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.