Lessons from Jordan & Musings of an Anthro-in-Training

Memorial to Moses at Mt Nebo

On Saturday after the Dead Sea, we stopped at some Christian holy sites on the way back to Amman for our final night in Jordan. First, we drove up to Mt Nebo, where God showed Moses the Promised Land (it must have been a clearer day, that day; I couldn't see much land for the haze). We also went to see the Madaba Map, at St George Orthodox Church in Madaba. It's one of the oldest portrayals of the area, and as such is an important map of Jewish and Palestinian sites.

Guard of the Mt Nebo mosaics

The Madaba map

After we dropped our suitcases off at our hotel, we returned our rental car with great relief and decided it was time to relax with a discreet cocktail at the Intercontinental. Jordanian rules about food and alcohol during Ramadan have been spotty and inconsistent, which means every time you ask if you can get food or alcohol during daylight hours you feel super awkward and vaguely like I imagine alcoholics feel. Our hotel in Petra didn't serve beers after Ramadan started at all (the day prior, we tried Philadelphia beer, a local brand - can't recommend!). The Movenpick resort only served alcohol on their roof deck, not at any of the indoor bars. When we had lunch in Karak, the Jordanian owner responded to my question "Are you open despite Ramadan" with an "of course" like my question was crazy. "Some people eat, some people don't eat, but all are welcome." And our hotel at the Dead Sea opened their restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner (after nightfall) but didn't serve alcohol. You could order food and alcohol at any time from room service, but you couldn't consume alcohol anywhere but your room. And at the Intercontinental Amman, you could order alcohol indoors or in your rooms but you couldn't take it to the terrace, for example. The Intercon served food regularly. I found this interesting - at some of the other places we ate, like the Movenpick and the Dead Sea, our servers were non-Arab, which makes sense why they would work in food service during Ramadan. But the places that were the most open or unrestricted were staffed by Arabs.

I had an incredible vacation in Jordan, thanks mostly to Rob. We learned a few tougher lessons, though. Before I share them, know that in Jordan, a dinar is the basic unit, and 1000 fils make up a dinar. So 500 fils is half a dinar. $1 = 700 fils, so each dinar is like $1.25.

Lessons from Jordan

1). There is no such thing as "too short to merge," "too steep to drive up," or "too intense of a hairpin curve" in the minds of Jordanian civil engineers. This makes for funny jokes afterwards, but a harrowing driving experience at the time.

2). Sometimes speaking Arabic puts you at a disadvantage. It doesn't always win people over. I think sometimes it makes you seem condescending.

3). In Jordan, you're ALWAYS negotiating. Even things like bottled water - which should be 350-500 fils - were quoted at 1 dinar (2-3x value) or even 2 dinars (4-6x). It was such a relief when gas station attendants scanned water bottles, and the price came up instead of having to haggle. Cab drivers would say their meters weren't working, and ask for ludicrous fares. For example, one driver asked
for 3 dinars, and our actual cab fare - with another driver - was 158 fils. That's 3% of what he asked! Then, that driver, who had agreed to the meter, argued that 158 on the meter actually meant 1.58 dinars, after I gave him 1 dinar to pay (and didn't ask for change). That means I gave him ~8x in tip what the fare actually cost, and he still pushed to cheat me me. The Lonely Planet, usually reliable, says that most Jordanians wouldn't dream of cheating you...but that wasn't our experience at all. It was incredibly frustrating. As an anthropologist, it's also really hard - in the US, I am always advocating for Arabs and and trying to tear down prevalent and crappy tropes about them. Westerners ask me weird and oftentimes ignorant questions about the Middle East, but I'd rather answer them than have people continue to believe in the stereotypes. In some way or another, by my profession I often serve the role of ambassador or cultural-explainer or advocate, whether I want to or not.

But when I come to the Middle East, and have experiences like some of the ones we had, or have experiences like that of being a woman in Oman, it's hard for me to negotiate...I can't lie and say that we didn't get cheated 80% of the time in Jordan, and that the only people who were really nice to us were those in fancy hotels or resorts. I can't say that it wasn't really hard to be a youngish woman in Oman or that it was comfortable to be in my own skin. But I don't want to contribute to these ugly tropes...which puts me in a really awkward position. Not all Arab men are creepers and cheats. These boxes don't contain the entirety of a culture, and can't...this is what anthropology is all about. It's about the realness and the messiness and the way things don't fit in boxes or do or occupy a space that straddles or overlaps or destroys or touches or talks back to stereotypes and accepted ideas about the world, often in ways that are difficult to comprehend.

I recognize that this is the messy part of doing fieldwork and being in this profession is dealing with people, and that social sciences is considered a "soft" science because the facts of life and human experience are too varied and divergent to offer comforting and consistent predictions or explanations. Lila Abu-Lughod wrote about the difficulty of anthropologists "writing culture," and how writing about culture can create a consistency that isn't there in real life. So here, I've tried to write an honest depiction of all of it, the good and the bad, and not cover up where the edges don't line up. It's not easy, but it is an honest portrayal of my experience and my understanding of it. That is a contribution that I can make.

You told me I was like the Dead Sea, you'll never sink when you are with me

Thursday we took off from Petra to head up north, to spend two days in Hammamat Ma'In Hot Springs at a resort. On Hotels.com, it looked like it was close to the Dead Sea.When we arrived later, our local map told a different story.

On our way up, we stopped to check out the Crusader castle at Karak. It was pretty sweet. Turns out the castle was initially built around the time of Jesus (lots of stuff going down in this part of the world at that time, it turns out) and then rebuilt and expanded by subsequent empires including Crusaders and Mamluks. Perched high on a ridiculously steep hill, it's easy to see why Karak was chosen as a site - it's easily defensible. Bonus note: during the Crusader era, they had three ovens: two for bread. This system sounds great (guess who loves carbs?).

Afterwards, we drove on to the Dead Sea Highway, meeting up with it at the very southern tip of the sea. The view was pretty amazing - you just round a bend in the freeway, and then the Dead Sea spreads across the valley below you. It's so blue. The GPS freaked out a little bit (our suicidal GPS, that kept trying to get us lost) because the Dead Sea is the lowest place on land and the shore is about 350 ft BELOW sea level.

Our GPS, the bane of our trip and our attempted killer, told us to make a right off the Dead Sea Highway to get to our next hotel. The road was one lane, and after we passed a hotel and a few houses, got insanely narrow and steep. Jordanian civil engineers have a rather loose understanding of what "acceptable grade" and "manageable turns" are - both Rob and I were totally freaked out as we basically slalomed up a one-lane road with massive potholes, surrounded by boulders and a devastating dropoff. Our little Citroen (never buy a Citroen) ate so much gas...there were points where I was afraid I was going to have to get out and push because we were driving so slowly and the car was barely negotiating the grade. Both of us were being calm to avoid freaking out the other one, which I suppose is good, but when we hit the top we began breathing easier and congratulated each other on surviving (without fighting) another attempt by the GPS to kills us. When we told the guy at the hotel what road we came on, he said, "What? There is no road where you say." Exactly.

We spent two incredible nights at the Evason Resort at Hammamat Ma'In, a spa built onto natural hot springs in a stark desert valley, a lush oasis of green between two cavernous mountains and the Dead Sea visible in the distance down the valley. It reminded me a lot of Palm Springs - same climate, same landscape....just Arab. The resort is SO beautiful, and I'm glad we arranged our trip this way, to cap off a week of scrambling around Amman and Jerash, Roman ruins, Crusader castles, and Petra with a few days of peace, a massage, and lots of time by the pool.

 We had a lovely dinner at a (the?) panoramic overlook, and watched the sun set over Israel. The food was really delicious, and it was a beautiful evening. You can tell how high we are by the road and the lights in the photo below, at the bottom of the mountain - so tiny!

On Saturday, we woke up and went for a quick dip in the Dead Sea. It was pretty trippy - you just pop right up, and the salt is so intense that you immediately feel every scratch and bug bite, anywhere there's a cut on your skin, you feel flames. Rob opened his eyes under water, and couldn't see for a few minutes. It's called the Dead Sea because all life dies in it, fish and birds can't survive the intensive salinity. It coats your skin with a weird film, too. However, it was worth the experience, and pretty fun to sit down and just be able to lay back like you're in a pool chair...the Dead Sea takes all the effort out of floating. That song is true, you'll never sink when you are in the Dead Sea. Like how I feel about my loved ones - I never sink when I am with you. You all keep me floating.

(Dead) Sea salt anyone? Dead Sea Beach

(The subject line is from this amazing song by the Lumineers, Dead Sea. You should listen to it.)

An Ode to the Rose Red City: Three Days at Petra

Safely to Petra! Alhamdilleh

 So....Monday we had a bit of an adventure. We took off for Petra, armed with a map and a GPS. The route should have taken about 3 hours, and we headed out of Amman about 9:30am. We were looking forward to getting to our hotel in Petra, which had a pool, as a reward for our drive. Our GPS seemed a little off, but it had taken us safely to Jerash and back the day before, so we trusted blindly in technology. Our first sign something was off-kilter: Rob asked, "So...what are all these signs for Iraq and Syria for?" We passed multiple exits for Syrian border crossings, which was really strange, considering Petra is in the opposite direction. Also, none of the names on the exits matched the names on my paper map, but our GPS said we were doing fine, so we kept driving (technology knows best, right? Right?). We drove past the exits for Saudi Arabia, the Jabir crossing into Syria, Iraq, and ignored the fact that the paper map showed mountains and ragged terrain around Petra and the land kept getting flatter...and the temperature kept going up.

Our hotel had warned us that the US embassy encouraged all US citizens to avoid the Desert Highway near Ma'an in Jordan, which is usually what you'd take south out of Amman towards Aqaba, and turn off at Ma'an to take mountain roads into Wadi Musa and Petra. Apparently rival tribes have shut down the freeway a few times, and these events have been violent (not systematic, but enough for the embassy to tell Americans to take the Dead Sea Highway or the King's Highway instead). Due to this warning, we had been on the lookout for any road blocks or sketchy circumstances and had planned to get off the Desert Highway long before Ma'an. At about noon, we saw two buses parked in the middle of the road and a bunch of people gathered around them in a throng. My heart started palpitating immediately, and I told Rob to flip a U-turn. I was incredibly nervous, knowing that I had brought Rob here (Nancy Lee will kill me if something happens to him here!), and it was my Arabic skills that we were surviving on...and according to the GPS, we should have been 50km outside Ma'an and therefore in no danger...

Both freaked out but trying to be calm for the other one, we drove a few miles back up the road and took the first major road heading west, towards the interior and away from the troubled territory. But the road we were on, and the town the road led to, weren't on the paper map and the GPS kept saying we were still on the road to Petra with no mistakes or corrections...confused, I rebooted the GPS, and it said something really strange...we were 72 kms from Amman. How could that be? We should be something like 250 kms from Amman...

Well...our GPS had been simulating the trip from Amman to Petra, not updating with our actual progress - we had been off the actual route for 2 hours. Turns out we were in northern Jordan, pretty close to the Syrian border (hence...the signs for the Syrian border). So whatever it was we saw in the road, it wasn't rival tribes from Ma'an closing the Desert Highway - because we were not ON the Desert Highway.

Lesson learned: technology is great, but trust the paper map first and foremost, and make sure that analog (paper) map matches the digital (GPS) map. Also, if you're seeing road signs for Iraq and Saudi and Yemen, no matter your destination, you're going the wrong way.

Our lengthy tour of northern Jordan meant that we actually ended up getting to Petra much later, as we had taken a 3-hour detour and then when we did get to southern Jordan, we got off the Desert Highway well before we got anywhere near Ma'an (safety first! Our Syrian-Jordanian roadblock, whatever it was, had seriously freaked me out). Taking the King's Highway was a much slower process, and I would argue that "highway" is a fairly generous term. Despite the slow pace of the road and its continual winding through tiny villages where cows, goats, chickens, camels and children played in the road when cars weren't double parked across all lanes of traffic, the drive was beautiful, through canyons and mountains and wadis. We were so relieved when we finally got to our hotel, having definitely taken the scenic route. We left Amman at 9:30am, and got to Wadi Musa around 6pm....most couples would have been at each other's throats in these circumstances, but Rob's patience, once again, carried us through unscathed. We rewarded ourselves with a drink at Cave Bar, a Nabatean cave that has been converted into a restaurant and bar. It was a lovely way to close a rather stressful day.

The next morning, we got up early and went in to Petra. It's 1.2 km from the entry gate to the Treasury, which is the famous (Indiana Jones) scene. But the Siq, the canyon that you wend through on your way down, is incredibly beautiful, with towering walls that are occasionally inscribed with Nabatean graffiti. I know my words and pictures are a poor substitute, but please believe me when I say this place is magic. The rock walls are every shade of rose, red, brown, charcoal, and earth, and the most azure sky is visible above you in snippets.

And then, when you think the Siq will never end, you see it. The facade of the Treasury is nothing short of magnificent. I have wanted to see this masterpiece of human civilization for myself for so long, and when I looked up to see it, I felt a stone in my stomach. It was just so beautiful.

And then I was there, standing in front of the Treasury, the Khazneh. I had goosebumps. I know it's silly, and so nerdy, but there are some places that are just holy in a way that has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the possibilities of humanity and our greatest aspirations and capabilities.

Petra is not just the Treasury/Khazneh, though. It keeps going. There is so much to explore. When you walk further into the valley, there are so many more ruins. The valley is covered with them: the facades of tombs, homes, an amphitheater, a temple to Artemis, a monastery, a place of sacrifice, a colonnaded street...this massive valley and its walls are laced with traces of civilizations past: Nabatean, Roman, pagan, Ottoman, Mamluk...all these styles melding together in one place, all this beauty created around the time of Jesus that has survived 2000 years.

View from the High Place of Sacrifice, into the valley

Looking down onto the Tombs (in the cliff face)

The stone roof of one of the tombs

This is a facade of a tomb - musta been a big shot!

the facade of the monastery, ad-Deir

The path up to the monastery

Lunch after hiking to the top of the canyons to see the monastery

Tombs in the rock face

The Khazneh/ Treasury

New friends, who borrowed my sunglasses

We spent two days exploring Petra, getting completely filthy and covered in dust. It was worth every fils, every dinar, every time we had to say no to donkey rides or horse rides or Bedouin kid-hustlers selling postcards or jewelry...it is still one of the most beautiful places on this earth that I've been blessed enough to visit.

Last night, we bought extra tickets to go to Petra at Night. Growing up in New Mexico, I learned young that luminarias signaled the advent of Christmas every year. Luminarias are paper bags with candles inside, that line the paths and rooftops to shine the way for the Christ-child. Petra at Night evoked these memories of my childhood: luminarias lined the path down the Siq, winding through the canyon with inky black sky overhead pierced with the clearest of bright shining stars, and no real lights to dampen their beauty for miles and miles. We held hands as we shuffled our way over the stones and pebbles in the half-light, and made our way to sit in front of the Treasury, illuminated by hundreds of luminarias.

Sitting there with the man I love, with the light of hundreds of candles dancing on the facade of the Treasury, I was overwhelmed with gratitude: gratitude for all the travails of the past two years, because they brought me here; gratitude for those who came before me, who preserved this incredible piece of heritage that I might see it; gratitude to have chosen the at-times difficult but stimulating and rewarding profession that I have committed to (who gets to nerd out about interesting things in other parts of the world and go experience other cultures and others places? This is the best job in the world!). But most of all, I felt gratitude for the man sitting next to me, who loves me so much he'd drive to Syria, who understands the meaning of the word partner, who sees how crazy beautiful this ravaged, delicate, feisty world is and wants to explore it with me. I must be the luckiest girl in the world.

A Day at Jerash

 On Sunday, Rob and I picked up our rental car and drove out to Jerash, about an hour north of Amman. The Roman ruins there are meant to be spectacular, and we were not disappointed!

We got a bit of a late start, having some trouble finding the rental car office and then getting stuck in traffic leaving Amman. By the time we got to Jerash, we were ready for lunch. Lonely Planet recommended Lebanese House, a lovely Lebanese restaurant in an open air villa just south of the ruins. Lunch was absolutely delicious, and we no doubt ate more than we should have.

The ruins of Jerash are spread out over a few kilometers. Visitors enter through the Gate of Hadrian at the south (see below).

 Then you walk up through ruins of a hippodrome, into an amphitheater and the beginning of the cardo. The site is stunning, especially because directly across the street, contemporary Jerash hums busily away. It seems unthinkable that such history has been preserved, such a large archaeological park, and also exciting to think of how much more is yet to be excavated.

 On the way home, exhausted and sweaty, we navigated rush hour traffic in Amman. What can I say, this ass was holding up traffic for a mile or so...

A few summer days in Amman

 The weather's much more manageable here in Jordan (than Oman) but it's still pretty warm. Two days ago, Rob and I slept in late as he arrived at 3:30am. We headed out to visit Amman's Roman amphitheatre and the citadel. The amphitheater is about five minutes walk from our hotel, if that, and nestled right next to a main highway.

 After we slogged to the top of the amphitheater for the obligatory top-down shot, we walked up the opposite hill to see the citadel. The view of Amman is amazing! The city was originally built on seven hills, but has spread to 19 now. Amman has been inhabited for a very long time, and was known as Philadelphia in the Roman era. You can see the layers of the city as you walk through the streets: it has been built and rebuilt, and remains in the process of becoming as new buildings emerge and old ones crumble.

 At the citadel, there is also a small archaeological museum with relics from the site dating back to the Stone Age (gives 'historical' a whole new meaning). There was also a pretty bizarre jewelry display (see below: Rob asked, "Liz Taylor?").

 The view looking down into 'al-balad' (as the downtown area is called) is pretty incredible, and you can see the highway and the amphitheater again.

Later that night, we tried out the Wild Jordan Cafe for dinner. We ate a delicious healthy meal on their patio, overlooking the city spread out beneath us.

Above, you can see the citadel illuminated at night. It's gorgeous, but belies the many many hills of Amman we climbed...it was an exhausting day. We learned some important things, though: everything is negotiable. Never accept the first offer, and never pay more than 500 fils for a big bottle of water. Always ask the driver to restart the meter on the cab, cause he won't do it on his own. Even when you speak to Jordanian cabbies in Arabic, they will still try to take you for a ride, and you have to yell at them when they take you the opposite direction of your hotel just to get the meter up a bit. It's really tiring to constantly haggle prices and fight down superinflated prices ($3 for a can of Coke, for example). In this respect, I miss Oman: Omanis don't care about taking foreigners' money. They are scrupulously honest, and will hand money back to you if you overpay.

Yesterday, we headed to Darat al Funun, basically because Rob is being very generous about putting up with a few research items that have ended up on our itinerary. Darat is one of the first art centers in the Middle East, and has been a pioneer, so I couldn't pass up the chance to check it out. This place is a sanctuary: a series of three buildings amongst Roman ruins and lush gardens terracing down the hillside. It is quite the breath of fresh air from the busy tumult of Ammani streets.

After Darat, we headed to the Jordanian National Gallery in Jebel Weibdeh. We walked (again) and it was quite the long walk, but worth it once we found it, nestled in two buildings adjacent to an art park. The collection was lovely - unfortunately, we are missing the opening of their 70 years of Jordanian artists exhibition that is coming up soon.

Last night, we went to Beit Sitti for Jordanian cooking classes. Turns out Beit Sitti is basically right behind Darat al Funun, which would have made us pretty cranky except we took a taxi there this time! On the menu: cucumber salad, mutabel, matloubeh, and osmaliyeh (a kunafeh-y dessert). We started our lesson with Laure, and she talked us through their spices, including turmeric, sumac, garlic, parsley, mint and tahini.

Our "kitchen" was outside on the patio, overlooking the hillsides of Amman, and we chopped and minced at Laure's direction. We even made our own pita bread. Everything was so simple, and she used spoons and cups but no official measurements. You can see the stove and oven in the back, above, where we cooked the matloubeh, the eggplant for the mutabel, and the pita.

Happy chefs!

Here is Rob after Laur said, "You should do something! She is doing everything!" So we documented his labors (to be fair, he did cook quite well).

The final meal was delicious: at the top left, you can see our cucumber salad (with mint making the starfish pattern), the pita under the napkin on the top right, the matloubeh (upside down dish: with chicken and rice, cooked in one pot and then flipped), and the mutabel on the bottom left. It was so incredibly delicious, and we ate more than we should have but didn't regret a bite.

Afterwards, Laur gave us a ride over to Jebel Amman and we enjoyed a brief 'argileh (shisha) and lemon-mint juice before hitting the sack so we could get up for Jerash in the morning.