Walk Jordan, Clean Orjan

or, Was She Just Speaking Arabic?

Orjan, Ajlun, Jordan

Two days ago, I was in a terrible quandry. I had paid my money to go with my supervisor Nina on an overnight trip to Dana Nature Preserve with the Friends Of Archaeology and Heritage (FOAH); it's a trip I was really excited about, because it's complicated to get to Dana without having your own car and camping gear. Then I found out that Walking Jordan was going to the Orjan Soap House, which I've been wanting to see since Tareef's trip to Wadi Feynan Eco Lodge, and even moreso after reading in the Jordan Times last Friday about the new Calligraphy Centre and the Orjan Soap House. So I wavered between pleased and disappointed when the FOAH trip was cancelled, and I was able to go on the Ajlun hike with Walk Jordan. I even talked Jad into going along and taking fabulous pictures (even if I tried to make him think it was his idea...)!

From Orjan Soap House

I've been to Orjan before. My friend Betsy was a Peace Corps Volunteer there, and I went and visited her one weekend. I have very fond memories of the visit. We were invited to dinner at her colleague's house, a geography teacher from the Haddad family, where I had the best, moistest, most tender chicken of my Peace Corps days. We also visited her neighbor, and I distinctly remember her daughter, who was mentally and/or emotionally handicapped and is usually terrified of strangers, but came right into the sitting room and sat down beside me almost as soon as I arrived. (Perhaps, as Karla did years ago, she took one look at me and thought, Now, there's someone who won't reject me!) Her brother absolutely adored Betsy, and brought us the geography book Betsy had brought him from America to show us what he had learned.

From Orjan Soap House

On this trip, we started at the Orjan Soap House, which has a gorgeous collection of olive oil soaps made from all local products. Then Dr. Ramzi handed out black plastic trashbags and plastic gloves, and we set off down the trail. We filled at least two dozen trash bags with bottles, tissues, potato chip bags and other trash, and that was just what was lying right along the roadside! It's a terrible shame, really. Orjan is a beautiful little valley, full of figs, plums, apples, almonds, and fat, gnarled olive trees known locally as "Roman olives," dating back to Byzantine days and before. When my students in the village asked me, as they often did, "Is Jordan beautiful?" I would say wholeheartedly yes. But when my students would finish their potato chips and throw the bag on the ground, I would say, "How is Jordan beautiful when the whole country is one big trash can?" It was amazing to find that, even after we had collected all that trash, we stopped to rest under an enormous old tree, and when we got up to go to lunch in local homes, members of our own group left soda cans and candy wrappers right there on the ground behind them. Oh, Jordan! Sometimes you frustrate me!

From Orjan Soap House

Where are you from?

About half the people on this trip were old friends from Tareef - Bassem, Ahmed and his kids, Salah, Rasha, Moayad and Taymour whose photos I'm constantly stealing, Nara who will soon be my roommate, etc - but there were also many people I'd never seen before. There was a predictable mix of English and Arabic, however, and I was no exception. Jad is, by his own admission, selfishly determined to practice his English with me, and I understand the urge to take advantage of a native speaking friend ... plus, it's just easier for me. Rasha would walk past us and, as usual, look me right in the eye and demand, "3arabi! 3arabi! [Arabic! Arabic!]" which never fails to delight me. And, as usual, I got the chance to eavesdrop on plenty of Arabic conversations, which is a treat for me, as I am usually surrounded by English. And several people got the story, from me or one of my Tareef friends, of how I had come to Jordan, how I'd acquired my Arabic, and what I'm doing here now. One such explanation was particularly fun:

I was making arrangements with Nara to come and see the apartment before she moves in on the 1st, and because she'd been insisting all day on speaking Arabic and not English (and her Arabic is amazingly improved since we first met!), I also spoke to her in Arabic. And as we were making our arrangements, I heard a voice behind my shoulder say (in Arabic), "Is she speaking Arabic?"
I smiled as Rasha replied for me, "Of course! She speaks Arabic very well!"
"But, she speaks English, so I thought-"
Now I interjected, with a grin to soften the sarcasm, "So everyone who speaks English doesn't speak Arabic?"
"No, but your accent.... Where are you from?"
And before I could respond, Jad jumped in. "She's from Bleela! She's a real Jordanian! Her mother's American, right, Maryah? But she's Jordanian." And for a few minutes, this poor guy at my shoulder couldn't figure out whether to believe Jad or not. I just grinned, wondering where this would go. After all, Jad hadn't said anything untrue about my parentage; it was merely misleading. (When I was in Egypt, I did manage to convince some people that my father was Jordanian and I was a native speaker of Arabic, so I wondered if it would work in Jordan proper.)
But Rasha took pity on the poor guy and explained that I was not Jordanian at all, I'd just lived here for awhile.

From Orjan Soap House

Downsides of an SLR

or, If I Only Had a Digital Camera!

From Philip Goes North

Amman, Jordan

I've been teased a lot in the last few years for still having one of those old-fashioned film cameras, and for most of that time, I've been able to counter that it takes better pictures than some cheap digital camera. That claim's getting harder to make, especially in Jordan. I don't know if it's the way the vendors take care of the film before I purchase it, or the heat I subject it to after I've purchased it and taken pictures, or the quality of the developing, but it seems that all the photos I've taken in Jordan this time around have been grainy and poor quality. They tend to be washed out, too, even with my UV-protected and polarized lenses. I think this is probably because I can't find a place to purchase 400-speed film in Jordan. Every shopkeeper I try to ask says, "The sun is so bright in Jordan, you don't need 400-speed film!" But I think using 200-speed is over-exposing my film. (Not to mention that sometimes I want to take indoor pictures of kids whizzing around, or people dancing, for example.)

The other problem with film cameras is the time it takes to finish a roll of film and develop it. I just developed seven rolls of film this week, the best of which I've uploaded to Picasa. These photos go back months, all the way to our first trip with Tareef Cycling Club: Biking in Wadi Musa and Hiking in Wadi al-Ghwayr. Most of the other pictures are more recent, from the trek down the King's Highway with Philip, John and Ann, from my trip with Philip to Umm Qais and Jerash, and from the day that Ryan, John and I rented a car to go to Ajlun, Pella and Umm Qais. There are still a few more pictures left in my camera, and I'm waiting to get the pictures I took with Philip and Ryan's cameras!

From Ryan's Rental

Refreshing Frankness

Amman -> Ajlun -> Pella (Tabqat Fahl) -> Umm Qais -> Amman, Jordan

My roommate Ryan has been dying to drive, so today we rented a car, he and I and my colleague John, and went on an adventure. From my archaeologist friend Chris, I'd gotten a copy of the best map he had and directions to Pella, and from Pella to Umm Qais, my favorite place in Jordan, and Ryan's. However, there are no truly good maps of Jordan, so even the best map is mostly an approximation of where you're actually going. In addition, signage is spotty in Jordan, so we had to stop frequently to ask for directions.

The directions we got from Ajlun Castle down into the Jordan Valley turned out to be a simply gorgeous ride down flower-covered mountainsides, through the villages of Halawa and Hashemiyya (the one in Ajlun, one of two villages of Hashemiyya where there were Peace Corps Volunteers in my day!), and the ruins of what looks to my untrained eye like an Ottoman village. Once we got down to the bottom, directions were pretty simple. There's basically only one road along the Jordan Valley, so we turned right/North at the checkpoint and we were off.

But the guys at the checkpoint had said 7km to Pella, and when we had gone 9km and still not found it, I as navigator started to get nervous. We stopped a couple times to ask for verification, and the most useful of these was also the most amusing. Usually I would ask women for directions, but with Ryan and John in the car, I felt safe enough asking a young man hanging out by the roadside.
"Why don't you come in for lunch and then I'll take you?" he immediately responded.
"No, no, we have a lunch date in Umm Qais later," I replied quickly, only a slight exaggeration since we'd been talking about lunch and a glass of wine at the Resthouse at Umm Qais all the way up the road.
"It's okay, I'm just obligated to ask!" he grinned, and gave us excellent directions.

As we drove away, Ryan and I had a good laugh at his candor. It's true, in Arab culture, hospitality is so deeply ingrained and so important that one is essentially obligated to invite into one's home anyone who asks for help in any way. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, sometimes I took advantage of this, because it granted me the access to the community that was so essential for not only my work, but for my personal well-being. Still, it is exceedingly rare to hear an Arab speak so openly about his obligation of hospitality!

We got a little confused on our way to Umm Qais, too, because there seemed to be no signage in English, but eventually we made it. I've never seen Umm Qais so busy! Like every other grassy overlook or streambank we passed today, Umm Qais was swarming with Jordanians who'd had the same urge we had to get out of the city and enjoy the precious few weeks of green!

Also, if I may be frank myself, the new guard tower in Umm Qais is just a blight. Perhaps it is warranted for security purposes, but it was in the way in many of my pictures today. Most notably, it stuck right up in the middle of the beautiful sunset we watched from the top of the West Theater!

"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.