scribes

In general, my neighbourhood is slow to wake up in the mornings.   The streets are still sleepy at 8:30am when I am walking up the hill to the office -  I'll see maybe a shop owner or two sweeping the sidewalk or hauling deliveries and a few guys standing around and smoking in the morning sunshine in front of the autobody shop at the corner.  (This appears to be the favourite neighbourhood hangout for men aged 45 - 60).

 Stillness prevails, at least until I get to King Abdullah square where I hit  'Embassy Row'.  A number of high-profile embassies and consulates - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey - all of which generate a lot of visa applicants in this part of the world - and an array of Jordanian government institutions are all located here.  In one block you find the passport office, the Civic Registry, The Prime Minister's communications office, the Department of Statistics,  the excellently named Museum of Political Life (which unfortunately is never open when I want to go in, so I am still in the dark as to its collection),  and a host of many other institutions (some of them with inexplicable functions... see above).

Here the sidewalk tempo changes.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but it finally dawned on me that these people milling around are waiting for offices to open or appointments and trying to get their paperwork in order.  They are from all walks of life.  Young guys in jeans and aviator sunglasses and Guess knock-off T-shirts, black-clad women in face veils, men from the Gulf in spotless white kaftans and kefiyehs - these guys (always guys) are usually milling around the well-guarded entrance to the Saudi embassy -  old bedouin couples, the women in traditional embroidered gowns, with tatooed faces, the men in red-checked headscarves with incredible sun-weathered skin.

A makeshift cottage industry has sprung up in response to the plethora of official buildings. Again it took me a long time to figure out who the guys were sitting at card tables on the sidewalks under folding patio umbrellas.  Were they selling lottery tickets?  Signing up people for cell phone service?  They are there every morning.   At some point in the middle of the afternoon, they fold up their tables and chairs and depart,  leaving their mobile offices propped up against a nearby wall overnight.  Some even have built more solid-looking stalls that look like part of a farmer's market and have, predictably, taken over the sidewalk.

I finally asked a taxi driver what these people had on offer, and he informed me that they were scribes.  And fixers.  I can't believe it didn't occur to me sooner.  For a fee they fill in the forms of illiterate people.  Or draft documents.  Or they accompany foreign workers or rural peasants around the maze of government offices and sort out their paperwork. Now that I know what I am seeing, I get it.    I just noticed yesterday that on one of the side streets, one entrepreneurial fellow has set up a little photo booth in case you need visa pictures.  I have no idea how much they charge.  There are so many of them, each one cannot possibly get that much business.

I do know that as a foreign worker myself, you can't get through the paperwork without a little bit of professional help.  It is a sad truth that the nature of my stay here and my country of origin mean that I get a little more support than the folks who need the assistance of sidewalk scribes.  But that is another post for another day.


I want to take more pictures of the different government offices and embassies - particularly the Iraqi embassy which is a lovely miniature reproduction of the Babylon Gate.  But they are all heavily guarded by young men in camo holding semi-automatic weapons.  And I am afraid that I appear highly suspect snapping photos of banal government buildings and embassies - who knows what I could be planning!

I also want to get more close ups of the scribes at work with their clients, but that too, is a bit too intrusive.  So for now I am taking pictures during off hours and might work up the nerve to take some crowd shots in the coming weeks.

thinking about security

I love the film Missing by Costa-Gavras.  I saw it for the first time when I was in Grade 12 in a great big awe-inspiring cinema in Toronto, when I was visiting my friend Karen for March break.  (It was either the Uptown or the University where I saw it - both now demolished, long since gone, and left only in memory.)  Missing caught me at an impressionable age and I attribute that film, in part, to shaping my political tendencies.  I rented it again last year after a 25 year break and despite the fact that Sissy Spacek is far, far younger than I remember and Jack Lemmon is still annoying, the movie holds up.  If you don't know the film, it is about the Pinochet-led military coup in Chile in 1973 and the trials and tribulations of a young American couple who are living there at the time.  I recommend it.

I was thinking about it today, when the news came through this afternoon that a Russian-made Grad missile had exploded in Aqaba, a city in the south of Jordan, and destroyed a warehouse.  No one was hurt. A second missile landed nearby in the Red Sea, doing no damage.   It is worth knowing that Aqaba is right next door to Eilat in Israel, and right across a narrow inlet of the Red Sea from Egypt.  Interesting border country.   The news reports explaining this have been changing every half hour since.  Explanations over the course of the afternoon have included:  The rockets were fired at Israel from the Sinai in Egypt ;  the rockets were fired at Jordan from the Sinai; the rockets were mis-fired from Jordan and were targeting Eilat in Israel.  Some reports say Hezbollah;  some say Al Qaeda.  Now the BBC has a quote saying "We are 100% sure that the rocket which hit a warehouse in Aqaba was not fired from Jordanian territory, but from beyond our borders."  Here's the BBC link where the news keeps changing: 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8636796.stm


This is not that big a deal and people at work absorbed it with passing curiosity, focused more on our looming deadlines next week.  In fact, a couple of people in the office are heading off to Aqaba tonight to go scuba diving, and one colleague has a son in a basketball tournament there this weekend. They were mostly annoyed at the prospect of their travel being delayed by increased highway checkpoints.


What I find interesting is that this single incident has happened in a week full of equally interesting single incidents:  scud missiles allegedly crossing the Syrian border into Lebanon to arm Hezbollah; concerns from friends of friends who live in Lebanon that violence is imminent between Hezbollah and Israel; a week full of revenge killings and instability among east bank tribes here in Jordan that caused one of the cities where we work to shut down any access for 3 days.   These events may or may not be incidental - all leading to something bigger, or each completely random.  Evidence of instability or simply the episodic moments of life in this part of the world. 


And meanwhile, the biggest threat that I face in my daily existence is the possibility of being hit by a crazy car driver on my walk home from work and the likelihood of carpal tunnel syndrome from an improperly aligned office chair.   Which is why I have been thinking about Missing.  As an outsider, one has a daily life that is somehow removed from both the local and bigger geo-politics.   You are a part of it, but you are not.  So you think yourself immune.  Without access to the local arab-language media, you are reliant on colleagues to relay the latest news.  And in any case, some - lots - of the worrisome stuff never makes it into the printed word in any language.  So, there you are, living your daily life with your daily concerns until somehow you find yourself right there, where it is happening.  I am pretty sure nothing bad is happening here.  I am watching events with increasing awareness and acuity.  And mostly I am watching out for dangerous drivers when I cross the street! 


(This post, by the way, should be no disincentive to people planning to visit !!)

knafeh

I have been meaning to write about sweets for a while, since they are everywhere, everyday, all the time.  Whatever calorie reduction has occurred in my diet as a result of alcohol-free socializing,  it has been more than made up for in the constant intake of sugary drinks, tasty snacks and a wild array of sweets - from junky chocolate bars and twinkies to delicious stacks of honey-soaked pastries and chocolates filled with nuts and dates.

But there's one sweet treat here that generates more excitement and anticipation than all the others: knafeh.    So it deserves some attention.

Knafeh gets ordered for the office or extended family or school class when some momentous occasion has transpired: graduation day, the birth of a baby, a milestone anniversary.  When the wife of one of the guys on our team, Saddam, had a baby recently, knafeh was ordered.  When the team submitted a final report after more than a year of hard work this past Tuesday, knafeh was ordered.  Our little celebration was scheduled for 1:00pm and by 12:45,  staff were milling around the meeting area, keenly awaiting the treat.

I had never seen it before moving here. I am told that knafeh originates in Nablus, in the west bank, but has spread throughout the arab levant - from Egypt to Lebanon.  And it is hard to describe. It involves softened nabulsi sheep's cheese, wrapped in a crispy semolina pastry, soaked in a rose-scented sugary syrup and garnished with crushed pistachio nuts.  It seems like something that only gets cooked in large quantities, so that might explain why it is so closely associated in people's minds with celebrations.  I can tell you this: you eat a piece, you are full for the rest of the day.  It serves as lunch and desert in one fell swoop.  

Knafeh aside,  I can't leave the topic of sweets without sharing a photo of a chocolate pudding brand that shows up occasionally in the corner store here.  The picture speaks for itself.

more khamseen

Another dust storm hit on Tuesday.  From my office window I watched as the grey wall of sand advanced, consuming east Amman until the view was entirely obliterated.  The dust blew all night, covering my balconies in a fine grit.  By Wednesday, the weather was clear again.  Here are two pictures, both taken at approximately the same time in the late afternoon - one on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday.

The Big One

So, I finally made it to Petra.

The first time Petra entered into my consciousness was while watching an Indiana Jones movie sometime in the late 1980s. We are dashing through the desert on horseback with Harrison Ford and all at once we come upon an improbable temple hewn out of a towering cliff of pink rock.  I remember thinking: "can it be real?"  followed closely by "I want to go there!"

It turns out that I was not alone in this feeling.  Petra is a massive tourist draw for the country of Jordan:   UNESCO has listed it a world heritage site and it is one of the "7 new wonders of the world" along with the likes of the Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu.  Like Niagara Falls and Piazza San Marco, Petra is one of those places that is more recognizable than its home country.  While Amman is 3 hours away and bears little in common physically with Petra, it is nonetheless filled with post cards and wall hangings and, joy of joys, snow globes, depicting the iconic  Treasury.   Having lived for 5 years in Prague, where the Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge are in this same category of destination, I know this kind of place.  As beautiful as they are, they are not real.   They no longer belong anywhere, but have become some kind of occupied territory, laid claim to by international invaders, a world apart.

So while part of me has been looking forward, ever since I arrived, to meeting that 20-year old goal of seeing Petra, the cynical, wearied traveller part of me was expecting to be disappointed, especially after all the amazingly intimate moments I have enjoyed at sites like Umm Qais and Jerash over the past few months.

Here's the good news:  the cynic was defeated.  Petra is astonishing.  For one thing, the site is mind-boggling in its vastness.  It was a city of tens of thousands of people at one time, filled with monumental architecture as well as little caves and cubbyholes.  And while thousands of tourists pour in daily and parts of it are very busy - especially near the Treasury site - it is also possible to find oneself completely alone, wandering through a narrow desert canyon and coming upon an ancient tomb, yours for the exploring.  

For another thing, visiting the site is a cross between a living history lesson and pure back country hiking along narrow ledges and rocky outcroppings, with amazing views of the rift valley separating Jordan from Israel and Palestine.  I was only there for one day and we must have hiked at least 10km - and it felt like I saw very little of the site.  There is so much to take in.

I missed the chance to go back again last week with my friend who was visiting, but intend to return in early May.  More photos then.