Men, Monsters, And Messiahs
In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare famously wrote about a real-life soothsayer who tried to warn the Roman emperor of imminent danger. On March 15, 44 BC, on the steps of a Roman amphitheatre, a group of mutinous senators assassinated Julius Caesar. Nearly 2,000 years later, almost to the day, as I marvelled at the grandeur of Gerasa, an ancient Roman city in Jordan, that old prophecy came back to haunt the world in a far more virulent manner. I had been in Jordan for a week when the novel coronavirus’s shadow began looming over countries in the Gulf and Africa. I’d been guilty of ignoring travel advisories when I’d landed in Amman a few days back. A 10-year-old’s imagination had been fired up by David Lean’s epic, Lawrence of Arabia, and I’d wanted to visit Jordan ever since.
‘Beware the ides of March’.
In Amman, skyscrapers share the skyline with ancient Roman citadels. The capital city of Jordan exemplifies the country’s fascinating blend of the modern and the historic. It is the latter that interests me; for a taste of that, as well as a slice of local life, all roads lead to Downtown. Chalky, box-like homes blanket the hillside in the city’s older, more traditional eastern quarter.
