Gulf War II

April 1 - 21  2003

  Amman Jordan

One day I had a chance to get out for a little while and visited the old city.  There I stumbled into the Jordan Archaeological Museum.  The old city is on a hill in the center of town.  This ancient city has ben around for thousands of years and is now the site of several archeological digs and restorations.  It looked nothing like what Indiana Jones was into.  They did however have some of the original Dead Sea Scrolls from the 3rd century B.C..  The clay pots held the scrolls.  The ones on display here are copper strips (in the white box).  A reproduction of the copper strip is placed above the originals.  Other pots contained scrolls of kidskin fabric.  They were discovered in 1947.  The hand in front of the museum is the hand of Hercules.  It is Roman marble imported to Jordan during the 2th century AD during the control of the Roman Empire.  The rest of the statue was missing but this hand was restored.  
Right down the hill from the museum was the old Roman Theater.  There was even an ancient road that wound straight down the side of the hill directly to the theater.  If you turn to the right from the theater there is the bustling down town.  Well the theater is actually part of downtown.  Easily identified in this picture is the minaret of the oldest mosque in Jordan.  The al Hussane Mosque was built in 640 AD and is still a working  place of worship.  The next picture is the same mosque from street level.  Inside there are huge beautiful tile mosaics.  









This is Achmed in the plaid shirt.  He is our local "Fixer".   That is his title Fixer.  He is a local guy who knows all the local customs and customs agents.  He would arrange almost everything for us that involved interacting with the city including rides to and from the airport, dealing with the hotel and the bill, finding a shop where we could buy power connectors, finding a guy to build us a shed for the equipment on the roof, and even find lunch for us.  Achmed could fix any problem.  In the middle is Hisham.  He is our camera man.  Hisham showed John and I around town and was our car ride when nothing was going on.  During the last week of our time things were fairly slow in Amman because the troops and the news had made it to Baghdad.  On the right is Jon.  He works with me at Pacsat.  We were keeping the dish on the air 24 hours a day so 2 operators were required.  Like I said the last week was fairly slow and no clients had any news to send out.  
This picture is the rest of the gang.  Jeff in the white shirt with Cactus Jack.  In back wearing the black sweatshirt is Terrance or T as we called him.  He is the CNN engineer.  Jon is still on the right.  Jon and I are only responsible for the satellite dish and making sure it is transmitting something.  Terrance is running the equipment for CNN that feeds to our dish.  He would route out the camera on the roof, or the tape deck, or the DV deck or what ever CNN needed sent.  He also fixed the CNN equipment.  His room was right next door to ours.  Then in the front row Dawn in the brown jacket.  She is the producer.  Reem is sporting the white scarf.  Dawn would work with Reem to put together the stories that we would all work together to send back to CNN.  These were the people I interacted with almost everyday.  There were always other CNN people coming and going from the hotel, we were the rest stop to and from Baghdad.  




 



 


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