I am sitting on the patio of Books@ - a neighbourhood cafe-bookstore that has a breath-taking location on a hillside overlooking East Amman. Like every night this month, there's an endless spectacle of wedding fireworks from the nearby hilltops. The rush has been on for weddings the last couple of weeks - i think to get them out of the way before Ramadan begins this coming Wednesday. Or at least that is the only explanation I have for the non-stop nightly round of drums and gunshots and honking and fireworks. Tonight's displays have been particularly impressive. Meanwhile, people on the patio are lounging around on sofas or sitting at tables drinking tea or smoking argileh pipes. Or drinking beer - also something that won't be seen once Ramadan begins. The atmosphere is very relaxed; taking it easy is a pastime that people have honed to a fine art here. I am learning to get better at it myself. The heat definitely helps.
And this is where I encounter the eternal paradox, the circle that I cannot square in my head: how can a place so serene exist amidst so much turmoil? This past week saw an upswing in violence in Iraq with more rockets in Baghdad and a serious bombing in Basra. Several friends here whose work for the UN focuses on reconstruction in Iraq say the situation is definitely worsening - a couple of them just got back from (55 degree heat!) Baghdad and were very pessimistic about the situation. Meanwhile, last Tuesday, a serious border skirmish occurred between Israel and Lebanon - the first since 2006 - with 3 or 4 deaths and a lot of sabre-rattling from Hezbollah in the aftermath. Also last Tuesday, missiles shot from an unknown location in the Sinai desert targeting Eilat in Israel landed off course in the south of this country, in Aqaba. The story is similar to a news item from last April that I posted about. Only this time a person - a taxi driver - was killed and several more injured. The wife of a close colleague was in Aqaba for work that day (he is a very close colleague. He sits 18 inches away from me... and can hear me chew my lunch every day... poor dear) . The rocket landed on a taxi right outside the Intercontinental Hotel where she was staying. She could see the aftermath out the window.
And again, just like in April when this happened before, none of these events really raised eyebrows or generated conversation. I think a group of us chatted in an off hand way for about 5 minutes during a work break about the rocket landing in Aqaba and whether my colleague's wife was OK. Just a mild curiousity. We all just assumed that she was fine and there was nothing to worry about. Then we went back to work, reviewing excel spread sheets and pouring over aerial maps. I try and compare this reaction to what would have happened in the office in Toronto if one of my colleagues' spouses had been away on business and looked out the window of the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, say, to see a taxi flattened by a scud missile and dead and injured people lying around. I venture to say that a lot of chatter - maybe even some tears of concern - would have been generated.
So it is all a bit strange. My general experience is that the reaction to gossip and minor events here is much more amplified that I am used to. Small slights often get blown out of proportion. But when it comes to things that would constitute 'big' or 'newsworthy' events in Canada - bombings, landslides, city-wide blackouts - they tend to get shrugged off as nothing more than the minor annoyances of everyday life. I even have to admit I kind of like the nonchalance.
But it still doesn't quite make sense to me. And I have to wonder, relaxing on the patio, whether I am continuing to play the role of the Sissy Spacek character in the film Missing. Am I witnessing some kind of distintegration? In it but not of it. I guess that's the eternal mystery of being here.
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