The Good, The Bad and The Funny: Jordan

Here are just a few general remarks on life in Jordan :)

Men. There are good days and there are bad days. On a good day, a Facebook message saying things like this makes me laugh :

“I love all the stars in the sky, but they are nothing compared to the ones in your eyes!, ...... Only I need to know are you still single???.. ???..... i am looking for making a relationship..... i hope you like me ……...i want to be your real friend if you do not mind ....i live at Amman .... i see your photos... if you do not mind let us know each other first at internet ... ...i have master degree with Electronic Commerce ... …I will tell you more about me …. …I like your photo very much …. I will do anything for making you happy, ...if you need any help,, I am ready to give you my hand…… you are more beautiful than moon, i can not forget your eyes... There are 20 angels in the world,…..10 are playing,…..9 are sleeping,…..1 is reading this message…. Please add me and reply me soon ..... if you are not single please accept my apology .... god bless you .... thank.. “ (Wadaa Salim, 13^th July)

So do random love declaration, grammatically incorrect remarks. However, the constant starring, the kissing noises, the 'tstststs', the 'are you married?' are exhausting, especially on a bad day. That is one thing I haven't got used to in the four months I have been here, it annoys me just as much as on the first day. There are a few ways around some of the things, but they are pretty inefficient. You can dress modestly, but unless you're hiding under a ninja outfit, they won't leave you in peace. What I find amusing is to tell taxi drivers various stories when they question me. The one I use most is the one where I am married to a Jordanian from Irbid and have a son called Mohammed. If you wonder why I don't just ignore their questions, well, there are two reasons. First, I feel it's impolite (even if I know it is ok not to answer, I just can't help to feel rude) and also, taxi drivers are the only ones who speak in Arabic to me.

One could probably write a book on taxis in Amman. In summer, a silent 'masha'Allah' crosses your lips when a Taxi with closed windows stops: it has air conditioning! The others have a different way of “creating” air conditioning: they drive as fast as they can while leaving all windows open. The only problem: the increased traffic in summer, thanks to all the khalijis (people from the Gulf) who are enjoying the “cool” Ammani climate! What I love about taking taxis, is the way one gives directions. No one knows street names. In fact I have no clue about the name of the street I have lived on for three months. Not that I ever needed it. I was once asked at border control, as I was re-entering Jordan, what my address was. I had no idea - I just told them my neighbourhood- Al-Yasmeen. To get to a certain place in Amman, it is necessary to indicate a landmark near the place you want to go, unless you're lucky enough to be going to an obvious place, such as city mall or a specific hotel. In the vicinity of that landmark, you need to indicate to the driver where it is you want to go. The great thing about that is the fluency you acquire in taxi arabic. I can convince a taxi driver to go on a one way street, explaining that there is no traffic and that it is only a short bit, but I can only buy about 6 different fruits and vegetables without pointing.

Another means of transportation I enjoy is the bus. I have taken the one to Jerash many times and it has helped me to become more patient. The way it works is that the bus leaves when it's full, knowing that there are about 20 seats. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. The unpredictability can be mish kwayyis. (not good)

The recent uprisings in the Arab world have confused people back home even more I feel. Nothing major happened in Jordan. At the various demonstrations that occurred during my time here, quite a number of protesters were beaten up, but nothing severely threatened the regime. I usually avoided risky areas such as downtown after friday prayer, so I haven't seen much. Just police getting ready on Friday morning in the balad, various protests in front of the Prime Ministry at fourth circle and protests in front of the Syrian embassy, back in May and June, when people cared.

Before I got to Jordan, I was so excited about the food! I figured I would put on a stone ( I rather lost a few kilos – due to a various digestion issues) . Hummus, falafel, tabbouleh and so on being the standard dishes in most places, become less exciting and are only convincing when they are really good. I know I will miss them at some point, probably when I will be facing toad in a hole, smothered chicken and fish and chips on a menu. The traditional Jordanian dish is Mansaf.(Wiki page: Mansaf ). The best Mansaf I've eaten was the one the women in the camp prepared. Jabri's is nothing compared to that! My favourite drink in the Middle East is Lemon and Mint. It is simply the best. It is refreshing, helps you digest and goes with anything. If, however, you are a fan of Coca-Cola, you will have difficult moments in Jordan, where Pepsi is the leader on the market. It was always a moment of exhilaration whenever a shop sold real coke. And although some might deny it: Pepsi is no Coke! (even when you are really REALLY thirsty!)

Getting dressed in Jordan was one of the most annoying things. It was hot enough to walk around in a swimsuit and yet, better cover your elbows and knees. I have never dressed that much for other people as I have in Jordan. Although you get used to knowing what is acceptable and what is not in certain neighbourhoods of Amman, I often checked with a friend whether I was dressed appropriately enough. I am looking forward to the UK, where you can wear whatever you want, because there will always be someone weirder.

One of the most frustrating things in Jordan was service. Most expats complain about it. In shops or restaurants, there is either one guy, who is really slow and totally overwhelmed or there are five guys and they are totally inefficient, because they are either all helping you or none is helping you. Waiters in restaurants generally never deserve tip and client satisfaction is a notion that is lacked in many places. Of course, in some restaurants and cafés people were friendly and effective, but they were the exception.

My favourite time of the day in Jordan is sunset, especially if you are sitting at Old View Café in Jebel Amman. The city is slowly infused in a myriad of orange, yellow and pink tones. Kids are flying kites. Trained pigeons are flying in circles and the call for prayer starts all over the city. It's divine.

My favourite experience in Jordan was meeting the women at the Gaza refugee camp. I went there several times to teach English in a gym. Sometimes they were 20, sometimes 7, but they were always the most genuine and nicest people I have met in Jordan. I didn't feel like a stranger in their group as we talked about life, food, sports or clothes. I found the female solidarity I was looking for in the Middle East. It broke my heart when I had to say goodbye and if anything will make me come back to Jordan, it is what I found in the camp.

Petra, Aqaba and the Dead Sea

Right now I'm writing from the terrace at the well known Books@Cafe in Amman, where some jazzy tunes accompany the beautiful view onto one of Amman's hills. It is nearly mid-June and the days are now becoming quite hot, people stay up late and every morning I wake up to a sunny day. I want to use this rather relaxed Saturday to portray my recent escapades around the country.

There is one thing, a visitor of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan cannot miss out on. Petra. In fact, from the moment I knew I was coming to live here, people started telling me “You have to go to Petra!“ It's the biggest thing in the country and the developments of the historical site, financed to a large extend by USAID, have created a real hype. OF COURSE I was going to go there. After the 20^th “Are you going to visit Petra“ I nearly wanted to shoot myself. I mean, would you ask someone who is planning on living in France, whether he or she will see the Eiffel Tower? Or would you ask: “Are you going to eat Tapas in Spain?”. Anyway, when I got here, the question became: “Have you been to Petra?“. After all this pressure, I am so glad that I can say: “I have been to Petra“ and I can also expose the banalities that every visitor is able to produce, qualifying the site of beautiful, mind-blowing, huge, hot, amazing... Indeed it is an incredible place, but allow me just to say how fed up I am with hearing people talk about it. This is why I am just going to do a few remarks on the place, and for more information, well GO THERE!

  Petra

A Frenchman we met there described Petra to be beyond everything: beyond time, beyond civilisation, beyond imagination... Indeed. It's difficult to believe that this used to be a flourishing city, while you are roasting on the way up to the superb views in the mountains. It is truly amazing and in my opinion, it's worth going for three days and just enjoy hiking around the place, because during the weekend we spent there, we were only able to see the main parts of it. Also, I might be interested in history, but I have a threshold when it comes to the intake of information. Thus, the thing I enjoyed most was being outside, with magnificent weather... 30° degrees sunshine (a bit cooler would have been even better). Hiking in such a beautiful place is incredible and my favourite spot of it all is what they call “The view of the end of the world“: beyond the Monastery, there is a spot in the mountains where you see the beginning of the desert and it just appears that if you continue walking, beyond the horizon you will fall of the earth. It is just magnificent.

A week later, I had the opportunity to see a bit more of south Jordan, especially the major coast city of the country: Aqaba. Although it is a beach resort, society there remains quite conservative because of its close ties with Saudi Arabia, only a dozen miles away. At the Red Sea, there is not much to do but lie at the beach, go snorkelling, scuba diving and enjoy other leisure activities. On top of that, the city is in a 'Special Economic Zone' so that especially alcohol and cigarettes are particularly cheap, which is quite an incentive to a lot of people every year!

Sunset on the Dead Sea

Jordan is also a great place for beautiful panoramas, especially the breathtaking canyons leading to the Dead Sea, which are called Wadis. However, getting around can become a pain when you miss a road and the lack of signs does not help in that matter! It can easily mean a 60km detour but for us it was an opportunity to accidentally drive past incredible views, that you don't find in any guide. Then in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, there is Mount Nebo where Moses is said to have seen the Promised Land before dying without ever reaching it. The view is beautiful there and at night you can see the lights of Amman in the East and the lights of Jerusalem in the West. On our bible-themed day, we also visited the Baptism Site, where John the Baptist is said to have baptised Jesus. The most impressive aspect of the site, in my opinion, is that the size of the Jordan river has been quite reduced, mostly because of Israeli irrigation policies upstream. This means that at the Baptism site, you are only standing ten feet away from Palestine. You can see some of the churches of Jericho! The distance in physical terms is ludicrous compared to the distance in constructive terms. However, the essential problem with the decreasing flow of the Jordan River is that the Dead Sea is slowly... well, dying. At the shore you can clearly see from the salt residues, where the water level used to be. A project of building a canal connecting the Red and the Dead Sea exists and it would reverse the shrinking of the latter. However, it also bears the name of Peace Canal, because regional cooperation is essential in its construction, but in the current climate, the project seems far from being realisable.

On a much lighter note, the Dead Sea is a perfect escape on weekends. From Amman, it takes about an hour to go to the lowest point on earth and then you can spend a day at the pool in the various hotels or beach complexes for about 20-40 JOD (20-40€) and spending a day in a bikini is a great bubble of oxygen!  

Kate and me at the pool bar...

Al-Urduniyya

I'm sitting in a taxi, driving from first circle to Yasmeen, where I live. It is dark already and the warm breeze feels good on my skin. Amman is my new home: Somehow, I have woken up one morning considering all these strange new things as normalcy... the chaotic traffic, the car honking, the staring men, directing the taxi driver yameen (right) and shmal (left) to this or that duwwar (roundabout), hearing the Muezzin at 5am, hearing the usual „Kefek?“ „Shu Akhbarek“ „Kulshi Tammam“ etc. There also is the distinct (horrible) music the gas vending car makes or the amazing food... I have grown very fond of labane ( a form of thick white cheese) and za3ter (a thyme mix) and my everlasting love for cheese finds satisfaction in Halloum!

However, for a country where you hear “No problem, no problem” (with the accent it sounds more like 'no broblem, no broblem') all day long, things are really complicated. You can't really use public transport, because they not only give the directions only in Arabic ( and although I can read the script, I am still very slow, especially when it comes to reading a sign on a driving bus...) there are no clear bus stops (I'm not even talking about a map!): a random queue of people on the side of the road is generally a good sign indicating that a bus will stop here. At the beginning, I struggled a lot with this, because for me, all this was totally irrational, as many things here. Organisation works differently, even when it just concerns a few people and their plan to meet up. You spend more time discussing how you will organise than it takes for all of you to gather in one place. But to my greatest astonishment, things do work out in the end. All this made me acquire a great deal of patience!  أصبر الجميل  (Patience is beautiful)!

When coming here, I wasn't very sure what it meant to be a woman, living by herself in Jordan. At first I struggled to see the limits of security and the limits of appropriate behaviour. I started being overly careful, and I am sometimes still not sure if I am exaggerating with my apprehension. I can walk along the streets at night in Jebal Amman without thinking of any danger, but then a random cat that comes out of a dark corner scares the hell out of you and you feel confronted with your own vulnerability, not really knowing what to do with it. People from home always ask me what I wear and whether I wear a headscarf. Although a vast majority of girls do wear hijaabs and some women with niqaabs wander the streets of Amman, I don't feel weird by exposing my hair. However, I dress modestly, which means that I try to cover my legs down to half-calf at least and my arms below the elbow. Especially when you are going around by yourself using taxis, precaution is better. When I go out with a friend who has a car, I can allow myself to wear something shorter, although I have lost the appeal to it, I must say. Long clothes make you feel protected and comfortable.

I still feel like I have a lot to learn about the culture here and I often have these awkward moments. Such as yesterday, when my friend told me to dry my hair as wet hair was a sign of preceding adult activity...

Sunrise in Wadi Rum

I haven't talked about the country's beauty yet and it is something one must talk about! The several places I have seen here have made me hold my breath. The Dead Sea offers a beautiful and calm panorama, with amazing colours at sunset! The stones in the water shine in tones of red and orange as if they were from a different planet. Of course, every visitor has to get the floating experience but I did resist the picture with the newspaper in my hands. The taste of the water is awful though. I had imagined it to be just very salty but even very very very salty doesn't get near the taste experience that water represents. It is that salty that it gets bitter! Nothing you would want to cook your spaghetti in!

When we to drove south via Wadi Musa towards Aqaba, we passed by the most impressive panorama. We didn't have the time to stop at Petra, but I will go there eventually! Instead, we went to Wadi Rum, to spend a night in the desert alongside the (local?) Bedouins. It was also an opportunity to drive a 4x4 in the desert, to see the sunset illuminate the red landscape, to eat some traditional Bedouin food, to hear their songs, to collect wood, to make fire and to freeze during the night! The silence in the desert is truly impressive and the chant of the birds in the morning was beautiful. Somehow we decided that we wanted to do a camel tour and although it was one of the shortest of the ones they proposed, the pain I subsequently felt in my lower body has accompanied me back to Amman and has stayed with me for a few days!

Coming back to Amman was really a step back into civilisation after the desert! For me, it felt like coming home...

Amman