At long last, breaking out the tape recorder and notebook

Welcome to research. Oh thank god. Today I finally had the experience I had hoped would be my daily grind for the summer.

I started the day at the University of Jordan, where I spoke to an insect taxonomist about the housefly and other insects of the Jordan Valley. We looked at pictures, talked about trap details, drank coffee...and then he talked my ear off for 45 minutes about how he just doesn't understand why the American people are so nice - he married one - but our foreign policy is just so unfair to Arabs. I thought he was going to cry. There was a great moment where he had been talking forever, and then another professor showed up, and the session was over. I took that opportunity to steer us back to bugs.

After renewing my visa, I met with a retired general, M, who was a member of several committees on the Jordan-Israel peace treaty signing. His views on Israel were a complete reverse of the taxonomist's. M felt like a strong relationship with the Israelis helps Jordanians bargain for Palestinians - their quality of life, visas, being freed from prisons. There was a time, in the late 1990s, the afterglow of the signing of the Oslo peace agreement between Palestine and Israel and the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, that it really felt like a new Middle East had arrived. M's face lit up when he talked about that time, but the smile flickered and left when the conversation moved to the intifada.

I missed a chance to photocopy a housefly thesis, but instead I had coffee with two farmers from the Safi region of Jordan who told me about how disorganized the marketing of Jordanian produce is. They are involved in companies that are teaching farmers to keep better financial records, to budget, to comply with European standards, and to contract with French, British and Turkish buyers for their vegetables. I may go down to their farms on Saturday.

And here is a gender moment for you, in the Sheraton hotel today at 5.
Me: "How much is wireless internet here?"
Pleasant hotel staffer #1: "Six JD for two hours"
Me: "Are you serious? Six JD? That's crazy! How about 3JD for one hour"
PHS1: "No, maam, I am sorry."
PHS2: "Are you an in-house guest?"
Me: "No, but I can be" (smile, smile)
PHS2: "Right this way, to the business lounge, miss."

By the way, the serious hotels here have a thing for American bad music. Intercontinental plays Celine Dion. Century Park Hotel plays Boys II Men (the birthday song).

I am trying to find a translator to go with me to Safi, and I think I am really hurting my case by always being half asleep when the translators call. I have these vague recollections of conversations with pleasant-sounding fluent English speakers named Nadia, Anwar, Rana, Faid...but no idea what I have committed to whom. I hope I don't have three different people hoping to wade through chicken shit on Monday.

Tomorrow night is a major party night: going to Distant Heat, the (fucking expensive) biggest party in Jordan. It's a trance thing in the middle of the Wadi Rum desert. Should be great and wallet-draining. Looking forward to it. Maybe there will be photos.

Casualty of War

WorldPride 2006 in Jerusalem, rest in peace. The lectures and events will still happen, but ixnay on the giant parade. Here's the scoop from 247Gay.com. That's the second cancelled WorldPride J-lem cancelled in two years.

BTW, loads of pics up in here. check it out.

Whither Free Food?

The offer is on the table for me to get free dinner until the end of my trip. Only proviso: it would probably involve sexual relations with an Austro-Iranian man in his late 30s/early 40s who has a wife and kids in Tajikistan. I met him in one of my intrepid “pick up a foreigner” moments in a café, and invited him to a party across the street for expats. This spiraled into him asking me to dinner the next night. I was already having my doubts when at around midnight, when we left the restaurant, he suggested we take a walk in Amman. Irresistible as a walk alone with a strange older man in the middle of the night in a foreign country is, I suggested I take a cab ride home and ignored his calls the next day.

The free food is so tempting, but I think I just found my threshold.

Yesterday I went to the sleepy town of Salt, which was once a rival to Amman as the capital of Jordan. Then everyone dumped loads of money into Amman, and left Salt alone to be a small community with old Ottoman buildings still standing.

Old Ottoman building.

The entire trip cost me JD 1.40. That was the cost of the buses there and back and a cab ride home. Museum entry was free, and some old dude insisted on paying for my lunch. I am on a roll here!

Salt used urban planning to create open space and benches on the streets. Apparently Amman never got the same memo.



PETA this: Chicken shop in Salt.


The infamous Arab squat toilet. Please note the lack of any paper. If you can zoom in, you can see the fetid water on the floor. Peeing in this is a real challenge; you have to roll up your pants of the floor and down off your butt and balance your bags on yourself so they don't touch the disgusting floor. On the other hand, I just heard of a guy who used to take off his jeans while trying to go. This is in the Salt municipal building.

Big news: I have a research topic. The municipalities of Safi and Tamar, in Jordan and Israel, will be cooperating this summer on reducing or eliminating their housefly populations. Most of the flies are coming from Jordanian farms that use chicken manure and don’t treat it properly, thus inviting a huge fly population. These babies cruise over the Dead Sea to the Israeli side and annoy tourists. They also spread diseases that cause eye infections and diarrhea.

My article will focus on why Jordanians in Safi have chosen to be on board, and how the politics makes them view their cooperation with Israel. The next step is finding a translator to help me communicate with the farmers and residents of the town. I don’t think I am going to tell him/her about the high chance of spending the day walking through chicken shit.

There is quite a happening expat scene here, and I have gone with some Americans and Brits to see Pirates of the Caribbean II with them (terrible) and dished about politics. Unfortunately most of them are soon going home, but then again, I am going to be wrapping up my tenure at FoEME soon myself and traveling.

There continues to be general dismay in Jordan about what is happening in the region. Yet Jordan is so interesting because all these people – millions, even the lefties in my office – are pissed off as hell, and yet NOTHING HAPPENS besides some protests and a lot of angry blogging. There is also an ever-tighter rent market; I know one guy whose landlady hiked the rent 300 JD with two weeks notice, probably because she knows a Lebanese refugee will take it.

And as Condoleezza Rice put it, we are seeing the “birth pangs” of a US foreign policy statement on Israel. I had mistakenly thought Bush was going to step in and call for a ceasefire and negotiations. Instead, he expedited an emergency shipment of weapons to Israel and implied that the IDF gets another week to chase mirages across southern Lebanon and level Beirut.

This is a real departure in our traditional foreign policy, which has until now entailed the US putting forward the face of an honest broker for peace – Carter guided the Egypt-Israel treaty, Clinton the Jordan-Israel one, and he tried hard for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement as well. I will admit however, that even that former stance involved arming Israel to the teeth. At any rate, the US is clearly taking sides here.

One interesting point, though, is that no one else is stepping up to the plate on this issue. Not Bush, neither Tony Blair, despite massive protests in London. Where is any other leadership to actually call for a smart solution to this stupid war? According to sugardaddy, Europe’s foreign policy is nonexistent, because everyone just wants a quiet, cushy little life punctuated by foreign accents and cheap imports.

And finally, I would like to nominate these people at Hashem's in Amman for a prize for the best cheap hummus ever.

Protest!

I headed to a protest yesterday with some people from the office. T, A, and I got into T's car, took a blank placard and started driving to the demonstration against Israeli aggression in front of the UN building. T and A were brainstorming on the way for slogans, none of which were really electrifying. Suggestions ranged from "Wake up, Sharon," to "Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, what's next?" to "Save the Dead Sea!"

In the end we got there too late and the demonstration was over. But I was surprised that A and T wanted to go at all - being that they are in Friends of the Earth and have regular contact with Israelis. The way they put it, they have no problem with -- and in fact they like -- Israeli people. It's just the government they can't stand.

While cruising the Middle East blogosphere, I found one with an extraordinary commentary on the action in Lebanon. Since people in Lebanon and in Israel tend to be well-off, computer literate and good at English, there has been an Internet exchange between them. That is, an Israeli typing away in his bomb shelter can reach a Beiruti who's listening to warplanes overhead. Check it out.

On Tuesday I visited the University of Jordan, which is in Amman. The campus is nice, there are a lot of green spaces where people pass out or just chat on the grass.


The new IT building had a nice Mediterranean feel to it:

And the library, which just got a new computer search system, was filled with rows of Arabic titles I didn't comprehend:

There are also Israeli flags spraypainted on some of the staircases - so people can step on the Zionists. The guy showing me around explained the logic to me with a sense of pride. To me it seemed funny that people hate Israel, so they put their flag around campus?



I have a lively exchange going on right now about houseflies at the southern end of the Dead Sea. These flies reproduce prodigously on the Jordanian side of the border, and then they fly at breakneck speed to the Israeli farms and hotels. But since it doesn't really affect them, Jordanian farmers aren't that interested in making it stop. So somehow we are supposed to make the farmers in Jordan till their chicken manure fertilizer deep into the soil. I think money will be involved.

Last night I found some expats and went to the Dove bar, tucked under the Best Western Amman. We paid 3JD each to go to an underground, cigarette-smoke-filled sausage fest with terrible music. Do you know what it's like to be one of two women dancing in a strangely blue room while a bunch of deadbeat men puff away on cigarettes?

The expat scene here is a lot of UN people, along with some former Fulbrighters and Peace Corps volunteers. Besides that, most everyone else is working for an NGO. Some of them have cars, including the guy who drove me and some others to the Dove while blasting Backstreet Boys through the streets of the city at 1 AM.

stench

Since all I do in the office is eat grapefruit and read news here is what I have for you today - a news roundup.

First Lebanon's tourism is a mess. There's a shocker. Israel says it needs more time before a ceasefire. Lebanese and Israeli civilians are miserable, yet resolute. Washington Post took a long hard look at the Israel Lobby in the States. Arab-Americans are lobbying in the USA for Bush to end the violence in the Middle East. The New York Times finally published an opinion piece that makes sense/I like. If you don't have TimesSelect, email me and we'll work something out.

My apartment is more revolting than ever. You know what smells bad?

• a drain in the shower that has hair and funk in it from the last two years
• a garbage that contains moldy bread
• coffee cups that held instant coffee and cigarettes for three days
• the sponge I used to wash them.

The truth is, I should probably move out, and probably sooner than later. All the people leaving Lebanon are going to Syria, and from there, to Jordan, Kuwait, and other countries in the Levant. The hotels are getting booked, from what I hear.

Uh, I took a cab ride this morning with a guy who told me he was a fedayee in Israel. I'm not sure exactly what he did, but it involved shooting at people with a machine gun, from the gestures. It also involved five years in an Israeli prison, followed by deportation.

crop-dusting pot?

I was talking to A at work today (which has improved now that I cut my hours down to half). On the subject of the Middle East crisis, I suggested we use crop dusters to spray Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon with narcotics. A was not impressed. That pretty much ended a good conversation on the regional politics. Then he went home.


Err, this is awkward. Reported by New York Times:

The United States has 25,000 nationals in Lebanon. Its evacuation plans
have moved more slowly than those of some other countries.

Other strong points of the US response to the crisis has been offering evac services at cost, providing loans for people who need them. Spain is ferrying their people for free.

In today's "I'm still alive" email to my parents I threw in a joke about how I have dysentary (I don't). They didn't get it. Dad offered to look up doctors here, mom warned me to take antibiotics and eat cooked vegetables. I sat in Amman with solid stools and got hummus.

I will be honest with you. FoEME did not accomplish anything today. We sat in the office watching TV, reading newspapers and checking Internet updates all day. I got in late and left early. It's hard to push coexistence when Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and Iraq are all burning at the same time.

I took this chance to pursue my research, which has changed from "how does FoEME function with Hamas in power?" to "How do FoEME and other regional organizations function when the political situation goes to hell?" I interviewed the people in the office about what they think - apparently they have a battle mode. In this time, they take a lower profile, focus on local environmental issues, and catch up on paperwork. If the situation is still terrible in two or three weeks, they will start being more public and again focus on saving the shared regional environment.

This morning I started my Arabic lessons. Just taking an hour and half twice a week is giving me some confidence in speaking with other people in Arabic. I think it also gives me some street cred - i.e., I may be near-mute, but hey, I am trying.

If I am to measure my success here in terms of cab experiences, tonight was a good one: I took a ride home at 11.30 PM. At 11.45, the driver points to the meter and tells me the results don't count because it's midnight. I told him, that is garbage, it's not midnight, and I am paying the meter price, end of story (more or less, in Arabic). He grumbled and took me home anyways.

In news of brazen social encounters - I saw an American eating hummus at Hashem's today (btw, excessive hummus = horrible gas, glad I am living sort-of alone). After staring at him for around ten minutes, I asked him if I could join him. He was in for three days. We wound up meeting some Jordanian guys who talked to us a bit about the news and about their Palestinian backgrounds. One definitely, and maybe all three of them, wanted to see Israel washed into the sea. I nodded and asked some questions about the logistics of that one - not many plans.

On the subject of hope and pleasure, please check out this story, from either the Israeli or the Lebanese press.

I meet tomorrow with a Jordanian correspondent to Gaza. I want to ask this guy, O, about how Palestinians in Jordan and in Gaza feel about cooperation with Israel over the environment. As in, when tribal connections are stacked up against environmental realities of devastation, which influence will be more powerful?

rants, raves

One of the most boring classes I ever took at Northwestern was civil-military relations in Israel. The professor interrupted the class at least once a week to wake me up. But I did learn one thing - and that is that war is extension of diplomacy by other means. I.e., it's supposed to be a tool to achieve a greater goal than just battle victories. Is there a strategy in Israel that I don't know about?

Where is Bush? Why isn't he doing something about this? It is such a waste that we have two countries that are tearing each other apart (although Israel is definitely holding Lebanon's balls a little tighter), and they will only stop because one wins, or because the world makes them back down. Wonder how Bush would feel hanging out in the Beirut airport...

In other news, no one in Jordan has spare change. Ever. I don't know why they even circulate bills worth more than 5 JD. I spent half an hour wandering around downtown before I could get change to pay a cab driver.

Hug a Lebanese/Israeli/Palestinian. This would all be resolved if WorldPride 2006 just happened a little sooner. It's this huge world gay celebration, held this year, August 6-12 in....Jerusalem!

not miserable anymore.

While I was poking around where I live, looking for expats to become friends with, Jordanians were protesting Israel. Honestly, I am kind of surprised it took this long. It really does feel like a long-range war is coming. I spoke tonight with this really great academic, RA, who studies political science and has been researching Jordanian-Israeli relations for years, and he also feels like this is a long-term thing, where within 2 weeks Israel will be occupying southern Lebanon again, like it did until 2000.

The big question I have is what is the exit strategy, and what are the alternatives to escalation? Because frankly this conflict started up so quickly that it feels stupid. Especially when winning or losing in Lebanon will not really do anything for Israel.

Let's say Israel "wins" by beating the shit out of Hizbollah, or killing off the head -- there will be so many casualties, and it will take so long, that the Arab world and a lot of the international community will be pissed beyond belief. Maybe Israel gets the soldiers back, maybe not. Let's say Israel "loses" and does not take out all of Hizbollah - then it still will kill a bunch of people and fail to improve the safety of its people. Isn't there a smarter way to deal with this? Suggestions?

By the way, the Lebanese War of the 1980s marked the first time Israelis en masse doubted the power and moral infallibility of their army. So going in again raises all sorts of questions now about the last war, and how long this one is going to last.

Back to Jordan...It's so interesting to be on this side of the world while this stuff happens. I really don't understand, though, why the streets are not exploding. I was kind of expecting Palestine flags to be out everywhere, for there to be posters supporting Hamas and Hizbollah, and it is so quiet. This may have to do with a strong police and military presence all over the street, which comes down hard on even tourists taking photos outside.

For a taste of the Jordanian and Arab blogosphere, check out Into the Wind, a Jordanian blog, and Toot, a network of Arab blogs. Pretty interesting stuff.

I have had a great weekend, which is because I pretty much shoved myself out of the house so I would stop moping. If nothing else, this trip may teach me about how to feel comfortable traveling alone. This week I start Arabic lessons. Going to look into getting a translator. I put up some signs saying I want a one-month roommate, but that may not pan out - I will have to see. All I found so far is a pair of guys looking for a roommate, which I don't think I'd be comfortable with, and a kind of hardassed girl who is researching honor killings and wants her own room and no roommate. Probably so she can hide the evidence.

i love the smell of hizbollah in the morning

This region is going crazy. I fielded my first panicked mom call two nights ago. It was actually pretty cute, just asking me to email her daily saying that I am alive. I am going to think of creative ways to send that message, since I am going to be doing that for the next 50+ days.

For some background: An Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was kidnapped on June 25. Israel moves into Gaza, promising to beat the shit out of the Strip until Shalit is released. This involved bombing a big power plant, and knocking out a bunch of other stuff. Israel clarifies why it is rolling out the big guns over one kidnapped soldier: actually, this strike is more about knocking Hamas down a notch. Escalations continue in Gaza. Meanwhile, on July 12 (Wednesday), Hizbollah grabbed two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. Israel responded by promising to beat the shit out of Hizbollah. The Hiz rains rockets on Northern Israel, and gets one in Haifa. Hizbollah has said now that if Israel touches Beirut, they will come for Haifa.

Every time I get into a cab and the news is on the radio, it's all "yisraeel" "hizbollah" "Libnan" and stuff like jeysh (army). I can't really understand beyond that, but Jordan kind of sits as this buffer in the middle of a Middle East that is blowing up. Amman is a departure point for a lot of people headed to Iraq as contractors. A shit-ton of Palestinians live here. Now Israel is fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. The feeling here is that Israel has lost its mind, that America is backing it up, and that above all, it sucks but no one is doing much about it...yet.

I just got an email from a friend who is staffing a summer program in Israel, and it is quite a different reality -- seeing as there are rockets falling on all the cities in the North, even the little shitty ones. Then this girl I work with has a cousin who studies in Lebanon and can't get home to Jordan because the country is blockaded. Then you go to a cafe here, and the hookahs are bubbling away.

The way we have felt it in the office so far is there was this big River Jordan Experts Meeting planned for this week, to involve a bunch of UN and other international experts, along with Jordnian, Palestinian and Israeli mayors. They were supposed to tour the river and look at how disgusting it is, and see if it would be eligible to become a UN World Heritage Site. But last week already, with Gaza boiling over, the whole thing was canned.

Thank you to everyone who has weighed in on the topic of how to make friends. Andrew suggested I spend money (i.e. go to hotel bars). Ruby said I should invest in perfume. Olivia is all for me inviting myself to other people's houses. The consensus appears to be that I should shower.

So I took the initiative today and spent longer in a mall than I have over the last 4 years. I bought some heels and more shirts to go to work. Hopefully I will stop moping around this city and enjoy it, even if I will be doing that mostly alone. Any further suggestions on how to make friends here would be great.

Here's something cool - the walls and ceiling/roof divisions here are paper thin. I keep hearing a bubbling upstairs, which is periodically interrupted - it's a hookah. This is a big improvement over the usual scraping of chairs across the floor and hammering.

flirting still works!

Glory! The most unexpected thing happened today: I had a sort of normal cab driver. And I flirted my way into a cheaper fare. I don't think we're in Jordan anymore.

Here's how it happened - I was getting a ride home, and I told the guy I am a student from Canada studying Arabic. I wanted to know the word for problem, and I asked him, and I think he was really into teaching me Arabic words and telling me how to spell them. I refused to give him my name. I also think he was driving in circles to rip me off, and I told him I was only paying him a half dinar for the ride since we were lost (it should have cost at least one). We found my house, he said "dir balak, yahalak, and then I slept with him.



I mean, I paid half a dinar and he drove away.



Compare that with my driver this morning, who, when asked to put on the radio, popped in a cassette tape of Qur'an reading.


IN OTHER EVENTS:

I am worse dressed and hang out with more unacceptable company than I gave myself credit for.

Last night I got shut out of Nai, this spiffy nightclub run by Howard Johnson in Amman. It actually is a pretty cool-looking place, and when we got there a whole bunch of Americanized Jordanians who studied outside the country were lining up outside the door, looking all dolled-up and also, slutty.

I was there with Naveed and this Australian dude who went with us to Petra. I think the guards let me through because they thought I was with the group of hot, slutty girls. When it came time for Naveed and Ben to go through though, they weren't allowed in, and I think the guards looked me over again and thought "oh, you are actually not dressed like a hot little number and we wish we hadn't let you in." So we left, dejected, to tool around and wait for a cab.

Work is still pretty average. Actually, it's boring and I hate it. Cheers.

Dir Balak

Tonight my dad had the moment every man who has a daughter wishes he could experience:

Naveed, dad and I were sitting in Al-Rashid's Ecotourism Cafe, where we got free hookah and turkish coffee because my boss at FoEME knows the owner. We were passing the pipe, enjoying the balcony view over downtown Amman, and when our coals weren't that great on the hookah, this guy sitting at another table, who had a little pot full of coals, helped us reload.

Anyway, this guy was a Palestinian living in Jordan and he really wants to learn English. He keeps a little notebook full of Arabic-English lists of words that he got from reading a dictionary, and he was speaking to us in terrible English while we responded with terrible Arabic and he took down how to spell "father" and "daughter."

So we are talking, and eventually he asks me how old I am (which I think translates into English as "will you sleep with me?"). I told him, and a look of death is gradually coming over dad's face. We all spoke for another 20 minutes. Eventually it's time for us to go, and the guy asks if we can hang out sometime, and my dad looks at him and says "dir balak" which means "don't you dare or I will use your testicles as target practice."


On a more serious note, I think being an American woman without any Arabic just screams "I will screw anything that moves." I dress pretty conservatively here, covering the shoulders and legs and often wearing long sleeves. I would like to be able to have a serious conversation with a taxi driver, with local young people, or even with a fucking 16-year-old Bedouin kid driving the donkey I am riding uphill in Petra. Unfortunately it always degenerates into "how old are you?" Does anyone have any advice, short of wearing hijab, to help me not seem like a walking whorehouse?

Oh, and you should go to Petra. It's amazing. And it is full of Bedouins who have more donkeys than teeth, who set up racks of jewelry right along the trails up to the big monuments, hoping that even though its above 90 degrees and you are sweating buckets, you will take five minutes on your way up to haggle over necklaces or bracelets made of camel bone and silver or fake Nabatean lamps. What is it about people with no teeth that makes me leery of buying their things?

please sell me a crappy panpipe

I have been talking about kefiyyas a lot, so I thought I would let you see what they look like:




By the way, that's my dad.

We went to Jerash today, which is in northern Jordan. It's the site of one of the best-preserved Roman cities outside of Italy. This whole city is outside, and today was particularly hot. Since neither of us brought sunscreen, my dad decided he would protect his face and neck with a kefiyya that he picked up for 4 JD at one of the stores at the entrance to the city.

Nothing says "I am a huge tourist. Please sell me crappy panpipes and postcards" quite like being a white man speaking english with a camera around your neck and a kefiyya on your head.

After we picked up the kefiyya, we headed over to the city, where they re-enact chariot races at the restored Hippodrome. Of course, my dad, in full tourist battle mode, asked one of the gladiators to pose with us and the kefiyya:




We wandered around the ruins, while every now and then a group of Arab tourists in real kefiyyas passed by.

Loads of creepy people hang out in Jerash. One guy in a white and green baseball-style shirt kept on appearing near us. He had bad posture as well. There was a park worker with a pickaxe who watched us as we passed by and then followed us for a while. And all the time, these creepy kids kept coming really close, either to sell us stuff or stare at us. It just had a spooky feel sometimes, because you are walking along stones or sand in an open area and then these creepsters come up to you out of nowhere...On the other hand, the ruins are pretty cool.

This evening I met the editor in chief of the Jordan Times, who is really warm and open and gave me some insight into what's going on in the country. We wanted to know what the national dish is here: it's mensaf a rice and meat dish that often features a boiled goat's head. Hopefully this will turn into a dinner invitation.

Update on R, the roommate: I think I am going to move out in around two weeks. Living here has all the pitfalls of having a roommate and living by myself. R never really sleeps here, so I pretty much live alone (a situation I had wanted to avoid). I had hoped to live with someone I could go out with at night. But she still works here every day and leaves her dirty dishes and ashtrays all around the house. I am going to look into homestay. Plus the bathroom here is pretty gross; for some reason there is a thick plastic carpet (can't really describe it) in the bathtub, and from what I understand its basic function is to feel slimy and collect hair. The door is missing its windowpanes. The sink makes a dripping sound when the water is coming out of the tap quickly, and I think the dirty water is going into the cabinet below.

Going to Petra tomorrow. Should be cool! Should also be kefiyya-less.

fun with the israeli embassy

I went on a field trip to the Israeli embassy with the office manager at FoEME (pronounced foamy, so it doesn't sound serious in abbreviation or in full) and three Jordanian dudes who are going on an international tour of both the east and west sides of the Jordan River. They want to make it more of a river and less a dumping ground for sewage and saline water.

Israel is pretty hard assed about security (although not as bad as the Americans). You get to the embassy compound, and just to enter the gates you have to wait on a sidewalk on the side of a highway with no shade. Delicious. Then you get in, and you form two lines, split by gender, under a canopy, so you can be patted down. Then you go back to the shadeless waiting, outside the x-ray room, where people get called in one by one (wahed wahed) to have their bags scanned and to go through a metal detector. Then you wait in the waiting room. We skipped waits #1, 2 and 4 because N, the office manager, had wassta (connections).

Fun fact about Israelis in the embassy in Jordan: they barely speak any Arabic. The reps in the embassy were puttering around in Hebrew behind the desk, and there was one guy, Rami, shuttling between them and the growing crowd of Jordanians waiting to be called up. He spoke fluent Hebrew and Araibic, and every few seconds the Israelis would cal out "Rami, Rami!" from behind the desk, and he mostly ignored them. So funny, you see this slutty girl in a low-cut t-shirt and greasy blonde curly hair dealing with this hunched over woman who barely speaks any English, or an old guy wearing a kefiya (arabic headress, think yasser arafat) and a dishdasha (floor-length robe, apparently nice to wear commando), and they obviously have no idea what the other is saying.

When N and I got back, she invited me to get a pedicure with her. She also told me about the pimples she has and asked if I knew what to do about it. I don't know where she learned to say "whitehead" because her English is kind of limited. But I think if I start getting to know the people in the office, I will be harder to ignore.

Also, I wrote up a letter to the consulate to describe the mission in detail, so that was putting some of my skills (basic literacy in one language) to good use. And A gave me a ride home, so I will put off the shooting him in the face.

Covert ops in the Palace Hotel

If you were hoping to hide your identity in Jordan, would you:

a) not make any mention of your background at all?
b) omit any references to going to Brandeis University?
c) say, in Hebrew, in the middle of a crowded hotel, "I am trying to keep the fact that I am Jewish a secret"?

Well, a fellow I met today chose option c. Arabic and Hebrew are pretty close. If you know one of them, you can recognize the other.

The brief round-up of the last few days is my dad is in town and it's cool, work absolutely blows, and I do not have the foggiest idea of what I am going to produce with my "research" here.

Regarding the dad: I was in charge of organizing his accomodations, and I was looking for a place that was within walking distance of my apartment. I chose the Palace Hotel for him (http://palacehotel.com.jo/) which is pretty much the kind of dumpy place I would stay in. But my dad is happy as long as there are no bed bugs, and at $25 a night, this cheap dive makes him feel just fine about blowing money on me. Plus he dug up a nice wholesome boy (the James Bond mentioned above) for me to hang out with in Amman, so he is feeling good about himself.

For some reason though, he really wanted to go to Mecca Mall, this four-story monstrosity for those who feel spiritual about shopping. Lots of shoes for sale, lots of decent clothes, Elvis coming through the speakers, a food court with Cinnabon (I had NO idea they came all the way out here) and a Starbucks and Mrs. Fields. With most store signs in English, it was a bit disorienting...but then the muezzin coming over the loudspeakers, and a few women in the full head-to-toe burkas, brought it back.

Subject 2: Work blows. Seriously. The big one. Before I start, I just want you to know that the environmental organization Friends of the Earth is located in one of the biggest industrial belts in Amman.

Yesterday afternoon, I wrangled a grant proposal assignment out of them. "Great!" I thought to myself. "Something to do that I am pretty good at."

But this proposal for funds to improve a park was pretty tough to write without any background info. I used the project summaries lying around to put together a draft, and then I sat in the office all day, trying to get a budget, or a work plan. It wasn't until 4 pm that Abed finally took the time to talk to me - and he sat there picking at the keyboard and adding in all these things to the proposal about the project, riddling it with typos. By the end of the session, I still didn't know much more about the project, the proposal wasn't finished, and I wanted to shoot A in the face.

He made a halfassed promise to talk out what I am doing tomorrow. I have no high hopes. For now, I am trying to figure out how I can be useful, but it just sucks because I don't have any major project to think of ideas for, or to take initiative for. In the meantime I am consoling myself with the major achievement of understanding the Amman public transportation system, which charges 25 cents Jordanian to go anywhere in the city. What a steal! And what a crowded, standing-room only, sweaty ride!

Subject 3: Research. Does anyone have any pointers for how to get started on researching the rise of Hamas and how it affects cooperation between Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians? No? Me neither...

Tomorrow morning I am going to the Israeli embassy because a group of Jordanian mayors and water experts is going to Israel and the West Bank later this month through Friends of the Earth (Mideast) for a conference on the Jordan River. Apparently the experience of waiting for the Israelis to process your visa application is really horrible, so I am going there along with the secretary of FoEME to make it suck less. It should be an interesting experience, and I am glad to be able to talk to some of the people who are involved in the different projects going on around Jordan.

By the way, the American embassy in Amman, one of the biggest US embassies in the Middle East, is guarded on all sides by soldiers looking like idiots in huge tanks aimed at the streets. Happy 4th of July. And the war in Iraq has brought thousands of refugees across the border and into Jordan, which has crowded the highways and driven the price of real estate way up.

Jordan seems to always get caught in the middle of events happening in its neighborhood - either in Iraq to the east or Israel/Palestine to the west. Amman is a sprawling mess with little sign of urban planning. New buildings eat up former farmland, and the zoning is a patchwork all around the city. Maybe I am being apologetic, but I think part of the reason for the disorganized sprawl is that Jordan keeps getting these huge waves of new people. In 1948 and 1967 it was the Palestinians, the first Gulf War brought in a bunch of people, and now the war in Iraq is adding more to the mix. The population explosions are so sudden that no one really has time to prepare for it.

And now...
I am going to go study some Arabic and pass out in the process.

felafel burrito

I had a "what the hell, Jordan?" moment today.

I stopped the first cabbie I found to get to work this morning. In retrospect, maybe I should have tested his English or thought about the strange band-aid he had on his nose. Whatever. He took me to the general vicinity of where I needed to go (via a gas station, and I could not tell him in Arabic to stop charging me for the time it took to fill up his tank), asked if I was married, asked for my phone number, drove in a loop, asked four people for directions before I called the office and had the receptionist give him directions, and then dumped me on the side of the highway while he pointed to where I should walk (which was on the other side) and then peeled off with my three dinars. What a turd.

Plans are cancelled again for today, which left me some time to read about...honor killings! For a good description of what Amman is like, and a maybe, although it may be exaggerated, description of what women's lives are like, check out Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love.

Fun fact about Jordan: felafel here comes wrapped sort of like a burrito, not all stuffed inside the pita.

Also I started work today, and they had nothing for me to do except read all their literature on the Dead Sea and on the rivers and groundwater of the area. A, the main guy I will be working with, was nice enough to tell me that tomorrow will probably be a waste as well, so I am going to take with my own reading, since I exhausted the supply in the office today. Hopefully Tuesday will bring something more substantive. On the other hand, another guy who works in the office took me for a tour/drive of Amman because he wasn't doing shit either.

By the way, what are the thoughts on what's going on in Israel and Gaza? http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/world/middleeast/03mideastcnd.html?hp&ex=1151899200&en=322a92cbd8530d36&ei=5094&partner=homepage

There are a bunch of people I know who were thinking of going over the border, either for work or fun, and they are all cancelling now because "shit's going down."

very very nice

It's midnight and there are cars honking and people screaming outside and probably raving drunk. I am in because the lameass I was supposed to go out with cancelled on the last minute. I better find some people to get trashed with...luckily I have a friend coming on Thursday, and Dad in two days. Between the two of them I should be covered.

On second thought, getting drunk with my dad may be creepy.

WARNING: I actually start work tomorrow, so I may not have the time anymore to post every day. On the other hand...maybe you will get lucky and I will have no life.

Someone gave me a philosophy on life in Jordan today: it has all the pitfalls of a dictatorship, with none of the perks; i.e. there is no freedom of speech but still, everything is expensive. A cup of freshly made juice at a nice restaurant is $3 (2 JD). A decent hotel can be $25 a night. A "bargain" breakfast can cost 6 JDs.

Biggest achievement today was getting hummus from this highly recommended restaurant Hashem, in the middle of the downtown area. I spent the day with a British girl, A, who spent the spring semester in Amman and is wrapping up her trip before she goes home. We got a bowl of hummus, a bowl of beans, chickpeas and olive oil (the dish is called fool), a plate of fries, pita bread and tea for 2 JD (dictatorship prices, I guess). By the way, Allan Madrid, you were a key connection here, so thanks.

Also I had a diarrhea scare last night. I think it was just a one-time thing. I thought it might be dysentary or typhoid. I got my vaccine the day of my flight and it's not yet effective.

I spent about 40 minutes getting lost and being late to a gathering today that A invited me too. I met her Arabic teacher and a bunch of other American and Italian women who have been here for anywhere from two weeks to four years. Sleazy journalist type I am, I whipped out a pen and sucked out all their contact information, which may be useful if I want to study Arabic, get a homestay, see the United Nations Relief Works Agency and the Palestinian refugee camps they run, or get advice from former Fulbrighters on how to put together an application. Basically, a pretty shoddy bunch...not.

And now, I am grouping the catcalls I got today into the like and dislike categories. It doesn't matter if you show arm or not, it's because I am obviously white and foreign.

Like:

• "Very nice, very very nice."

Dislike:

• Whistling.
• Yelling things at me in Arabic, which I don't understand.
• Saying "hello, hello, welcome."
• Being five years old and doing any of those things.
• Making groping gestures as you walk by.
• Honking in my face.
• Staring at me from a window or balcony 30 feet above me.

By the way, my little sister's flooded summer camp has made the news. Being a good little girl, she is in upstate NY for the month and was evacuated to a nearby high school for a few days: http://www.recordonline.com/flood06/stories/fa37.htm