Amman has a vertical economy in the most literal sense. It spreads over several large hills with the wealthy living up high and the commoners down in the valleys. As you travel uphill it is like traveling to the West, not just gaining elevation. Up there are the big houses and the shiny Mercedes, the Tex-Mex restaurants and the Irish pubs. We sat outside a frozen yogurt shop one night to people-watch and it could have been a scene straight from an American suburb: families came and went, teenage boys looked bored, girls wore tight t-shirts and gabbed endlessly on their cell phones.

It is in the valleys downtown where traditional culture thrives. The frenetic strip of restaurants, shops, and cheap hotels lacks the crowded pollution of Cairo but manages to maintain just enough of the Middle Eastern insanity to keep it interesting. Our hotel was located near a line of airline offices that looked like something straight out of a Saturday Night Live skit: Syrian Airlines, Palestinian Arab Air, Iraqi Air. "Welcome, Sir. And how many bombs will you be checking today?"

Downtown is where the eclectic stew of Jordanian citizenry comes together. This country has always housed a wide range of cultures and religions, not just Arab and Bedouin but also Ottoman, European, and Christian. Recently, policitcal stresses in neighboring countries has flooded Jordan with especially large populations of Iraqis and Palestinians, and these two demographic groups now make up a significant portion of the population. Sarah and I walked into a crowded hole-in-the-wall restaurant one evening and sat down amongst the locals. We ordered some food. Everyone was crowding around us, of course, watching our every move. About halfway through the meal one of them struck up a conversation with us.

"Jordan number one!" I said, trying to win over the crowd.

"No Jordan, no Jordan," he replied. "Iraqi." He began pointing to everyone in the restaurant, "Iraqi, Iraqi, Iraqi. Where you from?"

Ummmmm. . .

It is tempting at times like this to fall back on the easy out and just say "Canada." Canada never offends anyone. But I decided back in Asia that America has few enough travelers as it is, so the ones of us out here better stand up and be counted. Ambassadors for our country, and all that.

"AMERICA!" I said, a little louder than I meant to.

As I should have expected this didn't lead to any sort of international incident, just a lot of smiles and the usual, "Ah! America! I have brother in Texas!"

I got a haircut one day. (Alert readers will have just detected that I am about to launch into one of my "bad haircut" anecdotes that seem to be a recurring theme on this trip.) The haircut was actually quite nice. The guy took his time and did a really good job. He shortened it up, trimmed the back and sides carefully. It only cost $3, and as he was finishing up the last few snips Sarah and I nodded at each other in a hey-that's-not-so-bad kind of way.

I leaned forward to stand up, but the guy motioned for me to stay put. He picked up a length of thread; ordinary black thread like you might use to sew on a button. He doubled up the thread between his hands, gave it a little twist, and then began brushing it against my cheek.

No, "brushing" isn't the right word. Brushing implies something soft and delicate. Let's say "raking."

He raked the thread back and forth across my cheekbone on that delicate skin between ear and eye. Splinters of fiery pain pierced my face and I literally screamed out in a very unmanly whimpering gasp. He kept doing it, and even though he was just touching a small part of my face I could feel the pain licking all the way down my back, as if he had tapped into some elusive acupuncture point. Neurons reached out for Vietnamese pedicure. . .

Sarah told me he was just using the thread to pluck hair and eyebrows and that women have it done all the time. God bless my Y chromosome.

Aside from catching up on haircuts, laundry, and sleep after our mad-cap rush through the rest of Jordan, the main reason we stayed in Amman was to take in the sights near town.

We hired a car and driver one day to take us on the "desert castle" loop. Our drive took us to a variety of ruins located in an area 80 kilometers east of Amman. A few were remnants of the castles in the stone-fortress genre of castles (including one that our old friend TE Lawrance used as a base of operations earlier this century), but more interesting were the structures that were unlike any we had seen before. Two of them -- Hammam as-Sarah and Qusayr' Amra -- housed elaborate steam-baths, but archaeologists continue to argue over whether they were hunting lodges or manor houses or simply baths. Qusayr' Amra had walls covered with painted frescoes that somehow survived centuries of the harsh desert climate. Another "castle" was a 2-story square structure that probably served as an inn for traveling merchants. It had a central open courtyard surrounded by several dozen small rooms.

While the castles varied in form and function, the surprising thing about all of them was that they exist there at all. They sit in inhospitable desert surrounded now (as then) by nothing. They guard no mountain passes nor crucial seaports. Instead they sit quietly on the flat plains or low hills, watching ripples of sand and the occasional tumbleweed.

As Sarah and I creep north along the Mediterranean, we enter the heartland of the Roman Empire's eastern provinces. After conquering this region in the first century BC, the Romans established a series of provincial capitals and commercial cities, one of which, Jerash, lies 50k northeast of Amman. It was my first experience touring the ruins of a Roman city and it was an inspiring site. One hears so much about Rome's architectural and engineering accomplishments, but until you are actually standing in the middle of one of their creations it is impossible to appreciate.

The backbone of Jerash is a 600 meter-long paved street lined on each side by pillars. At one end of the street is a huge forum, or open area, and a second collonaded street lies perpendicular to the first. Time has taken its toll on the city, but in addition to the well-preserved streets the remains of hundreds of buildings litter the hillsides. South of town, just outside the gate, is a hippodrome (sports field) that once seated 15,000 people. Inside, two huge temples, the Temple of Artremis and the Temple of Zeus, tower over everything else.

My favorite buildings, though, weren't the largest or the holiest. My favorite were the theaters and Jerash had not just one, but two theaters. Each held more than 5,000 people. Despite all the inhumanity and injustice the Romans leveled upon the world, you certainly have to admire a culture that makes such a dedication to public meeting places, for theater, sport, politics. It speaks to the advancement of the society to see so much workmanship applied to buildings that had no defensive purpose whatsoever.

Through preservation and restoration the theaters are in remarkable shape. All the stands are intact, the hallways and ramps are eerily similar to the concourses of modern-day stadiums, and the stages are backed by elaborate pillars and adornments. The acoustics are amazing. Sitting high up in the "300 level" it was easy to hear people on stage speaking in a normal voice. For some reason, I felt like rushing on to the stage to shout at the top of my lungs:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licur
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek . . .