A day at the Dead Sea
Sunday was yet another excursion day for our large and lively group. Seriously, I wonder how it is us journalism students are ever going to get any reporting, writing and blogging done with all these damned day trips.
Not that I’m complaining too much. Sunday was a chance to see some very unique places, special to one or all three of the Abrahamic faiths.
Strangely, I’ve always been drawn to religious spots, despite having no particular allegiance or belief in any of them. Maybe it is something about the weight of history, the fact that people have occupied a space so long and imbued in it sacredness that gives it meaning for a nonbeliever like myself.
St. George’s Basilica in Madaba
Our first stop was Madaba, an ancient city not far from the Dead Sea. The town is known for it’s numerous mosaics, the most famous being the Madaba Map at the Basilica of Saint George. On the church floor is a 6th century mosaic of the Biblical Middle East. It’s also one of the oldest maps of the Holy Land, depicting among other things Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean.
The Madaba Map. The dead sea is the oblong shape on the upper right. Jerusalem is dead center.
Before we shipped off for our next destination, we meandered through Madaba’s tapering streets and poked our heads into its quant shops. At one, I finally pulled the trigger on a keffiyeh too! Went with red and white. Jordan represent!
Next stop: Mount Nebo. Supposedly, this is the spot where Moses first looked out onto the Holy Land. It’s also said the Prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark of the Covenant in a cave somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to go Indiana Jones-ing for it. Next time I guess.
I’ve always been a sucker for a hilltop view, so I was stoked to take in this holiest of vistas. I jumped off the ‘daffodil monster’ and made my way up the pine-lined ramp towards the land of milk and honey. About halfway up though, I stopped. Suddenly I wasn’t in such a hurry. It took me a couple seconds and then I noticed it: fresh(er) air, no filthy car exhaust fumes, fumes ubiquitous through Amman, freakin’ pine! For a second, I closed my eyes and swore I was back in Camp Sherman again, riding by sexy road bike through it’s Ponderosa Pine forest. Who knew I’d find home at the top of a biblically significant viewpoint?
There was only so much time to savor the sweet flavor of central Oregon; I had to beat the rest of the Northeastern crazies up to the top and gaze out on the Holy Land. I wondered if Moses must have done the same, telling the rest of the Israelites to sit tight while he scoped out the scene at the summit of Nebo in shalom. Just him, his land and his God.
Up the hill, a dash to the right and I was looking out on quite a sight: striking rolling hills of gold, dotted with olive trees, dirt roads snaking their way down to the valley floor. It would have been a scene familiar of a Tuscan summer. It was a couple minutes before someone told me what I was looking was in fact Jordan and that Israel/Palestine and the Dead Sea was further up the path.
Whoops.
So I joined the crowd at the real viewpoint.
“Meh” was my first thought. Maybe it was the overcast day or the more striking view looking back to Amman, but it was all a bit underwhelming. I’ll take that landscape looking back towards Urdunn.
After our bus careened down a road with enough switchbacks to make even Andy Schleck sweat, we arrived at the Dead Sea AKA the lowest freakin’ spot on earth. With each switchback our canary behemoth banked, my ears popped a little from the pressure.
To say the Dead Sea is unlike any other body of water is a bit of an understatement. With eight times the salinity of the ocean, it’d be hard to sink even with an anvil strapped to your feet. The consistency makes it feel like you are rubbing oil between your fingers. If a drop of Dead Sea water happens to fall in your eye, it feels like acid boring into your skull. All this makes it sound terrible, but it’s really quite amazing. That first moment when you fall backward and the water gently cradles you at the surface is pretty amazing. Plus, rolling onto your stomach, punching a fist forward and doing your best Superman impression is pretty awesome too.
And apparently the mud there is miracle stuff for your skin. Check out some pictures:
Muddy Mad Dogs
It felt so good I did cartwheels:
It was a great day. As we headed back to the seemingly endless hills of Amman, the sun died behind the barren hills of the Holy Land. With Bon Iver and St. Vincent playing through my headphones, it was a pretty perfect coda to the day.
Good Times Bad(ia) Times
Saturday was the end of a little three-day stint in the Badia with our Bedouin family, the Abu Yassers.
Cheesin’ in the Badia
Arriving on Thursday, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I could’ve been living in a nice, but rural home; I could’ve been squatting in a tent. In the end, I settled for something in the middle: a simple box of a house with two sleeping rooms (one for boys, the other for girls), a kitchen, an expansive lounge and a hallway that served as the TV/dining/play/main living room.
The layout seemed like it would be tight quarters for a family of nine children — not to mention the grandchildren, friends and random Bedouin kids that filtered in and out of the house during our stay — but somehow the rooms felt like the perfect size.
Bedouins live in almost vacant houses. Save for some small, portable mattresses lining the walls, a handful of blankets and a TV, there’s a lot of available space, so even when our hallway was packed with the whole family and a few guests too, the place still felt more than half empty.
Thankfully, we were introduced to this gargantuan family slowly. When our big, garish bus rolled up outside a small olive grove, Anthony and I were greeted first by Mahmoud. At 17, he is the youngest boy in the family and undoubtedly the shyest.
Mahmoud
After Mahmoud led us through the family’s little orchard and into the giant salon, we met Taseer, 25. An elegant looking guy who carries himself with an air of indifference, Taseer teaches biology at a madrassa (school) nearby.
Over Coca-Cola, we talked about the finer points of life, especially the burning question every Jordanian has an opinion on… No not the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but Barcelona or Real Madrid?
Climbing the nearby Jabal (hill)
Soon we were welcomed into the house in earnest with our first meal. More than even the communal people of Amman, Bedouins are all about collectivity. This becomes apparent when it’s time to chow down. Hind — the wife of the family’s oldest son, Yasser — brought out a massive tray of rice with pine nuts and various bowls of tomato and potato/lentil dips. No individual cups; water or sheep’s milk was poured into a single cup and passed around. There were no individual plates either. Instead, we were all handed spoons, thrown a handkerchief-sized piece of Bedouin pita bread and proceeded to “dip and dodge.” I watched our family of pros at work before jumping in myself. Didn’t want to look too much like an amateur. Once we’d had our fill, the remaining pita bread was thrown back in the sack for consumption at a later time.
Super cool rock sculpture we made. Home is the second nearest white building.
The only things seemingly not shared with everyone were tea and cigarettes, neither of which you could turn down either.
Not long after, our parents arrived. Salah, or Abu Yasser (father of Yasser, the eldest son), is a former police officer who now spends his days in prayer, watching nothing but Jordanian government TV and tending to his flock (sheep, goats and a crap-load of offspring). Umm Yasser is a doting mother and was fascinated by my pictures of home and family back in Oregon. They were very nice, but Anthony and I soon learned that interacting with the kids, usually the youngest ones, was the most fun.
Abu Yasser with his flock
I tossed a marble back and forth with a 3-year-old girl (I still have no idea who she was, maybe a child of Yasser’s). As she moved up the stairs, she laughed hysterically when I was unable to throw the gull (marble) back to her.
Iftikar, 15, was their oldest daughter and so much of the housekeeping duties fell to her. She made our meals, served our tea and cleaned up too. She was also a sweet girl with a crush on Christiano Ronaldo and a dream of going to Turkey.
Me-essa, Salah’s youngest at 12, wore a bright pink sweatsuit and thought the number one thing I should do was take pictures of their sheep and goats. She was also a total ham, dramatically spoofing the girl singing “I Will Always Love You” on Arab’s Got Talent and miming an affected concert pianist when I placed my iPhone on the floor in front of her and played Chopin’s “Nocturne #20, poth. C#-.”
Me-essa looking very serious. She was anything but.
Then there was Hamed, a little guy around five who just showed up on Friday and never left. Again, I’m not sure who he belonged to, but the family didn’t seem to mind him hanging around. For hours, he just stared at Anthony and I, speaking constantly in Arabic, none of which we understood. In the end, we figured wrestling was the best communication.
Anthony, Hamed and Abu Yasser.
Hamed and I. He fought, I tickled, we made peace and then I quickly broke it.
In a lot of ways it was a truly singular experience, but lose the details and it’s not all different from what I’d imagine farm life in middle America was like a couple decades ago: big family, austere home, religion and work that sustains their way of life. The simple life, but these weren’t simple people.
Me, Umm Yasser, Hamed (looking very upset about something), Abu Yasser and Me-essa.
Ahmed
Our host brother (the fourth oldest in a family of 9 children) hardly speaks english, but it’s pretty apparent he’s a hopeless romantic.
Ahmed… Suave
As Anthony and I prepared for bed after our first day in the Badia — the region in the Mafraq Governorate of North Jordan composed of Bedouin families — Ahmed, 19, took a break from studying to talk with us. He in scant english, us in scant-er arabic.
After telling us how he’d done on his exams so far — great in one, 95 percent; not so good in another, 64 percent — he professed his love for Ismail.
“She, I, friends, two years,” he said. “Ahmed love Ismail two years.”
The problem is that Ismail got married a couple months ago… and not to our studious, lovesick host brother.
“Future, enta (you) find another girl, awya (yes)? Inshallah (God willing)?” I asked.
“Inshallah,” conceded Ahmed. Then he grabbed his pen again and scratched out some information on his college-ruled piece of paper.
“Inshallah,” he reaffirmed.
“But Ahmed love Ismail past, now, future,” he said, mouthing the words as he scribbled.
Then today, I sat reading in the Abu Yasser family’s expansive greeting/living room while Ahmed continued his studies (he’s in his second year at the University of Mafrak majoring in geology). He looked up from his thick work packet at Anthony tapping on his laptop.
“Anthony… Musica Titanic?”
After awhile we guessed he wanted to hear Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from James Cameron’s tearjerker, Titanic. So Ant pulled up youtube, looked it up and hit play.
Saccharine for Matt and Anthony (or Mahmoud and Ahmed2, as our Bedouin family refers to us), mellifluous to Ahmed.
As Celine’s voice filled our little corner, Ahmed closed his eyes, tilted his head back to rest against the wall and cracked a smile.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
He’s a lover not a fighter ladies.
Remember to enjoy the little things
The other day, Melissa and I realized that we needed to talk to someone at the United Nations Refugee Agency. We are working on a story about the influx of refugees from Syria, and after doing a bit of reading, we saw that a certain UN agency representative was quoted several times in various news articles, including one in the New York Times.
After jamming in my “I * Jordan” USB internet drive (which, by the way, is super bad ass looking and apparently the only consistently reliable source to the web in this country), I found that the UN Refugee Agency’s offices are based right here in Amman.
The net, even when you’re riding in the back of an Amman taxi-cum-rally-car zipping through traffic
So, destination scribbled in Arabic on a spare piece of notebook paper, we quit SIT and jumped in a cab for the UN offices.
Contacts there? Zero.
Press credentials? Not a one.
Plan for what we were going to do once we got there? Sh’yeeaa and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
Nonetheless, we were determined. So when our cabbie rolled up to an unassuming (save for the desperate-looking people lingering outside) four-story building in a nice, newly-developed part of town, we approached the first line of security with an air of confidence.
“Yes? Can I help you?” said a diminutive African man in a UN security outfit.
“Hi, yea so we uhhh….” I started
“..Have a meeting with … Andrew…. Andrew….,” continued Melissa.
“Andrew Harper?” asked the pocket-patrolman.
“Yesss. Andrew Harper!” we both said.
What follows is a guaranteed plan (warning: not guaranteed) to get to your source at the UN:
1. Once the first guard believes you have a meeting, he will then inform the next guard, the one at the first door, to unlock it and let you pass.
2. Be sure to bypass the ID station, where you are asked to show some sort of media credential. Instead, just avoid this temporary trailer by going to the right and walking through the front door.
3. Inform security outside the elevator you have a meeting with your source. He will then tell you which floor his office is on.
4. When the elevator doors clatter open at your floor (ours was the third), greet the secretary, let her know you do not, in fact, have a meeting with your person (in our case, Mr. Harper), but that you’d like to set one up.
5. Fast forward to the next day. Now that you actually have a meeting, follow the real rules. Have turkish coffee at the UN’s rooftop cafe with your interview subject. Get to work.
A journalist’s breakfast
Macbook Pro, Zain USB internet drive, a temperate Amman morning and cigarettes and coffee.
Keep cool
Concentrate
And work together
Sorry this post is so long
I’ve truly arrived in the Middle East.
I’ve said this in passing conversations many times, and each time I do, a new experience seems to come along and smack me upside the head, as if to say, “Boy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
……………………
Friday morning, after an absolutely zeki (delicious) traditional Arab breakfast of Turkish coffee, hummus, falafel, pickeled vegetables, and pita warmed by the stovetop, Anthony and I dashed down our side street and hailed a cab on the main road towards the city center.
Destination: Al Hussein Masjid, Amman’s oldest mosque.
On Fridays around noon, the mosque is the epicenter for the city’s bustling markets, midday prayer (known as jumu’ah) and, most important to us, ground zero for anti-government rallies. Melissa was covering the story. I would be tasked with shooting photos.
I was excited. I was also nervous as hell. Apparently the previous Friday saw a heated and sizable protest lead by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now, Jordan is Jordan — the most stable country in the region — but Jordan is also the Middle East, and I think it would have been foolish to head to the masjid with a false sense of safety.
The atmosphere ahead of noon prayer seemed relaxed though: vendors shouted the price of goods, kids handled birds and men performed wudu in preparation for prayer.
But a hint of tension was definitely in the air…to me at least. Jordanian police were bussed in and filed into the streets. Their red and black caps peeked out among the bustling crowd that shuffled along dirty sidewalks. Talal, a student volunteer at SIT helping with the story, pointed to a group of plainclothes men in sunglasses lingering under a store awning facing the Mosque.
“You see those men? They are Jordanian secret police. Take their picture, but do not let them see you,” he adivsed me.
Across the street, the square outside the mosque was hemmed in by pro-governement placards. “A Nation will not go on it’s knees if the leaders are lions,” proclaimed one.
But then the noon prayer commenced, and nearly all the activity I mentioned before stopped. Muslim men — kneeling on makeshift rugs of cardboard — spilled out of the mosque into the square and the street beyond. Police cordoned off the thoroughfare 50 yards in either direction and the available pavement was soon occupied by a man or boy laterally queuing up to pray.
Perched on a baluster, I was totally blown away by the scene. Pictures or videos of Muslims in prayer have always amazed me, but to witness it in person and see the sheer numbers is another thing entirely. Perhaps three thousand to four thousand males stood shoulder to shoulder taking part in the jumu’ah.
Transcendent.
After prayer wrapped up, people stood, stacked their cardboard carpets back onto carts and lingered outside the mosque.
It looked for a few minutes as if there would not be a protest today after all.
Then off to the right, a crowd quickly converged around a boisterous group of four or five men shouting in an impassioned call and respond.
“You thieves!” some shouted.
“Where is our money?!” Others answered.
Talal found me and told me to head towards the shouting, so I slung the camera over my shoulder and darted through the crowd. Following the wake of a photojournalist, I brushed past onlookers, inching closer to the source of commotion, outstretched hands holding cell phones and point-and-shoots gave way to journalists in Al-Jezeera vests, grasping expensive DSLRs and voice recorders.
As the protester’s calls against government corruption grew louder, a speaker on the other side of the police barricade blasted discordant music in an effort to drown out the protestations of the dissidents. I held the camera up above my head and wildly snapped photos, having no idea what was happening or what I was capturing. Phantom hands tossed mini flyers into the air. Suddenly, a scuffle broke out to my right and the crowd swayed towards the action. Talal — camera in hand — materialized between two protestors, grabbed the Oakley sunglasses out of my front pocket and disappeared as quickly as had came.
As the cops dragged away a man whose face had been bloodied from the short tussle, a flatbed of government supporters behind the human barricade of police backed up towards the protesters, waving Jordanian flags and blasting a song championing King Abdullah II.
Strangely, amid all the chaos — the two groups, the police, the crowd and the din of all those sounds coalescing into a barely decipherable human static — I thought to myself, “This is it. This is real.”
I should have felt uncomfortable. Maybe I should have been a bit scared. But in my adrenaline-addled brain, all I thought was, “Fuck, this is fun.” A grin crossed my face for about half a second before snapping back to reality.
Though a too-cool-for-school freelancer would later tell me that the event was small potatoes compared to recent demonstrations, it was one of the rare moments when I felt like what I was doing might have some rare weight outside the confines of my world.
After about 20 or 25 minutes,, the protest was over as quickly as it had began. Like a long finished puzzle waiting to be broken apart, the crowd split into smaller and smaller pieces and the scene returned to normal.
Standing to the side of the road as street traffic began anew, a friendly Jordanian that had been standing on my right struck up a conversation with me.
“You are American?” he asked. I told him I lived in Boston and he lit up. MIT was wonderful he said, mentioning how much he loved the school’s great dome.
We shook hands and introduced ourselves to one another. His name was Abdul* and he was studying to be a veterinarian in Jerusalem. It was a light, friendly conversation. After awhile, I started asking him his thoughts about the protests. He smiled a sardonic smile and shook his head.
“The government is only so many days old,” he said. “No government in the world will get stuff done in a few weeks.”
As we continued to chat, I figured Abdul was as good a person as any to quote for Melissa’s story. Writing on a crinkled, folded up paper — the only piece with me — Abdul gave me his name (spelled it out for me) and even his phone number (“we can talk more about this later if you like,” he said).
Soon Anthony appeared and joined in on what had now become an impromptu interview, supplementing my questions with his own and my note-taking with a recorder. Eventually, I asked Abdul his thoughts about government corruption. Halfway through his answer, he stopped cold and stared for some seconds at a point on Anthony’s right shoulder. Abdul lifted his hand and poked a small pin on Anthony’s backpack strap; it was a badge bearing the water droplet insignia of Al-Jezeera, a gift he’d received from a friend who’d visited their broadcast headquarters.
“This…this…I want you to delete this recording,” said Abdul. “I want you to delete this recrording now.”
“What? Why?” we asked.
“Give me your notes. I don’t want you taking notes,” he said to me.
“What’s happened? Why do you want us to stop recording this?” we asked again.
“Because you tell me you are students, but you are not students. You are Al-Jeezera. Al-Jezeera are cheats and they do not tell the truth. Give me the recorder, I do not believe you have deleted what I said.”
As I desperately, but calmly, tried to reassure Abdul that we were not Al-Jeezera, Anthony fidgeted with his recorder, attempting to remove the track. Abdul snatched the recorder out of his hands and proceeded to delete every interview on it. I tried to calm him down, asking him what his issues were with the Mideast television company – of which we were not affiliated.
He told me they blew things out of proportion, they lie, and their deceptions cause even more trouble because they are broadcast across the region. I told him again and again I was sorry we had made him upset. He told me, “it’s okay, don’t be sorry. Just be a man.”
“Do you have your residency card? Show me your residency cards!” he demanded. We didn’t have any. “Come with me, we are going to the police.”
We again told him again we were just student reporters living in Amman taking courses about the region and writing stories, but our lack of residency cards had convinced him otherwise.
“This is my country. This is my country! What happens here affects my people. You Americans, if something goes wrong, you just go to your embassy and fly to safety, but this is my country!”
With that he turned on his heel and left, leaving us standing at the mosque square, totally shamed.
We weren’t who he thought we were, but his last few words made me feel like an asshole anyways.
We came here to report, and many of us have chosen to pursue journalism because we enjoy the interactions it affords. But a lot of people must think we look at them as if we’re visitors to the zoo come to see the zebras in their cages.
The whole experience seemed like an introduction to a more volatile side of the Middle East. Of Jordan. Of the parts of Amman outside the safe confines and rank commercialism of Rainbow Street and Abdoun Circle.
……………………
I’ve truly arrived in the Middle East.
So, let me rephrase: maybe you don’t ever arrive here, maybe you just inch closer to a better picture of this place. You snap on a wider lens and crank the aperture to its narrowest opening, ensuring everything in the frame is focused…. sorry, my camera has been attached to my hand lately.
*While Abdul initially told me it was fine if I quote him, I’ve decided to change his name.
Too much Salt will leave you thirsty
Saturday we went to Salt, a town about an hours drive northwest from Amman. Situated among three craggy hills, it has been a crossroads of sorts since the time of Alexander the Great. It was a long, but exceptionally fun day.
It was also my first trip outside of Amman and while cities have many things going for them (diversity, culture, the arts…people), they often stand apart from the more rural communities that surround them. And so it was with Salt. It was a little more reserved; more thobes and hijabs could be found amongst it’s narrow streets that wound their way up into the beautiful hillsides. But like Amman, it was full of generous and gregarious people.
Could I write more about it? For sure, but I’m saving the ol’ writing chops for the next post. In the mean time, chiggity check out some pictures I took from the day in Salt:
En route, we were treated to breakfast on the side of the road.
Purty ain’t it?
Then we headed to the Salt Museum, where you could read all about the conquering civilizations that had put their stamp on the city (Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman to name a few). The view from the roof wasn’t bad either.
In a shady plaza at the confluence of two roads and market streets, local men played mancala. Among our large (and sometimes boisterous) group, our presence felt imposing, but they didn’t seem to mind.
Under the intense sun, we hoofed it uphill.
U mad (sic?) bro?
I made some new friends on the way…
Habibi
Then somehow our rowdy group squeezed into Al Khader Church, a tiny 17th building built after St. George appeared to a traveler taking shelter in a cave and told him to build a church on the ground. I would have liked a bit of solitude and tranquility out of this lovely place. I didn’t get it.
Until I return, I guess this photo will serve as a stand-in
After I met some more local kids and bonded with them over WWE, a bedouin family-run restaurant made us lunch. After the copious amounts of food had settled a bit, some of us dressed in traditional wedding garb and treated the rest of us to a dance.
After that, we visited Jordan’s first school.
I think students might be distracted by the view. I would.
Then I put the camera down for a bit as we parked at a little roadside cafe on the outskirts of town, burrowed at the base of two hills. It was all very pretty; you’ll have to take my word for it.
Back onto the bus and we climbed higher still, to the highest point in Salt. At the top lay a pristine mosque and a view looking out towards the Dead Sea and Palestine/Israel. Sam decided it was as good a time as any to get some head shots for ANTM:
Not really. I was sneaky and caught her off guard.
As the sun went down, the wind picked up and we headed into the mosque. There we saw the mammoth tomb of the prophet Jethro (or was it Elijah? someone help me out here!)
And then quenched our thirst with a drink from the mosque’s ancient, miracle well.
With that, we called it a day and headed back home: Amman.
To Photo or Not to Photo?
I love to take photos. And while I’m a total dilettante in the field, I’d like to think I’m fairly good at it too. But constantly trying to find a balance between seeing Amman from behind the lens and can be tiring. I think something is missed from an experience while trying to recorded it. You spend so much time constantly focusing, spinning knobs, adjusting the aperture or shutter speed, composing a shot, that you miss the chance to organically absorb and process the scene playing out in front of you.
That’s not even to mention the ethical issue. You can only shoot so many landscapes before you need to get a human face or two in the lense, but snapping photos of strangers and intimate moments has always made me uncomfortable.
Yesterday afternoon, Sam and I took a walk down the street from our blogging/journaling/reporting base at SIT to take some photos of the gorgeous view of Amman.
جميلة Jamila (Beautiful)
On our way back, we ran into an elderly man pulling weeds in the intense Jordanian heat. Dressed in dirty, tattered pants and a fraying shirt, he looked quite out of place in this bourgeois part of town. We crouched down in from of him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Bakhud sura?” we asked. I take picture?
He looked up with milky eyes and mumbled some words that were beyond the four hours of Arabic lessons we’d had. So I snapped a few photos and I think they turned out well:
I’m still uncomfortable about it though. Should I have given him a few dinar for not slapping the camera away from him? Were my actions okay? What was the right thing to do in this situation?
This was just one forlorn-looking man on the side of the road. I can’t imagine what questions must go through the mind of war photographers.
Nakba
“Do you remember the screaming in the dark? I don’t. The world had already forgotten by that time…”
Janine performs at 64 and still ٦٤ و لسه, a performance raising money for a documentary depicting the lives of people at the Gaza Refugee Camp.
These were some of the lines spoken by Jenine, a Palestinian-Jordanian poet, one of just eight artists who performed at last night’s Nakba remembrance concert at the Rainbow Theater in downtown. Half the entertainers were women poets while the show also featured four male rappers.
It was my first live exposure to Amman’s hip hop scene, a subject I’m reporting on for our journalism class here.
Amer Al Taher raps Tuesday night at the Rainbow Theater in downtown Amman.
The event also forced to me to think about the unending and seemingly unsolvable situation just west of Jordan in Palestine/Israel.
Spoken word poet Aysha AlShamayleh
For Palestinians, Nakba is a sort of anti-holiday, celebrated/mourned the day after Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s independence day. It crystallizes all the displacement, rejection, anger and hope the Palestinian people have felt since some 700,000 of their ancestors were ousted or fled from their homes in 1948. The day’s full name, Yawm an-Nakba, means “the day of the catastrophe.”
While a few of the spoken word artists performed in english, the majority expressed themselves in Arabic. And while I failed to understand a single syllable, you’d have to be blind to miss their grief. While I shuffled around the theater snapping photos and trying my best not to trip into the laps of concert-goers, I tried to capture those emotions.
Yet among that company and the people in attendance, I had trouble understanding those strong feelings. While all of the performers were displaced Palestinians or the descendants of them, they also struck me as some of the most privileged Jordanians I’ve encountered during my short time in Amman. They wore clean, fashionable clothes, trendy even by American standards. Organizers thumbed off text messages on iphones. An audience member took pictures and shot video with an ipad. None of the performers could have been over the age of 30. How many had lived in Jordan their whole lives? How many actually knew their homes in Palestine?
I’ve mentioned at least a couple times the sharp and immediate contrast of Ammani citizens. At our base in West Amman, we are surrounded by sandstone compounds, sparkling new Range Rovers and BMWs parked in their driveways. But pay a taxi driver to take you 2 or 3 dinars (about 3 or 4 dollars) towards East Amman or Sport City (where my host family lives) and you see a different kind of life. On the surface, many of the artists and organizers seem to have it all.
Abdallah Taher was the night’s DJ
I’m not trying to knock the Palestinian cause. In fact, I feel just the opposite about it. I just have trouble wrapping my head around how this grief and despondence transfer to younger generations, to people who haven’t actually lived in the places they call home.
How do some Palestinians hold on so vigorously to these places while many of us Americans shed our heritage and native lands like so much dead skin?
Amman rapper El Far3i in action
I don’t have an answer, but I’m trying to understand.
First Impressions
Take a glance at our host father, Muhammad, and I doubt your first guess would be that he’s a semi-retired Ammani man. As Anthony and I filtered into the living room at the School of International Training near Abdoun Circle, squeezing past swarms of Northeastern students joining their Jordanian families, our host father for the next month stood right in the thick of it, wearing what has already become a familiar grin across his wrinkled face.
While other host parents were dressed in outfits familiar throughout Amman — the airy slacks and collared shirts of business men, the demure, but fashionable hijabs of middle-upper class Muslim women — Muhammad stuck out like a sore thumb: Levi’s blue jeans, plaid western button-up and navy baseball cap. More American ranch-hand than Arab family man.
It’s said that you should never judge a book by its cover, but I think there are some people whose benevolence is worn on their face as clearly as a bright, neon light. Even before shaking hands and exchanging marhabas (hellos) with Muhammad, I could tell I was going to like our new host father.
Matt Kauffman in Jordan 