Friday, March 1, 2013

AMMAN AND JORDAN HOSPITALITY Bog # 7


Bog # 7 
AMMAN AND JORDAN HOSPITALITY


After a 7-hour trip from Muscat via Dubai on Fly Dubai we arrive at 11 pm in Amman. We hail a taxi at the airport and our driver immediately demonstrates Jordanian hospitality by offering to take us for coffee. We decline saying “no thanks” trying not to sound rude.  Throughout our ride into town he seems honestly interested in talking to us and making us feel comfortable. He jokes with us about our one star hotel and makes recommendations of where we should visit. He repeatedly says, “Welcome to Jordan” and we thank him in English, wondering whether “shukran” is the right response.  We arrive at the beautiful Four Season’s Hotel and our taxi is inspected by guards before we are allowed to enter and my purse and camera are scanned separately as well as our bodies.  I set off the buzzer twice but finally they decide to allow me entry. We didn’t experience any of this safety checking in Oman but remember that in Cairo and in Delhi it was much more militaristic as our car was scanned as well.  We are greeted with smiles and genuine warmth by many hotel staff.  The Jordanians clearly put energy into social interactions that makes me begin to feel ashamed of our Western indifference.

We breakfast the next morning with an incredible buffet – John relishing his bowl of hot fuul (boiled fava beans mashed with lemon juice, olive oil and chopped chilies) and mopped up with flat bread.  He is commenting that he is already on his Mediterranean diet by getting his 4 tablespoons of olive oil and hummus and fish.  The waiters serve him a round Middle Eastern pizza cut into triangles, called “manakeesh” and are told these are traditional in Jordan. The waiter brings him a Turkish coffee. This is made from boiling cardamom-flavored grounds in a long handled pot. Then they let it cool and reboil and this may be done as many as 7 times. John drinks it and looks at the mud in the bottom of the tiny cup and asks the ever-present and attentive waiter if there is supposed to be water in it? The waiter responds by bringing him another cup of Turkish coffee and this time adds boiling water. I am not sure that John likes it but when the waiter asks again if wants anything else he orders a double espresso. I have since learned that one is supposed to let the grounds settle before sipping Turkish coffee and to leave the mud in the bottom of the cup behind.  As for me, the waiter has carefully explained the huge array of foods including pastries, assortment of fruits, olives, runny yoghurt, chicken sausage, cheeses, pancakes, omelets and so many other choices that I can hardly decide.  I hate to confess (or disappoint the waiter) that I resort to what is my habit of granola, fruit and de-caf cappuccino. Maybe tomorrow I will be more adventurous with breakfast.  I am disappointed in myself.

We meet our new guide for the day named Abed. Turns out he is not an authorized guide but rather a driver who is very friendly but does not have nearly the breadth of information that Don provided. It is hard to detach our allegiance to Don who was a great guide to a new guide. We warm up to Abed and he tells us how concerned he is about all the Syrians arriving in Jordan because they are taking all the jobs. He explains that normal shop workers make 350 dinars a month but Syrians will work for 150-200 dinars a month and will do double shifts. Unemployment is already as high as 26% in this country. We have read in the Jordan Times that 54,000 Syrians arrived last month and up to 500,000 could be admitted by the end of March. They are building refugee camps of up to 50,000.  We drive through the old city and since this is Friday, which is comparable to Sunday in our world, there is a bustling market going on ~ clearly a men’s market. There seem to be thousands of men of all ages pursuing the street stalls of used shoes, shirts, pants, and household goods and greeting each other with hugs and kisses.  Rarely can I glimpse a woman here and I notice the clothing is not for women either. It is an amazing spectacle … men shopping!  I wonder why John didn’t get this gene.

 We visit the Roman Theatre, a hugely impressive 2000-year-old ancient area cut into the hillside like a gem in the middle of a rough Amman. The theatre is a bit like a Shakespearean stage and was built for an audience of 6000 people. John stands in the middle like an Emperor and then we take the steep climb to the top to see what the view is like for spectators. Afterwards we visit the small museum, which displays traditional crafts, jewelry and amazing mosaics.  Next we go to Jabal Al Qal’a Citadel Hill, which sits on a summit overlooking the city center, including the Roman theater. It has been a site of human settlement for over 18,000 years and there are amazing columns and ruins from Roman times and a spectacular view of the amphitheatre below. Abed says he will take us into the rich residential area where all the embassies are housed. He asks us to guess what the next building we see will be but warns us we are not allowed to take pictures. We laugh as we see the American flag and like most of the embassies has guards with machine guns positioned outside.

I think about how different this city is from Muscat in Oman that seemed like such a modern, perfectly groomed, and peaceful city. Amman on the other hand has a 3rd world quality to it ~ but not as poverty stricken as Delhi or Cairo. In fact, unlike these historical cities, Amman is actually a 20th-century invention as it was nothing more than a muddy farming village when Emir Abdullah chose it to be the new capital in 1921.  It is a kind of displacement city – most Ammani people identify themselves as originating from somewhere else.  Abed tells us with delight that his father is Jordanian and his mother Palestinian just like the current King Abdulla II. In addition to the native Bedouins, the population consists of large numbers of people voluntarily or forcibly exiled from other countries such as Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians, Libyians and above all Palestinians who have arrived in this city in large numbers. Amman is a mixed salad bowl of different cultures and personalities. I see very few women in black abayas or burkas and men are dressed in suits. Those women who are wearing head scarfs have their faces exposed and also have on tight jeans and tall boots or high heels and are walking hand in hand with boyfriends. We enter a small coffee shop which reminds us of a Starbucks near a university in some ways because young 20’s looking students are sitting at small tables working on their computers. But unlike Seattle, the air was thick with smoke as over 60% of the population smoke in Jordan. We didn’t think we would see men and women working together like this in Oman.

While walking down the Rainbow Street we met a group of friendly college age boys who asked if they could take our picture. Why would someone want to take our picture? Bilal Swaiseh and Laith Falahat were two of these boys and they said they were taking pictures of people’s faces for a project called the Humans of Amman.
They took our picture and then I asked to take their picture and they laughed. We shared facebook and email addresses and I told them I was writing my first blog on Jordan and would put their names in it. (Their blog is f.b.com/Hussain.c.ahad)


I started writing this first blog to talk about how hospitable the Jordanian people are and while I described the helpful waiters at breakfast and our taxi and tour guide drivers and the boys on the street... let me give a couple of other examples. In fact I was sitting in the hotel lobby trying to type this blog when the computer battery was flashing time up. I tried to plug the computer into the lobby outlet but I could not get it to work. Over the next 30 minutes 5 different hotel employees persistently and happily tried to figure out how to get it to work, including bringing in an electrician to check the outlet. Eventually they took my computer and could get it to work in their office and offered to keep it there until the battery was charged. I was struck by their eagerness to want to help – it was not a resentful helping like I was imposing on their valuable time but a genuine caring.  Even when I got up to take the computer and power cords etc to our room a staff employee offered to carry my computer for me! (I’m not that weak!)  I couldn’t imagine this happening in America. Then later coming out of my room, there was a man vacuuming the hallway, and he turned off the vacuum noise until I entered the elevator. Finally tonight, John and I were trying to hail a taxi to take us to dinner at Al Tanoureen, a restaurant according to John to have the most authentic Arab food in Aamman and we were having trouble explaining to the driver where we wanted to go. A young man asked if he could help us because he spoke English and Arabic. He said he was being picked up by a friend who he was sure would be willing to drive us there. So we went with them and they stopped several times to ask people where this restaurant was. Our driver was an Arabic man and the other man who originally offered to help was from South Dakota and teaches special education in Amman. John admonishes me, “Who says Americans aren’t friendly or helpful?” because I have been complaining all day about American’s indifference compared with Jordanians.  Well as some of you know this past year I wrote a new program about attentive parenting and I would definitely say that the people we have met on this day have taken this concept to a higher level than parenting ~ their hospitality is certainly attentive.


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