Walking into Karak we follow Road 35, the historic King’s Highway. We are rushed out of a long-distance bus at an intersection, lugging ourselves onto a side-curb to get organized, deciding that another 15 kilometers on foot is doable before sunset.As the highway lazily curves its way through the increasingly busy human settlements, we pass an auto-ville: garage after garage after garage. The tarmac is hot and the road clogged. Smells of gasoline and coffee fill the air. Car mechanics sit on plastic chairs in front of their shops. All the men’s hands that are raised to us in a friendly wave are grease-stained. Kittens sleep curled up in the insides of tires.

For centuries Karak castle has stood over the city, seven stories tall. Its straight walls provided a look-out for days over the grassy lands below its cliff. It housed at least a thousand Frankish soldiers - at which point it took Saladeen eight months to lay siege to it, finally forcing those troops out. The fortification is known as one of the largest Crusader castles in the Levant. The ancient structure has been refurbished and repurposed numerous times. Now, the city is finally outgrowing it and the walls that used to surround it. Concrete flats in blocks of pastel, dirtied yellows and rotting window sills have spilled over the hillsides.

Our hotel has carved out a prime spot for itself, across the city’s new ring road in the valley. The place doubles as a wedding location since the windows on one side provide a romantic vista of the castle. Wedding guests can consume their festive dinners in an air-conditioned subterranean hall. Its mirrored doors are opened to me so I can make my way, navigating between the guided furniture packed in protective plastic sheets, to the laundry room. My socks stick to the residue of a heavy-duty cleaning product that’s been used to scrub the tiled floor.In the backyard it seems as if piles of rubbish have been growing on their own. All the buildings in the Karak outskirts seem to come with a silverfish tail of soda cans and crackling plastics - modern waste streaming out of back doors and being tossed out of car windows.