BY LYTTON J. MUSSELMAN
Professor of Biological Sciences

Hejaz Station is near the center of Damascus. Its elegant Oriental architecture contrasts with the bland Soviet style of buildings nearby. Not far from the station is the main market, a cacophony of sounds, symphony of odors and people - veiled women, men in robes and turbans, older tourists with video cameras and water bottles, younger tourists with backpacks and "Lonely Planet" guides.

Unlike the market, the station is hauntingly vacant, like a monument to a forgotten hero. A steam engine, cold and silent, guards the front courtyard. Inside, the station floor is dirty and wet from a leaky roof. Ticket windows are closed and shuttered, not surprising considering how few trains use this depot. Walls plastered with posters cannot tarnish the ornate walls and ceilings of exquisite Damascene arabesque workmanship. The only people are those cutting through the station to a coffee shop behind. Here, a few customers drink the local floral tea in coaches once used on the Orient Express, apparently oblivious to the history around them.

The Hejaz Railway was built by the Ottomans around the turn of the century. Collections from faithful Muslims were used to construct the railroad from its northern terminus, Damascus, to the Hejaz, the region of Saudi Arabia where Medina and Mecca are located. For many centuries Damascus had been a staging point for caravans traveling to the desert holy cities. With the advent of the railway, coaches replaced caravans. The Ottomans had another motive as well - to be able to control fractious tribes in Arabia.

A rail line through Aleppo linked Damascus with Turkey. The railway was of strategic importance to the empire and an obvious target of saboteurs in any uprising.

Lawrence of Arabia wreaked damage up and down the line as part of the British-engineered Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule. With brilliant military strategy, he isolated the Hejaz region by mining the track at numerous sites in what is present-day Jordan. If the revolt blossomed along the railway, it also bore ultimate fruit here. In 1918 Feisal, descendant of the Prophet Mohammed through Hashem, rode triumphantly into Damascus on its rails and reigned for a short time as king of Syria. His ancestral kingdom was elsewhere. For generations the Hashemites were the rulers of the Hejaz. Feisal's grand nephew is Hussein, present king of Jordan, the only surviving Hashemite monarch. Because the king is so ill, his brother Hassan is now the regent and de facto ruler.

I was thankful to learn that there was still one train a week between Amman and Damascus so I could experience the Hejaz railway. The morning was bright and cool as my son John and I walked to the station at 0630. Damascus was set against the spectacular snow-covered mountains to the west. In a dilapidated room with a kerosene heater, we paid our fare, equivalent to $3.20 each. Our names and passport numbers were entered in a large ledger and we were given tickets. These were made of thick cardboard, as those used 40 years earlier in the states - no magnetic stripes! The notice board said in Arabic that departure was at 0720. Unlikely, we said to one another.

The train was standing at the station with several freight cars, a Romanian diesel engine and two ancient carriages. I wondered if the carriages may have been damaged by Lawrence himself. Windows were cracked or broken. There was no water, heat or light. Six passengers were on the train - four Bedouins in one compartment and John and I in the next.

At exactly 0720 we left Hejaz Station and headed south through rush-hour Damascus, a refugee camp on the edge of town, along olive groves and finally into open country. As Lawrence noted, "In the spring these hills were full of grazing sheep, for the rain cloaked their low sides in new grass and flowers." After leaving the hills south of Damascus, we entered the Hauran Plain, ". . . a huge fertile land; populous with warlike, self-reliant and prosperous Arab peasantry." Shepherds' dogs almost outpaced the train, leaving the sheep in their care to scatter in panic. Asphodels, anemones, poppies and wild asters sprinkled the landscape to the delight of my botanical heart.

On this crisp March day, the massif known as Jebel Druze, or more recently Jebel Arab, stood as a magnificent snow-covered eastern backdrop to verdant fields of wheat and blossoming orchards of almonds. Lack of amenities was more than compensated for by the open vestibules. We stood at the front of the car in the sunlight while these ancient machines lurched, twisted and groaned forward as if arthritic and weary after almost a century of work. Compared to the Byzantine and Roman ruins that littered the countryside, however, these carriages were frolicking youngsters.

We crawled through villages past stations and water towers recognizable from Lawrence's description - their solid basalt construction as enduring as the people he described. If the buildings appeared solid, the tracks appeared delicate. Rails were smaller than in the U.S. and not on an embankment so the fields and meadows came right up to the tracks.

As the train passed through towns, people stood and watched as if this were the first train they had ever seen. The horn had a peculiar lowing sound as a calf separated from its mother, yet alternately sounding like an adolescent with cracking voice. It was used continually.

After five hours, we reached the town of Dera'a, where the Syrian locomotive was exchanged for a Jordanian diesel. The crew and local station employees sat near the tracks to eat; some prayed. Any concept of a timetable seemed irrelevant on this early spring day.

By now we had left the Hauran Plain and entered the Badia of Jordan. The hills were green. They slowly changed to yellow in the desert to the east. We had a long delay at Mafraq Station for customs. This station was not built out of basalt and I recalled that Lawrence and gang had destroyed the original. The conductor and customs agent spread their prayer rug at the edge of the track and bowed toward Mecca for the afternoon prayer.

After eight hours with no food, John was pleased to see a shop not far from the station selling shawurma sandwiches. Did he have time to get food? Of course, someone from the station assured us. Just as he returned with the greasy delicacies, the horn sounded and the train slowly rolled forward as John jumped aboard. It was 4 p.m.; we were only 160 kilometers from Damascus with two hours still to go before reaching Amman. Zarka was next.

In Lawrence's day this was a village. Now, Zarka is perhaps the most industrialized city in the Hashemite Kingdom. We inched along the oil refinery, other industries moved past the windows of our compartment, the glass opaque with time and neglect. Night was falling, the call to prayer marking sunset mixed with the sound of the horn. Their cacophony echoed off the factory walls and buildings of Zarka.

We followed the Zarka River and passed a camp of Gypsies. In the light of their cooking fires, they seemed mesmerized by the train. Children and women came from the tattered tents to watch. Did they dream they could ride the train and visit some place different from their grinding poverty?

By now it was cold and dark. The light from the locomotive cast a stark glare over the rocks as the lowing behemoth climbed the hills toward Amman. At 7:15 we pulled into the Amman station, almost 12 hours after leaving Damascus. We had traveled about 240 kilometers between two cities of the ancient Decapolis.

These two capital cities and countries are strikingly different. Most of Amman's populace are from somewhere else - from places where they were either driven out by military force or political expediency. Damascenes know who they are. Amman is a new city with clean streets and undisciplined traffic. In contrast, Damascus streets may not be as clean but are safer for vehicles and pedestrians. Syria has a diverse population of religions and ethnic groups, Jordan is more uniform. Syria claims some of the oldest cities in the world. True, Jordan has numerous ancient cities and archeological sites but the nation itself is the design of colonial powers. In short, Damascus is a city of unbroken history of thousands of years. The importance of Amman was designed by men whose life span overlaps mine.

The Hejaz Railway was an important focal point in the Great Arab Revolt. This uprising challenged the authority of the Ottoman Empire and with its collapse the map of the Middle East changed. An eastern empire was replaced by western hegemony and ultimately independence. The search for Arab autonomy continues today along the tracks of history and culture.

(Lytton Musselman received a Fulbright award for 1997-98 to lecture at the University of Jordan and conduct research. He taught three courses in the biological sciences department at the university, the largest university in the country, and carried out research on plants of the Bible, ferns and parasitic plants. Musselman also lectured at universities in Syria.)