boy alive. “I’d rather be here!”

  3. Sunrise in the Palm of the Lord

  The last day day of our entire journey began, oddly enough, with a car chase. It was just after 8 A.M. on a breezy, summer Sunday in Amman, when we were met in our hotel lobby by the Israeli ambassador to Jordan, Oded Eran, whom Avner had befriended in the course of trying to reopen the Nabatean Spice Trail. Eran was a generous if meticulous man, who scolded us for being five minutes late. Then, gesturing to his entourage of Israeli bodyguards, Jordanian bodyguards, king’s policemen, and aides, he invited us into his car, a black, armor-plated BMW 750iL with two-inch-thick windows that Eran, driverless on this morning, wheeled out of the parking lot.

  Suddenly we were in the midst of an elaborate, six-vehicle caravan that reminded me of a video game. One car blocked traffic, another rode to our right, another to our left, one in front, another behind. Whenever we would reach an intersection, the cars, which belonged to the special security unit of King Abdullah, would fan out like skaters on a roller-derby rink, executing a moving pick-and-roll that somehow allowed us to pass through without stopping. Turning a corner was even trickier. Several cars would burst into the intersection; we would pull behind them as if going straight; then the cars behind us would quickly make the turn, we would duck in behind them, and the cars that had been leading deftly filled in behind us. I could only imagine how the Israeli ambassador to Egypt ever left home if he was expected to use such intricate precautions in the impassable streets of Cairo.

  In our case, the proceedings were made even more complex—and droll—by the presence of Mahmoud, trailing along in our dust-covered jeep, trying to keep pace at the end of the line. Once he got separated from us by a public bus, and I could see him behind us honking, gesticulating, and screaming as if he personally were the linchpin of Middle East peace.

  In time we reached our destination, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and the cars pulled to a stop in rapid succession. One of the king’s policemen opened the ambassador’s door, and we flitted inside without ever seeming to touch the ground. All of this effort, just for a meeting with the chief of tourism and archaeology, seemed like overkill and struck me as what it must have been like in the days of espio-archaeology, when researchers like Woolley and Lawrence carried the hopes, bona fides, and military aspirations of their entire countries. One could almost hear Agatha Christie, who spent years at digs across the Middle East with her archaeologist husband, chuckling in the background as she answered the frequent request of her sand-jealous friends, a query that later became the title of her autobiography, Come, Tell Me How You Live.

  “I am thinking,” she would often say, “that it’s a very happy way to live.”

  Inside the concrete building, the crowded hallways parted as the entourage made its way to the second floor and quickly disappeared behind the closed doors of the minister. The main purpose of this meeting was to discuss ways in which Israel and Jordan could jointly raise funds abroad to open the Spice Trail. I waited outside with a stern-faced twenty-three-year-old Israeli bodyguard, and when the meeting was over, the ambassador asked the minister if he had a few minutes to speak with me.

  Akel Biltaji was the best-dressed person I met in the Middle East, with a hand-tailored, Italian-style taupe herringbone suit, a light blue dress shirt, and an orange silk tie that would have been at home on any European king. His mien was no less regal, with slicked-back gray hair, an ivory smile, and broad-shouldered assurance that no doubt helped him, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, navigate three decades of palace intrigue to assume one of the loftier positions in the kingdom. Over his desk was a beautiful painting of King Abdullah, but on the walls were even larger pictures of Biltaji with various dignitaries, including Pope John Paul II.

  “Sit down, what can I do for you?” Biltaji said in Cantabrigian English. In a way I thought it appropriate that at this point in our journey, with the Israelites’ battles with the enemy tribes behind them, and their war against the Canaanites ahead of them, we pause for a morning of diplomatic reflection. I feared, however, that Biltaji would be so diplomatic that he wouldn’t say anything interesting. I certainly didn’t expect him to slap me down.

  Taking my cue from the stack of books at his side about the making of Lawrence of Arabia, I asked Biltaji what he thought of Lawrence. “Personally, I think he wasn’t much of an archaeologist or a spy,” he said. “Archaeology, like espionage, is not a science; it’s an art, the art of interpretation. I always thought that good archaeologists went in search of the truth, not with the intention of proving something they already believed.”

  Okay, I suggested, turning the conversation toward archaeology. A new ministry publication I had seen in the lobby discussed over twenty biblical sites in Jordan and said that the Bible was “an excellent tour guide” to the country. I asked Biltaji if he thought these sites could be a source of common ground between Israel and Jordan.

  Again his response caught me off guard. “We don’t see anybody looking for Jewish connections to the Arabs,” he said. “Ishmael was dissected; he was thrown out of the family, simply because his mother was Egyptian. And that’s where we feel bitter, and dismayed, that so much injustice was done. Because this kind of injustice continues to separate us as Arabs and Jews, when we should be cousins.”

  “So do you feel the Bible is hostile to Arabs?” I asked.

  “To start, I’m going to quote Hanan Ashrawi”—the Palestinian leader—“when she says, ‘God was not in the real estate business. To promise land and give land to begin with is a dangerous thing.’ ” He then went off into what could only be described as a diatribe, blasting Israel for “destroying democracy” and “dismaying the world” through its treatment of Palestinians. “If they are so godly, what gives them the authority to strafe people with machine guns?” he asked, apparently rhetorically. “What’s happening in Israel is a great distortion to the beauty of the world’s Jews, who all along, through persecution, have managed to rise and excel.”

  I started squirming, but Biltaji showed no signs of letting up. “Palestine is my homeland,” he continued. “God must have had a reason to make it the center of his spiritual kingdom. But it’s nobody’s property, it’s God’s property. I’ve always felt comfortable with sharing the best with both sides. That’s the spirit of God. When I go sometimes on Fridays to Bethany, to the spot where John baptized Jesus, which Jordanian archaeologists just uncovered and which we’re just opening to visitors, I see it bringing peace, not war.”

  Taking this as a possible olive branch, I asked Biltaji if when he closed his eyes he saw Israeli settlers opening fire, or Christian pilgrims coming to sites like Bethany in Jordan.

  “I force myself to see people, carrying the Bible and the Koran, praying their own way.”

  “You force yourself, or you believe it?”

  “I believe it. The Buddhists have a saying: ‘Your creator is your own mind.’ Your mind is the one who takes you to your god. So before we can make peace, we have to make it in our minds.”

  Outside in the lobby, Avner was just finishing a call on his cellular phone. Ofer had telephoned during my meeting with Biltaji and announced that he had found Nissim’s camels. Avner discussed it with Eran, who turned to Biltaji: Perhaps a special camel crossing could be arranged? “No problem,” Biltaji announced, suddenly the peacemaker again. “Just call my assistant and arrange it.”

  Back in the BMW, I was shaken by my encounter. Biltaji had been so belligerent on the topics of Lawrence and Israel, but he seemed to warm somewhat when the subject turned to pilgrims visiting religious sites. On the one hand, Jordan desperately wanted the hard currency of Western visitors, and it was Biltaji’s job to lure them. But there was something else at work. Even a realist like Biltaji admitted that somethi
ng came over people—came over him—when visiting holy places. I asked Eran if living in Jordan had changed his view of the Bible.

  “Basically it has given me a new sense of depth about the Bible,” he said. Eran also spoke perfect English, growing out of his time as a diplomat in Washington. “What comes across more than anything is the proximity. Basically, you’re looking at one historical unit—fifty miles on either side of the Jordan River—and it’s a unique feeling for an ambassador. You’re serving in a country that is part of the Bible. Maybe my colleague in Egypt has a similar feeling.”

  “Egypt is sometimes vilified in the Bible,” I mentioned. “How do you feel about Jordan?”

  “I think it’s a mixed bag,” he said. “On the one hand, there are those tribes—the Edomites, the Moabites, the Amorites—that stand in the way of the Israelites on their way to the Promised Land. On the other hand, following the conquest of Canaan, there are times of cooperation between the two sides of the river.”

  I asked if he thought these tensions affected how contemporary Israelis view Jordan.

  “I doubt it. I think most Israelis separate the modern Hashemite Kingdom from Moab and Edom of the past.”

  “What about the other way around?” I asked. “When you go into meetings here, are you perceived as being the Ambassador of the Bible?”

  “There is one question that I’m sure comes to their mind,” Eran said. “And that is: ‘What is the legitimacy of the claims of the Jews to the Holy Land?’ I think most of them challenge this. It’s difficult, especially in Jordan, which is sixty percent Palestinian, to reconcile the message of the Bible that Jews are entitled to the Promised Land, with the idea that it came at the expense of sixty percent of the population of Jordan.”

  “What about the claims of some Israelis that the Promised Land should extend into northern Jordan, since two and a half tribes stayed on this side of the river?”

  “There was a member of Knesset [the Israeli parliament] who came to Jordan and stood at the amphitheater in Amman and said, ‘My friends, you are standing on the land of the tribe of Reuben.’ You can’t refute that this appears in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 3. But whether it was appropriate to make this comment at that place is a different issue. There were attempts by these so-called East Bankers in the 1920s and thirties to settle across the river, but I don’t think there’s a big movement today to make that happen.”

  I mentioned that one of the things I learned during my trip was that you can’t understand the Bible without understanding Mesopotamia or Egypt. Did he think the same applies to Jordan?

  “Absolutely.”

  “So what’s the main thing one needs to understand?”

  “That these two territories were, in the past, connected. And the same applies to today. These two territories can, as they once did, act as two different entities. Jordan and Israel can survive without each other. But at the end of the day, they are part of a small region, and eventually the movement of people, the movement of trade, will force them to cooperate, as it did two thousand years ago.”

  Our final stop that morning was the plush mansion of Fawaz Abu Tayeh, perhaps the most colorful diplomat we met. After saying goodbye to Ambassador Eran, we rejoined Mahmoud in our jeep and proceeded across Amman, a city that’s easier to define by what it’s not than what it is. Amman, like Jordan, is mostly an invention, a city arbitrarily deemed the capital in 1921 that, as a result, has little of the history of Damascus, the beauty of Jerusalem, or the grandeur of Cairo, though it has none of their tiredness, tension, or traffic either. Author Paul Theroux once dismissed it as “repulsively spick-and-span.” Though ancient Amman was rarely more than a muddy outpost, the city was briefly freshened up by Alexander the Great’s successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who named it Philadelphia. That makes Amman, a place long plagued by earthquakes, refugees, and bedouin rivalries, the original “city of brotherly love.”

  Insofar as that slogan is true today, Fawaz Abu Tayeh would make an outstanding emissary. Abu Tayeh is the grandson of Ada Abu Tayeh, the bedouin prince who served as Lawrence’s chief military officer and who was played in Lean’s film by Anthony Quinn. Through a friend, he had agreed to meet us and talk about his family’s heritage, and we were shown into an ornate living room, filled with Arabian rugs and European furniture. Abu Tayeh greeted us graciously and offered us Earl Grey tea and cakes. He was tall, with a prominent belly, and was dressed in luxurious white ankle-length robes, a white kaffiyeh, and a purple silk shawl that altogether, he later confided, cost $10,000. “In order to look good in bedouin clothing,” he said, “you need to be brown and tall.”

  Abu Tayeh was born in Amman in 1933, studied law at Jordan University, and later received a master’s degree in politics from Oxford, a poetic turnabout considering that Lawrence had come from Oxford to lead his grandfather into power. For twenty years Abu Tayeh served as the chief of royal protocol for King Hussein and was later rewarded with ambassadorships to Romania and Bulgaria. On his wall (like Bil-taji’s) were oversized photographs of him with assorted luminaries: Alexander Haig, Barry Goldwater, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II. Power is etched grandly in Amman’s salons.

  Befitting his status, Abu Tayeh was diplomatic—and noncommittal—when I asked him about the remarkable rise of the Hashemite family from Arabian tribe to leaders of a nation. “We are open. We are proud of our history. We are proud of our goals,” he said.

  He was a bit more forthcoming when I asked about the role of his grandfather in this story. “My grandfather was the most famous warrior of the desert,” he said. “When Ada Abu Tayeh met Faysal Hussein, Lawrence of Arabia said, ‘Now I know the Arab Revolt will succeed. When the prophet—Faysal—meets the fighter—Abu Tayeh—this is what the Arabs need.’ ”

  He was downright charitable on the subject of Lawrence. “When it comes to Lawrence, as a person, my opinion is always positive, never negative,” he said. “We consider him a great man, a great help. As a young British officer, to endure the difficult life of the desert, Lawrence must have been a great admirer of the Arab cause.”

  The conversation went on like this for half an hour, and I began thinking of ways to extract myself, when, apropos of nothing, I asked Abu Tayeh, “What do you think of the desert?” The change that came over him was instantaneous. He suddenly seemed to shuck his diplomatic reserve and speak to me like a friend. “The desert is a way of life!” he said, his eyes brightening. “The Jewish tribes, led by Moses, came from the most advanced civilization, in Egypt. They crossed the desert to the Promised Land, where they civilized again. But during their journey in between they were bedouin. And look what happened to them. The desert, because of its uncertainty, forces you to feel more attached to the higher power.”

  “So can someone like me, who was not born in that world, feel that attachment?” I asked.

  “I don’t know why not,” he said, now openly giggling. “I wasn’t born in the desert, and I feel the same!” He leaned forward, as if in confession. “I’m not a specialist in this,” he said, “but when you go to the mountains along the Jordan Valley, if you know the Bible, and if you leave the roads behind and walk two or three miles by yourself, you expect Moses to come looking for you!

  “I’ve been to Petra a hundred times,” he continued. “But this year, for the first time, I walked up Jebel Haroun. And it was such an experience. I hiked seven hours, and when I got near Haroun mountain I got confused. I could not see the top of the mountain. And if you go the wrong way, you’re lost. All of a sudden a man appeared, a bedouin. He was eighty-one years old. I said, ‘How long to Jebel Haroun?’ He said, ‘I will go with you.’ I said, ‘You are a great man.’ And he said, ‘No, I am a servant of our master Haroun.’

  “And he walked in front of me, for one hour and thirty minutes, until we got there. I reached what I thought was the top of the mountain, but I was not there yet. I had to walk up another twenty minutes. If you have disease, or sickness, or any psychologi
cal problem, you will never do it! And once I got there I went inside the chapel, I went down the stairs and saw the real tomb where Haroun is located, and then I went up on the roof and looked over the land. It was the best experience of my life.

  “And before I left,” Abu Tayeh continued, “I read two things: the Koran and the Bible.”

  “Really?” I said. “So what did you learn?”

  “I learned that this shrine is there as a symbol, to remind us that we belong to the same tradition. The mentality of our people may have changed, but we have the same roots. There’s no reason we can’t get along.” By the time he finished his story, the entire room had been transformed. It went from being a chilly diplomatic parlor to my home away from home. Within minutes Abu Tayeh was giving us a private tour and showing us a signed copy of one of the original editions of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He summoned his college-age son from his room and asked him to bring out some old family photos. Finally he called back to the kitchen and ordered up an impromptu feast of chicken, rice, yogurt, and sweet Arab knafi cake, which we shared with neighbors and ate with our hands while drinking toasts of alcohol-free wine in the most lavish meal we ate on our entire journey. All this happened with so little effort, and so much affection, that when Abu Tayeh ushered us to the door of our jeep and bid us good-bye with a hug and smile, I knew that the desert had served up an antidote to our clash in Nissim’s tent and to my meeting with Biltaji. I knew that the openness of the place had triumphed over the hostility.

  It was almost 2 P.M. by the time we left Abu Tayeh’s house and began our drive southeast of Amman toward Ma’daba, a small town that houses the most famous mosaic map of the ancient world. This part of the King’s Highway shows how pleasant the Middle East could be with a little more rain and a lot less diesel exhaust. The hills are gentle with an occasional mountain stream that spawns meandering banks of green that could almost be in Switzerland. The only thing missing are cows. There is another similarity with the Alps, though. Occasionally one hears the shrill cry of bedouin tongues, a high-pitched, quavering ululation that if it moved deeper into the throat and took on a bit more melody would sound exactly like a yodel.