Salaam Alaykum

The world’s tallest free-standing flagpole flies the Jordanian flag, over Amman’s frothy greyed limestone blocks and scattered ruins, including the Roman amphitheater, where 7 Western tourists were shot in 2007. Wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t think Jordan is any more like that than the US; in fact, it’s known to be pretty safe, all things considered. It’s just doesn’t seem like it’s very comfortable, unless you live in one of the “palaces” by the American Embassy, perhaps, or in a 5-star hotel, or are very, very wealthy.

Every building, every shop, it seems, has large photos of King Abdullah and Queen Raina, and even my 3-day driver Samy had a photo on his cell phone, of when he met the Queen, when she stopped for a bottle of water at a neighborhood shop. The colors of Jordan are brilliant and proudly raised throughout the Hashemite Kingdom.

Shukrun. (thank you). I never learned how to say please, or excuse me (although I asked), I learned a lot of other things. I have to admit, I was disappointed in my experience; I wanted to really love it in Jordan. But I didn’t. My nephew tells me that some of the packages I sent have already arrived, though, so I’m at least comforted by knowing that DHL works. We’ll see if everything is in them, that I got, when I get back. Always a risk. Although probably moreso sending things into Jordan, rather than sending stuff out.

There is tremendous history in Jordan, and tremendous beauty. It’s difficult to find people who will share that with you, not so much because of the language barrier, because you will find people who speak good English almost everywhere in Jordan, if you look. Rather, I think, it’s because they just don’t trust the West very much, and probably rightfully so. I have some other thoughts on this too, but I’m not ready to share them, for primetime. I’m just never going back to Amman, anyway — the Dead Sea, on the other hand, might be good, whenever.

Sadly, though, for a Western non-Arabic speaking woman, this strange vibe makes things very, very difficult. I can’t begin to imagine how overwhelmingly difficult life must be for girls and women living and growing old fast, in Jordan. It’s very appropriate for me to be writing this on the 4th of July, because I have never been more proud and felt more fortunate to have born in a country that cultivates freedom and independence, regardless of gender or national origin. We don’t always get it right; but as Americans, in America, we have a good track record of encouraging merit and talent and hope; and at the least, trying to shine a light on evil or on as many sides of the story as we can. Periodically, we really screw up; but at least we try to recognize and cherish the individual; many places just don’t. In Jordan, which is much more modern and Western in its orientation than many other countries in the Middle East, it’s still an uphill, rocky climb over cultural barriers to recognizing the full potential of the “other” 1/2 of the population, but some, at least, are definitely trying.

My airport taxi driver reminded me of some of the dads I knew when I was growing up in Rhode Island — he swore at least 3 or 4 times, when in Amman traffic, at the “women drivers”…It’s those little comments that can tell you so much. In a country of 4 or 5 million people, you also get a sense of that culture pretty quickly — it’s like a small to mid-sized US state, when you think about it.

I’m not going to digress into political this-n-that, or address what might be right or wrong in Jordan; I don’t know the details of the 500,000+ Iraqui refugees, including the ones that own the big 5-star hotels, or in what country nearby that’s not their own that they may be better served; I don’t know the facts of why and how Amman is built on top of itself the way it is; I don’t know anything, really, about the culture. I just know what I saw; and didn’t see. Men typically don’t talk to women; and there are all kinds of special unspoken cultural rules that I wasn’t privy to. I do know that I was treated differently, both better and worse, as an outsider; some people felt they could touch me, for instance, by putting their arm on my shoulder, or talk to me — and some of that was because I was Western, so they didn’t respect me as much as they respected a Jordanian woman who they would never touch, or speak to first. There were several times when teenage boys giggled and pointed when they saw me, because I had blue eyes and blondish hair, which wasn’t covered; some at Karak actually asked me to be in a picture with them, not because they were just being goofy (I’ve done that before, having random people in photos because it’s hilarious) but rather, because I was from the West, and looked weird. (As I mentioned earlier, with my poor packing choices, I’m sure I was looking only that much weirder. Note to self: think fashion and fit first, as well as practicality, next international trip.) I think I got taken a few times, when buying souvenirs, and spent more than I should have; I think I also was better respected, once or twice, because I was Western, than I would have if I had been a woman from Jordan.

This is a true Bedouin, with his sheep, who Samy agreed to ask for a picture for me. When I said — ask him if we can take a picture together, he started laughing, and told Samy…”Don’t tell my wife!!” I’d include the pic of the two of us together, but as I mentioned earlier, Samy, aka Sufeiman’s forte is not as a portrait photographer.

Petra renders me speechless. If this is what a civilization could accomplish 2000 years ago, what kind of beauty and marvels of engineering are we capable of today, that might last through the centuries? The Nabateans were traders; makes me wonder how long we traders might last, and what we’ll leave behind.

One Jordanian said to me – “Rumsfeld, Cheney, just businessmen. Bush, ah, I won’t say. Kissinger was a statesman!” There’s a difference, and, quite honestly, I had forgotten. The Jordanians have longer memories as a nation, and as a group of tribes and peoples, than we do. And they had one of the world’s great statesmen, King Hussein, as their leader, for a long time.

Here’s Hamzeh, the modern Bedu, on his cell phone outside Lawrence’s cave (the one Lawrence used to hide from the Ottomans). Hamzeh had seven kids. Everybody appears to have big families in Jordan — my taxi drivers (apart from Samy) had 12 and 13, respectively. Sultan was one of 5. But when I asked the cab drivers when their daughters got married, they said “18″ right away; and then said, but sometimes 17, or 16, or even 15. I didn’t see many women on the streets unless they were doing shopping; and apart from one woman who was acting as a translator, all the women in the Intercontinental, with the exception of one at guest relations and one in a jewelry shop, were either escorts, dressed like Sith, or western. Guess they’re all too busy having kids.

Jordan has two vast expanses that must be experienced to remove them from the realm of imagination and legend, and into an understanding of what we, as humans are about. No matter what man does, whether it’s find water from a rock, carve a graceful city out of stone, create fortresses lasting for thousands of years, or create beautiful objects, perform remarkable feats of engineering, and find ways to trade and communicate with each other and learn from each other to improve all our lots, man’s got nothin’ on the complexity and magnificence of our amazing earth. And Jordan’s got key places where you can bear witness to that, not just history, nor religion — but nature, in her full, strange, and wondrous glory.

~ by mimi on July 4, 2008.