Hot Legs

Here's a link to Steve's photos from Jordan. Here's one of my favorites. Check out my new boots:

Photo by Steve Stanek.

Gobble Gobble

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. Turkey, mashed potatoes, green peas and buttery rolls...yum! What's not to love?

Don't worry about me. I'll be here, living it up with a kebab.

Happy Turkey Day, all.

The Fourth Estate

Here's the best story I've read in the Jordan Times to date. Not written by me unfortunately, but by Hugh Naylor, an American colleague who's freelancing at the paper. It's about the freedom of press situation in Jordan, which leaves a lot to be desired. I was shocked and amazed and full of admiration that Hugh and Paul (one of our really great editors) managed to get it past the censor - you heard me! - and into the paper.

And while we're talking about stories...I wasn't happy about the edit of my Walking Man story, but that's the name of the game, I guess. Jacq is the epitome of the naive Westerner. He wanted to meet the king to discuss the good and bad things he saw in Jordan (good: friendliness of the people, bad: pollution along roadways). I included it in the story, even though there was no way he was going to meet King Abdullah. An editor cut it, because "the king reads the paper." Also, I wanted the story to walk off with "and so, the walking man will walk on," my own personal homage to James Taylor. No such luck.

Crossing the Jordan, Part 2

The Western Wall viewed through fence. (Photo by Steven Stanek)

Enough people mentioned the last blog post about my trip to Israel that I felt obliged to finish the story as promised.

As soon as we crossed into Israel, it was like a different world. The desert gave way to a border station surrounded by a carpet of lush GRASS! plants and palm trees. Not only that, the building and the road up to the building looked like it was constructed with some sort of plan.

The bus dropped us at the front of the building, we handed our bags and our passports to two Israeli security officials. They put stickers on our bags and sent them into the building on a conveyer belt, just like at any airport. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I had a brief moment of near panic when I thought “What if I’ve somehow accidentally been transported to an airport?” I clearly didn’t have a plane ticket, and I was worried I’d never see my bag again. Really stupid, I admit, but I couldn’t read any of the signs and you never know, right?

One thing was the same here as in Jordan: no one gives any instructions. I followed the Dutch woman through a metal detector and into the building. She and the guy from Seattle started filling out a form that asked for basic personal information, so I filled out the form. I took it to a very young Israeli woman, who looked at my passport and asked me where I was going, why I was going there, who I was visiting, when I would leave and where I would go when I left.

Then she stamped my passport. I listened to the CHACHUNK of the stamp, and I kissed any trip I might have wanted to take to Lebanon or Syria or the Sudan ;) goodbye. As my colleague Peter pointed out in his comment on my earlier post, if your passport has an Israeli stamp, Muslim countries that don’t have a treaty with Israel will not allow you to enter. For this reason, the American Embassy issues temporary passports, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. My passport expires in March anyway, and I don’t have plans to visit Lebanon or Syria on this trip. It would have been nice to leave the option open, but I also figured it might take longer to get through immigration with a temporary passport. And, I heard you can’t go to the King Hussein Bridge border station, but haveto go to another one. I’m not sure if that’s true, though.
I went through another security point where the young woman soldier looked at my passport and asked my reason for visiting and when I would be leaving. There’s nothing like feeling welcome.

I found my bag without a problem and wandered outside where I asked the shared-van-taxi-people how much to go to Jerusalem. They said 28 shekels. I exchanged 50 JD (Jordanian Dinar) for something like a million shekels (okay, not really, but a lot). I went to get in the van. The guy from Seattle was already there, and he asked me where the other woman was. I told him I didn’t know. He went to find her. I thought this was odd, but then I just thought he was trying to look out for her because she’s young and foreign and a woman. He found her and came back to tell me that we would all haveto pay a little more money, otherwise the van wouldn’t leave until 5 p.m. (over an hour) or when it was full (it held ten people and we were six). I agreed. I paid 20 shekels extra, so the whole thing cost me about $25.

On the drive to Jerusalem I saw more desert, but it was different from what I was used to seeing. There was a lot of agriculture in parts of it. It seems clear that they have some kind of sophisticated irrigation system. As we got closer to the city the landscape became more mountainous. On the side of the road I saw bulldozers busily cutting into the side of a mountain, building a road or expanding a road, but no doubt making some general improvement. I noticed this seemingly mundane detail and note it here because it’s indicative of a level of organization and efficiency and governmental responsibility that I find lacking in Jordan.

I also saw some things that were more familiar – people living in what looked like barely held together tents, brown children in dirty clothes running around (playing or maybe working) amongst a flock of sheep.

When we finally arrived in Jerusalem about 40 minutes after we left the border, I knew I was going to love it. I remember thinking how many trees there were here. Some of the bland, concrete buildings with satellites on the roofs were familiar, but they were much less densely stacked than what I am used to. And Look! There’s a church! The sun was about 30 minutes from setting and it glinted off of the gold cupola of the Dome of the Rock. Ahhhhh! Let the love affair begin.

As we drove toward our departure point - the Damascus Gate in the Old City - I saw homes that were constructed from stone and buildings that looked historic (check out these photos of the Jerusalem). One was surrounded by an old stone fence, and as we passed I looked inside the open gate and saw a verdant garden and a huge angel trumpet in bloom.

It was then that I started to feel like I was in Europe, and I haveto admit, as much as I’ve loved Jordan, I was feeling like I REALLY loved Israel.

The Arabic driver, who was being overly friendly to me (not in any inappropriate way, but in an annoying, cloying way) offered to let me use his cell phone. I told him I had my own. It turned out that I should have used his. Mine would only send text messages and receive calls. Later it stopped working altogether. The driver dropped us across the street from the Damascus Gate, and the whole area was full of Arabic vendors selling everything from cell phones to fresh, hot bread. I was ready to be finished with this journey which was now well into its fourth hour, and I forgot to grab my bag out of the back of the van. The ever-helpful driver ran it over to me just as I was crossing the street, and then I felt bad that I thought him annoying.

I paused at the Damascus Gate and saw tourists of all nationalities sitting on the steps. I stood there for a minute and enjoyed my break from the Middle East. While I was technically in the heart of it, here, in Jerusalem at least, I felt like I had been transported to another world. One in which I was less of a foreigner and more myself.

I took a cab (the guy wanted 40 shekels but I told him it was too much. He said the meter would be more and I said that was fine. Using the meter I paid 28. HA! Take that, guy! I’m not as stupid as I look) and made it, finally, to my destination.

So that’s the very long and involved story of how I got to Israel. I didn’t stop loving it, btw, and while I know I only saw a very small part of a very diverse city (and country), I am now fond of saying that Israel is like Europe with ugly shoes.

Women praying at the Western Wall.
We visited the Western Wall where the men’s section is separated from the women’s section by a chest-high, wooden barrier. Guess which side is small and crowded and scrunched up against some kind of construction project? Uh huh. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.

We also spent a lot of time in the Arab market, walking around crowded, narrow passageways, people watching and taking photos, including the one of an incense shop at left (taken by Steven Stanek).

I got myself drunk on two glasses of wine, thank you very much, and ate mashed potatoes and sushi (not at the same time), hamduallah, katir, katir, katir!

The weather took a turn for the worse while I was there, becoming cold and rainy, and I was forced to buy a fabulous brown peacoat coat that brings out all the subtle highlights in my ever-lengthening locks, I was assured by the salesman. I relished shopping by myself at night, and I’ve never enjoyed walking around in the rain more. I’ve missed the luxury of independence. I’ve missed being able to get to know a city by walking its streets. I’ve missed the opportunity for serendipity. I felt like I’d broken free of something.

It wasn’t all warm fuzzies and roses, though. It is, after all, one of the most troubled regions in the world. There was security everywhere. A guard sat at the entrance to every bar, restaurant and café.

Also, I’m sure that I was ramming into some kind of irritating cultural difference that I can’t identify, but I found people on the streets and waiting in lines to be so rude. Out for themselves, walking four-wide across a sidewalk without moving an inch for me to pass. Scooting in front of me in lines (violating the queue, if you will) because they knew they could, even though they also knew I’d been waiting very patiently longer than they had.

The journey home was much the same as the trip to Israel, except the King Hussein Bridge is called the Allenby Bridge on the Israeli side and the exit tax was $35.

Legitimate points abound!

I love this guy. Steve Stanek (photo credit) took this picture at the Western Wall. He tried to take it on the sly but the guy looked right at us. Steve said, "Did you see how pissed that guy was that I took his picture." I have a hard heart. I said: "Yeah, well, he shouldn't wear his hair like that if he doesn't want his picture taken." ;)

Crossing the Jordan

This is a two-part series, I guess. I've been working on this for several days and have only gotten as far as the border. Sorry. Not only that, I feel like it's long-winded and boring. Sorry again. Inshallah, someone will think it's moderately interesting.

Last Thursday I traveled the roughly 50 miles from Amman to Jerusalem. The embargo on this blog entry was self-imposed, because I didn’t want friends and family to worry about me unnecessarily while I was gone. Now that it’s over, though, let the storytelling begin.

I tried calling Ahmad all morning Thursday to tell him my plans for the weekend. I finally talked to him at 11 a.m. I asked him how to tell the taxi driver to get to the Abdali bus station. Instead of telling me, he and his brother Mahmoud picked me up and took me there. I sat in the car while they negotiated a 20 dinar (down from 35) cab ride to King Hussein Bridge (one of the border crossings between Jordan and Israel). I looked at my watch. It said 4:05, which is apparently when it stopped the night before. I looked at my cell phone. 12 p.m. I was on my way.

My driver made a call on his cell phone shortly after we started out. It used to make me nervous when taxi drivers talked on the phone while I was in the cab. I imagined them calling their friends who moonlight as kidnappers of mute American women. I'm over that now. Anyway, I heard him say something in Arabic - I don't remember what – that told me he was talking to his wife. We hadn’t gone a mile before he started to slow down. I saw a woman dressed in black from head to toe, with black material covering her entire face. It was not her ultra conservative attire, though, that surprised me. It was the fact that she was wearing eyeglasses on the only visible part of her face. Not a lot of people wear glasses here. My taxi driver said, “This is my wife,” and I thought he was joking. The next minute I saw a little girl tugging at the door next to me. A friendly looking young woman with a toddler on her hip - not the woman in black - slipped in the front passenger seat. The curious 6-year-old at the door slid in beside me.

Marhaba – Hi - I said to my little neighbor, who was wide-eyed and staring. She looked away. Her mother, who was, in all likelihood, younger than I, said, Salam Alekum, and I returned the greeting. NOW we were off.

Taxi driver's daughter reached into a sack and pulled out two falafel sandwiches. She handed one to her mother and her baby sister in the front seat. Taxi driver's wife offered part of hers to me, which didn't really surprise me as I've grown accustomed to the amazing hospitality of Jordanians. Every time something like this happens, though, I am touched by the generosity. They had only the two sandwiches. It goes without saying that I declined.

On our way out of town, I saw my first Corvette in Jordan. Red. 2000-something, new-ish anyway. It made me think of my dad and of Jaber, who always, always, always beats me at my own Corvette game (think Slug-Bug but insert Corvettes). I also instinctively wanted to punch someone on the arm. Something told me that was ill-advised. I refrained.

The youngest girl child sat on her mother's lap in the front seat (no child seats, no seat belts, sooooo 1980) and played with a green balloon, half-inflated. When Allison was here she saw her niece playing with a balloon and talked about how unsafe it was: "She could bite into that, inhale a piece of it into her lungs and..." a whole slew of horrible things followed. I can't remember exactly what they were, but she was very specific and I trust her expertise. So I was relieved when the green balloon was retired to the dash, wedged ever so snugly between the windshield and the requisite box of tissues. You don't understand why it's requisite? Neither do I. Let's just say if I were going to own a company in Jordan, it would be a "Fine Tissue" factory.

The trip to the border was beautiful. I wish I had photos. We drove on a mountain road and I could see the valley below. We also drove around Salt, which I was told by one guy used to be the capital of Jordan. It's old and crowded and neat with ancient steps leading up to many of the homes, which are nestled close together on the hillside (just like in Amman). Anyway, my driver pulled onto a gravel road on top of this mountain and dropped his family outside their home. As we drove away, he said, "That's my home." I told him it was beautiful, and it was. The location was gorgeous, anyway, very isolated with olive trees for neighbors.

The photo, btw, is borrowed from bastchild on flickr.com. Check out his other Jordan photos; they're fabulous! I'm not sure how to format a caption on Blogger. So this is the best I can do for now.

He dropped me at a gate and told one of the guys loitering there with a couple of soldiers to direct me inside. The loiterer walked me halfway but lost interst when he discovered I was too stupid to understand the word he kept saying in Arabic. Possibly bus? Not sure. Anyway, he motioned to the "Public Relations and Tourism – Arrivals/Departures" building. I remember it as little more than a rundown warehouse with a few offices. Inside, there was little activity, and I don't even know if someone was manning the X-ray machine until I put my backpack down on it. I walked through the metal detector, it sounded, but no one came to inspect me further, so I walked in. I paid the exit tax of approximately $7, had my passport stamped and was on my way in less than 10 minutes.

I was thirsty, and I saw that the "café" (which amounted to a few tables and some refrigerators with drinks in them) had Coke. I was surprised, because Pepsi is the beverage of choice in Jordan. There is a perception that Coke is "owned by Jews." I'm not sure if this is the only reason, but I have heard this from more than one person. Anyway, I didn't have change, and I tried to pay the young man for a can of Coke with a 5 dinar bill. He didn't have change either, so after a few minutes of neither of us understanding the other, I went to put the Coke back. He smiled and gave me the Coke (and a straw) for free. God bless my Scandinavian ancestors. That's what I say.

Only one bus company is allowed to shuttle passengers across the King Hussein Bridge. The next bus was supposed to leave at 2:00 p.m., inshallah. I looked at my watch. 4:05. Hmm. I looked at my cell phone. It was after 2. No one was surprised. And by no one I mean me, the blondish Dutch woman who spoke Arabic (I secretly hated her) and the Jordanian-American guy who was visiting from Seattle.

The bus finally left at 4:05, or 2:43 in the p.m., depending on who you ask. We were asked to exit the bus once on our way across the desert. I say desert and not bridge, because if I'm being accurate, that's really what it was. There may have been a short little bridge (over the mostly dried up Jordan River?), but there sure as hell wasn't any water. We showed one soldier our passports while another soldier with a scary gun on his shoulder, even scarier because he was just a boy, got on the bus to make sure we three didn't have a bomb.

We reboarded the bus and entered Palestine, or Israel, again, depends on who you ask. The whole bus trip took less than fifteen minutes, including the whole disembarking episode. My cell phone buzzed twice just as we were in the middle of the "bridge." It was a text message from FastLink, my cell phone provider, saying, "Fastlink wishes you an enjoyable stay in Palestine…" Nothing gets by these people.

I give and I give and I give

Nobody likes me very much (except Goodan, Goodan loves me). That's what I've decided. I've only checked my two e-mail accounts 150 times in the last hour. Nothing (except from Goodan, he's the only one who really cares). Yesterday it was the same thing. Oh wait, I take that back, the 95th time I pushed refresh on my Gmail account today I had one message in my Inbox. I was really excited...for about five seconds. I opened my Inbox and my new message was a Borders Rewards coupon. Now I HATE Borders. Where's the love?

Weekend Trip

Here's a not so fabulous picture of me in front of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City. I will post my embargoed blog entry about the journey and the trip tomorrow, inshallah.

Wain Hobez?

We are sitting, drinking Turkish coffee out of the most precious, little cups - the word demitasse comes to mind - and my host brother Sufian is telling me a story. He is cigarette thin, and he is at this moment killing himself - and me if you believe everything you read about second-hand smoke - one puff at a time. When he was young, he says, he was wild. I watch him ash his cigarette in the nearest ash tray and I wonder if he still isn't.

He is the youngest of ten children and was also the last one out of the house. He tells me when he was 17 or maybe 18, he left for work one day and his mother asked him to buy some bread on the way home. He said okay and that was his plan. At some point during the day, a friend invited him to the Dead Sea. He went, and he stayed for three days and two nights. He didn't call, he didn't write, no one knew where he was or what he was doing.

He returned on the third day, and his mother was waiting. Do you know what she said? He asks me, his piercing eyes catching me like a fly between glass. No, I really don't. I am worried about the young Sufian in the story and I can feel my eyebrows scrunching down in a way that encourages premature wrinkles. I am imagining his mother standing in the doorway in her black robes and furious scowl. Sufian pauses. He takes another drag of his cigarette, his face softens, and he smiles. "She looked at me hard, and she said, 'Where's the bread?'"