roads to Rome

I spent Christmas day in the town of Madaba. Madaba is mentioned in the bible, an ancient city, and also a very contemporary one. It houses one of Jordan's large Palestinian refugee camps and is a busy, happening place.

One of the things that drew me there is a renowned 15 metre x 6metre mosaic map that dates from the 6th century. The map, embedded in the floor of a Greek Orthodox Church, depicts the holy land as it was at the time. It shows the towns and villages and key pilgrimage sites in extraordinary, geographically correct detail, using designs to show water courses and valleys and mountains that are beautiful and functional too.

The centrepiece of the whole mosaic is Jerusalem, depicted painstakingly. All the ancient gates to the city - the Jaffa gate, the Damascus gate, etc. - are shown precisely. The standout feature is the colonaded roman road running straight through the centre of town, end to end.

On Christmas day, the church was thronged with tour groups from all corners of the world - India, Germany, the US, Japan. It appeared to be a regular stop on the guided tours to the holy land for religious folk. Lots of people snapping pics like the one above. (Something I learned: mosaics are hard to photograph.) I stayed a while and then gave up on the crowds and decided to check out the other sites in town.

Walking down a narrow street, I noticed a gate with a sign that said "Departemenet (sic) of Antiquities". I pushed on the gate and it wasn't locked, so I stepped in. Unlike the crowded church, there wasn't a soul. It was a cross between a garden and a rubble heap, interspersed with more mosaics. I figured out from the guidebook that it was a place called the 'burnt palace' - the partial ruins of a roman patrician mansion and a jumble of neighbouring buildings. I wandered in the incredible stillness, soaking in the heat of the sun. The aging caretaker came and informed me that the site was closed today, but 'please, stay, stay, no problem.' Then he offered me coffee and we sat on the roman ruins and he showed me pictures on his cell phone of his son and six daughters.

Sitting there, it took me a while to figure out the place and what I was seeing. But slowly it dawned on me that I was looking at a Roman road and what remained of the buildings that fronted on to it. The road is in perfect condition - flat, straight, unrutted - made from huge slabs of white limestone. 2000 years later and 2500 kilometres from the city of Rome, it is still there. It runs through the back yards of people's properties - like some kind of back alley - and the back of the mosque edges on to the ruins.

the new Madaba, the fragments of mosaics, the old enduring road make me think both about permanence and the fleeting nature of things. Layers of history piling up, fragments left, disregarded, but always there, in the back yard, as a reminder.