"Baba Jordan"

Ayn Jenna, Ajloun, Jordan
[Ayn Jenna means "font of Paradise"]

I'm in Ajloun visiting Wijdan's family. Here, again, not much has changed except that the kids have gotten bigger. It was nice to be able to visit them, not just because of the fond memories it recalled, but also because it so obviously gave them an excuse to see each other.

When I talk about Jordan, I always talk about how close families are. I like to describe to people how I lived next to my headmistress and all her in-laws, and how they all used to gather at the grandfather's house every night to just be together, to be a family. I talk a lot about the family from Zarqa coming to visit, or going to visit the family in Zarqa. But that was with the headmistress and her family.

What I don't often take the time to talk about is how economics can divide a family. I'm beginning to see this even with the headmistress's family in Zarqa, who are not able to come out to the village and visit as often. But it has always been an issue with Wijdan.

We had to postpone this trip to the village twice because of last minute obligations I had to the school, and we almost postponed again when we determined that Megan would not be able to make it to the village and/or Ajloun this weekend. But in the end I decided that I, at least, needed to go, because otherwise Wijdan wouldn't have the chance to see her family. It's always been expensive to hire someone to drive from Mshairfeh to Ajloun and back, a trip of well over an hour, but now it's getting rapidly more and more expensive as fuel prices have gone up all around the world. Prices are down a bit at the moment, but no one is counting on that lasting. But I know that Wijdan could only justify the expense on my behalf ... and anyway, I fully intended to pay for the trip and not take 'No' for an answer, which she probably expected.

And I'm glad that I did, because we got to stop along the way and see her sister Zain, and once we got to her parents' house in Ayn Jenna, two of her other sisters came with their families, one all the way from al-Khaldiya, a village in Mafrag where not one but 3 Peace Corps Volunteers I knew were living. Some of Wijdan's aunts came, as well, including a fascinating woman named Umm Hamze. She's a Macedonian Turk, so she grew up in Yugoslavia under Tito, but her native language is Turkish. Then she married a Jordanian, and has lived here for 10 years, and her Arabic is nearly perfect. Her children are both bilingual, Turkish and Arabic, and fluent in English; unfortunately, I didn't get to meet the children, even though her son had brought her to Ajloun, as the men were all sitting in the parlor. (Wijdan's father is rather more conservative than I'm used to from Mshairfeh.)

I also just really enjoy spending time with Umm Firas and Abu Firas, Wijdan's parents. Abu Firas has always referred to himself as my "Baba Jordan," my Jordanian dad, and although it's a little weird coming from someone I barely know, I find it very heartwarming, in large part because it shows me just how important my friendship is to Wijdan.

Hands Culturally Tied

Amman, Jordan

As I've mentioned before in my blog, Jordan is a very hard place to be handicapped. Aboud has it better than most, as his family has themoney and social standing to maintain their status despite his handicap, and to send him all over the world and give him all the possible opportunities to improve his condition. Even in the developed world, however, all the asistance and opportunity in the world can't always make up for the harsh realities of being handicapped.

Aboud has for 5 years been the boyfriend of the supervisor of our summer Arabic program, Eshrak, and the love of her life. When he was 14 years old, he woke up one morning to find himself paraplegic. Apparently, he's one of only about 6 people in the world to have this particular kind of spinal infection, and there is as yet no cure. Fortunately, his father owns a major manufacturing company in Jordan, and can offer him all the asistance money can buy, and has told him that he needn't work if he doesn't want to. But Aboud is a strong, independent sort, and doesn't want to be more reliant on others than absolutely necessary, not even on his family.

What's more, Eshrak's family once heard about her relationship with Aboud, and her father even met Aboud, and he forbade them from any further contact, but said afterward, "He's a very nice young man. It's too bad about the wheelchair." Eshrak has continued to see Aboud, but in secret, because they don't dare let her father know until he can prove that he has the means to marry and support her.

In Jordan, for a young man to get married, he must first provide a fully furnished home, right down to the silverware and bed linens and in some cases even a complete wardrobe for the bride. He has to be able to pay for a big engagement party and wedding, and for several thousand dollars worth of gold to be given to the bride in part at her engagement, and in part at her wedding. In some families, he is also expected to pay for the bride's engagement and wedding dresses, and her wedding night lingerie. In short, it is a huge financial undertaking for even a perfectly fit and normal young man, which is why most Jordanian men can't get married until they are 30 years old or more.

So in September, Aboud went to America for a month to look either for a spot in a clothing design BA program, or for a job. Not surprisingly, considering the global financial circumstance currently, he didn't find one. When he returned to Jordan, he was absolutely devestated, convinced that all his options had been exhausted, and he would never be able to marry Eshrak. In order to protect himself from being further hurt, he cut off all communication with Eshrak. He hasn't spoken to her or seen her except once, and she's devestated. So is he, but mostly too manly to admit it.

Instead, he's been calling my roommate Megan and asking her to relay messages to Eshrak, and Eshrak has been calling Megan and asking her to relay messages to Aboud. Perhaps because we're Americans and more sympathetic to their desire to be married, and more willing to believe that they'll be happy despite his disability, we've been put squarely in the middle.

The hardest part is that there's absolutely nothing we can do. Eshrak wants this desperately, she wants desperately to be Western and to be one of the boys, but she loves her family and respects them deeply, and is unwilling to offend their relatively conservative beliefs. And all we can do is sit by and watch.

Sometimes They're So Sweet!

Amman, Jordan

I've told my student Nadine over and over that she doesn't have to buy me things at lunch break, but should spend her money on herself. I thought I had finally gotten through to her, so I was surprised today when she offered me a bottle of water. When I started to protest, she launched into a story about how, once, when she was three, she choked on some food, and then got food poisoning, and had to have an injection and all this stuff, and that her mother had said it was important for her to drink a lot of water, so she wanted me to have some water for my food poisoning.

It was so sweet, how could I turn her down? (And it sure hit the spot!)

Jordanians from Abroad

Amman, Jordan

We had some very interesting conversations with Syrians about their perceptions of Jordanians, and they were not very flattering. In fact, the Syrians we spoke to were downright disdainful of the Jordanians. Frequently we heard "They have no culture" or "They left their tents and forgot their culture."

It's not hard to see where this attitude comes from. Here they are, living in the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with the citadel and a 9th century mosque that was a cathedral before that, in the seat of dynasties and kingdoms. Just two hours away, we're living in a city that was a village of 5,000 people just 50 years ago.

But in Jordan's defense, and it's been my home long enough that I feel obliged to defend it, I said a number of times that Amman is a totally different country from the rest of the country, and in the villages like al-Mshairfeh where I lived, that history is not so far behind them as the Syrians suggest.

Carter's Revenge

Damascus, Syria

Well, we had a nice, slow vacation day in Damascus yesterday ... finishing up with a nice triple case of food poisoning, which started with me vomitting in the street and being pelted with plastic bee-bees by some local boys. So I guess this is what I get for breaking my promise to Carter not to brave the wilds of Syria ... diarrhea and nausea on the day we're supposed to be driving home from Damascus and dealing with Jordanian Immigration....

Pilgrims and Passion Plays

Damascus, Syria

Wow. What a day. With our fairly early start, we had a nice brisk walk down mostly empty streets to the Ummayad Mosque (once a cathedral). We donned our culturally appropriate cheap polyester robes, and I my hijab (photos forthcoming), and first saw the tomb of Saladin al-Ayyubi, the great noble opponent of King Richard in the Crusades, who eventually united his Kurdish people and the Arabs to their southeast to retake Jerusalem and most of the rest of the Holy Land from the Europeans.

Then we rounded the corner and rejoined a crush of what, judging by the women's abayas and chadors, were several tour groups of Shi'ites. It took a while to figure out what they were doing in Syria, a predominantly Sunni country ... until I read on the tickets that Hussein bin Ali bin Muhammad's head is supposedly enshrined in the Ummayad Mosque. (There are actually three possible locations for Hussein's head, but this is the most likely, since Yazid bin Mu'awiya lived in Damascus, and he ordered the army against Hussein that took his head.)

Hussein was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, and it is one of the formative moments of Shi'ite Islam when the Caliph in Damascus sends his son Yazin to kill Hussein, whom Shi'ites supported as their rightful Imam and Caliph. When Hussein sent to his supporters in Kufa, they failed to come to his aid in Karabala, and a central theme of Shi'ism is atoning for the failure to protect their God-given leader and his entourage, mostly women and children.

So, intrigued, we followed these Shi'ite tour groups and their mullahs through the mosques, and sat for some time to watch one mullah's abbreviated recitation of Hussein's martyrdom at Karbala and the mourning of Zainab his daughter ... or at least I think so; it was all in Persian. In any case, the intersting part is watching the weeping and wailing and mourning in religious trance, much like what you would see in an evangelical Christian Passion Play.

Then we followed them into the shrine of Hussein's head, and saw them mourning again, including one middle-aged man leaning against the wall and flat-out sobbing so that his whole body shook. It was a very deeply moving experience for me, how these people can feel such a profound personal connection to a 1,300 year old story. And of course evangelicals are known to react similarly to the Passion of Christ, and Jews at the Wailing Wall, but in some inexplicable way, this just felt so much more legitimate....

And then, to top it all off, we went shopping. Oh, did we go shopping! Scarves, scarves, scarves! and jewelry and inlaid boxes and shoes (including some really fun ones for the little girls in the village)! I'm almost ready for Christmas already!

P.S. Apparently, there are quite a few sacred places for Shi'ites in Syria ... going all the way back to the hill where Cain killed Abel! Find out about them here.

Damascus or Bust!

Damascus, Syria

Well, here we are! And it only took us 6 and a half hours on the border and 30 Jordanian dinars (about US$40) to get here.... I feel bad for poor Megan, who, unlike Stephanie and I, already had her visa and was ready to cross the border in an hour....

We got here so late that we haven't really seen much yet, just a few blocks of the modern city. It reminds me a lot of Dresden and East Berlin and Prague, with the architecture of the buildings and the muras of Presidents Hafiz and Bashar Al-Assad in such a socialist-realist style. And of course I visited all those Eastern block cities long after the fall of the Soviet Union, but I can imagine that the security presence must also feel similar. There are military everywhere, whether in little beefeater-style booths painted with big Syrian flags, or just lounging in the street. I didn't notice the kind of weaponry you'd see in Switzerland or Jordn, but the sheer numbers of personnel are sufficiently intimidating ... or reassuring, if you're a tourist like me, worried about last week's car bomb blast....