كل عام وانتم بالف خير

May you and yours be well all year.

Eid al-Adha
Mshairfeh, Jerash, Jordan

This is the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, when Muslims honor Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his first-born son (Ismail in Islamic tradition) to honor the one true God. Like Abraham, every Muslim household that is able sacrifices a sheep, goat, camel, cow, water buffalo or whatever it is that is husbanded locally. At least once in their lives, every able Muslim should try to go on Hajj and perform this sacrifice on Mount Arafat in Mecca, where Abraham is thought to have done so in Islamic tradition.

From Thanksgiving Weekend in Mshairfeh

It is also traditional to visit family and neighbors, and exchange the traditional blessing: kul 3am wa antum bikhair (May you be well all year). You usually get sweets, too, and the traditional Arab coffee, unsweetened and sharp with cardamom, served in small, bowl-like cups.

From Thanksgiving Weekend in Mshairfeh

It's generally very hot, but as the cups are shared, you must not blow your germs on it to cool it, but rather swirl the coffee in the cup. When you're done, return the cup, and if you don't want another, shake it as you give it back.

From Thanksgiving Weekend in Mshairfeh

Among others, we went to visit Nasri's oldest niece, Suha, to see her newborn son, Asil. Hadeel simply adored the little guy, and couldn't keep her little fingers off his face.

From Tareq Learns to Butcher

When we returned, Nasri was sacrificing one of their goats. Their oldest son Tareq is 17, almost a man himself, and Nasri used the occasion to teach his son how it's done, as Abraham taught Isaac and Ismail. To see it in detail, check out my web album, captioned with explanations.

Thanksgiving and Politics

Mshairfeh, Jerash, Jordan

Happy Thanksgiving! It happens this year that Eid al-Adha falls the day after Thanksgiving, so I've got a 5-day weekend, Thursday to Monday, just as if I'd never left Pennsylvania!

I'm spending my long weekend with my Jordanian family, dar Nasri, in Mshairfeh, and they have something particular to be thankful for this week. "Did you hear what the king did?" exclaimed Wijdan this evening. I waited for her to be more specific. "He dissolved the Parliament!" I had heard. It's his constitutional right. In the two years I was in Peace Corps, he dismissed the Prime Minister and his cabinet at least three times, though he hasn't interfered much with the government for several years; international aid donors frown on that sort of thing.... Wijdan and her husband, on the other hand, are quite pleased. Nasri explained:

From Thanksgiving Weekend in Mshairfeh

The Parliament is terribly corrupt, he says. All the money they get to help the people and lower prices and unemployment goes instead into the pockets of MPs and their families. They buy themselves nice Mercedes, send their sons to expensive schools and universities, give jobs to their cronies, and the situation never changes for the rest of Jordan. Look at my wife! Ranked first among English teachers in Jerash, and yet she can't get a job! But the king, God bless him, says Nasri, he cares about the people of Jordan. He's looking out for the little guy in his kingdom, and he kicked all those corrupt MPs out of office and called for new elections.

There's no guarantee, of course, that the same MPs won't get their positions back, elected by their extended families and tribes, not for their political platforms or tribes, or for promises of reform, but because they're family. Organizations like NDI are making some progress at teaching Jordanians to run on and vote for issues. Young journalists and activist bloggers tend to understand its importance. Still, those in power are reluctant to let it go, and it portends to be some time before Jordan's democracy looks like, say, Turkey's.

"It's Better To Pray Than To Sleep..."

Amman, Jordan

I can still remember very clearly the first time I heard it. It was the 8th of February, 2004. We had landed in Jordan at about 2am, and it was after 4am before we had been paired off and settled into our rooms at the Ayola Hotel in Madaba. My roommate was Audrey, and our suite-mates were Katja and Laura, who would both become good friends over the following months. We had just crawled into our beds, under wool blankets and extra duvets from the closet against the surprisingly cold winter night.

I don't know what was going through the other girls' heads, but mine was certainly swimming. What had I done, leaving the comfort of the Western world to come to this land of terrorists? Of course, it was just the strain of 26 hours of travel and being in an unknown place where I didn't know the language, and then a mini panic attack at the airport. Still, I wasn't sure I could ever be happy in this place.

And then we heard it. There was a new mosque going up just around the corner from the Queen Ayola, and it started the call to prayer first. Immediately Audrey and I were at the window, with Katja and Laura not far behind, as mosque after mosque picked up the call across the city of Madaba. Here, then, was the flip side of our long-conditioned Orientalism: scary terrorists, yes, but also the romantic harmonies of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

"God is great. I affirm that there is no God but God, and Mohammad is the Messenger of God. It is better to pray than to sleep. Come to prayer. Come to prayer...."

I understood only bits of it then, but the melody of it, the beauty of it echoing across the Madaba skyline, has stayed with me. My experience of the call to prayer would change over time. It wasn't long before I didn't hear that pre-dawn call at all, or if I did, it was a sign that I'd had a very bad, sleepless night. The other four I'm more likely to notice, but they're more a sign of the hour than of faith for me. In the village, time was told in this way:
"Come back after the afternoon call, and I'll be ready to help you with your homework."
"My mother says you should come over after the sunset call."
"There's the last call to prayer. I'd better be getting home!"
On weekends like this one, when I have the opportunity to sleep in, it's often the noon prayer or the Friday khutba that wakes me at mid-day.

From My Amman Home

Recently, a new reaction has entered my repertoire. There's a new mosque going up just behind my house, which makes the call to prayer much louder through my window than it ever was before. My newest reaction is frequently annoyance! But I suppose that sooner or later I'll stop noticing it.

"How Are You With Pain?"

Amman, Jordan

That was what this doctor said the first time I met him, back in Peace Corps, when I thought I was just going in for a consultation, but instead got a baker's dozen Plantar's warts burned off my feet, ending with me passing out and the panicked doctor calling the Peace Corps Medical Officer to come and rescue me.

Why do medical people always freak out when you pass out? I know, it's not something they do themselves, but it has a perfectly clear physiological explanation. It's not that I'm afraid of pain, or of needles. It's a purely physiological reaction to trauma to my hands and feet. I can't control it. It runs in my family.

Anyway, when I went in to have an ingrown toenail looked at this morning, I knew there was a high likelihood I would pass out. In fact, as the doctor was starting to put the anesthetic in my big toe, I warned him that I might pass out. He gave me this look of utter disgust, as if he couldn't believe that I could be so weak of character as to even suggest such a thing. But of course, as he made the second injection, that's just what I did! Out like a light.

It's a little-known fact about passing out that you tend to dream while you're out. It's never anything I can remember, like most dreams, just a whirlwind of images. Every time, I'm reminded of an essay I once read by Henry James about Victorian women who would deliberately make themselves pass out because they believed their dreams revealed the secrets of the universe. I had one of those episodes once, but not this one. I don't remember much, except that it was chaotic and loud, and I was in America. So imagine my disorientation when I woke up in Jordan!

Good news is, I got the day off work, and my toe feels much better now!

ACOR Advanced Arabic!

Check us out in the ACOR newsletter, p. 4-7! May we live long and prosper!

Rain, Rain ... Come Again Another Day!

Amman, Jordan

We are in our third straight day of rain, alternating between drizzle and downpour, and I'm loving it!

I know you can't prove global climate change by anecdotal evidence of local trends, but as surely as the Sudan is feeling it, so is Jordan.

The very first time I arrived in Jordan was February 2004, and I don't remember much of that winter, except that "the desert" that I thought Jordan to be is surprisingly cold in February!

I do remember my first full winter in Jordan well, and I remember that it rained almost every day from November 2004 till April 2006. It would drizzle most of the time, but there'd be a good half hour of downpour at least once a day, and some days there'd be hours of steady rain. Neighbors assured me this was perfectly normal, the way that winters had always been.

In the subsequent four winters, I don't think there's been more than 15 days of rain a year.

Jordan is a country that struggles for water in a good year. There's not much left of the Jordan River once Syria and Israel are done with it, and the Azraq Aquifer is so severely depleted that there's serious danger of sinkholes east of Amman. Jordan just finalized a deal with Saudi for exclusive access to the aquifer the two countries share east of Wadi Rum, called the Disi Aquifer, but I heard that the water may be radioactive.

For decades, Jordan has relied on rainwater for half its water supply. Over 40 valleys across the country have been dammed to create reservoirs that catch rainwater all winter and store it through the summer. Jerash and Mujib are two of the largest. When it doesn't rain, though, there's nothing to fill those reservoirs.

I haven't spoken to a single Jordanian in these 3 days who wasn't glad of the rain.

May all the regional gods of rain keep it coming!