Jurash July 23-August 18 Part 4

The school and the site of Jurash are on the outskirts of the city of Khamis Mushayt, the home town of a number of the September 11 perpetrators. As had been the case last year, we Westerners had to have a police escort wherever we went, especially the kilometer or so from the school to the site. We were not even to leave the school compound unescorted. The security sometimes reached a level of overkill, such as being escorted into the Abha airport surrounded by five heavily armed security guards. Difficulties in getting a security escort arranged partially thwarted the intentions of some of the staff to conduct a regional survey.

Next to the school is a hill called Jabal Hamuma with some early inscriptions that some of us climbed one day.

The school viewed from the top of Jabal Hamuma. Note the two police cars at the base of the hill; a third police car was on the other side.

Another view from the top of Jabal Hamuma with the site of Jurash in the middle distance

Khamis Mushayt is an uninteresting city, although it does lay claim to having the world’s largest shopping cart – a three-storey high construction placed at the entrance to a shopping mall. Unfortunately, I only spotted it as our police-escorted convoy of vehicles whizzed by, so I was unable to get a photograph.

One day the group went to visit a nearby village with some traditional mudbrick houses, followed by a visit to the nearby big city of Abha, a summer resort city, where we visited the traditional market adjacent to a folklore museum and some restored traditional houses now used as art galleries. All around in Abha and Khamis Mushayt the Saudis like to trim the trees that line the main streets.

The folklore museum and a restored traditional house in Abha

A main street in Abha with trimmed trees. Note the cable car.

The various members of the project left on different days, and Bill and I stayed one day longer than the rest. We had to vacate the school and so we went to a five-star hotel in the center of Khamis Mushayt to hang out until our flights. After dark I slipped out of the hotel unnoticed and I walked around the city for a while all by myself and I survived to tell the tale. I traveled back to Amman from the Abha airport with a transfer in Jeddah early on the morning of August 19, a couple of days before the start of Ramadan.