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Peter BairdBE (Civil) Dip, Bus Stud (PFP)

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Chris MacKayBCA, CLU, CFP, FPIA Fellow, FLBA

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MacKayBY FINANCIAL PLANNER CHRIS MACKAY on money

Hardly the news I wanted to hear a week before we were booked to go there. The Government travel website

reinforced this with “There is a high risk to personal security, and travellers are advised to take extra care at Jordan’s borders with Israel and Iraq … Elsewhere in Jordan, there is also some risk to personal security and the possibility of terrorist action remains …” Well it could be worse then. Even London has some nutters roaming around. And South Auckland defi nitely does. So ignorant of the other possibly relevant fact that 57 people had been killed in Amman by Al Qaeda terrorists in November last year, we set off for a fabulous adventure in the holy land of Jordan.

Level 5, 92 Queens DriveLower Hutt

570 2233chris@mackay.co.nz

We fl ew from Cairo, which apart from the banks of the Nile was devoid of any greenery, to Amman the capital of Jordan, which was well treed and quite attractive. The former King Hussein had been keen on everyone planting trees and the plan was working well. Property always interests me. Our guide Husein could have bought his apartment for around 60,000 Jordanian Dinars (JD’s) about NZ$130,000 three years ago, but now it costs around JD160,000 (NZ$340,000). Prices have rocketed. Part of the problem is the number of Iraqis fl eeing Bagdad with the pockets of their galabeyas bulging with cash looking to buy a home. It’s like wealthy Americans and

Europeans buying up our coastal properties and putting them out of the reach of the average Kiwi. The average Jordanian is only making about 500 JD’s per month so house buying is hard work. Jordan is old, really old. Talk about history. King David, of David and Goliath fame, arranged for the death of Uriah the Hittite, at Amman, because he fancied Uriah’s wife, soon to be widow, Bathsheba. Moses and the Exodus generation wandered around the neighbourhood for quite some time. There’s a place we (and the previous Pope visited) called Mt Nebo from where Moses apparently saw the promised land, but as you Old Testament scholars will know, he himself never got there.

“A gunman this morning fi red on tourists visiting a popular site in downtown Amman,

killing a British man and wounding six others including a New Zealander…

Jordan

Just across the border, “Joshua fit de battle of Jericho” not far from where John the Baptist baptised Jesus Christ in the Jordan river. We were there at the exact spot. But because the Israelis control the water flow, and don’t let much through, the River Jordan isn’t exactly chilly and wide; it’s just not there at all. It was dry dirt. We had to walk for another 100 metres to see the mighty Jordan which was tepid and narrow, less than a quarter the width of the Hutt river. Archaeologists believe Jordan was inhabited 200,000 years ago. More recently, but still a while back, the Amorites, Persians, Greeks via Alexander the Great, Romans, Christians during the Byzantine period, Muslims, Crusaders (but no Hurricanes), Mamlukes and latterly the Turks (the Ottoman Empire) from 1516, all were there. This is where I got interested so I’ll try to summarise my understanding of a hugely complicated recent history. Arabs from the Middle East became united in their struggle for independence but it wasn’t until World War I when things started happening. It appears Britain, who you remember was at war with Turkey (Gallipoli and all that) sent Colonel T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) to help the Arabs get rid of the Turks. A chap called Shareer Hussein Ibn Ali, Prince of Mecca was asked to be leader of the Great Arab Revolt along with the help of the Brits. The Ottoman Empire was thus defeated and somehow the UK received a mandate to govern much of the Middle East including Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. Transjordan’s boundaries were drawn up in the early 1920’s by the Colonial Secretary, a young Winston Churchill, rumour has it after a long London lunch, half a bottle of brandy and two cigars. In 1946, Abdullah Ibn Al-Hussein the eldest son of Shareef Hussein was proclaimed King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. His brother Faisal became King of Iraq. The other brother missed out on being King of Arabia (now Saudi Arabia) being defeated by the Saud family. Abdullah I was assassinated in 1951 and his son Talal became King. His health wasn’t too flash so he abdicated in favour of his son Hussein in 1953 who was a clever chap despite not having much luck in the old marriage department. The famous and beautiful Queen Noor was wife number four. But he was a popular King who did a good job for Jordan. He died in 1999. Hussein’s eldest son Abdullah II is the latest boss. Jordan is a constitutional monarchy. Executive authority is vested in the King and his Council of Ministers, led

by a Prime Minister but all appointed by the King. Despite this, Jordan does hold free and fair parliamentary elections; the top jobs just aren’t decided by the democratic process. They’re determined by Abdullah. It’s fun being King! Jordan is bordered by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank which is stuck in the sandwich between Israel and Jordan. Their main exports are phosphates and potash, but they rely heavily on tourism. When idiots start blowing up people, it’s not good for the economy. The recent Lebanon war and the Amman shootings have caused a very lean tourist season. There are just under six million Jordians, 92 per cent being Sunni Muslims and six per cent Christian. Our main guide was a Muslim family man who loved his God, family and country. Like Egyptians Jordanians understand car insurance which is compulsory but life insurance type products aren’t big. It’s all God’s will after all, if you snuff it early or get crook. Only big companies and Government workers have superannuation schemes. They all need to because males have a life expectancy of 76 and females 81. Ibrahim, a 70-year-old guide we had in Jerash, where the Romans had built a hippodrome for chariot racing and a bit of Russell Crowe type gladiator stuff, reminded us that Muslims and Jews believe the original Old Testament Abraham was the father of both their nations. They believe Jesus Christ was a great prophet but not the Son of God, and Mohammed was the last great prophet. Like us Christians they believe in Heaven. How you get there under their belief, I’m still not quite sure. But everyone we met was polite, peaceful and pleasant. Well all except some chap who pulled out in front of our van and pranged us en route to Karak, a Crusader castle. In Jordan, if you have even a minor car accident, you have to wait until the traffic cops come; no matter how long that takes. Otherwise you are deemed to be guilty, you’re liable for both cars’ repairs and you can’t claim insurance. He wasn’t too happy the bloke who hit us. There was quite a bit of Arabic arguing going on and we (the prangees) ended up down at the local police station full of cops with machine guns, where the pranger ended up being locked up until he paid the fine. It’s an understatement to say we were pleased Husein had been driving. The Temple of Zeus, the Temple dedicated to Artemis and the Forum at Jerash were amazing. We went to the open air Roman built South Theatre in Jerash where the acoustics were so brilliant

someone in the back seats could hear an orator whispering from a particular spot in the front of the amphitheatre. Kathryn sang us “Che Faro” from this spot just after we had been serenaded by kilt wearing bagpipe playing bandsmen. These guys were a hangover from when the Brits/Scots were in Jordan. It was at the Temple of Zeus I bought some 2000-year-old Roman coins. This is after all a money column. Jordan occupied the West Bank/Palestine from 1950, but in the June 1967 war with Syria, Egypt and Iraq, lost it and East Jerusalem to Israel. It seems Jordan still wants it back, but the majority of Palestinians who haven’t already immigrated to Jordan that is, appear to want to do their own thing. The West Bank is home to the PLO (Yasser Arafat fame) and Hamas and is a tourist spot I’m keen to avoid. The Jordan/Palestine situation is very complicated and the whole area really needs someone with the wisdom of Solomon to sort them all out. What I did find fascinating was the fact Jordanians want immigrants to become locals with Jordanian culture and doing things their way, not being Iraqis for example, who just happen to live in Jordan. Just like how Kiwis want immigrants to become one with us. We’d read about the Dead Sea, which is getting deader by the year. Nothing grows in it. No fish. Nothing. Well ok maybe a couple of amoeba. But that’s all. I’ve mentioned the Jordan river and how its flow has decreased due to trouble upstream. This isn’t helping the Dead Sea because this is where the water ends up or to be accurate, isn’t ending up. If you want to see it, go soon. I did the tourist thing and had a swim (well a float really) and yes it is an amazing feeling. We visited the lost city of Petra (think Indiana Jones and The Holy Grail) which had been buried but rediscovered in 1812. It goes back many centuries B.C. and is breathtaking. Fabulous. It was here we searched out the NZ woman Marguerite Van Geldermalsen who had met and married a local and then subsequently wrote a book titled surprisingly “Married to a Bedouin“. We eventually found her house in the Petra Resettlement, a house, not a cave or a tent anymore. She was off in London doing the English leg of the book launch. We did meet her son Raami, who looked Bedouin but greeted us with a “gidday” and a Kiwi accent. He’d been sent to school at Nelson College at the same time as one of my nephews.

At Petra I haggled for some Nabataean coins. The Nabataeans (4th Century B.C. – A.D. 106) must have dropped an awful lot of loose change, because man oh man there were lots of “really old” coins being sold by just about every Bedouin we met. They reckoned they found them on the ground each year after the winter rains. Maybe they were real, who knows? But apparently there is a thriving business in downtown Petra with genuine ancient coins being minted on a daily basis. Unlike Egypt, there weren’t police on every intersection, but our hotels all did the airport metal detector trick. We felt completely safe and welcome. The Jordanians were warm and friendly. It was a fantastic place to visit. A very different culture and the sense of history really fired our imaginations. n