Yet, the state of things being what it is, one must choose between the lesser of two evils, and while I wouldn’t call the Democrats a profoundly progressive party–there are countries in Europe that don’t even have a party as far to the right as the Democrats–they are, for what it’s worth, the best America has to offer. I didn’t vote in the primary this year because I couldn’t make up my mind between the two remaining candidates. I didn’t really like either of them, and was not impressed by the fact that one was a woman and the other black. I didn’t love Obama then, and I don’t love him now, but I like him a lot more than I like most other people who have been in his position over the last several election cycles. He’s smart (criterion number one in my book), articulate, compassionate, understands what it’s like to live on food stamps, and seems to have a sense of how to make a flawed system work to the best possible ends. My most compelling reason for voting for him, however, is that John McCain scares the piss out of me.

Frankly, this election is sickening me. I’m not at all sorry to be out of the country, or that my TV is broken so that I couldn’t watch the hot air machines on cable news even if I wanted to. I think if I had any more exposure to this bullshit than I get from the New York Times online, I’d be rendered physically ill.

Every statement the McCain campaign makes is an out-and-out lie. They have (with the gleeful complicity of the media) tried to label Obama alternately as a terrorist, a foreigner, a Muslim, a black nationalist, a celebrity, and now a pedophile. The way that these narratives play on American racism is really sickening, particularly given the air of smugness and feigned innocence that accompany them–seriously, why don’t they just come out and call him an “uppity nigger?” That is, after all, the point they are trying to make.

But what did we expect? A year of overtly sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton, and now as soon as anyone mentions that Sarah Palin may have lied (which she did) about her positions, or question her (demonstrably deceptive) stance against corruption, or wonder whether she has the experience (she has very little, by the way) to take on the position of VP and quite possibly president, the Republicans decry their opponents’ anti-feminist attitudes. Never mind the fact that her selection as McCain’s running mate demonstrates more than anything else his contempt for women and for the office of the Vice President. For crying out loud, Charles Gibson had to tell the woman what the Bush Doctrine is! (Granted, that definition was probably educational to most of the people who saw the interview as well). Paul Krugman calls it the “It’s OK if you’re a Republican” syndrome, but in this case, there are whole new dimensions to it. We judge Barack Obama by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin (yeah right), but if that darky dares lay a finger on our little white girl, he’d best start running.

And this from John McCain, whose campaign in 2000 was demolished by ad hominem attacks and merciless slander from the Karl Rove factory of negative narratives. McCain, who decried the similar tactics used against John Kerry in 2004. Do you know what Bush’s 2000 South Carolina strategy people are doing with themselves now? Working for the same man whose good name they wiped in the mud eight years ago. Talk about a “flip-flopper.”

McCain’s 180-degree turn on smear tactics is, however, highly revelatory about who is really running his campaign. Hint: it’s not him. It’s the same people who have been pulling the strings over W’s head for the past eight years. Case in point: John McCain did not vet Sarah Palin. He did not want her as his running mate; he wanted Lieberman or Ridge. But what he needed–said the voices from backstage–was a governor with a solid conservative image, anti-abortion and receptive to creationism, to rein in the base; oh, and if it’s a woman, they could pick up the disgruntled Hillaristas as well, because everyone knows that women are irrational and overly passionate and too stupid to tell the difference between Clinton and Palin. So Palin it was–never mind the fact the he did not know her or who she was until a week before he picked her.

Worst of all, the media say that the Clinton-Palin switcheroo seems to be working. The suddenly significant WWWs (white, working-class women) appear to be slipping into the red zone, and the new narrative is that Obama has already lost this election to Sarah Palin.

Now, given that all television belongs to a small cadre of corporate leviathans–Disney, GE, Viacom, CBS corp., and Rupert Murdoch, respectively–and that this list includes one hawker of sweatshop goods, one arms dealer, and one right-wing activist (and who knows what kind of shit Viacom and CBS are up to), it is hardly surprising to see the TV pundits rolling over, as it were, and playing straight into the Republican-manufactured fairy tale narratives wherein John McCain is a maverick soldier, Sarah Palin is a dynamic reformer, and Barack Obama is a representative of Al Qaeda (Stay tuned for allegations that Joe Biden murdered his wife). Nonetheless, anyone would be loath to admit that we’ve sunk so low that lies beat the truth about as often as a casino takes your money. Unfortunately, it’s looking that way.

Let’s take a look at some of the complete lies Americans have been made to believe, just over the past eight years or so:

1. John McCain fathered two illegitimate black children.
2. Tax rebates are the only viable form of economic stimulus, especially if they mostly go to the upper upper class.
3. The economy grew more under Reagan and Bush than under Clinton.
4. Health care is not a universal human right, and treating it as such is tantamount to joining the Communist Party.
5. 9/11 took the US government totally by surprise.
6. Saddam Hussein bought uranium from Nigeria.
7. The 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi agents.
8. There’s nothing fishy about Dick Cheney holding closed-door negotiations for the reconstruction of Iraq.
9. John Kerry was a traitor to his country.
10. There’s nothing fishy about the president of Diebold declaring that he will “deliver the votes of Ohio to George W. Bush,” following which a mountain of evidence emerges pointing to vote tampering in Ohio.
11. Intelligent design is a reputable branch of science.
12. There is no scientific consensus on whether human activity causes or contributes to global warming.
13. The Social Security trust fund is in imminent danger of insolvency.
14. Deregulation of financial markets can only be a good thing.
15. The war in Afghanistan has been won.
16. The war in Iraq has been won.
17. War with Iran is both advisable and feasible.
18. Increasing offshore oil drilling will decrease the price of gasoline in the short term.

(This is hardly an exhaustive list)

So please don’t blame me if I’m a little jaded–I don’t blame you if you are.

Now, back to the matter at hand. Everyone is freaking out at the moment because of the slip Obama has taken in the latest national polls, but as Gail Collins pointed out in her column in the Times on Wednesday, Presidential contenders do not and should not worry about national polling. Might I remind you that W “won” the 2000 election with a relative minority of the so-called popular vote, and that despite his clear majority in the popular vote in 2004, had to rig the election in Ohio to actually “win” his re-election (see #10 above). Looking at the facts of the matter–that is to say, the facts that matter–Obama is actually sitting much prettier in terms of his chances in November than the present maelstrom of hysteria would have you believe.

It is impossible to call an American election in September–for that matter, it’s impossible to call it on Halloween–but there are a few points I think we’d better look at, which are much more salient than national polling data. Looking at the Times’ electoral college map, the breakdown is as follows:

Solid Obama: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington D.C. (172 electoral votes).

Leaning Obama: Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin (66 electoral votes).

Solid McCain: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming (148 electoral votes).

Leaning McCain: Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, (79 electoral votes).

Tossup: Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Virginia (73 electoral votes).

Assuming–and this is a big assumption–that all the pink states go crimson, and the baby blue states turn out ultramarine, that’s 238 votes for Obama, 227 for McCain. 270 are needed to win. That means that Obama, again assuming that the striped states become solids, needs only, say, Michigan and Ohio to win the election. McCain, by contrast, would need to take those plus either Virginia or Colorado. The latest polling has Obama leading by small but not miniscule margins in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Colorado, so if the election were held right now, he would likely win it–albeit without a mandate.

Now, anything can happen between now and November, but frankly, I see no reason for the Democrats to lose one iota of hope. The heat of the Sarah Palin moment will die down, and there’s every chance that she will end up hurting McCain, particularly if that ethics scandal of hers turns out to be a doozy (and gets coverage). Besides, I have a hunch that McCain’s post-Palin-proclamation bounce has little to do with Democratic and Independent voters going over to the dark side, and much more to do with Palin’s wingnut credentials enticing the conservative Christians who were planning to sit this one out–as, I might remind you, was her intended effect. The intense scrutiny that is befalling her at the moment could play out two ways: either she successfully plays the “damsel in distress” card and wins admirers by bravely confronting the “sexist, sensationalist, liberal media”; or she turns a lot of people off with her already apparent ignorance and self-contradiction.

Furthermore, I’m going to go ahead and call the Presidential debates in favor of the Democrats. Passing over the fact that one candidate will be telling significantly more lies than the other, John McCain, whatever else he may be, is no rabble-rousing pulpitmaster, whereas Obama knows how to deliver a solid point and make it sound good, too. I’m looking forward to McCain having a temper tantrum when Obama asks him to explain what made him change his mind about all the policies he adamantly opposed a few years ago, and now just as adamantly supports, or how a man who voted with the White House 90% of the time over the past two election cycles is supposed to bring “change” to executive policy. The Veep debates are harder to call, but my inclination is to say that Biden’s mush-mouth will lose him fewer points than Palin’s inability to articulate positions on things she should know about but doesn’t will cost her. If we’ve learned anything over the last eight years, inarticulateness is no barrier to entrance into the highest levels of government. Then again, we’ve also learned the same lesson about ignorance, so who the hell knows?

Finally, the tipping of balances in the Republican- and Democratic-leaning battlegrounds is, I think, more likely to favor Obama. Indiana, North Carolina, Louisiana, Montana, and Missouri are shakier holds for McCain than Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa and Oregon are for Obama–just one switchover for Obama, particularly in a big-ticket state like North Carolina or Florida, would leave McCain treading water.

Frankly, Obama is running a good campaign. He knows what to focus on and actually has the background to connect with the working class voters he needs to court. Right now, McCain is the one who should be (and, frankly, is) looking genuinely desperate. This is visible in the sloppy, nonsensical, vicious smears he has been lobbing at Obama over the past few days–the incredibility of which, thankfully, appears to be getting a modicum of attention. He is not just playing standard politics; he is playing Karl Rove politics–make your opponent look like a weirdo to cover up for your lack of anything meaningful to say. There is, unfortunately, every chance that this dirty business will find a way to succeed, particularly with the TV news cretins chomping at the bit to make the election look less like an election and more like a cockfight. But, again, looking at the numbers, McCain has to convince a lot of people in a lot of places that Obama is a foreign, Muslim, Farrakhanite, elite, pedophiliac terrorist celebrity to make this a game-winner.

The only wild card we haven’t considered yet is the perfectly expectable deployment of vote-rigging by the Republicans, as evidenced by the stomping of Democratic principles in the past two Presidential elections. While McCain projects himself as a reformist Republican, his recent behavior leads one to believe that he would have no problem with hijacking this election illegally and dishonorably in the style of his predecessor. After all, the shenanigans in 2000 and 2004 went completely unpunished, so why should he or his backers fear pulling the same stunts? If there’s anything I’ll really be watching out for in the coming month and a half, it’s evidence of funny business with voting machines, ballots, gerrymandering (sorry, now it’s called “strategic redistricting” because “strategic redistricting” is easier to pronounce and isn’t explicitly forbidden by the Constitution), etc. I’d like to think that those days are behind us, but I can’t see the neocons giving up their day in the sun over such a trivial matter as being voted out of office.

First of all, I don’t mean to imply at all that identity is merely local, but rather that it contains a local component: a person’s identity is shaped by numerous group memberships, from family to town to tribe to nation to state to religion to–for the very enlightened among us–humanity writ large. My point is that when a revisionist Zionist argues (and believe me, they do) that there is nothing wrong with relocating a Palestinian Arab to another Arab country–that Arabs are essentially interchangeable–they are ignoring the intimate connection between person and place, and denying a family from, say, Hebron the right to count “being from Hebron” as an integral aspect of their identity rather than being lumped together with a group of people that is in a sense foreign to them. This is, meanwhile, entirely abstract and academic when compared to the much more tangible sufferings involved in being kicked out of one’s home, but I’ll save that for another post.

Secondly, I’m sorry to say that I disagree with you when you consider my “straw men” to be discountable minorities. While academic circles have certainly long abandoned the notion of ethnic purity, spurious ethnic divisions continue to fuel conflicts all over the world. What is “ethnic cleansing” about if not purity? Just look at the situation in the Caucasus, or the Balkans, or in Sudan (and various other African countries). What I’m saying i that ethnicity is a historically constructed idea and not an immutable, ahistorical truth. The development of “ethnic” identities is tied in with political histories, so often invented to exploit imagined differences and similarities in the justification of conflicts and atrocities.

My gripe is with those who say things like “Well, Jews and Arabs/Hutus and Tutsis/Serbs and Albanians/whites and blacks hate each other by nature, and it’s always been that way, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” when in fact each and every one of these conflicts has a material, historical explanation that does not rely on abstract ethnic conflicts. For over a thousand years, Jews found protection and prosperity in the Muslim world while in Christendom they were killed, expelled, forced into ghettos and treated as pariahs; and yet today, as a result of modern world events, we find a widespread myth that Islam is inherently anti-Jewish. Call them “straw men” if you like, but these people exist, and this kind of ahistorical defeatism is more prevalent in debates over these conflicts than you or I would like it to be.

Now, you may never have heard anyone say that Arabs look the same or have a single culture–probably because most of the people who hold these opinions don’t spend much time talking about Arabs. If they did, they might learn something. I don’t know how well-connected you are with the U.S. zeitgeist, but in my experience, conflation, confusion, and ignorance of the complexities of Arab (and worse, Islamic) societies is the rule, not the exception. You may call people who don’t know the difference between the Maghreb, Levant, and Gulf “not the cleverest of people,” but I assure you that the lowest common denominator of American society do not know what the Maghreb is, cannot find their own states (to say nothing of Iraq) on a map, and think “madrasa” means “terrorist training camp.” You can forget about “homogeneously Arab” and “ethnic minorities”; they haven’t gotten past “towelhead.” And these people vote.

Let me remind you furthermore that a person who thinks global warming is a myth and evolution is an ugly rumor currently occupies the White House.

Now, to your third point. Perhaps, when I say “Zionism,” I should be more specific and say “revisionist Zionism,” the anti-apologist wing founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky that brought us Irgun and Likud. This right wing of Zionism–growing in power since the 80s with the help of Jewish fundamentalists–believes that “Judea and Samaria” belong rightly to the Jews, and have absolutely no qualms about the permanent expulsion of the Palestinians. You can’t call them “a few”; they are many, they are well-supported by American lobbyists, and they more than occasionally produce Prime Ministers.

Yet I still feel that to absolve “Zionism” as a whole is to be too kind. The core goal of the original Zionist project–Revisionist, Labor, or otherwise–was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine with a sustainable Jewish majority. In order to achieve this goal, a sizable proportion of the Palestinian Arab community had to be forcibly expelled from their homes (an order given by David Ben-Gurion, a Labor Zionist to the left of Jabotinsky), and myths of Palestinian non-existence and a self-directed exodus were invented to justify this crime. Of course, Israel did not expel all of the Arabs from all of Palestine, but there is no denying that the foundation of the Jewish state required the “ethnic cleansing” of what was to become its sovereign territory in order to ensure a Jewish majority there. For this reason, although most Israelis support a two-state solution to the crisis, even the most left-wing of them would never in their wildest dreams support the right of Arab exiles or their descendants to reclaim their homes in Israel proper–to allow this would be to destroy the Jewish majority and the Jewish character of the state.

This selfsame right of return being a condicio sine qua non for a settlement on the Palestinian side, can you blame the cynics?

And this should come as no surprise; after all, the Arab world stands at the crossroads of three continents, and its historical commerce of influence (both given and taken) is found as far afield as England and China. “The Arabs,” as they are called, are as a matter of historical inevitability an internationalized population: a mix of Semites, Turks, Aryans, Caucasians, Africans, and Indians, to name the most obvious. Thus while many self-described Arabs do look the Semitic stereotype of olive skin, black hair, and big noses, many others do not. This is one of the ironies of pan-Arab nationalism: if Nasser wanted ethnic unity, exactly what ethnicity was he talking about?

The other irony is this: as convenient as it is for some to believe that all Arabs, everywhere, are culturally indistinct, sharing a uniform set of values and practices, the fact remains that they are not. When the great Arab nationalist romantics of the twentieth century set out to unify their people under one flag, they seemed not to consider the vast differences that separate an Egyptian from a Yemeni from an Iranian Arab in Khuzistan. An example of this presumption backfiring is to be found in the Iran-Iraq war: when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, he marched his troops into Khuzistan, expecting to be greeted by the local population of ethnic Arabs as a liberator from the lascivious Persian tyrants. His presumption was proven astonishingly incorrect.

For a more local example, take the occupation from 1949-1967 of the West Bank and Gaza by Jordan and Egypt, respectively. The populations of these territories never considered themselves Jordanians or Egyptians, nor do the millions of Palestinians now living in Jordan, Lebanon, and other neighboring Arab countries consider themselves to belong to the local nationality. They may have loyalties to their host countries, but they remain self-identified as Palestinians.

The old Zionist argument, still reverberating in some circles, is that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian,” and that there never was; after all, how can a people profess a national identity based on a state that was carved out of one foreign empire by another foreign empire just a few decades ago? What is a “Jordanian” or a “Syrian” or an “Iraqi” when these states are complete fabrications, Arabs are Arabs, and there is nothing to differentiate one from the other?

(It is ironic to note that while Nasser’s pan-Arabist project no doubt scared the piss out of Israel, the revisionists were more than happy to borrow his rhetoric part and parcel when it suited their agenda.)

This is a question that remains unresolved among circles of high scholarship, and yet to me it seems strikingly explicable. The first, simple answer is that while the precise borders of the modern Arab states were drawn after World War I, they reflect to some degree already existing borders drawn earlier by the Ottomans. Take a look at this map of the Levant in 1914:

One can see here the semblance of modern borders, particularly that along the Jordan river, and the borders of modern-day Iraq to the east. Note the location of administrative centers in Beirut, Amman, Damascus, and Jerusalem. Of course, this doesn’t really answer the question, as these borders–which shifted throughout the 19th century as a result of Ottoman hegemonic decline and political upheavals in Istanbul–were themselves the design of a foreign imperial power. Nonetheless, the point is made here that political divisions in the Arab world are not a modern novelty.

1914 is, however, not that far from 1919, so perhaps that map doesn’t drive the point home. Take a look, then, at this map of the Abbasid Caliphate in the late 8th century:

Note the existence of Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and Armenia.

The point I’m trying to make with these maps is that the idea of a contiguous political entity encompassing the entire Arab world has not existed since the time of the Umayyads, and that the formation of distinct, local political identities based on the constant division of the Arab world over the course of the past twelve centuries is not so terribly farfetched.

Fine, one might retort; so there was a Palestine. There still weren’t “Palestinians” until the Zionists came along. Well, my answer to that is that there weren’t “Israelis” either. Nobody questions the national pride of Israelis, Pakistanis, Irish, Poles, Lebanese, Mauritanians, Zambians, Koreans, Laotians, or Mongolians; not one of these countries existed one hundred years ago. Is it really so hard to believe that a people’s identity is shaped historically in real time? That events as fresh as those of 1918-1948 could play a part in the shaping of a “Palestinian” identity? Can we really play a game of “I was here first” with the constant flux of historical relationships between people and land? Modern nation-states are not so much the product of ancient ethnic divisions as they are of modern political and ideological developments, of imperialism and globalization. Jordan is a young country, relative to some, and yet the events that won it its sovereignty, however recent, are important to its people. The word “Jordanian” refers on its most basic level to the people born within a certain, arbitrary geographical area, but also refers to people who relate on a personal level to a particular history of imperial control and freedom from it–the fact that there are Jordanians still alive today who remember the country’s founding makes the relationship between their national identity and this history stronger, not weaker. This history, unique to Jordan, sets apart this group of people, “ethnically” and linguistically indistinguishable from their neighbors, just as the unique modern histories of so many young countries transformed them from hazy political entities into nations. Can “Arabs” not be both Arabs and something else at the same time?

The idea that people with a shared ethno-linguistic heritage will develop the same identity everywhere, much less to wish for political unity, seems to me a much more bogus claim, for the precise reason that it ignores the interplay of political and cultural histories. Tajiks and Iranians speak a virtually identical language, and share an “ethnic” identity to boot, yet you do not hear clamors in Dushanbe for political union with Iran, nor would the people of either country take kindly to the idea of the Tajiks being relocated en masse to Iran. Imagine the UN deciding to found a Gypsy homeland in Switzerland, and relocating the Swiss to Germany because they speak the same language. Does this make sense?

No. And why not? Because there is more to an identity than language and ethnicity. There is more to it even than that nebulous catch-all term “culture.” Identity is local; it is tied to the land of ones birth and of ones ancestors. In the Arab world, the severe localization of identity politics is readily apparent, and has much to do with the importance of family and community, and with the presence of tribal modes of thinking in very recent and even contemporary history. An Arab anywhere may be an Arab everywhere, but that does not mean they are the same. In Egypt, everyone is Egyptian, but any Egyptian knows the difference between a Cairene and a northern Bedouin and an Upper Egyptian fellah. Likewise, a Jordanian from Amman and a Jordanian from Salt are both Jordanian, but one is Ammany, and the other is, well, Salty. Here, your identity and relationships can reflect something as small-scale as what side of what town you live on, which may in turn reflect what side your family took in a century-old dispute. Of course, there is on top of that the division between city and country–a division longer-standing here than in Europe–and the various national self-conceptions that have emerged through political history.

It is doubly ironic, then, that Zionism professes the Jews’ right to the land of their forefathers and at once denies another people the right to the land of their grandfathers. When the Jewish fundamentalists of Gush Emunim, asked what is to be done with the Arabs of Palestine, answer “they can go to Jordan,” this expresses not only racism and an ignorance of history, but a genocidal ambition.

As religious fundamentalists gain power in both Jewish Israel and Arab Palestine, and a question of land and history becomes reduced to a competition between two psychotic crusades of attrition, the potential for peace between these two persecuted peoples–neither one more or less deserving of a national home than the other–becomes more and more remote. But one thing I can say for certain: until the Palestinians are recognized as a people unto themselves, with roots in a slice of land from which they were wrongfully removed, and not merely as part of a homogeneous mess of “Arabs,” the point of the discussion will remain entirely lost.

The Yarmouk River valley as seen from Romero’s restaurant at Umm Qais.


The Romans left a terrible mess…

Yarmouk River valley with the Sea of Galilee in the background.

On Friday, Dinusha invited Jacqui and me to lunch at her family’s apartment. She and Kumar came by around noon, and we took a taxi over to Jabal Amman (I think), where her family lives. We were greeted by her mother, her sister and brother, and sundry cousins–Kumar isn’t related to them, but he’s a close friend.

Now, Dinusha’s family lives in a tiny, low-ceilinged, two-room basement apartment on a slummy street . Their bathroom consists of a curtained-off corner with a bucket and a hole in the floor. For all that they don’t have, however, their house pride would put anyone to shame: the apartment was lovingly decorated and spotlessly clean.

We walked into a bedroom/living room/dining room where a table was set with our lunch. In the center of the table was a plate piled with rice, into which were mixed shredded carrots and fried onions. Around it, four dishes: a dark, spicy chicken curry, a starchy vegetable concoction made with coconut powder, a sweet dish of fried eggplant and onion, and a plate of fried savory pastries that resembled egg rolls, all cooked by Dinusha (Naturally, I don’t know what any of these dishes are called. Dinusha named them, but I forgot). It was one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten, and here I don’t exaggerate.

Afterward, we were served tea and shown family photo albums of weddings and babies. Throughout, I was struck speechless by the overwhelming generosity and hospitality that I was being shown. This family has nothing, and yet they give everything; they take no shame in their poverty, but cherish their every blessing. The family didn’t eat with us–which I found a little strange but didn’t ask about–but sat and watched us, demonstratively proud of their opportunity to entertain us. Clearly, there was some gratitude in this gesture; after all, Jacqui did help Dinusha and her sister considerably in their legal troubles, and most people in their situation do not find such willing advocates. For me, who had little to do with it, it was a bit uncomfortable to be the recipient of their kindness simply by association–then again, who knows, perhaps I did them a big favor just by showing up at the police station with them.

(Update: Mr. Wonderful is out of jail, apparently, but had to go back to court today to answer four counts against him, for which he will most likely go back to jail and then be deported. Now that he knows the kinds of friends they have, he has been leaving Dinusha and her family alone.)

I guess the point of this story is that if ever I should feel exempted from the responsibility to be kind and generous for a lack of means, I’ll think of Dinusha and refute myself; you should do the same.rsri

In 1908, the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire appointed the Hashemite notable Hussein bin ‘Ali Sharif of Mecca and Emir of the Hejaz. During the first World War, Hussein initially supported his Ottoman overlords and their ally Germany, but once he discovered that the Ottomans were planning to depose him after the war, he turned on his superiors and is now rightly hailed as the leader of the great Arab Revolt of 1916.

This is Sharif Hussein as he appears on the one Jordanian dinar note:

Sharif Hussein was promised, in his wartime correspondence with Britain’s High Commissioner Henry McMahon, a post-war Arab kingdom encompassing everything that lies between Egypt and Persia, excepting a few already-extant Middle Eastern possessions of the British Empire. He and his family were instrumental in dismantling the Ottoman Empire’s possessions in the Arab world; his son Faisal (later king of Syria and Iraq) aided the allies in the conquest of Medina and Damascus, and led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he and his friends T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell expected to see, as promised, an ennobling reward for the Arabs who had helped so crucially in winning the war. The promise was, obviously, not kept. Although the Ottoman Empire was dismantled, the Arab world was divided almost entirely into British and French mandates, which is, as you may imagine, not the kind of “independence” Sharif Hussein and his progeny were looking for.

In 1917, Sharif Hussein had declared himself the king of Hejaz, a declaration that was internationally recognized. At the same time, he declared himself the King of all Arabs, which ticked off his rivals to the East, the Wahhabi royal house of Abdul aziz ibn Saud. In 1924, when Sharif Hussein declared himself Caliph, this was the last straw for the Saudis, and later that year the Saudis attacked the Hejaz. Despite his having fought half a world war on behalf of Great Britain, and despite the support they had shown him in the past, the British decided not to intervene in this conflict, and ibn Saud took the Hejaz, forcing Sharif Hussein to abdicate to Cyprus, and later here, to Amman, where he died in 1931.

Meanwhile, in March, 1920, the Syrian National Congress proclaimed Prince Faisal as the king of an independent kingdom of Greater Syria. However, after the San Remo conference a month later, Syria became the property of France, which led to conflict between the French and Faisal’s nationalist army (The Battle of Maysalun). Faisal was expelled from Syria by the victorious French, and fled to the United Kingdom. At the news of his younger brother’s dishonorable discharge from his throne, Prince Abdullah mobilized his own forces in the Hejaz, preparing to launch an attack on Syria to remove the French. Winston Churchill got wind of Abdullah’s plans, and invited him to tea, where he convinced the prince to abandon his likely doomed campaign. Abdullah agreed, and as a reward, a protectorate was set up in Transjordan under his control.

Meanwhile, the British were failing badly in their attempt to directly administer the government of Iraq, and, in the face of unrest there and waning domestic support for the occupation (sound familiar?), they decided in 1921 to abandon direct administration and hand the territory to an Arab monarch; after a plebiscite indicating overwhelming support for this option in Iraq, this job was given to Faisal.

Back in Transjordan, Abdullah ruled over a semi-autonomous entity known as the Emirate of Transjordan, although the British still had a hand in its administration. The British mandate did not actually end until 1946, at which point Abdullah was crowned king of the now-independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

King Abdullah I on the fiver.

King Abdullah I was something of a maverick among Arab monarchs, a tradition continued by his progeny. In the 1930s and 1940s, Abdullah was to his contemporaries what John McCain was to the Republican party in the 1990s (and would like us to think he still is today, despite all evidence to the contrary, but I digress). He held faster to the dream of a united Arab state than his power-preoccupied colleagues, and was unique in his willingness to accept the partition of Palestine and to make peace with the nascent state of Israel. In 1948, Jordan participated in the war against the new Zionist entity, but reluctantly, and only after significant pressure from other Arab states.

Most likely as a result of his pro-Western and insufficiently anti-Zionist attitudes, Abdullah was assassinated by a young Palestinian in 1951 while attending Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in the company of his grandson, Prince Hussein. The assassin fired upon the young Hussein as well, but as the story goes, a medal pinned to his chest by his grandfather deflected the bullet and saved his life. Abdullah was succeeded by his schizophrenic son Talal, who was instrumental in the drafting of Jordan’s constitution and in the mellowing of relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but was forced to abdicate in 1952 on account of his poor mental health in favor of his 17-year-old son, the selfsame Prince Hussein. Because Hussein was not yet an adult, he was officially enthroned a year later in 1953.

King Talal on the tenner.

In 1958, following the union of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic, King Hussein and his cousin Faisal II in Iraq formed a similar alliance, the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan. This federation ended only a few months later, however, when the 23-year-old Faisal was executed along with his family during a coup d’etat. Following this, Iraq became a republic and Hussein was left as the last Hashemite royal still in power.

King Hussein on the twenty.

King Hussein, in the model of his grandfather, was a uniquely progressive Arab leader, and was known to his people as Al-Malik al-Insan (“the humane king”). Favoring peace over conflict whenever possible–and it was by no means always possible–he guided his country through decades of extreme adversity, Jordan to emerge the most stable (if not exactly the wealthiest) country in the region. Not once during his reign, which spanned the duration of the Cold War, did Jordan succumb to Soviet influence. (Granted, Hussein’s staunchly pro-Western posture was well paid for in cash and expensive automobiles by the United States during the 1950s.) He was also an avid sportsman and an amateur radio operator who loved to race cars, drive motorcycles, and fly airplanes and helicopters.

King Hussein’s 1974 Ferrari 365 GT.

During King Hussein’s reign, Jordan saw conflict with both Israel (the 1967 war, in which Jordan lost control of the West Bank) and the PLO (The 1970 conflict known as Black September, in which the organization was expelled from Jordan). During the turmoil of 1970, King Hussein at one point requested Israeli assistance to prevent a Syrian incursion into the north of his country. In September, 1973, King Hussein met secretly with Golda Meir to warn Israel of an impending Egyptian-Syrian attack; after the devastating losses of 1967, King Hussein did not wish his country to become involved in the conflict, but was ultimately pressured by Syria and Egypt into providing a small quantity of support to the invasion. Jordan began peace negotiations with Israel in the 1970s, culminating in the peace treaty of 1994 between King Hussein and Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. Jordan was the second Arab country (after Egypt) to make peace with the Jewish state.

King Hussein ruled for a total of 46 years, up until his death from lymphoma in 1999. Shortly before his death, he made a change to his will, disinheriting his brother Hassan for his eldest son Abdullah, who ascended to the throne in 1999 as King Abdullah II.

Now, for those of you who like to think that indentured servitude is a relic of a less enlightened past, I have some bad news: here in Jordan, it is alive and well. Amman is host to large communities of domestic servants imported from poorer countries to the east–particularly, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These workers, mostly young women, are brought here under the care of sponsors, who employ them, pay them at their discretion, and hold their passports to prevent them from fleeing the country. While some of these workers, like Hilda’s Indonesian housekeeper, are treated decently and paid a living wage, again, they are the exception, not the rule. For example, Rani, the young Indonesian woman who is employed by Jacqui’s landlady as her housekeeper and as caretaker of the building, has not been paid in three years. She is currently trying to get out of the country, but in order to do so, she must get a new passport.

Rani’s case is hardly the worst of them. Nonpayment of wages accompanies a host of other abuses, ranging from harassment to overwork to beatings to rape to murder. The situation is so bad that last January, after finding its embassy in Jordan virtually transformed into a battered women’s shelter, the Philippines placed a ban on all new domestic workers coming to Jordan.

Jacqui told me a story that appeared in the news recently about a domestic worker from the Philippines who, on her first day of work, went up to the roof of her sponsor’s building to call her family back home to let them know that she had arrived safely. Her sponsor didn’t like that, apparently, and upon seeing the girl on the roof, pushed her off the edge. The girl was paralyzed from the neck down and had to return to the Philippines where she died shortly thereafter. I’m not sure what happened to the sponsor, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer were “nothing.” A large part of the problem for these women is that they are legal non-beings, without rights, and generally treated with contempt by Jordanians. Because their sponsors hold their documentation and are essentially their guardians, it is nearly impossible for them to take legal action against their sponsors for any manner of abuse without the assistance of their home country. If they go to the police, they are simply ignored; the word of a foreign servant will always be trumped by that of her native sponsor. So they must instead seek help from their home countries’ embassies, a long process that could get them killed if their sponsors find out.

The second-class legal status of domestic workers also makes it difficult for them to seek justice in other situations.

Monday night, Jacqui and I were having dinner at Books@Cafe with Hilda, Shadi, and Lon (former chair of her department, now working at NYIT’s campus in Bahrain), when Jacqui’s phone rang. It was Dinusha, calling to say that she was in some kind of trouble and asking if she could stay at Jacqui’s apartment that night. We went home later to discover Dinusha, her sister, and her mother in the kitchen, looking panicked. Jacqui asked them what had happened.

Apparently, Sunday afternoon, Dinusha and her sister had been walking home from church when a Sri Lankan man (for our purposes here, let’s call him “Mr. Wonderful”) came up behind them and put his hand on Dinusha’s sister’s backside (in Jordan, touching a woman in such a manner is tantamount to rape, and this is made all the more serious by the fact that Dinusha’s sister is married). The girls turned around and hit him to make him go away. A scuffle ensued, and Mr. Wonderful and Dinusha’s sister both sustained minor injuries. Now, Mr. Wonderful–who had made advances towards Dinusha’s sister in the past–apparently has a girlfriend here in Amman, and has an illegitimate baby with her, so Dinusha and her sister went to this woman to tell her what her babydaddy had done and to ask her to keep him from doing such things in the future.

The next day, the police showed up at Dinusha’s house and informed her and her sister that Mr. Wonderful had filed a complaint against them for hitting him (valid) and for stealing his necklace (lie). They would have to come to the police station the next day (Tuesday) to answer for the complaint. Jacqui, as usual exuding Christian charity, sat them down and had them tell her their side of the story as completely as possible. She typed it out for them and agreed to accompany them to the police station the next day, to respond to the charges and to file a counter-complaint against Mr. Wonderful.

The next morning, Jacqui called up her friend Abdallah, a cab driver who formerly worked as a policeman (and who has several times asked Jacqui to marry him), and asked him to take us to the police station as well as to speak for the girls–being a former cop, he seemed a good person to have on our side. She also called her friend Karina, a Mount Holyoke alumna who works for the Institute for Diplomacy and can translate between English and Arabic. Karina agreed to come along, and said that the more expats show up, the better, so Jacqui asked me to come as well. Well, I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to get an insight into the Jordanian justice system, so I was all too happy to oblige. Also, I can’t stress enough how badly our presence was needed–had Dinusha and her sister gone alone, there was every chance that nothing they said would be believed.

We arrived at one police station just before 10 AM, only to discover that we had come to the wrong station and had to go elsewhere. We went to the right police station, where we were told that nothing could be done until Dinusha’s sponsor and her sister’s sponsor showed up with the girls’ passports. Once they finally arrived, it transpired that Mr. Wonderful was willing to drop his complaint if the girls would give him 50 JD (and here we discover what this was all really about). Now, Mr. Wonderful is not too bright–in fact, there’s clearly something wrong with him, mentally speaking–and it didn’t occur to him that the trouble might well end up landing on him. After a while, once it was revealed what Mr. Wonderful had done, and that he had a past criminal record both here and in Sri Lanka, it became clear to everyone but him that the tables had turned (even after being put in a cage, he still wanted his 50 JD). Dinusha’s sponsor wanted to give him the money rather than having his name tied up in police records, but Karina (I think) convinced him that it was better to follow through with the girls’ complaint and see some kind of justice done.

We spent a good five hours at the police station, and ended up with two options: take the case to criminal court, in which case both Mr. Wonderful and the girls might end up in jail (all having verifiable assault charges against them–self-defense apparently doesn’t acquit you here the way it does in the states); or take the case to Family Protection Court and ask for a restraining order of sorts against Mr. Wonderful. Around this time, certain members of his family showed up and started antagonizing Dinusha and her sister, and Jacqui warned the girls not to rise to their insults.

Jacqui and I went in Abdallah’s taxi to the Family Protection Court to wait for Dinusha and her sister, who, along with Mr. Wonderful, were being escorted there by the police. They showed up and were taken in for medical examinations, and we waited. Finally, Jacqui said that since there was nothing for us to do, I should walk over to Cozmo (a hypermarket down the street) and buy a phone–something I’d been meaning to do. We explained to the guards what I was doing and they seemed to understand, so I went.

I bought a phone at Cozmo, but they only sold one type of SIM card, which was not the one I wanted. I walked back to the court building only to find that the guards had changed shifts and the new guy didn’t seem to buy my story. He told me to go around the corner and sit, so I went around the corner and sat in the shade of some olive trees growing by the side of an empty lot. Mr. Wonderful’s family was also sitting there, so I sat a little ways away from them and waited for Jacqui, who I presumed would come looking for me eventually. As it happened, she did, but she didn’t look around the corner, so she never saw me. So I sat there about an hour, with a phone I couldn’t use–granted, I could have just gone back to Cozmo and bought the SIM card, but I don’t know, I was stubborn–until a young boy (I think related to Mr. Wonderful) started throwing olives at me, at which point I decided it was time to leave. I walked to the main road, got a taxi, and went home.

Nothing was resolved that day, so Jacqui went with Dinusha and her sister back to court Wednesday; in the end, Mr. Wonderful went to jail, and the judge instructed his family to leave Dinusha and her sister alone. We don’t yet know how long he’s going to be in jail, but I think they’re going back Sunday to find that out.

ME: It seems like everyone was getting married last night.

HILDA: Everyone’s always getting married. But at the same time, everyone’s always getting divorced.

ME: Do they set off fireworks for that, too?

HILDA: I did. I had a huge party.

Driving down from Umm Qais yesterday, we passed several wedding caravans, driving brides to their new homes with their husbands’ families. One of them was more than ten cars long, and all of them involved a great deal of horn honking and shouting.

I guess a woman about to commit herself to a sedentary life of baby-making deserves one last hurrah.

The meeting went well; Melissa definitely intends to hire me–pending my completion of this online TEFL course with which I’ve been rather lackadaisical (I told her I’d have it done in two weeks, well ahead of when she would be giving me a contract). She impressed upon me that she was pulling a lot of strings for my sake, not in a “you’d better be grateful” way, but more in a “this is how badly we need a young, male, native English speaker in this department” way. The pay, as I already knew, will hardly be stellar, but relative to the average Jordanian’s salary, I’ll be doing pretty well for myself–especially if I supplement it by giving private English lessons (or, as Melissa suggested, piano lessons, although I don’t know if I’m quite good enough for that–though in the words of Marge Simpson, “I just have to stay one lesson ahead of the kid”). She filled me in on all the problems of the university and of her department specifically, probably giving me more information than I really needed. She said she hopes to be able to give me two classes, but can’t promise more than one. I asked her about getting a long-term visa, and she said the school couldn’t get me that until I was hired full-time, which won’t happen unless or until I finish out one term with them and everyone’s happy (that wouldn’t be until January). She said that nobody would come looking for me if I overstayed my visa, even for a while, and that I would just have to pay a 1 J.D. fine for each day I overstayed it by, but I still would prefer not to have to pay any fines, so she suggested that I leave the country and come back in for a fresh visa. The cleaning boy brought us tea. She gave me directions for getting home and even drew me a map. All in all, a very pleasant job interview.

The taxi ride back home was easier, since it only involved going up one street. I came home to Jacqui’s news of the arrival of Nikolai II, and shortly thereafter, Denusha arrived. Denusha is the young Sri Lankan woman whom Jacqui pays to do housework and sometimes to help take care of the dogs. She used to stay here, in my room, but moved out a few weeks ago (I don’t remember why, but it wasn’t just because I was coming). Anyway, she’s a very quiet and sweet young woman, very capable and intelligent, with a winning smile. Jacqui takes good care of her, although she works several other jobs and I have no idea what her experiences there are like. I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of her.

Jacqui and I were both quite hungry, so we went across the street to the Iraqi restaurant there. I sort of marvel at Jacqui’s ability to address people at length in English even when it is quite clear that they don’t understand anything she’s saying. Food items are high on my list of Arabic vocabulary to learn, lest I go on forever relying upon Jacqui’s mastery of crude communication (when the waiter didn’t understand “lamb,” Jacqui clarified by going “Baa! Baa!” I was a little embarrassed). The food was excellent.

On our way out we passed by a Saudi family. The man wore a plain white kaffiyeh, the adult women all wore the niqab, and the son wore a t-shirt that read “fuck off wankers.” Gotta love the Saudis.

Just before leaving, I pocketed my passport on a whim, thinking I might need it for something (it being my only official form of identification) but not knowing what. It turned out to be a good decision, since where we were headed was near the Israeli border, and peppered with army checkpoints. Waleed has Kuwaiti license plates on his car, and on the way up, somewhere near Irbid we were stopped and the car searched. They didn’t ask for my ID then, but they would later, on the way back. Somewhere between Amman and Jerash, Hilda pointed out to me a Palestinian refugee camp.

Jacqui’s bus had left at ten, and I was expecting to be about an hour behind them, but Waleed and Hilda, laid-back as ever, didn’t show up until about 12:30, and it was nearly 3:00 when we arrived at Umm Qais, by which time Jacqui and her class were getting ready to leave (Jacqui had wanted to stay longer, but her students were complaining about the heat). I just had a moment to say hello to Jacqui’s class and to her friend and colleague Shadi, before they were gone and Hilda, Waleed and I were left on our own.

There is a restaurant at the ruins at Umm Qais called Cafe Romero; it’s a gorgeous half-indoor half-outdoor cafe built right into the ancient Roman architecture. We stopped there, but none of us were terribly hungry, so we had a drink and some watermelon. If you ever go to Umm Qais, you must stop at Cafe Romero if only to use the restrooms–hands down the nicest public restroom I have ever seen, and the only one I’d ever call “beautiful.”

The ruins at Umm Qais are hauntingly beautiful in that ancient way. It occurred to me when we arrived there that they were the oldest buildings I had ever seen, by a long shot. I wondered why I was not gaping in awe at such magnificence, until I realized that I had been gaping in awe for two straight days and was perhaps gaped out–or rather, the ruins were no more new and exciting to me than anything else I had seen in Jordan.

Umm Qais lies in the heights overlooking the Yarmouk river valley; looking north from the patio of Cafe Romero, one can make out in the distance Lake Tiberias and the Golan Heights. The three of us didn’t stay long, on account of the heat, just long enough to take a few pictures and look around. On our way back to Waleed’s jeep, we stopped to chat (or rather, they stopped to chat, since we’re talking about a chat in Arabic) with two local boys who were selling cold drinks, coffee, tea, and cactus fruit near the parking lot. Waleed urged me to try the cactus fruit, which he said reminded him of his childhood in Egypt; it tasted sort of like a cross between a pear and a honeydew melon, very succulent but riddled with seeds too dense to chew but too numerous to spit out (one simply swallows them). We sat a while, and I listened with the fascination of ignorance as the two youths and the two artists shot the shit. Waleed asked me if I wanted to go swimming; I said “sure, why not?”

Next thing I knew, we were packing back into the car, this time with one of the boys sharing the back seat with me. I wondered if we were giving him a ride somewhere, but quickly realized that I had it backwards; he was to be our guide to wherever the hell we were going.

We drove a while–I had no idea to what or where–and eventually came to a checkpoint. The soldiers were stone-faced in greeting us, but lightened up considerably when Waleed revealed that he was Egyptian and not in fact Kuwaiti (apparently Jordanians take more kindly to Egyptians than to those suspicious “gulfis”). They checked all of our IDs except the boy’s, who didn’t have one, and for whom, as a local, an explanation sufficed. We went on and came to another checkpoint; this time Waleed and Hilda spent a long time in what seemed like a polite argument with the soldiers. Hilda explained to me that we were very close to the Israeli border, and that most people would not be allowed to go where we were going, but that they had let us go after Hilda and Waleed explained that we were artists. Talk about smooth talking.

Our first stop was no swimming hole, in fact, but a cliff overlooking the Yarmouk river valley. Here I got to see, up close, the river bordering Jordan and Israel, with the Golan Heights just across from me, and just beyond them to the right, Lake Tiberias. Somewhere in the distance was Lebanon, and in the other distance, Syria. So this was what everyone was fighting about.

Looking out at this scene, I recalled a song we had sung in the Young Judea camp I had attended for two pre-adolescent summers:

Shiri li, Kinneret, shir mizmor yasham
Shiri li, Kinneret, shir li Ha Golan.

I don’t recall when the song was written, but I’d be willing to bet that it was not before 1967.

I took pictures there, among the many pictures I took yesterday, but I just realized that I don’t have the right cord to plug my camera into my computer, so you’re going to have to wait until I get one for pictures. In the meantime, here’s one from Hilda’s camera:

We left the cliff and drove on through more checkpoints to stop at a small town whose name I don’t remember. The air smelled of flatulence, indicating the presence of sulfur springs. This was the “swimming” Waleed had mentioned earlier, but by this point I wasn’t interested. We walked down a staircase past a small group of men, and I followed Hilda through an archway before quickly realizing that I had just walked into a section of the complex that was restricted to women. I apologized to the two muhajabaat sitting there and backed out, to find that Waleed and our guide had disappeared, and that I was left alone with the group of strange men. They addressed me, and I, in halting Arabic, apologized for my faux pas and explained that I was American. One of the men said (I think) that he was Syrian, and for a moment I wondered if I was in trouble. They began to walk up the staircase back to where our car was parked, and indicated for me to follow them. I walked with them, and they kept talking to me. One of them mentioned Bush, and I answered “Bush, hua shaitan!” I knew that was a safe answer, besides which it’s hardly a lie. He went on to extol Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and again to curse Bush I and Bush II–so n.b. to any Bush fans who may read this: if you go to Jordan, keep it to yourself. One of the men said to me: “you’re afraid; why?” I answered in Arablish (more “-lish” than “Arab”) that I wasn’t afraid, just worried because I couldn’t find my friend. They could tell that was a lie, so one of them said to me that they were in the Jordanian army and showed me his Army ID card with a picture of him in uniform. I relaxed a little. They asked me what I was doing in Jordan, and I said that I had come to teach English and learn Arabic, which they thought was great. They had somewhere else to be, apparently, so they said goodbye and left. Hilda emerged from the ladies’ room and told me that she didn’t like this place and was getting suspicious of our guide’s intentions. She asked me where Waleed was and I said I didn’t know. She tried to call him but her phone got no service. We were just about to get really worried when Waleed and our young friend emerged around a corner, Waleed soaking wet. He said the water was too hot for him, but I should try it. I said no thank you but that I needed to use the bathroom. Our guide (I never caught the kid’s name) led me back where they had come from to a courtyard where a group of men were congregated and pointed me in the direction of the most decrepit restroom I had ever seen–and I’ve seen some pretty bad ones. As I left, a young boy said hello to me, and I answered. I couldn’t understand anything he said for the thickness of his accent, so when he said “ahlan wa sahlan,” I had to stare at him dumbly until someone said “welcome.”

Those were some real “dumb American” moments.

We left the sulfur springs and drove on. At one point we went through six checkpoints in the span of what could have been as many city blocks. Understandably so, for the road we were driving on ran parallel to the valley separating Jordan and Israel. On the heights across the valley, I could see Israeli watchtowers. Being so close to the border, and to so many armed men, I was a bit wary. Not of the Jordanian soldiers, who were friendly and laid-back and who I knew wouldn’t lay a hand on me, but of the Israeli snipers and artillery that I knew were hidden up in the mountains across the border (Israel’s carte blanche from the U.S. means that they have little compunction when it comes to accidentally killing an American or two). What if they had seen us taking pictures and gotten suspicious? I wasn’t really afraid, since Israel and Jordan have been at peace for years now, and the scenario was a little farfetched, but still, you never know.

We drove our little friend back to Umm Qais and set off back to Amman. By this time, I was flat-out exhausted from several nights’ poor sleep, and was somewhat skeptical of the plans that we apparently had for the evening to go out drinking with Jacqui and some former dean at NYIT. I also hadn’t eaten much.

For such a small country, Jordan is hard to get around. You ask directions, follow them, see a sign, follow it, and have to ask directions again. By the time we stopped to eat in Irbid, it was dark. We picked up falafel sandwiches at a little hole in the wall, and I was worried that the vegetables would make me sick (you know, from the water), but when I expressed this concern to Hilda, she said not to worry about it, so I didn’t, and I haven’t gotten sick yet. Inshallah I won’t get sick at all. The sandwich was delicious, incidentally.

I dozed off on the way back to Amman, and by the time we reached Jacqui’s, it was around 11. Apparently we had gotten lost several times. We ditched the plan to meet Jacqui at whatever hangout she was hanging out in, since we were all tired and wanted to go to bed. Waleed found his bed here too uncomfortable, so he would spend the night at a motel nearby.

I came upstairs, fell into bed and slept twelve hours.