July in Jordan

Were driving down the airport road, one of the greenest, cleanest highways in Jordan. I guess its to impress the tourists who visit Amman. Driving north, I follow Uncle T, whos driving ahead of us in an identical rented Hyundai Elantra. Ive got mom next to me and two little ones behind. Every now and then Uncle T sticks a hand out of his window and waves. I stick mine out, give him the thumbs up, and confirm that Im right behind him. In the darkness of night, its easy to end up following the wrong car.

Its July 1^st, we just landed in Queen Alia International Airport, after a two hour plane ride from Athens, Greece. My family minus dad, as well as our good friend Uncle T and his family, arrived in the same plane, and now he was leading us to Amman, where wed split up.

Speeding down the highway, we catch glimpses of the expanse of rocky desert through the rows of trees planted parallel to the road. Every now and then were met with billboards adorned by the face of Jordans king Abdullah: goofy smile, squinty blue eyes (betraying his English parentage) and incomplete facial hair. Sometimes he is with his late father King Hussein, reminding us who he inherited the country from; other times hes in a picture with his wife Rania, who is so much taller than Jordans midget that she sits while he stands on a stool for the photo. Rania, that self-styled philanthropist promoted by Oprah, turns out to have much in common with me. For one, shes way taller than the King. Shes also a Palestinian born in Kuwait. Her parents are also from the Diaspora, from my town Tul Karem. And shes way taller than the King.

Other than the Kings face plastered everywhere, theres also lots of subtle advertising for Jordan. Theres a popular one with a bunch of hands holding a Jordanian flag, with the words Al-Urdon Awwalan! (Jordan First). And theres another one, with a dim-looking lady poking at her eye. She has a drunken-friendly face accompanying the words We will serve you from our eyes. Arab expressions....

My mom interrupts my gazing at all the Jordan First! Posters and asks, Isnt Uncle Ts mom next to him?

Yeah. And those are his two kids in the back seat.

Ok, just making sure, I thought it was someone else.

Uncle T slows down so we can catch up to him, and sticks his hand out the window. I give him the thumbs up.

When we reach the outskirts of Amman, we pull in next to Uncle T, but to our horror, it turns out weve been following complete strangers for the past hour. Crap! His mom has a beard, his kids are girls, he looks wrinkled and old, it wasnt them! Theyve been leading us on why was he sticking his hand out the window every 10 minutes? Just as my mom started laughing at the absurdity of the situation, Uncle T pulls in from behind us, and gives us the directions to our flat in Amman. We split after explaining why we sped in front of him for most of the drive.

2^nd day in Jordan, and its me and mom in our rented Elantra. The kids are in our flat in Amman, which we bought as a base for the family in Jordan. Its proved useful last year, its proved useful for my sister who studies in Jordan, and it proved useful this summer. But before it proved useful, we had to prepare it, and that sent me and my mom driving around Ammans north west areas, buying food, cleaning supplies, and tidbits that well need, such as sim cards for the mobile phones. Next to Amman Mall at the end of Gardens street, is an office complex, where we found the Agency, dealing with bringing in domestic workers. With the amount of house work anticipated in the next month, we made arrangements to have a lady stay with us, and picked her up from there. A young woman, Lynne, in her mid-20s: she was a Pilipino who left her husband and five children to work abroad, sending money back to support them. She was very shy at first, calling my mom Maam, and calling me Sir. I would tell her not to call me Sir, as I was only a kid, younger than her. Yes Sir, she would reply. Ok so Im not only a kid, but when youre called Sir at 20, you feel old. Later I found out she thought that I was the dad in the family! Thus the insistence on calling me Sir. We had to explain that Sir will be coming to join us in a week, and that shell recognize him from his extra large belly, bald head, and grey beard. That one is Sir! Im just a kid.

It reminded me of the last time someone thought I was my mothers husband. I always accompany my mom as a driver and pack llama. That time we were at the local Laiki (open-air weekly vegetable market) in Athens, and we were plying over the dried apricots and nuts stall. My mom wears the niqaab, a face covering veil extra to the basic hijab dress code that many Muslim women wear in observance of the religion (the ninja code, as the kids call it). I had my beard scruffy and long, untouched for weeks since I returned to Athens for the summer break, so may have looked older than I was. My mom left and I was packing our purchases into our cart, when the lady at the stall stopped me. Are you her son? she asked, pointing at my mother.

Yes, I answered.

Ha! I told you he was her son. Look, hes just a kid, the lady at the stall gloated at her husband.

Oxi, (No), he doesnt look like a paidi (kid), he was contesting, hes her andras!

Look at that face, she pinched my cheek, hes just a kid. And he has his mothers eyes. I also have other features from mom, but the lady only saw the niqaab.

Oxi, mntera mou (no, my mother), I assured the man, in my broken Greek. The lady pinched my now red cheek again, gave me a lollipop and sent me on my way.

When I caught up to mom she asked, Whered you get that lollipop? Did you get it from a stranger?

Im just a kid, huh? and I stuck it in my mouth.

So With Lynne and mom cleaning and cooking, and me going out daily to run errands and buy supplies, we started to get real busy as people started to arrive. Our flat serves as a place in Jordan for family and friends scattered around the world, where many of us would come to see each other. Weve been doing this every summer for the past few years, because my grandpa wants to see as many of us as possible. Grandpa, or Seedo (as we all call him), lives in occupied Palestine, in the West Bank town of Tul Karem, in the house he built decades ago before the 1967 occupation. Since the second Intifada he hasnt allowed us to come visit him in Tul Karem, fearing for our safety, but would come out to Jordan where we would all gather. Being an old man (in his 80s now), he buys special transportation to ease his passing across the borders, including the many checkpoints, searches, delays, and background checks the Israeli army subjects people to. He gets VIP treatment in an ambulance, which helps him bypass most obstacles due to his medical condition, which happens to be old age exhaustion.

The first to arrive was Seedo, and for a few days all I did was drive him around to see extended (and I mean mothers cousins brothers inlaws extended) family. He lived in Jordan for a couple years ago, yet still has a sharp memory, and seems to know where everyone is despite the massive build-up of the city in the past several years. Ah yes, Amman is growing like crazy. You see with Jordan, its always Jordan First! Every country that neighbors Jordan has had disasters, tragedies, wars, etc, and Jordan was always there to benefit. In the first Gulf War, most Palestinians in Kuwait were forced out of the country, and most came to Jordan (the goal was to get as many Palestinians out of the Gulf as possible). Jordan was there to take all the refugees, and this lead to a big boost and drive to its economy as they settled and opened businesses. This lead to a huge growth in the 1990s, making Jordan one of the top countries in the region in the fields of medicine, higher education, and other things. This lead to large amounts of students, patients, and others from the Gulf countries, Syria, and beyond to start coming to Jordan for university education, medical treatment, or tourism. This only fueled Jordans economic growth and Ammans expansion. The second Gulf War and subsequent occupation in Iraq lead to a huge influx of Iraqis into Jordan. Im speaking about a million Iraqi refugees entering Jordan which only has about 6 million people! Most Iraqis came to Amman, and the rich amongst them bought flats and houses, lots of flats and houses. This new rise in demand lead to a real estate boom in Amman and an acceleration in its build up. Every summer since 2003 Ive seen new buildings pop up, construction everywhere, and more cars congesting the streets. The Lebanon war would only add to this.

Over the next weeks, we visited and saw many family members and friends living in Jordan, as well as many family and friends that came to Jordan and stayed with us. First Seedo came, then my dad, then my two aunts from the West Bank, then my aunt from Abu Dhabi, with her husband and five of her six daughters, then our friends from Lebanon, then my uncle from Kuwait, then my aunt from Kuwait, then one of my dads uncles and a cousin from the West Bank. And those were the people who stayed with us from overseas, add to them family and friends based in Jordan who were always coming in and out, saying hi here and bye there, and you could imagine how busy we were. Poor mom and Lynne were working full time cooking, dishwashing, cleaning, while I was the only one amongst them with a car, and did the driving for everyones errands. The flat is on a hilltop (and Amman is a city originally on 7 hills, now its spread over 100 valleys and hills) close to the University of Jordan in north west Amman, close to an area called Sweileh. I learned many roads in the area, as well as some closer to downtown Amman, as I drove Seedo around to see relatives, drove the ladies around to do their cheap shopping, drove people to doctors, got groceries and supplies, etc, etc.

Theres a street in Amman thats just packed with private clinics. People come from all over the Middle East for medical tourism, getting operations and treatments done not available in their countries. I brought my mom once for a minor operation for a day (and spent six hours sitting next to her bed waiting for her to wake up), and also brought one of my aunts to discuss her cosmetic surgery with a specialist there. This aunt of mine has Treacher Collins syndrome, a genetic disease that leads to one messed up enzyme. Unfortunately this enzyme is important in many enzyme pathways involved in building the face during development. TC people end up with similar facial disfigurations, which affect the jaw, ears, cheeks, eye sockets, and the ability to eat, speak and hear. Alhamdulillah, my aunt had several successful operations, and now she has no trouble eating, and looks much better, shes looking forward to more. Whats funny is that shes hard of hearing, and so is Seedo with age, so whenever theyre in the house everyone becomes really noisy, and we all end up screaming at each other so they can hear.

We took our Playstation to Jordan for fixing; its lens had malfunctioned again. There the fixing and the games are cheap! A game there costs 1 Jordanian Dinar (JD), but of course you get it under the table or in the basement of even the most high-brow electronics shops. A couple years ago the authorities cracked down on the trade of pirated games and movies. Many shops after that started putting up a façade of legitimacy, but the legit market for electronic entertainment never existed before, and still doesnt exist after, the crack down. Original copies are simply way to expensive compared to the incomes of most Jordanians, and many visitors take advantage of the cheap copies which they dont find in their respective countries. So we got a couple games, both turned out excellent. Id play Shadow of the Colossus in the early mornings before my errands/family visits started. In that game you take the role of a normal guy (or was it a girl? Japanese style animation really makes it hard to tell) who must defeat sixteen colossi to bring his loved one back to life. And by colossi, I mean OMG LOOK AT THAT HUGE COLOSSI! Armed with tiny sword, bow and arrow, and often riding around the colossus feet on your trusty steed, each monster was great fun figuring out, finding its weak spots, climbing on it like lice in the fur of a dog, and finally poking at it into submission. Unfortunately I reached the 14^th colossus when the Playstation broke down again. The fixing was cheap, not good. But before that, we played many matches and inter-family tournaments in the excellent soccer game Winning Eleven. That was addictive football, and what I felt made it stand above games such as EAs FIFA was the physics of the ball itself, and the Japanese commentators (we bought the early pirated Japanese version, apparently the English one wasnt out yet.)

With an abundance of cousins (and not to mention: neighbours kids) we played many group games as well. Tarneeb and Kents were popular card games, while Mafia was a popular game that I introduced (imported from my mates in Edinburgh), even the parents played it with us. The best was when Rana (my littlest sister), the youngest kid amongst us, was able to get everyone to lynch each other while playing innocent. It boiled down to me and Rami (my next brother) both begging her to vote against the other, when she was the only guilty one among us. Shes turning out to be quite a performer, always entertaining us with acting, singing, dancing, shes great! The only faults are that shes getting heavy to carry on my shoulders, and she drives me insane when I try teaching her math.

My aunt lives in Irbid, a university town north of Amman, close to the Syrian border. My older sister studies there, doing Graphic Art and Design. We had a big gathering at my aunts house, having lunch on her patio, eating watermelons and melons, talking and reminiscing. Suddenly we hear zaghrata from upstairs. Lalalalalalalalalalalalaleeeeeee! It was my aunt doing the zaghrata, which is a loud celebratory sound in Arab societies, which consists of screaming at the top of your lungs while flailing your tongue.

Lalalalalalalalalaleeeeeeeeeeeeee!

We all rushed upstairs to find out the results. Her youngest son had just finished the Tawjihi exams, the painful end of high school graduation exams whose results get you into university. Every summer in Jordan, we congratulate someone whos done well in his Tawjihi (or mourn someone who failed). Its a hugely significant event, as how well a person does in the exam determines what s/hell be eligible for in Jordanian universities. And with everyone wanting to become doctors or engineers in a very competitive society, the pressure to do well and the tension waiting for results is some of the most nerve-racking experiences a Jordanian ever faces. To be amongst the top students in the country, a student has to start studying since the summer before the final year, spend his free-time studying, suffer vitamin D deficiency, and cram! Its unhealthy and unwarranted, but those who suffer in this year become doctors and engineers, which is what everyone else wants to become.

So we all rushed up to see my aunt hugging and kissing my cousin, who just got his result off the internet. Hes capped Tawjihi at 93.6/p>

Just tell your friends you got 94. Lalalalalalalaleeeeeee! my aunt was celebrating.

We all congratulated him on the good mark; it should be good enough to get him comfortably into any course, except maybe medicine. (There are robots in Jordan, and the doctors it produces are machines.) In our new lighter mood, we all went down stairs to have knafah, of the Nablus type, best knafah in the region. After eating the rich pastry knafah, with its orange flaky dough, made rough or smooth, and its rich sweet cheese, all soaked in syrup, we sat around talking.

Alright, lets go celebrate, said Hani, my oldest cousin. Lets go for a drive.

Drive? I asked him what he meant.

You know, the guy just got 94àLets go have a drive around Irbid.

Ok, Irbid is a small town, I didnt get what he was on about, thats until we reached Irbids university road.

We went out in 2 cars, ten of us in total, with Hani driving in the first, our pride who just graduated next to him. As we approached the University Road we started to hear an amalgamation of countless horns beeping and tootng. Hani joined right in, blaring primitive tunes out of his Toyota. And then I saw it, hundreds of cars, filled with young people, all beeping and making noise, and nearly all the cars had people sitting out of their windows, on the sills. Ive never seen a sight like it. Young men, kids, girls, boys, were all having a huge party out on the street, from the windows of their cars. People were singing, some were dancing with their upper bodies only, arms flailing about, others were waving their shirts in the air, all were making noise. Every time two cars got close enough their window popping occupants would reach out and shake hands, ask about the Tawjihi results of each others graduates, congratulate each other, etc.

An explosion of emotion befitting of the angst and hardship the Tawjihi students endured for a year. People were having conversations out the car windows, passing out sweets, dancing, beating tabl (an Arabic drum) tunes on the roofs of their cars. It was an open-air party that was moving down the streets, where no one had a foot on the ground. The police were out in force in anticipation of this (apparently annual ritual) celebration of the Tawjihi results. We were stopped once by them and told to get into the car (yes, we also joined in the celebration out of the car windows), but we popped right back out as soon as we passed. Despite all the police, the celebrations couldnt be stopped, and instead driving around for a good half hour, the convoys of students and their friends and families, simply popped in and out in waves as they passed by police. It was great fun, celebrating with a rush of wind blowing through your hair (or sliding off my head, I had mine closely cropped). Our convoy returned that day, all of us with sore throats from all the shouting and zagrata. Tawjihi has been passed by yet another batch.

One of my fathers closest friends growing up in Kuwait is a Lebanese man named Hasan. Hes a Shia Lebnani from a village in the south, and moved to Beiruts Southern District when we moved to Amman during the first Gulf War. Its been years since weve seen Hasans family, and they came to Jordan to visit us for a few days. They drove from Lebanon to Jordan via Syria, on the day Hezbollah caught two Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon. They came for an initially planned three days to see us, but that all changed.

Already before they came, most gatherings we had that included a TV inevitably lead to Seedo shouting and cursing at the world, for what was happening in Gaza. The Israeli forces, now outside Gaza with no Jewish settlers inside, were pounding and bombing the whole population, killing whole families every week in military mistakes, kidnapping and assassinating both resistance and political leaders, and all that because the Palestinians voted for the wrong people (Hamas).

You see this shoe, Seedo would say, pointing at his foot, this shoe is more honourable than all the cowardly Arab leaders that are silent and let this crime go on.

Everyone was already angry when Hezbollah captured the two soldiers, and the subsequent destruction of Lebanon only made us angrier. Several times in the past few years, Hezbollah captured Israeli soldiers, and exchanged them for Lebanese prisoners (many of whom have been in Israeli dungeons for decades). When they did it this time though, the response was different. The Israelis used the incident as a pretext for a war of aggression against Lebanon thats been planned for years. The Israelis under Olmert decided that not only will they retake their soldiers, but will also destroy Hezbollah and occupy South Lebanon again while theyre at it. And what was their strategy to achieve this? Destroy Lebanon: its infrastructure, bridges, roads, power plants, fuel, farms, apartment buildings, and people. In hindsight, with over 1000 Lebanese civilians murdered, and Hezbollah virtually untouched, the Israelis are now trying to achieve politically what they miserably failed to achieve militarily (unless death and destruction was a goal in itself). But at the time, when Hasans family reached Jordan, the bombing was just beginning, and Lebanon became the focus of our tirades when watching the news channels.

Hasans family stayed their 3 days in the hotel rooms they had reserved, but with all the roads bombed to Lebanon, werent able to return. They came and stayed with us. For most of the month we were several families living in the same flat. When bedtime came, the bedrooms would be packed, the couches occupied, and futons would be spread all over the living room floors. We tried to enjoy ourselves and get on with our activities and visits, but in our gatherings or whenever we sat with a TV, conversations always lead back to Lebanon. I cant imagine what Hasan, or his wife, or his son Ali, who studies in university in Beirut, or their three young daughters, were going through. Always trying to call home, checking on their relatives, being uncertain about what might happen, constant worry. Many times wed be sitting in a room and just sit there, deep in thought, not knowing what to say. It was especially bad when they heard their house in their village, and those of their relatives, were destroyed in the mass bombings. Whole villages were destroyed in those weeks, with the pathetic claim that killing countless civilians is Hezbollahs fault, even though theres no proof Hezbollah was hiding among them. It was bad when Hasan or Ali would recognize places Beirut, where whole neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Their whole area in Beirut is uninhabitable now, much of it leveled like it was in 1982.

It was hard, but the Lebanese are an impressive bunch. Theyll smile in your face, call you the love of their heart (habib albi) and tell you not to worry. Dont worry, homes can be rebuilt, and we accept the sacrifices and martyrs. Its the price of honour and freedom. Our relatives left gradually back to their respective homes, till it was us and Hasans family left. It was the hardest saying goodbye to them (and definitely the most tearful), and now Im writing from Greece (where we have another Lebanese family stuck here with us) while Dar Hasan are still living in our flat. Its proven very useful indeed. With the ceasefire now, theyll probably insist on returning to Lebanon to help in the rebuilding. Unfortunately things dont seem to be over, tensions are still high. Hezbollah came out stronger and more popular than ever, and I doubt Israel would stand for it for long, after its first major defeat and humiliation in its short history. All plans indicated that Lebanon would be the first step in Israels war (which some analysts say was a war planned to destroy Hezbollah, spread to Syria, then drag Iran and the USA into neutralizing Iran, the ultimate target.) Only God knows what may happen next.

Thats all for now. Lebanon and Gaza has been the centre of our attention during the month. To the point that all else pails in comparison. It was a good month though, considering all the circumstances. I saw family, lots of them, too many to mention here, and thats always a good thing.