Amman – An Uphill Love Affair

I’ve always said that if you want to get to know a city just go for a walk. The travel blog itinerary, Lonely Planet approved checklist can endow you with incredible experiences and unbelievable sights, but without some drive to seek the unknown, the less trodden path, the core components of the city will elude you. Getting to know a city is like getting to know a person. No matter how much we all enjoy judging a person based on superficial characteristics (whether in hushed voices or the much meaner internal monologue), the intricacies of their personality can only be discovered at a slower pace, with an inspection of their less discovered facets. Amman forces you to get to know it fairly quickly. The streets are a generally monotonous and visually uninspiring, the beauty of the city comes from the feeling you get in each place, in each district. In a sense, Amman is not about what you see but about how you feel.

 History of Amman

The land of Amman has been inhabited since at least 7250 BC, when some Neolithic fellas decided to make some terribly malformed human statues (among the oldest and creepiest ever discovered). These are now found in the Archeological Museum that I’ll mention later. Amman’s next chapter is probably most colourfully described in Genesis of all places. Lot, the nephew of Abraham, had travelled from Mesopotamia with his uncle all the way to the Jordan Valley, stopping there because it seemed like “the garden of the LORD” (a description I can get behind). In those fertile lands, he settled in the city of Sodom while Uncle Abe continued to Hebron. After a fair few years, God came to Abraham in the form of three men, and said that the cities of the plain (including Sodom and Gomorrah) would have to be consumed by fire and brimstone as divine retribution for their sins. Abraham begged with God to not destroy his nephew’s new home of Sodom and God said, “Alright, but only if 50 righteous people are found there.” Abe was a man with nerves of steel and so he began to haggle with God. Before God knew it, he only had to find 10 righteous people in the entire city of Sodom. Easy right? Two angels were sent there to find out.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Sodom was full of the worst of the worst. You know who I’m talking about. That’s right. According to the Bible the Sodomites had been egotistical, haughty and… Dare I say it…. inhospitable. Lot did not know they were messengers of God but protected them from the Sodomites anyway (and even offered that the gathering horde of Sodomites take his own virgin daughters instead). Personally, Lot’s level of hospitality is pretty unnerving, I’d be wary of a man who offers his young daughters to a marauding mob but the angels lapped it up. They blinded the mob and told Lot and his family to leg it out of the city before they torched it. The one caveat was that they couldn’t look back “lest thou be consumed”. So, they did as they were told and ran for the mountains while Sodom burned.

However, much like Orpheus in Greek mythology, Lot’s wife was consumed by temptation and love for the one thing she was forbade to look back and see. Orpheus ventured to the underworld to retrieve Eurydice (the woman he loved despite her atrocious name) and was told by Hades that she would be allowed to leave as long as Orpheus didn’t look back to check she was following him. While the Greek story was based around the lengths we go to for romantic love, the Bible story was about leaving behind a home and the memories interred there. In both cases they failed. Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt while Orpheus was punished by having to walk the Earth alone once more. Both tragedies of human temptation. Lot wasn’t phased by the transformation of his wife into a table condiment and continued to a cave. In the cave his daughters complained to each other that all the prospective men had been burned to a crisp by God, so they conspired to get their dad drunk and then sleep with him in order to get pregnant. The product of this questionable union were their sons, Moab and Ammon.

These brothers born in the earlier half of the Iron age, set up the two kingdoms of the same names that make up modern day Jordan. The kingdoms of Ammon and Moab came under the wider region known as Canaan (the modern day Levant) and the Canaanites were a busy bunch during this time. God had been chatting with Moses and the Israelites and had said that they could chill out away from Egyptian tyranny in the Promised Land (pretty much from Sinai to Syria i.e. Canaan), the Canaanites were not so keen. They didn’t want their land to be taken by some monotheistic dudes prattling on about a burning shrub so refused and continued with their day of throwing children into a fire heated bronze statue of one of their Gods, Moloch. 

“…they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”

Either way, after hanging some of his own Israelites for beginning to worship Canaanite idols, Moses headed from Egypt over to the Canaanites’ southern neighbours, the Midianites. There he married and seemed pretty happy. But it’s safe to say that Moses’ best mate (God) was not a fan of Moloch, or his whole cooking children alive sacrifice thing. So, He instructed Moses and the gang to slaughter every single man, woman and child in their territory apart from virgin women. Unfortunately, this solved nothing. Canaan’s culture and Gods persisted in neighbouring regions like Mesopotamia and child sacrifice continued because people really thought that their Gods loved the screams of burning children. In fact, child sacrifice was used all over the world for millennia to come. The most notable examples included in the great city of Ancient Carthage where they burnt children alive to honour their chief deity Baal Hammon (who the famous general Hannibal was named in honour of) and the Incas who mixed up their child sacrifices between a blow to the head, strangulation or being buried alive on a cold mountaintop.

After winning against the pesky Canaanites, the whole promised/holy land malarky survived the millennia and the reclamation of the “promised land” became the central tenet of Zionism. I’m sure most would agree that ideology has since got wildly out of hand (although I bet Moses wished he had drones). Anyway, back to Jordan. After some customary Old Testament incest and heavenly wrath, Amman was taken by every man and his Empire (Assyrians, Baylonians, Seluccids etc) until the Greeks rocked up in 331 BC and changed its name to Philadelphia (city of brotherly love). Soon, the Greeks left and the Romans arrived and so Amman became one of the Decapolis cities (mentioned in this post). During the Islamic period following Muhammad’s death in 632 AD, Amman became the official name and the city became essential in the Balqa district of Syria where As-Salt was the capital. However, Amman was abandoned following some devastating earthquakes. So, it fluctuated between a small city and an abandoned outpost for centuries until 1878 when it started to become resettled by Circassians (an ethnic group from the Caucasus mountains). They were fleeing a war with the Russian Empire, which was committing a genocide and had soon kicked out between 75 and 95% of the entire Circassian nation most of whom went into Ottoman Syria. The Ottomans directed the Circassians (who were mostly peasants) to Amman and they integrated into society quickly. In 1909 the Hejaz railway was built between Damascus and the Holy City of Medina in Saudi Arabia. The Ottomans built this to facilitate the annual Hajj pilgrimage but also to increase trade. The railway ran right through Amman and it quickly allowed the city to transform from a village to a major commercial hub in the region. Britain fought to control the railway in the First World War against the Ottomans and won which then meant the establishment of the British Mandate. This put Jordan under British administration and then in 1921 it became a the Emirate of Transjordan (a British Protectorate). The Emir later became the king of the newly independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 and the capital was finally changed from As-Salt to Amman. Since the early part of the 20th century Amman has grown exponentially from a population of 10,000 in the 1930s to around four million now and luckily for everyone concerned, there’s plenty of knafeh to go around. 

Central Amman 

Downtown & Citadel 

Al-Balad is the name of the downtown area of Amman which is also the oldest section of the city. Surrounded by seven hills (Jabal) the city spreads outwards from this point and now it encompasses 19 hills. This historical centre is the lifeblood of the city. It’s an eclectic mix of markets, restaurants and shops which have engulfed every inch of the valley floor, penning in the ancient Roman Nymphaeum and Amphitheatre. Both of these remnants of Rome’s expansion to the East are worth a gander but avoid paying for either, save your money for more stomach-orientated endeavours. Once you’ve glanced at the towering steps of the Roman amphitheatre and climbed around the smaller Odeon, nip by the Grand Al-Husseini Mosque in downtown and then find your way into the alleys behind it. Alleyways are usually better avoided in unknown cities halfway across the world, but these alleyways will lead you to the market. Souk Al-Sukar (the sugar market) is a sensory hark back to the history and tradition of Amman. Wooden tables and stacked boxes are piled with carefully placed fruit and vegetables, while eruptions of unconfined herbs spill from their containers. In these narrow spaces, you have to dodge and weave through the densely packed current of bodies, ducking under bunches of bananas and straining to avoid the unwelcome brush of draped tarpaulins which darken the alleyways and intensify the senses. Small children run giddily between stalls while women in brightly coloured hijabs inspect sacks of beans and spices. Men talk loudly on the phone while gesticulating wildly in the melee, as if their passion will help to drown out the metallic rumble from the nut roasting drum. The dry warming odour of roasting nuts, the piercing smell of fresh fruit and the sultry wafts of Jordanian sweets saturate the air. It’s not exactly a relaxing place to walk around but it really is unmissable. There’s nothing like a good souk. 

Taking another road back through downtown, you can head up a disgustingly steep hill towards Jabal Al-Qala’a (The Citadel). Only a few minutes away from the hostel, the Citadel was one of the first things I saw in Jordan. I took advantage of the only non-torrential rain day in my first week to have a look around. The Citadel’s occupation by countless powers throughout history makes it a fascinating place to walk around. First, I wandered around the Byzantine Church ruins and the surrounding buildings then I hopped onto the surrounding walls to sit and take in the views of the city. From the top of the walls the city was an ochre concrete mosaic. Every undulating rise and fall of the ancient land’s heaving swell was occupied by the dense angular sprawl. Monotone concrete boxes shouldn’t elicit such awe, but as the winter sun headed for the far hills, the light of another Ammani afternoon illuminated chosen faces in warm tones. All the while, the muted shade of the narrow alleyways contrasted the illumination, light and dark were divided along the seams of the house, amplifying the glow. The more I looked the more I saw, it was an endlessly interesting labyrinth, every house a microcosm of city life. On rooftops, families sat between white water tanks, rusting satellite dishes and washing lines draped with colourful fabrics. And in the narrow streets, away from the traffic, children played loudly. This slither of the almost 360 degree panorama seemed perfect to me then. I sat in the same ribbon of sunlight that illuminated the buildings opposite me, watching flocks of tame pigeons spiral gracefully in the shifting light. I made myself stand up and continue so I could see the rest of the site before the sun set. 

The main building of the citadel is the Umayyad palace of which only the domed entrance chamber remains, the rest of the large palace sprawls out as ruined walls stretching to the edge of the site. After looking in every nook and cranny of the impressive 8th century building, I headed towards the unfinished Temple of Hercules. Possibly my favourite part of the citadel, this Roman ruin (166 AD) was comprised of the large footprint of the temple but at its portico were the enormous standing columns.

Weibdeh & Rainbow Street 

These two important areas are on neighbouring hills in the centre of the city. Weibdeh is the young expat centre of Amman, full of beautiful people wafting around the clean and walkable streets. As well as good international food, Weibdeh has independent coffee shops galore, a fair few bars to ruin all notions of a budget and art galleries where you can practice contemplative looks and painfully slow walking. The nicest coffee shop in Weibdeh is up for debate among the dirty caffeine addicts of this world, but for someone unconcerned with this aspect of life, Rumi Cafe is the place for me. It’s always got the Starbucks stereotype of someone “working” on their laptop but also people practising languages, friends chatting and couples laughing. The outdoor courtyard is next to one of the small roads that run the length of the district and it’s an amazing place to people-watch day or night. Often the only reason to sit inside Rumi is lack of space outside but it is nicely decorated with lots of light and simple design. A special mention must go to Kaffeine in the town centre too, which was a great little cafe, very hidden from ground level but I am completely unsure whether they were closing or just refurbishing the place when I left Amman. 

Next, the bars of Weibdeh. Some of my favourite photos and travel stories have taken place in the bars of the world. There’s nothing quite like a nocturnal loosening of the senses through the dangerously fun inhibitor that is alcohol. One half of the tagline from this website says “Stay Dangerous” and in a way drinking inordinate amounts of alcohol while young, reckless and thousands of miles from home is living up to that motto. However, the bars in Amman won’t desecrate your night with hazy disregard because:

1. Unless you’re an oil baron, Russian oligarch or recklessly nonchalant with your finances, getting drunk at a bar in Jordan is not within your price range. Spread those small pints out for as long as you can for the sake of your financial future.
2. The bars aren’t actually the alcohol slinging dens of pure depravity (perfect description of Spoons) found in many places around the world. The bars in Amman are refined and mellow. 

So, the bars. Dali is modern, youthful and spacious. Rustic is cosy, sophisticated and refined. Maestro is the other one. Dali and Rustic are drinking establishments with their own individual characteristics but Maestro has a little something that sets it apart (if only a couple of times per week). Live music. A local band/musician on one night and then a jam session on the other, the place gets absolutely chocker. On my first visit I was genuinely astounded at the quality of the music and made it my solemn duty to scrounge enough money to go there again. The jam session especially has a nice mix of expats and locals playing together. So everything from American Blues to Arabian classics was played late into the night. One night, acting as the hostel guide, I took some of the guests out to the bar for a few drinks and to listen to the music. A German guy with us (who is best described as a softly spoken, touchy feely, spiritual flannel of a man) decided to ask if he could sing at the jam session. And luckily he was allowed to because he absolutely killed it. Everyone was up and singing and despite my reservations about him I was enjoying myself. I returned to Maestro a fair few times during my stay in Amman and it’s safe to say that if it isn’t a music night, it’s not worth a minute of your time. But if the music is playing get yourself there and grab a Feyrouz cake before you head home. 

Rainbow Street is the other big area for tourists and young expats to hang out in Amman. Like almost everywhere interesting in the city, it requires you to walk up an infuriatingly steep hill, but on the way up there’s plenty of amazing pieces of street art to look at with sweat-burdened curiosity. Rainbow Street is, much like the rest of Amman, a visual disappointment. On my first walk up there I was so violently unimpressed, after such sterling blog reviews about the wonders of this street, that I considered never returning. As I mentioned in my food post, it is important not to believe a single word you hear about Amman from the travel bloggers. Travel bloggers do on the most part, provide a literarily insipid yet immeasurably helpful web of information to those of us who are travelling around the world, and for that I am grateful. However, if the words of these people (who have often stormed through a city in a day or two) are taken as gospel, then you’ll be stuck with the same old experiences as some other person believing that the falafel you had was indeed “the best falafel in Amman”. In a sense you’ll be living a cosy lie. A lie fabricated for you by a person equally clueless to the inner workings of the city as you, but armed with an online presence which in today’s world equals expertise. This cynical and egregiously egoistic section of the post may be a little jarring but that’s fine. The less you trust people with seductively sweet top ten lists and perfect smiles to match their perfect travel stories the better off you’ll be. All they did was look at the top ten list before them, go to the place to take some nice photos and then rearrange the words from every other blog (like every university student instinctively knows how to do). So, instead of trusting the plagiarising blogger, the successful instagram photographer or the SEO wizard, trust the heightened senses of your hanger-fuelled desperation or the treasure trove of local knowledge. The old ways are the best, they will guide you to a cultural nirvana.

Anyway, Rainbow Street was busy and boring at first glance, but on further inspection I found a few things to do. There are a few bars and restaurants like Copas Central and Cantaloupe which were on or close to the street and some chilled cafes towards the quieter end of the road where I could soak in the cool Jordanian evenings with a mixed local crowd.

Not far away was the House of Dreaming, a place I thought I would dislike. On a day of wandering with a Chinese lass called Felix (her favourite English name for now but she’s changed it many times before), we had a look around the place. I would describe the House of Dreaming as “a psychedelic hippy house of horrors” but for some reason they took their description in a different direction saying it’s an, “open space for communicating the beauty that resides in each of us, our dreams, our desires for connection and recognition of the pure self.” If you know me you can see why I was not keen to go. I don’t like faux spiritualism or forceful good vibes. I don’t like the entitled flimsy ideals of the raw vegan diet cultists. I don’t like astrology or the people that won’t stop going on about bloody astrology. Just because you base your life decisions on what ancient people believed about the universe over 4000 years ago doesn’t mean we need to hear about it. In fact, (astrology rant coming up), I would say astrology is one of the most egocentric unhealthy things you can believe in. You are, in a sense, seeing the vastness of the universe move across the night sky and thinking that those celestial bodies are directly concerned with you. There are at least 100 billion stars in our galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the universe and astrology asserts that all of that is directly affecting you, a cosmically insignificant organism that has been alive for a blink of an eye. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and life has been around for 3.8 billion years. And us humans? One million years at a push. The difference between a million and billion is pretty unimaginable to us (no matter how much we understand the difference in the number of zeros) so, one million seconds is 11 days but one billion seconds is 31.7 years. So, to suggest that the unimaginably old and unfathomably vast universe affects how creative you are or whether you should expect an unwelcome surprise this month is absolute nonsense. We aren’t special, we are just apes that evolved a sense of entitlement. Astrology gives you broad statements that will appeal to 2/3 of the population, so in a sense it’s just a fortune cookie with a different name and without the tasty container. A cosy thing to cling to, to stop you from realising that your life is imperceptible and unknowable to anyone but you. The universe doesn’t care, there’s been 4.5 billion years of Earth history before you were born and an unknowable stretch of time after you’re dead. Might as well take ownership of your brief and unique time alive.

Luckily, when we walked around the House of Dreaming no one jumped out shouting names of constellations at me or tried to tell me that meat is murder. It was empty and so we were alone to walk around the “creative space” which was actually pretty amazing. An entire building had been stripped and converted into a place where people could express themselves artistically. Whether it was playing music on stage, painting the walls, creating sculptures or taking yoga classes the whole place was set up to serve the people in Amman, not for profit, but to aid the creativity of the people. 

Western Amman 

As you move from Central Amman towards the west, you drive through our main shopping area, Abdali. It is the only area in the city with a collection of big skyscrapers and it also has the King Abdullah I Mosque which is an iconic addition to Amman’s skyline due to its large blue dome. To the right of Abdali as we head west is where I lived (between Jabal Al Qala’a and Jabal al Hussein). It was a perfect local area close to everything with great views of the city and good shopping (and falafel) away from the majority of the expats. Further west you come to Hungry street otherwise known as Al Madina al Monawara Street which is the home of incredible falafel, shawarma and knafeh (an indomitable triumvirate). And the area of Al Jubeiha is to the north of there with a large student presence and therefore a lively scene (lively for a very sober population). As I mentioned in my food post, at the north gate of Jordan University there is a wealth of opportunities to fill yourself with plates upon plates of very decent restaurant food. 

Abdoun is in the south west of the city and is considered one of the, if not the, richest neighbourhoods in Amman. Posh restaurants with London prices, white stone mansions with impractically large front doors and wide tree lined avenues filled with Range Rovers is what you can expect there. Abdoun shouldn’t have been somewhere a pauper like me would’ve frequented but the Quarenteam did end up making the trip across the impressive cable stayed bridge to the district a few times (mainly for ice cream). On other occasions I did two sessions of kickboxing back to back and felt like every muscle in my body was rebelling against me for the next week and I watched the film 1917 in Taj Mall with a Geordie brother and sister who then paid for the whole thing. Abdoun is a magical place of beautiful people, in beautiful cars, going around eating beautiful things. And, every now and again, I was permitted to enter the land of the rich, the plentiful pastures of the financially stable and eat ice cream for 15 minutes. 

Further out west you come to City Mall which is one of the biggest and poshest malls in the city and opposite is the enormous King Hussein Bin Talal mosque. With a nice park and the royal automobile museum next door, the mosque is worth a trip out to see. However, against everything the mosque stands for (devotion to God and all that) every time I saw the mosque I was on my way to one place. A palace of pints. Carakale.

Carakale

Not technically part of Amman, Carakale is just into the next governorate and halfway between the outskirts of Amman and the outskirts of As-Salt. However, really you are heading to a little place called Fuheis. This is a Christian town which makes it the perfect place to house Carakale, Jordan’s first microbrewery. As you leave the city and head through the ridiculous mansions of Dabouq (even richer than Abdoun), Fuheis greets you nestled on the hillside. But to get to Carakale you keep going into what seems to be the middle of nowhere. A single lane road flanking the steep hill to your left hangs on to avoid a long and uncomfortable fall into the wadi on the right. On the other side of the valley the mountains stretch towards As-Salt. The brewery isn’t open all day (opens at 2pm and closes at 7pm) so we always ended up going for the last few hours, after a hard day’s trying to get Firas to commit to a time. Planning anything with him is a test. Be ready at 8am? We leave at 10:30 alongside his smiley face saying, “C’mon I’ve been waiting for you for hours.” He tested every ounce of the polite, punctual, queue forming “sorry” saying Britaini that I am. I managed to make it through eight months without kicking him in the head and actually got used to the fact that we will be late everywhere if we even make it at all. The Carakale Brewery Bar is on the first floor overlooking the brewery itself through the windows opposite the bar. When we arrived we would order from the constantly shifting menu of ten beers and I was surprised at the differences at complexities of many of the beers. I would always try and have a new one on each go, but Firas (after discovering the smooth Rye IPA) was sold and sticking to his guns. After ordering we would always sit out in the conservatory style covered terrace which offered amazing views of the sunset over the mountains and meant that we didn’t have to sit outside in the sweltering heat. It’s just over a fiver for a beer but for locally brewed delicious and diverse beers with a great setting, it’s worth forking out a few of the extra JD you have lying around. 

Final Thoughts 

Of course, these aren’t even close to all the districts of Amman and in other districts there are plenty of things to see and eat. For example Al-Wehdat (mentioned in the food post) has an incredible market area, amazing views of the city and a beautiful mosque, Tabarbour area has tonnes of shops and restaurants and El Rajib in the far East of Amman is a hoarder’s paradise, an extremely rough and ready antiques road show, a shamble of junkyards. There are stacks upon stacks of everything you can imagine strewn in amongst a thousand other things. Fridges, napkin holders, industrial size ovens, panes of glass from beauty salons. You name it, it’s there. Not exactly an attraction but a strangely fun place to clamber around trying not to fall into the raging sea of totally unregulated and unsafe junk. 

Unlike Georgetown, Bangkok or Marrakesh, my experience in this city was too personal to reduce into one post. I lived there and walked begrudgingly along the steep streets, sweating out my hatred for not being able to afford an Uber. I ate so much knafeh that I felt ill and I found myself actually enjoying trips to the mall. Amman isn’t beautiful, but it surprised me as it slowly grew on me. It’s a fascinating place to get to know, a strange place to become accustomed to, an aesthetically uninspiring base to explore the contrastingly exquisite beauty of Amman’s surrounding wilds. 

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If you enjoyed reading this post or have unsubstantiated views on the merits of astrology leave a comment, I would love to hear from you. Needing praise… urrrghh what a typical Libra…