After
my trip to the USA, I was back in Amman for only a few days before leaving for
India. I stayed once again at the American Center of Oriental Research. I did a
bit of further work on the Madaba Archaeological Park report and translated
another section of Volume 2 of Gustaf Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine.
The
evening of Wednesday October 30 there was a public lecture at ACOR by Győző
Vörös about his work at the site of Machaeus, one of Herod the Great’s palaces.
The first final report volume of his project at Machaeus has just been
published and I wanted to meet him to discuss the option of my helping to edit
the second volume, which we agreed that I will do in February.
On
Tuesday November 5 I left on my trip to India. I noticed the demolition of the
old terminal in progress at the Amman airport.
The
demolition of the old airport terminal
I
took a 2:00 pm flight to Jeddah, which arrived at 4:15. I then had to hang out
for the next seven hours in the very small and overcrowed international transit
area until my onward flight to Hyderabad left at 12:30 am on the 6th. The
transit area was sort of okay at first, but it soon filled up to beyond capacity.
There were substantially more passengers, mostly Muslim pilgrims, than the
available seats. I have been in the domestic transit area of the Jeddah airport
a couple of times, which was not so bad, but this overcrowded international transit
area beats the international departures check-in area of the Riyadh airport as
the worst airport I have ever been in.
The
overcrowded international transit area in the Jeddah airport
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