Moving mountain

Amid the craggy wastes of Hashemite Jordan, wiry, Nevada-born Engineer John Monroe looks not much bigger than a pine sapling, but last week the local Bedouins were calling him "the Man Mountain." And why not? For if Allah, in his wisdom, sees fit to move a mountain, and a little man all alone pushes it back again, is not that man as good as the mountain?

The mountain that John Monroe put in its place was once an orderly peak in Wadi Shaib. Last month, local police patrolling the road to Jerusalem reported that it was walking away. Government officials at Amman at first viewed the report—and the cops—with suspicion. Then they went to have a look. Sure enough, there was a 40,000-square-meter chunk of mountain moving majestically down the valley in a slow-motion landslide. By nature's whimsy, fig trees that had been on one side of the road were now on the other, and bean fields had moved intact to new locations.

Local justice ordered the new landlords to pay the old a fair price for the bean fields, but the question of what to do about a displaced quarter-mile of vital state highway still remained. Like a link of pontoon bridge that has drifted downstream, one stretch of the highway lay useless at the valley's bottom, and the vagrant mountain sat camel-like astride the rest. Jordan's ministers estimated that it would cost $400,000 and 40,000 man-days of labor to push the mountain aside, and Jordan's budget could never stand it. Then up stepped John Monroe, who had come to Jordan on a Point Four project to teach the Bedouins how to use bulldozers and other dirt-moving machinery to clear old Roman cisterns. With one power shovel, said John, he could cut a new road in two weeks.

Two weeks ago, Monroe and his snorting machine wer>, to work. Sightseers jammed the roadside like county fair crowds. Enterprising merchants set up soda-pop stands and rented chairs to the sidewalk superintendents. King Talal himself, 43-year-old successor to the late King Abdullah, heard of the excitement, dropped down to watch, and was taken for a ride. Next day, bursting with pride, he insisted that Syria's visiting bosses Shishekly and Selo, who have so far turned a cold shoulder to Point Four aid, come and have a look. Ten days later, Monroe had pushed the mountain far enough aside for cars to get through. By last week's end the highway was almost as good as new, and Man Mountain Monroe was back teaching the Bedouins how to clear cisterns and run bulldozers.

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