A Very Short Side-Quest to Jordan

We raced through seemingly empty streets, barely lit, and every shuttered metal roll door was a potential shop but one couldn’t tell. The effect was of a ghost-town composed only of abandoned service stations.

The next morning the city was much livelier. The metal doors were rolled away to reveal stands selling shwarma and kunafa, sun glasses blue jeans, rifles and women’s clothing. Sam and I grabbed a bus to the Dead Sea, which would only take us to Raba. From there we shared a taxi another young American on break from work in Liberia. He was a graduate of Georgetown’s law school and had just come from five days in Lebanon.

I had forgotten what it was like to dive into a foreign culture, and the sinking feeling in my stomach from having my bags lost in the time warp generated by life lived only between international airport terminals didn’t help much. Fortunately at this point my greatest concern regarding my bags was that I didn’t put my swim suit in the carry-on and would have to buy an overpriced one in the Dead Sea Resort Spa gift shop. But floating effortlessly is worth it. Unable to check in so early, we killed time in the salt-free pool complex and walked to the ATM in the Marriott a few resorts over.

Instantaneous floating is indescribable. But since this is a blog and you weren’t there I will attempt a description anyway. You don’t experience the sudden buoyancy one might expect when entering a sea that requires zero effort to float. Should you choose, you can walk along the sea bed as in any sea, without being popped up into the air like a mischievous ticket-holder touring Willy Wonka’s soda room. But lift your feet and they stay exactly where they are, weightless, the sea floor declining to reclaim them. Once airborne, you can barrel roll on the water’s surface and, if you’re flexible, lie on your back and raise all four limbs high into the air without sinking.

The Dead Sea’s mud is said to have a uniquely powerful exfoliating effect when lathered on the skin, and we tried this as well. This valued mud led to funny signs that read “free mud,” as if it were a rare commodity being handed to us out of generosity by the hotel. I didn’t go overboard with it, however, as tourist beaches contain many more unsavory things the same color was viscous mud.

The night ended with dinner and the disappointment that arighilleh (shisha) stopped being served only half an hour prior to our arrival on the patio, out of consideration for the western tourists of course. Oh, and reports that tampered toner cartridges had been mailed to Chicago synagogues. They originated in Yemen. After first reporting that they did not contain explosives, the story changed the next day to reveal a narrowly averted disaster. Awesome. A bad omen. I couldn’t wait to get my luggage back from the airport so I could go to Yemen.

The next day we spent in Amman. Sam took me to a Yemeni restaurant and showed me the University of Jordan. In between we called the Royal Jordanian bag service people who knows how many times, and failed to receive a straight answer. That night we spent over tea and arghilleh on the balcony of a wonderful café decorated in worn style with wood paneling and wrought-iron lamps. This was something I knew how to do: I gazed over the city at night, sipping on shisha and tea, and in that moment I felt, for the first time in a long time, content. We meant to visit Petra the next day, but I had begun to feel sick and decided to sleep in and spend another day in Amman. Sam took me to Al-Quds restaurant and in the evening took me to beautiful panorama overlook of the city. We walked further down the street and got some of the best ice cream in the city and got tea at Books@Cafe. Again we spent the time in between throughout the day calling the luggage service at Royal Jordanian. Your bags will be in on the next flight from London. Your bags are in New York, they never made the flight to London. We assure you that your bags were loaded in New York; who is telling you that they didn’t make it to London? I fired off two harshly-worded emails to Delta and Royal Jordanian.

The following day I was allowed to attend the beginning of Sam’s school retreat at a lodge in the Karama region, near the Dead Sea. I had the opportunity to meet her incredible Arabic teacher, Dr. Najeh (Dr. Successful) along with her other teachers and the students in her program. Dr. Najeh was welcoming, playful, and funny, and it was he who insisted that I come visit the lodge when Sam realized that my visit to Jordan would coincide with her retreat. I sat through Sam’s Fusha class before we all headed to a local school for some service-learning. We got the opportunity to visit a number of classes, from Physics to Religion to English, and hold question and answer sessions with the students in both Arabic and English language. The final visit ended with a heated interrogation (of us) by a teacher who demanded our political opinions and an explanation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Why are we in Iraq and Afghanistan? (This tirade followed from two innocent-looking but very leading questions: “Do you like Arabs?” “Yes, of course we do!” “Do you like Muslims? “Yes, of course we do!” We were trapped. “If you like Arabs and Muslims then why…”). Sam stepped to the plate and began to offer as diplomatic (no pun intended) an answer as possible before Dr. Najeh quickly decided that Question and Answer Time was up and that we needed to get out of there. It got me thinking about how to explain to someone that our government’s foreign policy decisions do not always reflect the will of the people. This explanation seems obvious enough, but we are a democracy, one of the best functioning democracies in the world. People hold us up as an example. But doesn’t democracy mean that the government expresses the will of the people? How then does one explain to a foreigner the difference between the American government’s policies and the will of its people? It was a difficult answer to craft, especially in Arabic. Thank you, Dr. Successful.

Lunch back at the complex was delicious. Matlouba, a mix of rice, vegetables, and chicken jumbled into a casserole. I felt better that day and finally was able to eat after spending much of the past day and a half unable to eat much at all from a combination of nerves and sickness. Two hours of research for Sam and her classmates, reading for me, followed lunch, and then it was time for Sam and here friends to head for dinner. A car would pick me up and return me to Amman; Sam would be staying the night here to finish out the retreat with her class. It was a sad good-bye and I felt instantly lonely, by myself in a city I was only beginning to get acquainted with. The driver had his wife with him and she complimented me on my Arabic, which made me feel better. I was slowly re-acclimating to life in Arabic. Back at the hotel, I found that my luggage had been safely delivered. We were told earlier that morning that the bags would arrive by midday, but we’d been given so many false leads that I didn’t allow myself to get too excited about it. The night before I leave for a year in Yemen, my luggage-in-limbo materializes at the hotel. A good omen.