Amman Is Not An Island

This one.

I will be living in Jerusalem for a while this summer with my girlfriend and keeping a blog of photos and writing.   It will be interesting for me to spend some time getting to know Israelis and seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict from another perspective, while I am living at its epicenter.  Please join me in this experience at nearavolcano.wordpress.com

I am back in the United States and I’ve started a new blog about American politics, foreign affairs and whatever interests me.  Check it out at nextyearin.wordpress.com. I miss you guys. 

The blog is over. I am in Jerusalem with my family. Done with Jordan. I could write about how bizarre this city is, or what I thought of Hebron when I went visited. But I don’t think I will.

Soon it will be Jordan to Jersey, back to my home. I could probably start a new blog back there about my readjustment. But I won’t.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading the blog. It was a great experience.

Khalas.

In a few hours my dad will arrive in Amman. It’s his first time in the Middle East, aside from a brief trip to Israel a few years ago. I’m trying to imagine what it will be like for him to arrive in Jordan…

I remember when I first got to the airport in Amman. It seemed so shabby and rundown. The ubiquitous pictures of King Abdullah seemed strange. I did a double take every time I saw a guy in a dishdash. Women in niqab freaked me out a little bit. The driving was unbelievably reckless. I couldn’t believe that people were smoking in the airport and throwing their cigarette butts on the ground.

But two days ago when I flew in from Lebanon and stepped into Queen Alia International, it felt like I was returning home. The gruff Bedu accents of the soldiers sounded comforting. The presence of women in hijab seemed more natural than the makeup and tight jeans of Beirut. And amazingly, the airport no longer seemed shabby. It was perfectly normal.

Of all that I have accomplished in the past semester—and I do feel that I’ve accomplished a lot, from improving my Arabic to writing my paper about the IAF—the thing that impresses me most is the cultural fluency that I have developed here. Don’t get me wrong; I miss America and still feel more at home there than I ever will anywhere else in the world. Nonetheless, Jordan is no longer strange or exotic to me. It feels one hundred percent natural. And for that, I am pretty impressed with myself.

Everyone says that culture shock is much harder in reverse. I’m a little concerned about this. Will people think it’s rude if I show up to an appointment a half hour late? Will I be offended if I’m not offered tea upon arrival in someone’s house? Will American women seem horribly promiscuous? Will I be surprised when people obey traffic laws?

I miss my country, but I’ve kind of grown to love life in the Arab world. Despite its myriad political problems, the Middle East is a great place to live. Inshallah, I will be back here before too long.

I’m back in Amman after a great, albeit far too short, trip to Syria and Lebanon. No need for a complete recap, but highlights included:

- Old Damascus. Sort of a magical place. Rivals Fez in Morocco as the most magical place I’ve ever been.
- Quneitra. A ghost town in the Golan Heights that was bombed and then bulldozed by Israel in 1973. Very eerie, very depressing.
- Beirut nightlife. We had fun, as I recall. Definitely a cool change of pace from Amman.
- Lebanese food. Best in the world.
- Lebanese women. They are beautiful. We couldn’t actually get any of them to talk to us. Everyone says you need a nice car and nice clothes or at least a decent haircut. We don’t have any of those things.
- Hizballah. I learned so much about them in four days—information I wish I had known when we were stopped and questioned by their private security forces in the Southern suburbs.
- The Mediterranean. After four months in Jordan, I’d almost forgotten what water looked like.

As I said, it was a great trip. I hope I get a chance to go back to Lebanon. What is totally strange is how much Jordan feels like home to me now. More on that later, possibly.

My program is over.  My official time in Jordan is done.  I am writing this blog post from an Internet cafe in downtown Damascus!  I love this city.  They used to call it “the Jewel of the Middle East” and I see why.  It truly is every orientalist’s fantasy.  Beautiful souqs, old mosques, etc.  It was totally worth the seven hours that I had to wait for an entry visa.

Although my academics are over, I can’t bring myself to stop blogging while I travel around here.  It’s been such a good experience.  Just look at the interesting exchange taking place between my aunt, my friend, and some guys I’ve never met before over the level of physical contact in Arab society.  I love it!

So expect more updates as I continue my travels.  Tomorrow I am off to Beirut!

Something that I will not ever be able to get used to as I spend time among Arabs is the different attitudes that people here have towards phsyical proximity. The other day I was talking to a taxi driver trying to find out how much it costs to take a cab to Beirut and in the middle of our conversation he leans over and starts adjusting the collar of my shirt.

This kind of thing isn’t all that unusual here. Friends walk around holding hands. Men will often put their hands on your knee while they make a particularly emphatic point. In fact, if you look at the newspapers you can see how common this is–Nuri Maliki walks around at a press conference holding hands with some other head of state. But as a Westerner, I just can’t quite get used to it.

Please excuse my absence from the blog. I have been feeling very sick recently and haven’t gotten to the Internet too often. I hope to return once I feel better.

I can’t believe it, but my time in Jordan is almost over. As things wrap up, I find myself questioning how much I have really learned since I arrived in Jordan. My Arabic is still basic, my understanding of the region minimal. But when I look over my blog posts from the past three months, I feel like maybe I’ve gotten more out of this experience than I can realize right now.

So the Annapolis conference is finally underway after much anticipation. It seems like people here are talking about it, though they have little faith in anything changing. “The Israelis don’t want peace,” is the most common line I hear when the subject of the conference comes up. But the latest news from America is that there will be peace by 2008. Inshallah. I sincerely hope so, though I am also doubtful. Marawan Bishara wrote for Al Jazeera suggests that if agreements are not met, the Occupied Territories should be put under UN or Quartet trusteeship. While there are flaws with this suggestion, I support it nonetheless. The Israelis need incentive.

Anyway, expect more updates on Annapolis from Jordan. It should be an interesting couple of days.

I know that my American friends will have a hard time believing this, but I have to put it in writing: Everyone here thinks I’m Arab.

Seriously. People in the video store ask me for help, assuming that I’m an employee. Cars will stop to ask me for directions. And every cab driver I talk to thinks I’m an Arab. When I try to say that I’m American, they respond with, “Okay, but your family is Arab, right?” Sometimes for the hell of it I will say, “Yes, my mother’s family is Syrian, but she does not speak Arabic.” Other times I just say, “No, my family is American.”

The concept of Americanism is difficult to explain to people. They assume that Americans are blonde with blue eyes. There are Latino-Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans… I could keep hyphenating forever. But people in Jordan won’t accept that. To them, those people they aren’t real Americans.

And for that matter, neither am I. My dark eyes and curly black hair make me something less than purely American. In this country, my Semitic features mark me as Arab. I’ve never gotten this before in the States. I guess my friends from New York take my Jewy appearance for granted.

A lot of the time I just want to be up front with the people who assume I am Arab. “No, I’m not Arab. I’m a Jew. Sorry to say it, but Jews look like Arabs. We’re Semites, ya know?” I don’t bother trying that. A simple statement like this would have some serious political implications that I don’t really don’t want to get into most of the time.

But the truth is, Jews and Arabs do look alike. Since I’ve been in Jordan I have seen people who look like (in no particular order): Zev Holzman, Audrey Gelman, Andy Scherer, Jacob Lewis, Levi Albert, Benjamin Neufeld… I could go on. This adds a whole extra layer of ironic tragedy to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Maybe the next time a taxi driver tries to convince me that I am not really an American but some kind of Arab, I will be frank with him and say, “No, I am American. I am a real American, but also a Jewish-American, just like Indian-Americans and Arab-Americans and African-Americans. But, you know, I do like Arab. I am a Semite, after all…” We’ll see how he reacts to that.