I hopped into a taxi and sped off east toward the old, historical train station of the Hejaz Railway. Still Amman’s only station, an antiquated locomotive just pulled in, hauling four wood-paneled cars taken straight out of a Hollywood western.

The rails were laid by the Germans, who designed the landmark railway for the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid at the very beginning of the 20th century.

A rail yard employee forbade me from taking any pictures but was reluctantly willing to take me close to the historic cars. Seeing my enthusiasm, he relaxed a bit and even offered me a bunch of sour-sweet grapes straight off the vine that shaded the stationmaster’s office. Later he also let me take pictures, and was even offering to rotate the huge, heavy, turntable used to revolve the locomotives for me.

In its heyday, the train took the multitudes of Muslim worshipers south to Mecca, with offshoots of the line calling at different stations in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine. One could travel by rail from Mecca to Damascus to Istanbul and the whole European continent. And then came Lawrence, the famed British officer who masterminded the Arab Revolt, and one romantic legend seriously damaged another. Under him, the line was blown up in several points, rendering it defunct. Extremely slow and untrustworthy, hardly anyone today uses what is left of this once historic feat of rail engineering.