Amman Jordan
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Amman is dark, but very much alive. Although I am tired from a long day of travel, I've made arrangements to meet a Palestinian friend at a Lebanese restaurant beyond the stone walls of the Old City. But for now, I stand atop a tall building and gaze out into the vastness of the night, filled with glimmering yellow and white lights. Then I close my eyes and try to focus on the music of the call to prayer. But the sounds of trucks and taxis and radios blaring a crazy, confused Arabic hip-hop swallow it so that only a mumur remains. The air is cool and, despite the urban congestion and pollution, fragrant with a scent I do not recognize. If it weren't for the friend who awaits me, and the insistence of my hunger, I think I could stay here all night, breathing in the sweet smells and sounds, mesmerized by the canvas of the purple and black sky and the urban landscape that shapes its contours. And so I leave to find a taxi and make my way to what remains of the past that this place once was.Half way through dinner, I find myself conjured into a dream. The savory Shish Taouk (marinated chicken grilled over charcoal embers, oriental rice and tomatoes) and the Jordanian white wine (surprisingly good) have joined forces with my fatigue. I smile and laugh at a joke, then realize that I heard nothing that was said, and have merely reacted automatically to my companion's laughter and his infectious smile. I must remember to find a gift of jewlery for my wife, the voice inside my head reminds me, though it has nothing at all to do with the conversation, the joke or seemingly anything. Maybe it is the bold, alluring gold earrings worn by the Bedouin dancer, gyrating to the sounds of drums and a series of primitive stringed instruments whose names are a mystery to m. Who knows? Who cares? At least for the moment, I'm in a happy place with a good man made refugee by circumstances so very far beyond his control. I'm, unteathered from my cell phone and my laptop (they sit angrily, alone in my hotel room). I'm a free man in a distant free land (so many American's are surprised to know that Jordan is in fact a free, secular, and open society). It's as if I've become someone else. For a moment I feel that destiny might take me in a new direction. And well it might. For tomorrow, I take the first steps along a path that will lead me first to Saudi Arabia then at last to the dangerous and strangely beckoning land in the midst of revolution. "Syria calling," the jester inside my head sings to the tune of The Clash. We shall see. But first, I have things to do in Jordan and in the Kingdom. So more tomorrow from ancient ruins and the road to the deep southern desert they call Wadi Rum.
