After the discontinuation of visitors and antiques ... Karak Castle is alone and Petra complains about the absence

Ayman Fadilat - Karak Castle and Petra

The noise of tourists, the feet of the visitors, and the voices of tourist guides were absent from Karak Castle, after 120,000 visitors visited it last year. The Corona scandal closed airports and land and seaports to visitors.

Shops, restaurants, and those specializing in oriental and archaeological artifacts surrounding Karak Castle have also closed their doors waiting for tourists, and the owners' livelihoods have been blown away by the wind.

The Karak Castle sits on a fortified hill with an area of ​​25 thousand square meters, and its construction dates back to the Moabites in 860 B.C. 

Arbaeen predominantly atrophy depends in his daily life on a store selling antiques, oriental embroidery, statues and swimming pools, speaks four foreign languages, and communicates with European and Russian tourists with ease.

Atrophy - who started looking for a new job - tells Al Jazeera Net that the commercial traffic in its shop has been stalled for two months, and "the global spread of the virus does not bode well, and I expect that tourists will not return to Karak Castle during this year, which compels us to search for another job." 

The Jordanian Ministry of Tourism announced a contingency plan to face the Corona crisis by allocating ten million dinars (14 million dollars) to maintain tourist professions and stimulate domestic tourism. 

Religious shrines Religious
shrines in the city of Karak have long been closed, as the mosque that houses the tombs of the companions Zaid bin Haritha, Ja`far ibn Abi Talib and Abdullah bin Rawahah - who were martyred in the Mu'tah battle - is closed to visitors, and the famous battlefield is empty of only children playing with balls.

The valleys surrounding the Karak Castle were also a place of pilgrimage for adventure tourism enthusiasts, especially Wadi Ibn Hammad, as its clear waters and majestic mountains tempt adventure enthusiasts to go through the experience, all the way to the shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest spot in the world. 

Petra suffers
and is south. The Nabatean city of Petra is not better off than its neighbor Karak Castle, as tourists are absent, horses in its shelters, electric cars and carriages for tourists across the park are parked, and the phones of its forty hotels no longer ring to ask for reservations or inquire about residence prices in them.

Hundreds of shops and restaurants closed, and tourist activities stopped, climbers no longer climbed their mountains, and archaeologists no longer search their sands.

Fifty Saad Al Hilalat annihilated his youth by working as a tourist guide in his pink city, known by Shubra Shubra, he left no cave or cave except for it and entered it, and when he got old, he opened a shop for oriental artifacts and embroidery, which was a destination for visitors during the past years, but Corona changed the face of the world.

Al Hilalat says to Al Jazeera Net that the tourism sector and its accompanying tourism activities have stalled, adding that the tourist season for the pink city this year stopped since the middle of last month, fearing that this situation will continue for the next year.

He continues that his shop has been closed since last month, and after his goods covered the dust, he decided to open it for cleaning. It includes goods estimated at sixty thousand dinars (86 thousand dollars), and five workers who are looking for a new job work in it.

Last year, the city of Petra witnessed a huge celebration with a visit of one million visitors, and it culminated in 2007 as one of the seven "new" wonders of the world, after it was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. 

For his part, a maintenance plan . The head of the Petra Region Authority, Suleiman Al-Farajat, told Al-Jazeera Net that the tourism sector and the accompanying economic sectors are among the largest sectors affected by the Corona pandemic. On this day last year, Petra was teeming with four thousand tourists daily.

He continued, "We have developed a plan to stimulate domestic tourism after the Kingdom recovers from this virus, and we are currently working on the maintenance and restoration of archaeological areas, and a rediscovery of a number of archaeological areas in the city."

And work in Petra about eight thousand employees from the local community in the city of Petra and the areas near it, support about thirty thousand, and they have lost their jobs pending salvation from this great concern. 

The governorates of the south of the Kingdom witnessed Karak, Tafila, Ma'an and Aqaba to ease curfews, which moved stagnant commercial markets a month ago, but tourism activities are still stalled.