Rain is Baraka ... Right?

Wadi Musa (Petra), Jordan

From Farewell Tour

Some people go on vacation for adventure, and others for relaxation. By the time we got to Wadi Musa last night, we'd had too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Up early and on the move every day for a week, we were exhausted and starting to crack. Today's rain was unfortunate in that we didn't get to see much of Petra, and especially because we couldn't make it to the Monastery. On the other hand, today's rain was also baraka (a blessing), because it gave us an excuse to have a quiet afternoon in our hotel room, napping and recuperating.

From A Rainy Day In Petra

Farewell Tour of Jordan

King's Highway, Jordan
(Madaba, Macchareus, Mujib, Kerak, Wadi Musa)

From an Ammani evening

As we walked around the Castle Hill in Amman last night, it occurred to me that several of my favorite pictures from Jordan were taken on that hill. This morning, as we were winding our way through southern Madaba and Jabal Bani Hamida, I realized that while I was showing Wade all my favorite places in Jordan, I'm also saying goodbye.

From Farewell Tour

I'm excited about my move to Cairo for a CASA Fellowship. It's a great honor and a fabulous opportunity to immerse myself in Standard Arabic (as much as that's even possible) and learn the Egyptian dialect that I find so challenging. But there are so many things I love about Jordan, so many things I haven't seen (Umm aj-Jammal, Shaumari Reserve, etc.), so many things I haven't done (Petra-Wadi Araba by camel, climb Jabal Rum and the tallest mountain in Jordan, etc.), so many friends I'm going to miss. I've spent 4 years of my life here, and that's no small thing. So if my photos are captioned with nostalgia, well, it's a fair representation of how I'm feeling these days.

From Farewell Tour

Thistle-stop Tour of Jerash

Jerash, Jordan

From Thistle-stop Tour

I've been to Jerash many times, and every time it's somehow different. Wesley saw Jerash from the top, Mom and Dad photographed it from the bottom up, Auntie Viv photographed it 10 times to Sunday.... This time, it was theaters and thistles.

From Thistle-stop Tour

Wade loves theaters. She studied theater management when we were at Goucher College together, and now she's doing a PhD in history, so historical theaters are a dream come true for her. Jerash has two still standing (three if you count the steps of the Temple of Artemis where concerts were sometimes held during the Jerash Festival), so it was the perfect place to take her.

From Thistle-stop Tour

As for me, I've been to Jerash many times, and am pretty familiar with the big attractions. It gives me more freedom to appreciate the details, like the flowers. We only get about 6 weeks of flowers in northern Jordan, so they have to be appreciated while they're out. In fact, it's because of the lack of color in Jordan for most of the year that I particularly love thistles. After everything else has faded to brown, the flowers of the thistle will still be a bright, cheerful purple.

From Thistle-stop Tour

I stalked a lot of lizards and geckos on this visit, too.

Ancient Palaestina

Bet She'an, Israel/Palestine

Originally, the plan was to cross the border into Jordan, and then head for Umm Qais (aka the Decapolis city of Gedara) for the spectacular view from the northwest corner of Jordan. When Michelle mentioned Roman ruins near her kibbutz in Bet She'an, though, Wade and I guessed that it might be another Decapolis city, one that neither of us had seen, so we decided to go there instead. (In fact, a quick trip to Wiki reveals that Bet She'an has a long and illustrious history, being mentioned in conjunction with most of the major periods of the region's history.)

In addition to suffering the consequences of last night's fun, we had an unexpected delay on the way there, being pulled off our bus at a checkpoint to have our luggage scanned and our IDs verified. But we weren't the only ones stopped at that checkpoint on our way to Bet She'an, and we managed to hitch a ride right to the gate of the archaeological park.

From A New Decapolis City

Wade, a theater management major when I knew her back at Goucher College, was thrilled by the beautifully preserved Greco-Roman theater. I was excited about the exposed heating system that would have been under the floor of the West Bathhouse, and by the pomegranate trees, which always remind me of my Peace Corps house. The views from the top of the tel were also quite spectacular.

From A New Decapolis City

Biting My Tongue

Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

From City of 3 Faiths

Midway through Peace Corps Pre-Service Training, we met our counterparts and were supposed to confide in them our greatest fears about the next two years. Mine was a fear of political discussions, especially of regional issues like Iraq and Israel/Palestine, which are such personal issues in this part of the world. This fear was partly because I remembered how frustrating it was to speak to my Jewish friends and classmates at Goucher College about Israel/Palestine; how entrenched and adamant they tended to be about their opinions on the issues. Now, living in a city that is at least 80% Palestinian, most of my friends in Jordan have family in the Occupied Territories, and are equally entrenched and adamant about their own opinions on the same issues. So when I came on this trip, I was firmly resolved not to be sucked into political conversations.

From City of 3 Faiths

I did pretty well for awhile. Plenty of things were said about Palestinians that made me bristle like, "They all want to kill us," or, "They don't know how to take care of their homes," or "I'm afraid to go through the Arab souq." I managed to bite my tongue and just enjoy the beauty of Jerusalem, to take pictures instead of taking offense. I really genuinely liked the people we spent time with, and I certainly didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable in their own city.

From City of 3 Faiths

I do have to admit to being much more moved by the view of the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount than by our excursion to leave a prayer for a friend at the Western Wall, but for aesthetic reasons, not religious or political ones.

From City of 3 Faiths

In the evening, we took some wine up to a beautiful overlook of the city, listening to the sunset adhan from the mosques of Jerusalem. Halfway into my bottle of wine, and most of the way through Michelle's, I lost my resolve. Michelle started to ask me how I could support Palestinian nationalism when it was a complete fiction, and there never has been a people known as the Palestinians. She asked, so I tried to answer, remembering what I'd learned in Prof. Magid's class on Palestinian nationalism at Indiana University. I particularly wanted to talk about Khalil Shikaki's results from polling about the Clinton Accords. But I never managed to finish an answer. (A bottle of wine does not a patient listener make!) Eventually I gave up.

But this is my take-away: There was almost nothing Michelle said that was objectively false. There is very little that my Palestinian friends say that is objectively false. But there is intense propaganda on both sides, which emphasizes some truths and ignores others. To parse just one sample argument from this evening: Yes, Gazans destroyed perfectly good settlers' houses and have not built new houses in their place. This ignores the fact, on one hand, that Israelis will not allow Gazans to import building materials for new houses, claiming that those materials could be used for military purposes. It also ignores the emotional impact of living in the abandoned housing of one's occupier. If the Jews had been liberated from the Warsaw ghetto, would they want to live in the former barracks of their Nazi oppressors? I'm pretty sure they would have torn those barracks down. The tragedy here is that passions are so inflamed on both sides that objectivity and empathy have become almost impossible.

Cuneiform

Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

I've written before about how I hate to travel where I don't know the language. In Hungary and Israel, though, the frustrations are different. In Hungary, the language was incomprehensible, but at least the alphabet was the same, so I could understand the cognates on the signs. Here, I can understand some words when I hear them – left, right, hello, goodbye, six – and more and more as Michelle teaches things to us. But the signs may as well be in cuneiform. I recognize only one letter – "sh" – and the numbers.

"At least I can read the numbers!" I heard one American say in Eilot, having just left Egypt. There must've been a time in Jordan when I felt this way, but it was too long ago to remember!

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Jerusalem -> Tel Aviv -> Nazareth, Israel/Palestine

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

...goldenrod, poppies, Queen Anne's lace, purple hollyhocks, flowering bushes in red, yellow, pink, white, lavender and fuscia, forests of tall imported eucalyptus trees. And then the agriculture, miles of lush, cultivated fields.

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

The driver opened the window and you could just smell the green, the moisture. I'm not unaware of the political implications, how Israelis' stewardship of the land has been used as a controversial and, frankly, poor justification for pushing the Palestinians out and keeping them out. I'm fully aware that the bus drivers on this trip are Arab, and I got quite an earful from last night's Arab cab driver about how the Israelis oppress the Arabs. But as far as pure aesthetics go, this side of the Valley is more to my liking. It's easy to see why the Palestinians want to come back here, and the Israelis want to stay.

Today I saw the mountain of Megiddo where Armageddon's final battle will rage, the hill where Jesus was revealed to his Disciples as the Messiah, and Nazareth, home town of Mary and Joseph, to which young Jesus returned after his family's exile in Egypt.

It was fascinating to listen to the tour guide talk about Israeli history. I've been reading for the last week about national narratives, in Mona Baker's Interpretation and Conflict, and Howard Zinn's famous People's History of the United States. They both talk about how we choose the narratives we tell ourselves about our nation, and how the narratives we've chosen change how we act as individuals and societies. The tour guide's narrative told so much about Israel. He talked about the Jews tiring of "the filth of Yaffa" and building Tel Aviv, meaning "archaeological mound of renewal." He described the brave settlers, buying the land no one wanted and turning it into an agricultural paradise. Tales of nameless national heroes defying the odds to build a majestic nation. Only the obliquest references to the people who preceded those settlers, and when they were mentioned, they were "the Ottomans," a nation that no longer exists either geographically or ideologically. I kept wondering what the driver would think if he could understand English. What Heba and my many other Palestinian friends would say.

My Story of Nazareth
My stay in Nazareth is best described in the captioned photos of my online album.

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

It was also really nice to spend the afternoon and evening with Andy Lehto. The last two times I saw him, he was in the most intense moments of getting married, so we didn't really get to catch up. This time, we had hours and hours to share our stories of being abroad, the triumphs and tribulations that are only fully understood by others who are straddling the same two worlds we are.

...Just Different

Eilot -> Dead Sea -> Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

I’ve heard so much about the stark differences between Israel and the Arab world, so of course it’s the first thing I looked for as I came across the border.

You can see it in the city of Eilot: cleaner, neater, and more central European in architecture. In the people, for sure! I haven’t seen so many mullets outside of Lower Chanceford Township, nor so many leggings since the 80s, not to mention the short skirts – far too short for my high school dress code! It’s also much harder to pick out the foreigners on sight.

But pass outside the city limits, and one side of the Rift Valley is pretty much like its opposite. It’s still Wadi Araba. It may be a touch more green.

I’m fascinated by the date plantations: hundreds of palms, all the same height and shape, in a perfect grid of straight lines and right angles, the dead fronds trimmed neatly away.

It’s at the northern end of the Dead Seat that I started to see a real difference in the natural scenery, about where I spotted the distinctive Wadi Mujib Bridge over on the Jordanian side. From there most of the way to Jericho, between the road and the Dead Sea, was miles and miles of salt marsh, thick with reeds, acacia trees and the occasional palm, and bordered with short grasses in vivid earth tones. All of it was protected by chain link fence topped with barbed wire. It was just beautiful, even if segments of the trees had been ruined in a fire in the last year.

Then we turned left at the top of the Dead Sea and went up, up, up to Jerusalem. As we wound our way through the hills, which on the Jordanian side are barren and rocky, on the Israeli side were covered in a soft fuzz of green and yellow grass. Where the road cut into the hillsides, you could see a thick layer of fertile soil above the sharp, white layers of rock. Then we got to the top and it was greener than the greenest parts of Ajlun. How much of that difference is Mother Nature and how much human (mis)management is not mine to judge, but it was a dramatic difference.

Then we ducked into a tunnel and...
...there it was, the holy city, with the golden Dome of the Rock glowing in the late afternoon sunlight.

Promised land, indeed!

Honestly!

Aqaba, Jordan / Eilot, Israel

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” said the young women at the security check at the Eilot crossing into Israel. They had just repacked my bags for me, after carefully removing and handling everything in the kind of clear plastic gloves you see at the deli counter. They had sent everything I'd brought one at a time through the detector, oohing and aahing over my Jordanian jewelry and hair accessories. “No problem,” I said, thinking, Better inconvenient than insecure. They’d already asked me how long I’d been in Jordan, what I do there, why I’d chosen to study Arabic (“It seemed like an interesting challenge” seemed the safest of my many reasons), and why I was going to Israel. They were very cheerful about it, clearly very comfortable in each other’s company, and I was feeling really good about crossing the border. Plus, Jordan didn’t charge me the exit tax, or for the days I’d overstayed my visa.

Of course it wasn’t that simple. I hadn’t gotten to passport control yet. They flipped through my passport and saw its many Arab stamps: 3 for each Jordanian tourist visa, 3 more for my residency, plus every other entry and exit, half a dozen from Egypt, and a trip to Syria. They sent me to my own special window with my own special official. “We’re going to do a background check. I’m going to ask you some questions, and then it’ll take an hour, maybe more.”

She was very friendly, meticulous but pleasant. The whole time, a voice in my head was critiquing every answer: Oh, yeah, tell her again how the U.S. government has financed all your trips to Jordan. Oh, no! “I don’t actually know the French girl I’m staying with. I don’t know what she does in Ramallah….” Way to look like a terrorist! Good point about how Peace Corps doesn’t let volunteers choose their destinations. Be sure to mention how your best friend in Jordan works for the U.N. and was sent to the States by the U.S. government. (Crap! How could you forget that the Israeli embassy held her passport for months!) Don’t forget to mention how your other friend became an Israeli citizen and lives on a kibbutz!

Then I sat with Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States and waited. An hour passed. I started to make contingency plans for how I’d spend my vacation if Israel turned me away.

But in the end, as I suspected, blundering honesty was the best policy, and they let me in. In the end, it took half as long and was far more pleasant than crossing the border into Syria. Where, by the way, I won’t be going again on this passport. I needed the stamps from my crossing to renew my visa for my last 6 weeks in Jordan, and Syria won't let people in who have Israeli stamps.

Hospitality Is In the Eyes of the Beholder

Aqaba, Jordan

My Lower Intermediate students were reading a text in New Headway Plus about the souqs of Marrakesh. It describes how the carpet seller welcomes you into his shop, pulls out rug after rug, brings you tea....

“Now, there’s real hospitality!” my students said. It was a good salesman, they said, who anticipated his customer’s needs before the customer, who brought out tea, who engaged the customer in conversation.

It started an interesting conversation about differing ideas of hospitality. To most Westerners, what Arabs consider good hospitality and customer service is too intrusive, too pushy. When we walk into a shop, we want to be left alone to look by ourselves, with the shop assistant on hand to answer our questions if we have them. Arabs consider this extraordinarily bad customer service; they expect the shopkeeper to strike up a conversation with them from the moment they walk into the shop, and they don't feel that such a conversation constitutes pressure to buy something as we in the West often do. It was one of the many cultural adjustments I had to make as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and one that I still struggle with 4 years later!

Swimming Is For Everyone!

Aqaba, Jordan

I got my membership to the Intercontinental Hotel beach in Aqaba to avoid the crowds of raucous young men in tightie-whities on the public beach, where women swim in full hijab if they swim at all. It's not a place to be seen in a bikini, but the private hotel beaches are full of foreigners and upper-class Jordanians who are less likely to ogle (or at least more discreet about it).

Upper-class doesn't necessarily mean bikinis, though. Today there was a family on the beach in full hijab, and one young woman in niqab covering everything but her eyes. When they first came on the beach, I wondered why they would possibly want to pay the incredibly high price to sit on a beach in full hijab. Their Lebanese accents were a partial explanation, suggesting that they were staying at the hotel on holiday. Then the women and girls headed for the water.

The girls, about 7 and 10 years old, went in about waist deep, giggling and protesting, and then headed back to the beach. I figured the women would do the same, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Even the grandmother, ungainly on land and wearing the most layers of clothing, went right on in and got thoroughly wet up to her neck. Most unexpectedly for me, the girl in full niqab started swimming the crawl back and forth, parallel to the beach, clearly delighted by and used to swimming despite her layers of black dress and veils.

I so thoroughly enjoyed watching them enjoy themselves in the water that I could barely concentrate on my book for grinning. Not wanting to stare like some ignorant foreigner, nonetheless I kept finding myself watching. I almost wished I had a camera, though perhaps it would have been equally culturally insensitive to photograph a family that was trying so hard to be both Islamicly modest and secularly normal.

Jordan and Peace Corps In the News

Aqaba, Jordan

Yesterday on CNN, which I wouldn't ordinarily watch except that my new apartment doesn't have BBC or Internet, there was a story about Jordan. Not the usual "Jordanian kills a bunch of people" story we've seen of late. This time it was a positive look at Jordan, specifically the Dead Sea Ultra Marathon and the rising popularity of physical exercise in Jordan, and especially in Amman. Nice to see.



Also, Mel found this article in yesterday's Jordan Times that's not just about Jordan, but specifically about Peace Corps in Jordan. Apparently it also appeared in Al Ghad newspaper in Arabic. Peace Corps Volunteers rock, and now all of Jordan knows it! =D

The BMI Index

Aqaba, Jordan

My archaeologist friend Chris likes to say that Jordan runs on the BMI Index: Bukra (tomorrow), Mumkin (maybe), Inshallah (God willing). I've been here long enough to recognize it when I see it. In fact, a colleague was just commenting Thursday on how naturally and with such conviction I replied "Inshallah" to the latest news on plans for Aqaba. But nothing makes a bad day worse like the BMI Index.

This is the height of hay fever season in Jordan. I'm allergic to jasmine, lavender, olive pollen and ragweed, all of which are now in full bloom, in Aqaba most of all. Add that to my ever-present dust allergies and the stress and pressure of this project in Aqaba, and I was already set to have a bad day.

I was up at 5am to pack the last of my clean laundry, shower and get some coffee before the 4 hour drive to Aqaba. I didn't manage to sleep in the car as I'd hoped. By the time we arrived in Aqaba, despite being drugged to the gills on allergy remedies, my sinuses were packed full and aching from the swift drop in altitude of the last 100 miles. I stepped out of the car in Aqaba to a wall of stifling heat and humidity, half deaf and off balance from ears congested by allergies, to discover that the accountant had not actually made firm appointments to see any apartments.

We spent hours wandering around Aqaba, calling phone numbers spray-painted on walls, and looking at squalid little studio apartments above "Chinese massage parlors" (blatant code for something seedier). None of them had washing machines, and the accountant conceded that this was a necessity for a 5 week stay. We did look at one that would have been acceptable, except it was 50% over our budget, and the landlord wouldn't be bargained with. We'd been in Aqaba for almost 4 hours when we finally met up with the real estate agent who supposedly had some apartments to show us in our price range ... but who had only one apartment to show us, which was twice our stated budget.

Eventually we found an apartment that was in our price range. The kitchen counters and walls are coated in a layer of aged cooking oil, the cabinets full of mildew, and the kitchen lacking any kind of dishes or cookware (which was the point of having an apartment and not a hotel room). But I was informed that it's all the company could afford, and I didn't have a say in the matter.

Also, we were unable to arrange for any Internet access.

I sure hope the teaching goes well, because it's gonna be a long five weeks in that apartment! The German word "ekelhaft" comes to mind, somehow so much more evocative and appropriate than "disgusting"....

Ready ... Set ...

... Just One More Thing Before You Go....

Amman, Jordan

I suppose I've been in Jordan long enough that it shouldn't surprise me. I suppose that I should be used to the last-minute flurry of changes to every program we've ever done at Bell Amman. I probably should have even expected it. But I don't think I will every like it. I'm the daughter of a woman with a color-coded agenda, a woman who always has a plan and a back-up plan. We can fly by the seat of our pants with great success, sometimes even aplomb, but by nature (or by nurture?) we plan.

Of course, I arrived at work today to find that plans had changed again for Aqaba, the project I'm starting on Sunday. The client wanted more hours, different hours. The issue of Internet access was still unresolved (aside from a vague assurance that I could have one hour of access a day at the client's site). I found myself racing around to collect more materials, more options ... and consequently forgetting several of the things that had already been on my list.

I'll be so glad when this program has been settled and started! I always feel so much better about these kinds of things once I start teaching. Maybe Mom's right. Maybe I really am meant to be a teacher. It's certainly where I've found the most calm and equilibrium in the last few years!

Maryah On the Cutting Edge

of Corporate Social Responsibility In Jordan

Mel picked up a March edition of Jordan Business, and I've been reading it over breakfast. I found an article related to this article by Nas of the Black Iris about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a movement I've recently become more and more aware of. This is the principle behind such organizations as the Ford Foundation or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the idea that corporations have a moral obligation to give back to the community, and moreover, that such "charitable" acts can actually improve their brand image and increase their market share. For example, by donating computer labs to schools all over Jordan, the Gates Foundation has assured that when Jordanians do buy computers, they are most likely to buy Windows (or pirate it, if it's only for personal use!), because that's what Jordanians are familiar with.

I recently learned from Sameh that Ruwwad, where I volunteer on Saturdays, was established by Aramex (the Arab version of Fed Ex). They are one of the organizations featured in the Jordan Business article. Although you surely noticed that I'm somewhat cynical about CSR, I also believe very strongly in Ruwwad's mission, and I can see clearly how it has improved life in Jabal Nathif. Whatever their motivations, Aramex is doing excellent work in the community. Besides, let's face it, corporations are inherently selfish, beholden to their stockholders and their profit margins, and unlikely to do anything that doesn't enhance their long-term profits and market share. I'm just pleased to see them thinking beyond the next fiscal year!

Also in the magazine article was Questscope, an amazing organization empowering Iraqi refugees and poor Jordanians to work to improve their own communities. I did some work with them a year ago, and was really excited about the possibility (ultimately unfulfilled) of maybe getting a contract for full-time work with them.

So there I was, delighted to find that I had serendipitously fallen in with two of the most progressive CSR programs in Jordan without even knowing it.

Village Adventures

Mshairfeh, Jerash, Jordan

From Easter Sunday in Mshairfeh

With a 4-day weekend, it was easier than ever to get to Mshairfeh and back again for a quick visit before I trek off to Aqaba. One last breath of fresh air, as it were, before the stifling heat of the Gulf of Aqaba. The weather is always so much more pleasant up in Mshairfeh!

For a short trip, it involved a good deal of excitement.

I Come Bearing Gifts
I always bring Wijdan coffee when I visit, a holdover from my Peace Corps days, and usually cigarettes and a phone card. While I was in tariff-free Aqaba, I bought her a kilo of coffee and a whole carton of cigarettes. I know, I shouldn't be feeding her bad habit, but Wijdan's an adult, and cigarettes are her one indulgence. Besides, you should have seen the look of delight on her face as she was hiding the carton where her husband wouldn't get to it! Just as you should have seen Rana's delight when she came home from school to find coffee on the kitchen counter. No one mentioned the 4 liters of juice I brought for the kids ... but it sure disappeared fast!

Making the Rounds
When I was in Mshairfeh for Sihil's engagement, I got scolded by several of my former neighbors for only visiting Wijdan when I come back to Mshairfeh, so this time I intended to remedy that. (Never mind that I visit Wijdan because she calls every 3 days to find out when I'm coming back, and no one else calls at all....) Then, when I found myself on the bus full of girls I'd taught, including my neighbors Alia and Ayat, the plan solidified.

Around sunset, I went up to Umm Anis's house. They've built a lovely little patio in their garden, with a little fountain and benches on 3 sides. The garden, too, has evolved. It was a sparse bit of land when I left Mshairfeh, but now the bushes and flowers are cheek-by-jowl. It was a lovely place to sit and visit, even if it was still a bit chilly for evenings in the garden.

Then I stopped by Ayat's on the way back, having promised her little brother Ziad (aka My Favorite Jordanian) that I'd be by. Their parents were visiting neighbors returned from 'Umra in Mecca, but Ayat and I had a nice chat about her English studies. Her teacher, obviously a new graduate, is very concerned that they have authentic pronunciation and be able to speak English, something sorely needed here! Then her aunts and uncles stopped by for a visit, all people I remembered and who remembered me. It was a fun time!

She Didn't Even Flinch!
When I got back to Wijdan's, we sat and chatted for awhile, and then headed for the sitting room where her husband Nasri and most of her daughters were already asleep. We hadn't been there more than a couple minutes when Wijdan squealed. Mouse! She plastered herself against the wall in the farthest corner and started shouting to her sons to get rid of it. Then she started shouting at me, "The baby! The baby!" The mouse had disappeared under the mattress where baby Milak was sleeping, and as usual in a pest control situation, I was called on as the most level-headed person in the room. I scooped up the baby.

What ensued was a comedy of pulling up mattresses and beating about with a hand-broom. The boys woke Nasri, who had been fast asleep, and consequently stumbled around the room like a drunkard (Wijdan's description of him, not mine!). After most of the mattresses had been piled up in the center of the room, the mouse decided to make a mad dash for the opposite corner. Everyone else shrieked and scattered, but as the mouse ran right over my foot, all I could think was, If I panic, I'll surely drop the baby, clumsy idiot that I am!

Eventually, we caught the mouse, but as they retold and retold the story the next day, I found myself the hero. "The mouse ran right over her foot, and she didn't even flinch!"

Queen of the Mountain
In the aftermath of the mouse incident the next morning, Ghadeer cleared all the mattresses and pillows out of the sitting room and cleaned. Meanwhile, Taqwa got no end of amusement out of playing Queen of the Mountain atop the pile of mattresses in the salon.

From Easter Sunday in Mshairfeh

Say It Ain't So ... Hot!

Aqaba, Jordan

Aqaba is a free trade zone, so everyone coming and going is subject to Customs inspections. We stopped just past customs and rode our bikes down, down, down and through the streets of Aqaba to the resort hotels.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

Then we had a few hours to do whatever. Sameh, Mel and I had lunch, and bought the requisite coffee and cigarettes for my visit to Wijdan tomorrow. Then we found a bar by a pool on the roof of a hotel, and spent the afternoon sipping fruit juice in the shade.

It was soooo hot! I'm definitely not looking forward to moving to Aqaba on Thursday. Imagine how much hotter it'll be in another month!

The Contradictions of Wadi Rum

Disi Village, Wadi Rum, Jordan

Tareef took us south today, almost all the way to the edge of the kingdom (where we'll be tomorrow). On the agenda: desert cycling.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

As Mel pointed out, striking up the chorus of Hakuna Matata, the surfaces we rode on looked very much like cartoon landscapes.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

Wadi Rum's reputation is for desert, and we saw plenty of that - mountains, sand dunes, windswept surfaces dotted with scrawny brush.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

It's easy to forget that Wadi Rum sits on the great Disi Reservoir. A new project is installing the infrastructure to pipe some of that water north to Amman, Zarqa and Irbid, but in the meantime it's a rich source of water for local agriculture.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

Altogether it's a place of contradiction, where desert meets agriculture, flats meet sheer rock faces, and the nomadic meets the settled meets the tourists.

From Good Friday in Wadi Rum, Then Aqaba

And surprisingly nice cycling with an exceptional group of people from 4 continents. Just watch out for the sand traps!

When It's Time To Go

Amman, Jordan

It's best to leave a country while you're still happy there, while you can still look forward to returning. It's so easy for daily frustrations to morph into racist generalizations. I feel myself in danger of it sometimes, and it's an ugly side of myself I don't want to explore. I admire Abby for being brave enough to face double-digit unemployment in America to keep her love of Jordan alive.

Jordan is a difficult place to work. Management styles in both the public and private sectors tend towards micromanagement, Kafka-esque bureaucracy and shouting. lots of shouting and high emotion. At least so it seems to Americans like Abby and I, though we spent a lot of time this evening talking about how this is often a cultural misunderstanding. Then there's dawam.

Dawam is a word ubiquitous in Jordanian English because its translation, working hours, completely fails to convey its nuances. Dawam is completely inflexible. Big companies are now installing complex biometric systems to enforce dawam. I have to submit my right handprint to a scan to record the exact minute I arrive or leave. If I arrive 5 minutes late or leave 5 minutes early, it can be deducted from my pay. (If I were a Jordanian, it would be deducted from my pay.) If I stay an extra hour, though, it makes no difference. It won't even negate the 5 minutes I was late to arrive.

But what I do within the hours of my dawam is of far less importance. By my nature, I do my job and a half ... and then get in trouble with my boss for making others look bad. But teachers in my company have been known to miss entire classes and suffer no consequences, because at least she signed in and out at the right time.

It's turning me into the kind of employee I despise, the kind that does the bare minimum and nothing more, the kind that obsesses over what I'm owed at the expense of productivity. I'm starting to not like myself, and I envy Abby, with the gumption to couchsurf across America for as long as it takes to find a job.

I'm also just gonna miss her!

No Honor Among Teachers

Marj al-Hamam, suburban Amman, Jordan

I find all my conversations turning to education in Jordan recently. Perhaps it's partly Nas's recent posts on education and the long comments I left on this one. As Jordan slips further into recession, and slips on the Freedom House scale from "partly free" to "not free," reforms of all sorts seem more important and elusive than ever. It may just be because I'm a teacher, but I feel very strongly that none of these reforms are possible without a foundation of education reform.

King Abdullah II's Jordan First and National Agenda programs both included comprehensive education reforms, and the Amman Message also calls for more critical thinking in religious and civic curricula. There have been significant (though hardly sufficient) improvements made to the national curriculum and teacher training, both in universities and in-service training (for those teachers who can actually attend). But none of that means anything if teachers aren't appropriately compensated.

The average public school teacher makes less than $350 a month, and is technically forbidden by the Ministry of Education from holding another job. In practice, of course, most male teachers are also doing private tutoring or teaching at after-school centers, as salaries are well below the cost of living for most people.

The student who comes most regularly to Bell's free Conversation Club on Thursdays is a physics teacher, Firas. Today he explained to me that he has 3 jobs and works an average of 18-20 hours per day, sleeping an average of 3 hours a night. In addition, he's taking English classes in hopes of being able to get a higher-paying job, perhaps $500 a month, teaching at a private school. He's also taking an International Computer Driving License course, a U.N. certification he will have to obtain to keep his teaching job with the Ministry.

Teachers in the U.S. or Europe would have gone on strike 5 years ago, when wages had already been stagnant for 8 years, and the cost of living suddenly doubled as a result of the Iraq War. As far as I can tell, though, there's no teachers' union in Jordan. Teachers have been voicing their discontent, but the government's response has been less than encouraging.

A prime example is this week's announcement by the Minister of Education. In response to teachers' complaints about wages, he made a statement on public television. Perhaps, he opined, if teachers shaved in the morning and ironed their clothes, it might be worth giving them a raise. He said this on public television.

As a result of this and other abuses, teachers feel undervalued and unsupported. They work 7:40-2:00, and whatever can't be finished in that time doesn't get done. They never take grading or lesson planning home. In fact, where lesson planning goes, after their first year of teaching, they just copy last year's lesson plans into this year's notebook. Any education reform, no matter how well-intentioned or theoretically sound, is doomed to failure in the face of completely understandable teacher apathy.

Firas was telling me of his and his friends' attempts to marry. When his friends have gone to meet the fathers of the girls they're hoping to marry, of course they are asked about their jobs. They are all teachers. Fathers say, "I've even had taxi drivers want to marry my daughter and turned them away!" Even as cheap as taxi fare is here, and as high as the overhead is in that industry, taxi drivers can still make 2 or 3 times as much as a teacher.

It's a real shame, given the history of the Arab world. Students would come from the very ends of the known earth - China, Morocco, Tanzania, Zanzibar - to study with the great Arab masters in Kufa, Basra and Andalusia. Abbassid Baghdad was a Mecca of great learning. Teachers and scholars garnered the highest respect in that world. How different the world would have been if they hadn't been able to preserve all the masterpieces of the Classical world? That kind of respect inspired greatness. JD150 a month inspires apathy. Can you blame them?