A Norwegian in Arabia (3)
As an intermesso, the learned traveler Peter Parkerson had a 90 days stop-over in Jordan on his way from Kuwait to Algeria. Kuwait was traditional (see pic from a market), closed, dried up when it came to consume of alcohol, very family orientated, class-divided (low paid workers from different Asian countries), etc. The Norwegian ambassador blocked Parkerson's plan to travel over land with a second hand car, through Iraq. But he managed to have a date with a Norwegian lady, raised in the Philippines, making money in Kuwait in hiring Filipino housemaids to well-off Kuwaitis. Some few years later, by a coincident, Parkerson met a young Filipino female in a European capital, who happened to be her niese. Anyway, when Parkerson had his three month stop-over in Jordan, he met the same rich Kuwaitis queuing up for free food, since the Iraqi president Saddam Husseim had invaded their country and taken their gold and oil (see pic from a Kuwaiti demonstration in Jordan). Without this mad man's invasion, The Middle East would seem totally different. The three last pics from Amman down-town, with friendly Jordanians all over. The next blog will cover some more dramatic affaires on the Iraqi border zone, but Parkerson, as you all understand, always managed to get back safe and sound. All this can be read as as a travel documentary, split up in different parts of Parkerson's westward voyage, to the old Ottoman corsair state Algers. And all to be read as non-fiction. Everything here is to be considered as true, as to the single word!