An Off-center Trip To Have – Jordan Part I
Waiting at Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport -T2 Terminal, my stomach was churning. I’d never been abroad, and definitely not in a place that many asked me to stay at bay from. The urge or will to go there was stronger than any heartfelt word of advice. I was going. And there I was ready to board the plane to Amman, the capital city of Jordan with a stopover at Doha, Qatar.
The view from Doha to Amman was breathtaking. See it to believe it.
Upon reaching Amman, the feeling was unreal. Touch down, but I was on seventh heaven. I couldn’t wait to embrace all the adventure that beckoned me.
Our first stop there was Madaba City. This city in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordania is best known for its Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics, especially a large Byzantine-era mosaic map of the Holy Land.
We visited the church that had the huge map on it’s floor and it was amazing. The Map of Madaba mosaic was discovered in 1896 and the findings were published a year later.
The mosaic map depicts an area from Lebanon to the Nile Delta North to south, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Eastern Desert from East to West. It also depicts a lot of old testament christian sites as well including Dead sea, Jordan, Jericho among others.
We were also shown a mysterious painting of Mother Mary inside the church, which was said to have the appearance of a blue hand out of nowhere one day. The hand wasn’t there in the original painting, and no body knows how the hand appeared out of the blue.
Have a look here:
We made our way to the church through the market place and what a beauty to behold!
I was mesmerized and left in awe of the cobblestone roads, the stone buildings the sky. Beautiful is an understatement.
** End of – Jordan Part I – **
Stranger To My Skin
There’s a lonely place inside ourselves.
Sometimes you got to be a man you are not. Sometimes you’ve just got to take the road you’ve never imagined you would tread.
Sometimes you’ve got to befriend strangers… abandoning friends and family. Sometimes you’ve got to be a stranger to yourself. It’s the only way; only way you can find who you really are.
But no one can promise you it will come to be. And you could travel far and wide and yet never find your place. Never belong and be lost for what seems like eternity.
But you’ll never know what’s attainable if you never try. If you never leave. If you sit at the corner and wait for happiness or even satisfaction to hit you like a wave. It may never happen.
Isn’t that a scary thought? That you’ll go all your life not knowing what you truly are capable of? It scares me to no end.
And some day I’m going to have to pick the pieces up and run, run like it’s the only right thing to do, run like my life depended on it. Run like death was the beast chasing me to a dead end of a dark alley.
It’s the only way, my friend, it’s the only way to know who I am.
And to know what lies within I will have to abandon what I build on the outside.
Knowing well that it took years of love, care, sweat and blood to create. Knowing well that once destroyed, it could take years to rebuild. That if I lose, and am forced to mold whatever is left of me I could lose the will and walk away from the debris my life has become. That I may not have the strength or the power of will to start from scratch. Lethargy could be my enemy. But these are all the ‘buts’ I’m ready to overlook. Because the ‘What could be’ is enticing. Like the tempting devil in the desert of life.
I will have to make my own journey now. Carve out a new path. And meet people I’ve never known. Go to a land the language of which I do not speak. Under a sky that isn’t mine. I will have to leave. And the Now could be Tomorrow, Next week, A month later or Years from today.
What counts, is that my soul is ready to make the voyage.
I’ll know in my heart when it is time to sail.
Myshelle Congeries 
They came, they saw, they said.