Fleeing a war zone 4: Hotel to Airport

We’re older, and I’ll tell you that’s why

We all were partially dry

Thus faster the rate

We all dehydrate

Till away from Jordan we’ll fly

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I worked telemedicine, a COVID-19 clinic, a VA clinic, and spots Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.  Taking vacation from circuit-riding rural clinics in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I went on vacation to Israel, and found myself in war zone.  Israel closed its airspace.  Grey Bull Rescues orchestrated our evacuation.

I’m Jewish.  I will not be writing about religion or politics.  See my post https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

The spectacular, luxurious, way-past-5-star Hotel Rotana in Amman did a marvelous job of checking in 350 evacuees.  We arrived late, tired, sweaty, and hungry, and most partially dehydrated or worse.  And they didn’t ask about room number at the restaurant. 

The front desk employees checked us in, maintaining courtesy, cheerfulness, and professionalism in the face of a human tsunami.   Bethany and I rolled up to the 10^th floor about 1:00 AM, with instructions to be ready to board busses at 9:00 AM.

And breakfast opens at 6:00AM. 

I did my best to push the fluids over breakfast, but with age comes diminished perception of thirst.  Over spectacular food we talked about the journey so far. 

Jordan and Israel get along well, especially for the context of the region.  Jordan gets most of its water from Israel’s massive desalination plants, and when both countries have open airspace there are 2 commercial jets daily between Tel Aviv and Amman.  Israeli tourists regularly go to the spectacular ruins at Petra. 

Still we maintained an uneasiness as a group of Jews in an Arab Muslim country.  So even with a 5-star hotel and indescribable dining, we wanted to get home. 

At 9:00 AM we gathered in the lobby, and I struck up a conversation with a man who builds movie sets, including Star Trek.  One of our group wrote a screen play for an episode of Star Trek, and I put the two of them together. 

Another fellow traveler approached me with an ankle problem, and gave me permission to write more than I have.  She had swelling around the outside ankle bone.  I could visualize the tendons, but knew that naming them would just be showing off.  So I talked about management of ankle injuries, the need for icing, elevation, a rigid ankle support, good physical therapy and gradual return to exercise.  After I’d thought about it, in another country I approached her to say at the very least she needs an x-ray.

The Grey Bull reps, whom we have come to know and respect, announced we’d be going on 6 busses to the airport, and taking 2 charter planes to Cyprus. 

Amman sits about 40 kilometres (26 miles) from the airport.  Our bus had a manual transmission and an alarming shimmy at highway speeds. 

We passed lots of roadside fruit stands selling bananas and grapes, and a few others selling flowers, mostly on the honor system.  (At least, I think those were small businesses; if you’re Jordanian and know something different, please comment.) 

Fleeing a war zone 3: from the Jordan to Amman

We stopped on the road to Amman

Across the desert we’d gone

Our passports in order

We went over the border,

And arrived 5 hours till dawn.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I worked telemedicine, a COVID-19 clinic, a VA clinic, and spots Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.  Taking vacation from circuit-riding rural clinics in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I went on vacation to Israel, and found myself in war zone.  Israel closed its airspace.  Grey Bull Rescues orchestrated our evacuation.

I’m Jewish.  I will not be writing about religion or politics.  See my post https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

Before we left Jerusalem, Grey Bull advised us to transfer everything visibly Jewish, including skull caps, fringed t-shirts (tsitsit), and jewelry, to our luggage. One of our party has Hebrew tattoos and decided to wear long sleeves. A wedding ring went into a backpack.

After hours clearing passport control, we zipped through customs. Nobody set off a metal detector, and x-ray didn’t show anything suspicious. 

Despite plenty of bottled water, not everyone drank enough.   

Eventually, I had to seek the restroom: concrete block buildings with holes in the floor.

After Customs we waited in aging Jordanian busses with NO SMOKING signs in Arabic and English, reeking of cigarette smoke.  Once I found three men in Jordanian uniforms standing outside the door and one was smoking.  In Hebrew I said “There’s a baby in the bus” but I couldn’t remember the word for smoke, so I pantomimed rocking a baby in my arms, point to the cigarette, gesturing that smoke was going in through the open door.  Horror gripped his face and he quickly moved away.  

Just a little after sunset we started the trip to Amman.  

Despite the darkness I marveled at the road-side geology. 

And despite the darkness I saw a vibrant roadside night life, with brightly-lit stores large and small, and restaurants from tiny to opulent.  Younger teenagers hanging out under street lamps.  All, I think, joyous in the relief from the summer heat.

The huge city of Amman boasts big city traffic, lots of high-rise buildings, and a major medical community featuring signs consistently in English and mostly also in Arabic.

We got out of the bus at the Rotana hotel, where the state-of-the-art metal detectors and luggage CT stood in marked contrast to security at the border.

The Grey Bull representative advised us that the restaurant would be open till midnight but that check-in would be overwhelmed for a while.

The elevator challenged me only because I underestimated it.  To my embarrassment I had to ask a staffer (well-dressed, polite in the extreme, obviously intelligent, with fluent English) for help.  Yes, restaurant on 3^rd floor, but I should have pushed the restaurant button, not the floor 3 button. 

The place exceeded Las Vegas for fabulous food presented in industrial quantities with artistic grace.  Marble floors, marble tables, open seating broken up to quell noise overload.  Tasteful lighting.

From experience I knew large quantities of high-quality food tempt me to overeat at times when I shouldn’t, and despite my hunger I didn’t. 

In 16 hours I went from hugging the ground and listening to the thump of missiles dying in a fight between good and evil to dining at the most luxurious buffet of my life.

Winston Churchill observed that there is nothing quite so exhilarating as being shot at to no effect. 

Contrast is the essence of meaning.  

Fleeing a war zone 2: At the Jordan Border

At the Solstice, please expect heat

In the bus, please stay in your seat

We can’t leave the border

Till all is in order

Then the trip through customs is fleet.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I worked telemedicine, a COVID-19 clinic, a VA clinic, and spots Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.  Taking vacation from circuit-riding rural clinics in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I went on vacation to Israel, and found myself in war zone.  Israel closed its airspace.  Grey Bull Rescues orchestrated our evacuation.

I’m Jewish.  I will not be writing about religion or politics.  See my post https://walkaboutdoc.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/why-i-dont-write-about-religion-politics-or-sex/

When the last of the suburbs and Bedouin camps had passed the window, the road steadily descended.  I looked at the rocks with my penchant for amateur geology, reading the story of unimaginable forces twisting miles of rock, epics of volcanoes and floods and mass extinctions.  We got to the desert floor, where the stripping-away of the limestone leaves the naked volcano footprints , bleaching under the sun, down to the Jordan valley, an extension of Africa’s Great Rift.

Grey Bull Rescues coordinated the tangled mass of logistics inherent in moving hundreds of people across borders and oceans. Israeli passport control uses amazing, automated machinery with facial recognition software.  We tucked our pink-slip exit visas into unstamped passports

We waited in line in narrow shade next to the building.  Parents fanned tiny babies, and I worried for them in the heat.  When I smelled cigarette smoke, I looked to the upwind end of the line.

A man in his 20s spoke on his cell phone and puffed.  I left our group to confront him.  I pointed at his cigarette and in Hebrew I said please.  He offered me one.  I shook my head and pantomimed a baby, pointing downwind.  He smiled and nodded, crushed out his smoke, and never stopped talking.  

I returned to my group and we boarded the bus while the sun beat down from that highest of angles that comes only with the summer solstice.  The air conditioning helped, adequately on the shady side.  The Grey Bull volunteer (ex-military) warned us not to get off the bus until told to do so.  And we listened.  Even when the impatient bus driver opened the doors to raise the temperature, trying to drive us out of the bus.  

I worried for the babies in the heat, and so did their parents.  

We waited hours at the Jordan side of the crossing.  The heat of the day rose and we sweltered and we finally went into the passport control building, the space overwhelmed by the mass of humanity trying to get out of the missile target zone, the aging AC doing its marginal best but also overwhelmed by the crowd’s body heat.

The sun had started its long slow descent when the Jordanians issued a single visa number to the 350 of us. 

One by one we came through 4 lines to the passport counter, exquisite black marble with exquisite red granite trim.  The uniformed supervisor stood and smoked under the 3-language NO SMOKING sign with the universal cigarette in the red-slashed circle.  The facial-recognition cameras appeared to be prior generations.  From the passport building to Customs we had a lot of baggage handlers with no identification trying to take our bags from us.  I had to grab my bag handle from one of them.

I shouldn’t have been worried.  Muslim courts traditionally have been hard on thieves. The guys were just trying for a tip.