Jordan

Jekyll and Hyde

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One week from today, I’ll be sitting on the beach at Aqaba with term over and my labours temporarily at an end. Two weeks from today, I’ll be waking up in the comfort of my own bed once again, looking out over the Sussex Downs. Three weeks from today I’ll probably be back in Kent with the family, to see my brother in especial before he leaves for University. And one month from today, I’ll be sitting in the bus station in the sunblasted Plaza de Armas in Seville, waiting for the coach that will take me northwards to what is to be my home for the next nine months.

It’s all moving thick and fast roundabout now. I’m taking some time out in Ali Baba to work on the novel for a bit. Most everyone else has gone off in different directions: some to Wadi Mujib, some to grab a falafel lunch, others to one of the nearby cafes for some quiet study. I’m here in search of my voice, which I seem to have lost whilst I’ve been out here. I spoke to Andrew for quite a bit about this last night, reading back over some of my notes that I penned last year, in various states of emotion. Andrew gave me quite a jolt when he opined that my writing was a great deal better back then. Those aren’t easy words to take for somebody who’s set himself on the path to bettering his writing… How could this be, I wonder? Is it because I’m writing every other day, so I’m drip-feeding my thoughts rather than saving them up for a grand oeuvre? Or maybe it’s because I’m not finding enough time for myself to think properly out here in the city? I think there’s a bit of truth in both of those. My writing has become rather acerbic of late. Compared to all the self-help greenie moralising I used to throw about, my later work comes across as bitter, over-excitable, and above all else more than a little opinionated. I hope it’s not a lasting trend. I took the time to read over my notes a second time after I’d discussed them with Andrew and I’m a lot happier with them, though I know I wasn’t at the time. Maybe I’ll look back on these blog posts in the same way, and maybe not. My saving grace is that there was a victory achieved last night, however small; after comparing my writing, Andrew conceded that maybe sticking it out in a city really isn’t good for me at all. Because if there’s anything that might be described as a true window into the soul, it’s the way we express ourselves, poetry, paint or prose.

My summary of Amman a week ago was misinterpreted by some as an all-out attack on Jordan. I’d like to come clean on that point and confess that it’s really not that. In many ways, I’ve loved Jordan. The dizzying views up into the Golan Heights from across the river, the crashing waterfalls of Wadi Mujib and the stars stretched out like glittering velvet over the desert. Dana in all her majesty. Jordan is beautiful. And capital city though it may be, even Amman has its bright sides. In my melancholy, I’ve been unable to see it; largely, I guess, because I didn’t want to see it. It eludes me still. Picture this: you’re at the cinema, and the guy in the row in front of you turns around and asks you to stop kicking the back of his chair. You didn’t even realise you were doing it. Of course, you then spend the next five minutes wanting the kick the chair even harder – or is that just me? There’s a window into my mind and a half.

What I’m trying to say is that I have a bad stubborn streak, and this city – or any city, for that matter – brings it out of me like never before. When somebody tells me to stop doing something, or that I’m going to like something, my first instinct is to disobey. Watch Mean Girls, they say, ‘because it’s unavoidable… it’s part of our culture’. Instinct tells me therefore I cannot, under any circumstances, be made to watch it. Wait it out in Amman, they say, and try to learn to love it ‘because city life is just something you have to get used to… and Amman is actually a really cool place once you get to know it.’ Sod’s law dictates that it cannot be. It’s the old ‘I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now’ line.

When you set it down in writing, it’s really quite pathetic…

What’s a guy to do? I reckon the thing that I’m missing most of all, perhaps even more than escaping the metropolis, is time. Time to think, to write, and to be myself. It’s not just my writing that got bitter out here, it’s my personality. It sure is helpful having people around to point that out before it gets rotten. The year abroad is such an important part of your degree that it can feel criminal to ‘waste’ even an hour of it. As such, the last two months have been almost non-stop. Wake up, class, study, go downtown, shopping, sightseeing, studying, repeat. I rarely have more than an hour or so to get my head straight and that’s seldom in the solitary silence that I crave. Maybe I’ve made myself too dependant on ‘me time’; if there’s one common feature in all of my notes from last year, it’s a heavy emphasis on the importance of ‘me time’. I was busy then, too, rushing from class to rehearsal to gig after gig – and yet, I still managed to find time to wind down every week or so and defuse. Not so here. And it shows, right?

Oh, there’ll be one last big reflection on everything that’s gone down out here in the Middle East before I go. I hope that will be a better read, too. A blog in itself is a funny old thing, pasting your thoughts and feelings for the world to see. But that’s what writers do, paper or pixels. Some of my best writing was set down when I was in the throes of a hopeless crush, some time ago. Or maybe it’s just because we’re human, and we all love a good gossip. I don’t know. I’m going to keep looking for my voice, and I hope that I can find it again before I leave this place, if just to leave you with Jekyll’s view on Amman rather than Hyde’s. I think that would be fair. (Oh look, I’ve gone and done a JK Rowling, leaving the explanation of the title to the very last line of the chapter. Now I really do need to get reading some more!) BB x

  

Tick Tock

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Blimey, we’re on our fifty-fifth day already. Another two weeks and it’ll be almost time to head for home. In some ways it’s felt like every day of fifty-five, in others it’s flown by. I think it’s safe to say that we’re all ready to pack up and head for home, though. It’s been fun, but it’s been hard work too, and factoring in all of those post-exam rehearsals, I haven’t really had a decent respite since… Well, come to think of it, since the Christmas holidays. Ouch!

We had a lot of fun in class this morning acting out two or three of Nasreddin’s tales. You might also know him as Juha (جحا او نصر الدين). Plenty of opportunities to lark about. For counterpoint, we spent the second hour discussing the wonderfully British tradition of the stiff upper lip; that is, suffering in silence rather than causing anybody problems. Quite a world apart from the very hands-on Arab approach! Even though I’m not planning on returning to the Middle East in the near future, the 3amia classes (the local Arabic dialect) have been useful, if just for learning all the expressions and idioms which I adore. Here’s to the vain hope that some carry across into the Moroccan darija dialect, or even Egyptian.

Proof that I’ve been here too long is that I found myself slipping in and out of Arabic whilst trying to talk to my mum in Spanish over FaceTime. I’ve never had that problem before, not even with French. That’s probably a good thing for my Arabic, which has definitely improved since being here, but it’s doing no wonders for my mental state vis-a-vis my Spanish. Now that I’ve booked my flight it all feels a lot closer, a month and more away though it may yet be. A couple of days with my mega-drawing and it’ll all be over in an instant. I don’t know whether I’ll ever catch up at this rate; I’m already two years in arrears, so to speak. I’m going to have bite my lip pretty damn hard to stop myself from taking it out with me. But a promise is a promise: I’ll give it unti Christmas to get a feel for my new home in Villafranca de los Barros, wherever that may be, before I lug the monster out to Spain with me.

No, I haven’t started house-hunting yet. I’m kind of hoping to do that on foot when I get there. At the very least, I’m not making the same mistake I made out here in settling for a ridiculously expensive option for speed and safety’s sake. And no, I haven’t given up on my dreams of running into Lady Luck with flowing dark hair when I get there either. Or should that be Señora Suerte? Whatever. Miracles can happen. I’m not banking on it, knowing my luck, but it’d sure be a deal sweetener.

Ach, would you look at that, I’m setting myself up for a fall already! I’ve been rambling for a little longer than I intended to. I’ll love you and leave you for now. I need my afternoon nap as much as anybody. Andrew, in his wisdom, went straight home after class to take his. I think it’s time I followed suit. BB x

And Then He Threw A Table At Me

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

There’s a line in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf returns from his first encounter with the Balrog and tells his companions that he has ‘never felt so spent’. Well, I just got back from an hour spent looking after nine Iraqi children, and I think I have a fair idea of what it must have been like to face said fire demon.

But don’t get me wrong. I signed up for this. Willingly, even.

After three weeks of teaching English at this church Andreas introduced us to, I’ve been enjoying it so much that when one of my co-workers called in to say that she’d be absent, I leapt at the chance to try something new in looking after the children of our students for a change. They looked pretty fun, they sounded like they were having a good time with the girls, and Firas’ youngest is just about the cutest little thing on the face of the planet, even with the super-saiyan hair. The year abroad is all about new experiences, right? And I’m not afraid to say I’ve always been rather good with kids. I guess it’s my willingness to de-age mentally by about twenty years whenever I’m in that kind of position. Clown mode, or something like that. Kids love it. It’s supposed to be foolproof.

These kids don’t exactly speak much English, but I’d been told that they could introduce themselves and that they knew a few basic words, like colours, animals, the parts of the body… that kind of thing. So I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a song and dance kind of game. ‘I get loose’, to be precise. It always went down a storm in Durham, and that was with twenty year old students. Once they finally understood that they were supposed to be copying me – Maryam, the oldest of the girls, had to explain it to them – they seemed to be enjoying it. But one of the kids, Fadi, wasn’t having any of it. He just stood looking surly in a corner saying ‘ba’ over and over again, getting louder every time. After a few minutes of this it became almost impossible to think, so I shot him a dark look. He just yelled even louder at me, and then ran over and started hitting me with a microphone that he’d picked up from who knows where. I scolded him for it but he kept at it, and in the end I let him tire himself out until he got bored of smacking my arm. At least, I thought he had. Instead he ran to the other side of the room, grabbed the nearest small object – a piece of wooden train track – and threw it at me. Luckily, he missed, which is more than can be said for the dollhouse, the microphone, Noah’s ark, the drum, the foam floor mat and three chairs. When I looked up from teaching the girls (whose attention was quickly beginning to wane by this point) and saw a table flying at me from the other side of the room, I guess I realised that we had gone beyond the point of no return. At least he didn’t get his hands on my iPad, or I might really have lost it.

And then the screaming began. Whether Maryam had lost faith in my ability to control the class, or whether she was angry that it wasn’t Susie taking the class, or whether she just revelled in the chaos, I don’t know. But the next thing I knew all five of the microphones that Fadi had been using as missiles had found their way into the hands of the older girls and they were all screaming at the top of their voices into them. Fortunately, they weren’t on, though for all intents and purposes, they might as well have been. I tried everything – disappointed face, changing tack, feigning ignorance, even getting strict – to no avail. They just waved a massive thumbs down in my face and the screaming continued.

It was at this point that Andrew stepped in to lend a hand. For a few seconds the kids stopped, judging how he might react – and then unleashed a new barrage of screaming on him instead. Between the two of us we made absolutely zero headway and eventually Andrew retreated back to the Bible study group. Five ear-bleeding minutes later Kate came to my assistance and we tried again. More screaming – only this time they got tactical. ‘We’ll stop screaming if you dance’. So I danced, and they stopped screaming – for a grand total of two minutes. ‘We’ll stop screaming if you sing’. I whipped out the Circle of Life for them, and they actually shut up – until the English lyrics, at which point the screaming started up anew, not least of all because one of the girls who had slipped away during the chaos had returned with five cups of water. Ammunition to renew the war on the Substitute. There was a point when Kate and I just looked at each other in an expression of utter helplessness. What could we have done? The kids were mutinous in the extreme. They weren’t having any of it; no Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, no introductions, no colours, nothing at all. Just screaming. When their parents came in to tell them to shut up, and they got the screaming treatment just as bad as we had, Andrew, Kate and I threw up our hands in defeat. We’d tried everything. The kids had overwhelmed us. And when the clock struck five minutes past five, I can honestly say I’ve never felt happier to have finished something.

So the next time I jump at the chance to teach kids, somebody stop me. Please. My ears, at the very least, would be grateful. BB x

  

From Burning Desert to Sapphire Sea

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One minute I’m standing on a high rock, staring into a lunar desert whilst desperately trying to even up my tan lines; two hours later I’m staring down at a school of damselfish drifting over a coral reef. I’m still struggling to get my head around it.

Sunrise feels far longer ago than this morning. After putting the finishing touches to last night’s report, I left the others sleeping in the campground and set off alone into the desert once again, this time to see the sunrise. I made it to the other side of the valley in time to catch the first rays of sunlight bursting over the cliffs. The sand was full of tracks: the footprints of beetles, snakes, camels and four-wheel drives crisscrossed the valley floor. There was even a lone skink trail halfway across, both satisfying and amusing on a more personal level (for the record, it’s an old family joke about lesser-spotted three-toed eagle-eyed skinks that gets wheeled out whenever yours truly gets boorishly specific about animals). The others were mostly up and about by the time I returned, and in perfect time for half an hour’s meditation before breakfast. The hefty futur Ahmad and his brother Khaled prepared for us was a kingly feast: fresh bread, helwa, jam, hummus, falafel and hard-boiled eggs (there’s no escaping them!), and that’s without mentioning four glasses of that lovely sage and cinnamon-infused Bedouin tea. Dee-lish. God help my teeth over the coming year, because Spain and the Arab world most certainly won’t.

The jeep tour of Wadi Rum was a pretty standard exploration of the main sights, as you might expect: the early Nabatean rock art, Lawrence’s house and the rock arches. I needn’t elaborate much; such sights, stunning though they may be, are better detailed in guidebooks. Besides, Langelsby’s got it covered. I highly recommend you go for a tour if you’re in the area, though. On a more personal note, I found it profoundly ironic that I finally found a haven for wildlife, in what must be outwardly one of the most inhospitable landscapes on the planet. Desert larks, white-crowned wheatears, rock martins and rosefinches followed us from rock to rock whilst the ever present grackles, the tricksters of Wadi Mujib, whistled noisily overhead. No sign of the nocturnal denizens of the desert, but a welcome change from scabby cats and pigeons. The naturalist in me will never be suppressed. So says the lesser-spotted three-toed skink, at any rate.

On the knowledge that wrangling a bus from Wadi Musa to Amman might be beyond us, we arranged with Ahmad, our kohl-eyed Bedouin guide, to take us as far as Aqaba instead, where buses to Amman would be easier to achieve. Aqaba may be your run-of-the-mill beach resort these days, but it has a notch on everything I’ve seen before: the Red Sea. Sapphire would be a better name by far. I’d heard stories and seen pictures, but I’d never really believed quite how deep a blue the Red Sea was. Quite by accident, and with no small meddling from my heart, I found myself physically incapable of passing up the chance to go snorkeling.

Water sports and I don’t have an easy history, let’s say. Ask the population of Whitstable, who watched me capsize a kayak twice and have to be towed ashore (yeah, that still smarts). Swimming’s just about my favorite sport, being both an important skill and the only sport I’ve ever enjoyed, but I have breathing issues – something to do with my nose – which makes most other water sports more problematic than entertaining. Snorkeling has always been a dream of mine, though. Not as technical as scuba and easily doable for somebody with breathing issues. I say that, at least. It’s easy in retrospect.

The first forty minutes were tortuous – not because very salty water kept leaking into my mask, or because I was panicking over the oddity of breathing through a tube, but because the scenes opening up below me were nothing short of some of the most breathtaking sights I’ve ever seen (ouch, that was a bad pun). Stacks of frilled and fringed coral giving way to deep, sandy gardens shimmering in the crystal sunlight. Black sea urchins stretching their tapering spines out of crevices. Angelfish, surgeonfish, triggerfish, even clownfish, frolicking just inches in front of me. It was like living a wildlife documentary in the flesh. By the time I’d finally worked out how to breathe properly – ironically, the key to it was simply calming down and having faith in the tube – we only had five minutes left in the water. But those last five minutes were magical, even more so than the stars over Wadi Rum. Who could possibly feel lonely, or even give loneliness a second’s thought, with scores of brightly colored fish teeming about so close to? Those were my brightest moments.

Christ, but I feel like a tourist right now. I’ve just tackled three of Jordan’s biggest attractions in two days flat: Petra, Wadi Rum and the Red Sea. I didn’t really give Petra much clearance, did I? Mm, I’ll leave that one to the girls over at Langlesby Travels (https://langlesbytravels.wordpress.com/).

It’s been a busy weekend and a half. It feels unreal, somehow. But I don’t regret it for a second – and for once, l don’t even feel ashamed. I am a tourist. Jordan thrives on tourism. I guess I’m finally beginning to accept that. And about time too! Travel is no more and no less than the best thing you can do with your life, and it’s such a shame to have it spoiled by something you could never change, even if you wanted to. BB x

Amman: Observations of a Country Boy

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that most of my posts – discounting the rambling ones – are anecdotal more than informative. That’s only natural; you can’t spin a good story out of a constant streak of facts. And I tend to let my heart bleed all over my writing, so to speak, for good or ill. So I thought I might give you something factual for a change. It’s a little run-of-the-mill as topics go, but I can’t help but feel a few detailed observations on what life is like in Amman might not be such a bad idea. It’s the kind of thing I was trawling the internet for in the weeks leading up to my arrival here, now over a month and a half go. Obviously, we’re talking about a city, and a capital city at that; such places are very much what you make of them. If you’re prepared to go out and make a good time for yourself, you’ll probably find it. That’s as may be. At any rate, that takes a stronger will than mine.

Technically this kind of thing is best left until the end of one’s stay, but I’ll probably be out of internet range in my last week and having plenty of tale-worthy adventures whilst I’m at it. Besides, I think I’ve seen enough of this place over the last month and a half to have a fair idea of how it all works – at least, from my point of view. So without further ado, here’s my fifteen observations about Amman.

1. Amman is immense

I don’t have the figures, but you don’t exactly need them to know this. That you can stand at just about any point in the city and be completely unable to see an end to the seemingly infinite sweep of beige tower blocks has more to do with the fact that Amman is spread over several hills, making a full panorama nigh-on impossible unless you manage to climb one of the larger skyscrapers. Getting just about anywhere requires time, patience and, more often than not, a taxi. Some of the distances may look walkable, but in the heat of the midday sun, it’s just not worth it. Besides, a taxi ride means more Arabic. That’s good, right?

2. Grass does not exist

Looking for a shady green park to sit and study in? Think again. Amman has many things to offer, but grass is not one of them. The great belt of trees in the grounds of the Jordaninan University overshadows a bed of dust and pine needles, along with more plastic bags and bottles than the aftermath of a botellón. If you’re really after a green space, I’d suggest not coming here in summer for one, or else take a weekend sortie up to Ajloun in the north or Dana in the south.

3. Dust gets everywhere

This is one of the very first things you will notice. Wherever you go, there’s no escaping the dust. You can’t see it – at least, not unless you stand on a vantage point and look out over the city, where the brown haze over the skyline speaks for itself – but if you leave anything in the open air for a minute or more, you’ll find yourself brushing the dust from every available surface. Look on the bright side: when the occasional sandstorm sweeps its way up from the desert to the southeast, the wall of buildings act like a filter, so when it reaches Amman itself, it just looks like mist. Only, brown mist. Pretty novel when you first see it, I have to say.

4. Most of your Arabic practise will be in taxis

In a city that thrives on the back of its taxi service, it’s hardly surprising that the place you’re most likely to find yourself practising Arabic on a daily basis is in the front seat of a taxi. That’s not a bad thing per se, so long as you can put up with asking the same bloody questions day in, day out; how long have you been a taxi driver, are you from Jordan or Palestine, why is it so busy today etc etc. You won’t get lucky every time; there are a few singularly impossible cabbies who have wildly skewed ideas as to how much a ride downtown should cost, but for the most part they’re a chatty bunch. Life story, please!

5. Almost all taxi drivers are Palestinian

In seven weeks of living in Amman, I’ve met no more than three Jordanian cabbies. All the others have been Palestinian. And that’s assuming an average of six taxi rides a week. Most of them have plied various trades before becoming taxi drivers, up to and including military officers, teachers and engineers (all of which, thankfully, al-Kitaab One taught me). You can get a pretty good idea as to the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict after just a couple of taxi rides, in this way. Not a subject to bring up yourself, naturally, but if they have an opinion to share, it’s always interesting to hear. Did you know, for example, that Hollywood rarely, if ever, shows Palestinians in a good light? Food for thought.

6. Every bus has a different siren

Remember those BopIt! toys everybody had once upon a time? Try to picture triggering each of the annoying noises one after the other twice over and you have a fairly accurate idea of what a street in Amman sounds like. I’m not joshing you. From vuvuzelas to ambulance wails and car alarms to foghorns, no two sirens are the same. Fortunately, the majority of Amman’s drivers are constantly on hand to remind you what a regular car horn sounds like, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. These people will honk at everything that moves.

7. Stray cats are a thing; dogs really aren’t

This isn’t just a Jordanian thing either. I seem to remember Fes being similar, though I didn’t stay there long enough to see for myself. But there are no dogs in Amman. Cats, on the other hand, are everywhere, prowling the dustbins, skulking along the sidewalk or fighting beneath the window in the early hours of the morning. If you’re an animal lover like me, you’d better learn to accept the fact that the sleek and healthy cats of home are not to be found here. Amman is a fast-growing, modern city where you’ll need all of your wits to get about, and the cats that prowl the dusty roads reflect that, scabs, scruffy hair and all.

8. Cafés and restaurants give you water

This one caught me by surprise. Apparently it’s a Jordanian custom to give water to guests, water having always been something of a scarce commodity in this part of the world. That’s all well and good, but when you notice for the first time that it’s included in the bill, it’s a bit galling. And there’s no escaping it, either; it’s just something you have to accept. Take my advice and find one of the smaller establishments, where you might just get off the hook. Doors might look inviting, but behind all the bells and whistles, it’s essentially the Starbucks of Amman. If you’re looking for a local, look elsewhere.

9. Bins are optional

Rubbish bins aren’t as rare as they might seem at first. Most streets will have one or two skips where the locals deposit their trash, and these are emptied at least once a week, much to the cats’ chagrin. But the way the people of Amman drop litter, you’d think they’d never heard of a bin. Bottles, cups and crisp packets, once used, are simply thrown over the shoulder, discarded underfoot or lobbed at the nearest wall. Little wonder, then, that stinking, wind-borne piles of trash tend to gather in street corners.

10. Rainbow Street is where all the ExPats go

If you miss an old-fashioned British tea or coffee, you’d better get yourself down to Rainbow Street. It’s a creature-comfort lover’s paradise, with milkshakes, bookshops and ice cream parlours galore. But if you’re after an authentic Jordanian experience, you’d be better off looking elsewhere. Not only is Rainbow Street quite pricey by Jordan standards, it’s also crawling with Americans, Brits and other foreign students, with the result that many shopkeepers will address you in English and not in Arabic. It’s popular with Amman’s younger generation, too, so it’s not all rainclouds, but try exploring downtown and its offshoots first. Hashems and al-Quds, though popular, are more of an Arabic experience than Books@Café.

11. Falafels are the way to go

Jordan may be expensive to get to, but once you’re here, eating out can be as cheap as chips. And if you decide to forgo potatoes for falafels, it’s even cheaper. A falafel wrap, stuffed with salad, harira and hummus, shouldn’t set you back any more than forty piastres. That’s about 38p. It’s a great snack, and it makes for a good lunch or dinner, too. Hashems is supposed to have the monopoly on all the falafel joints in town, being a favourite of the King of Jordan himself, but most places will do a good line in the falafel wraps. It’s not the most varied of diets, but it’s cheap, and it beats McDonalds any day.

12. Piracy is the norm

Don’t let the DVD stores spook you: just because there’s not a legitimate DVD case in sight, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the law. If you’ve travelled to Asia or Africa before, you’ll already know the drill. Shops where you can buy as many as fifteen suspiciously homemade films for seven pounds’ worth are the norm. They’re also the lifeblood of the Jordanian student: especially if you’re up in out-of-the-way Tla’ al-Ali near the Ali Baba International Centre, you’ll be relying on these establishments to liven up the evenings when you’re out of pocket – or energy – to go to downtown and back.

13. Habibah is a dangerous place

Baklava. Kunafeh. Mille-feuille. Pistachio-coated trifles. Honey-glazed cakes. Triple-scoop ice creams. All of this in giant air-conditioned building so vast that it might well be the Arabian equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It’s a good thing that this heavenly establishment is as out of the way as it is, or we’d all be doomed.

14. Vegetables are cheaper downtown

This is a given wherever you go in the world, but it’s worth repeating all the same: for fruit and veg, never go anywhere other than the main market next to the mosque in the city centre. For reasons beyond my understanding, the price seems to double outside the market walls, but especially up in Tla’ al-Ali, the environs of the Ali Baba school. Sure, it’s cheap by UK standards, but if you’re paying UK prices when the locals are getting their produce for half the price, you’re being ripped off. Downtown, ten dinars can give you enough greens to last you a fortnight, if you’re careful, and that’s including a taxi ride into downtown, provided you split it with a friend. It’s barmy logic, but it works.

15. Crossing roads is like playing Frogger

Feeling lucky, punk? Then give the mean streets of Amman a try, if you dare. Traffic lights are like the last egg in an Easter Egg hunt; you’ll do a little fist-pump for joy when you see one. In most places, you just have to brave it and step out into the fury. The rule of the road is one of might is right, but most cars will stop for pedestrians. The only thing to remember is not to hesitate under any circumstances. As the guidebooks will tell you, the drivers will base their actions on what they expect you to do. If you make the first move, carry it through. You’ll pick it up eventually. And it’ll be just as much of a thrill to the last.

That’s it for the time being. It’s probably important to note that this is very much my own opinion, and one coming from somebody used to living in a town of no more than a few hundred people, so Amman hit me harder than it probably should have done. As I’ve said before, once you get outside Amman it’s a very different story and I’ve met some of the most wonderful people on my travels around Jordan. It’s just that Amman itself and I were never made for each other. Insha’allah, Fes will show me the light.

I’ll be away in the south of Jordan for a couple of days to catch the Perseid meteor shower in Wadi Rum, via Petra, so expect some more adventure stories when I get back on Saturday night! Until the next time. BB x

Some Seriously Good News

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

My year abroad just doubled overnight. Double the countries, double the adventure, double the fun – and half the cash. I’m one happy guy. Because I’m thrilled to tell you all that I’m going back to Morocco next summer!

Seriously, this is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. Not only does this mean that I’ll be spending hundreds less on flights and accommodation, but I’ll get the chance to do a homestay, something that’s been barred to me out here on account of my sex. So even though it’s only a six-week course, I’ll bet it’ll be a lot more intense than two out here – in a good way! I’ll be heading out there on my own, too, which should do wonders for both my Arabic and my confidence, as there won’t be that English crutch I’ve had ever at the ready out here. Last but not least, it’s only a skip and a jump from Spain, so I can lay some early foundations during my assistantship. Win win. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy – there’s a whole batch of new difficulties I’m going to have to face head on by breaking the mold and striking out alone – but for the sake of a smaller city that doesn’t live on its taxi service, I’m more than willing to make that jump. Thank you to everyone who’s been on hand throughout these last few weeks; to Shahnaz and Archie for telling me to keep smiling; to Banner and Anna, for suggesting that I go for it; to my teacher Aziza for giving me the go-ahead; and lastly to Andrew, for putting up with a month and a half of comparisons…!

The best thing of all is that half of August and September are now open to me to do with as I choose. I’m still umming and ahhing between volunteering at an orphanage in Peru and roughing it on the backpacking adventure of a lifetime in Ethiopia, but I don’t want to set anything in stone quite yet, so I’ll keep you posted as and when I make a decision. Freedom feels so good, I can tell you that at least. And freedom like this, or of any kind, is always worth fighting for. I’m not half cultured enough to find a pretentious quote for you on that count, so I’ll let my own irrepressible good humor convey to you just how on top of the world I’m feeling right now. Erin Shore is playing on my iPod and I feel like I could accomplish anything, even a return to the vegetable market in downtown Amman to stock up on a week’s worth of fruit and vegetables. We’re running low and my egg-based repertoire is getting thin on the ground. I think I’ll treat myself to a meal at Al-Multaka tonight before starting to think about my TLRP: a study of angels and demons in the Crusades with a particular focus on Saladin and Reynald de Chatillon. Exciting stuff!

Enough of all this shameless self-aggrandizement. I’ll end up with a head the size of a football field. To finish, here’s an Arabic riddle that came up on a game show on TV last night. The English equivalent might run something along these lines:

A red, red city with greenest walls; its citizens black, no keys at all

The Arab viewership got it pretty quickly. It’s a shame they couldn’t keep the winning streak going, though; the following round, a game of ‘Spot the Difference’, proved too great a challenge. After forty-five minutes, nobody had noticed that the girl in the second picture was missing a finger. I guess they were all of them too hung up on that most decidedly harām shoulder on show. BB x

 

Blood, Tears and Broken Glass

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s a Friday night in down-town Amman, the streets are buzzing and Andrew and Mac are exploring an abandoned hospital. Yours truly chickened out of this particular venture. I guess that means I’m on lookout? Jeez, how lame does that make me sound…

It’s kind of creepy, sitting outside this tumbledown hospital with the sounds of breaking glass and echoed footsteps breaking the half-silence. Not to mention the dim light from Andrew’s phone flickering off the walls between the windows from time to time. Am I missing out? Very possibly. Will I regret it? Almost certainly. I’m not about to abandon my post, though. Call it a brush with foreign police once too often, but I’m calling shy this time. In the countryside, maybe, but not in the middle of the city on a Friday night. And especially not after watching As Above So Below last night. Not on my life.

We’re into our sixth week in Jordan. Three school weeks remain, and after that – who knows? I took out another two hundred and fifty dinars this morning. The goal is to make that last until the end. With any luck, that should just cut it, travel funds and all, although I have been known to be a little over-optimistic about this kind of thing. Jordan’s bus service may be criminally cheap, but the Amman taxi system is draining my resources at a ridiculous speed. And there’s no avoiding them either, and believe me, we’ve tried. Google Maps gave us an estimate of two and a half hours. We scoffed at that and called it one and a half. Turns out it was a three-hour job. We won’t be walking to down-town again any time soon – not when there’s shopping to be done. And I thought that living twenty minutes’ walk from any shops in Durham was problematic! Something to think about if you plan on staying in Amman. It wouldn’t be a problem if you lived down-town, of course, but up here in Tla al-Ali, it’s a different story. Please don’t buy my fervent dislike for the place, that’s just me and my city angst, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the cost of all these taxi rides – two dinars a throw – racks up fast. I’m looking forward to living in a town where everything is within walking distance.

Now that the end is in sight, though, it’s a lot easier to stay positive. I’ve got it into my head that I’m not coming back next year and that thought alone is keeping me going, no matter how hard I’m going to have to fight to make it so. Hence a slightly less bitchy, more reserved tone this time around. It’s a lot easier with the midterm depression out of the way. Any and all lingering ill tempers were successfully vented this afternoon with The Green Mile. Tears all round, as it should be. There’s no better way to get it all out than with the greatest tearjerker of them all. Next stop, 12 Years a Slave! (There’s a bit of a theme going on here…) Films aside, I’ve plenty of books to keep me going between now and then, thanks to the wonder that is iBooks and all the free material on offer. Best of all, I even stumbled across a book of Arabic short stories penned by none other than our very own Dr. Daniel Newman, which I simply have to get my hands on the next time I swing by Books@Cafe. For the time being, I’ve at least another twenty Henry Rider Haggard books to wade through, including the full Quatermain saga. Excellent stuff. Perfect travel fuel, too.

Although I’m swung to thinking that perhaps Ethiopia might be wiser than South Africa for potential backpacking. It’s just a hunch. Further research needed. BB x

Not All Those Who Wander Are Flossed

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s just taken me about an hour and a half to wade through the latest Arabic text for tomorrow’s class. With a night of karaoke at the Marriott Hotel on the cards for this evening, I don’t exactly have the ‘I’ll do it later’ gambit at my disposal.

First off I want to apologise for a very rocky week or two of bipolar posting (some of you noticed, I gather…). The mid-term fury is over and things have settled back to the way they were before, helped along the way by much meditation, H.R. Haggard and Karl Jenkins. Ouch, that’s a painfully middle-class sentence. Life in Amman rumbles slowly onwards, the daily Arabic homework’s still coming in thick and fast and the Versailles branch of the British Council still haven’t told Andrew where he’s going. Business as usual. I took an entire weekend out to deal with my restless psyche and it seems to have paid off. It meant missing out on a couple of parties, but for the sake of my bleeding heart, it was worth it. So if you were feeling the strain of my sine-wave posts over the last week or so, fret not; the dust has settled. It should be a little easier on the eye from here on out.

It’s been a fairly productive couple of days, which means we haven’t had that many adventures; but that’s no bad thing. I saw our first clouds in a month or so the other day, and what a sight for sore eyes that was. You’d be surprised how uplifting it was to see a speck of grey on the horizon for once. Blue skies are lovely and all that, but when you’ve had temperatures balancing out over the high thirties for almost three weeks without cease, a cool breeze is a welcome miracle. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm, which we all got super excited about, but it never came. Instead, the sky went a very queer shade of brown and a mild sandstorm swept through the streets. No rain. One of the strangest weather phenomenons I’ve ever seen. We got the full force of the stifling storm heat, though; the temperature soared up into the mid forties. My insides felt like they were being cooked every time I stepped outside and there was a weird charge in the air. Mostly we found ourselves retreating to our various homes to sit like idol-worshippers before the air-con until the sun decided to call it a day. Even then it often carried on long into the night, that stuffy, all-pervading heat. The blankets had to go. How they’ve lasted this long is anyone’s guess. BBC Weather’s been getting an unnatural number of hits from our flat, at any rate. They say there’s a 51% chance of precipitation tomorrow. Good news takes the strangest forms…

I finally got around to sending off an email to the school I’ll be teaching at in Extremadura. I’ve had it written for the best part of a week and a half, but for some reason I never hit the send button. I guess I wanted to be dead-certain on the grammar, but in the end I just had to be happy with what I’d written, bite the bullet and hit SEND. With any luck, I’ll get a reply at some point before I arrive in September. So that’s pretty cool. In the meantime I’m keeping my teacher senses trained with this project of ours at the Iraqi church Andreas got me in on last week. The last session must have gone down well enough, because we had double the numbers this time. We’ll have to call in reinforcements at this rate. Parts of the body this week, following on from the previous lesson on going to the hospital. Getting the groups to use the vocab to compliment each other was a great idea, and also highly amusing. Apparently eyebrows are a valuable commodity. Or maybe they were just trying to get their heads around the pronunciation. I’d like to believe the former. Having to explain the difference between diarrhea and constipation in the politest possible way is definitely going down as one of the most entertaining moments of my teaching career. Something along the lines of ‘let’s say you eat a bad falafel, and it goes right through you… and for the other one, well, it doesn’t quite go right through you…’. British humour. It never gets old.

This church is just about the best thing that’s happened to me out here, though. It’s the one thing I’d return to Jordan for, given the chance. Maybe this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, maybe not. I hope so, at any rate. I’ve been waiting for my chance for so very long now, ever since I left that world behind almost six years ago… I’ll be dropping by three times a week from now on, twice for class and once for the service, so things should start to look up. And that’s a real slice of good news.

Bummer, I’m out of toothpaste. Looks like I really will have to resort to this weird Arab brand I picked up in the corner shop last week. At least it smells nice. After Morocco I’m none too keen to follow up on any of these traditional Arabian dental practices. BB x

The moment we thought Andrew’s placement might have come through…

A Sex-Tape is a Step Too Far

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I think the title needs a little explanation.

In addition to the mid-term exam, our Arabic teacher set us the task of coming up with a five to seven minute presentation on a topic of our choosing. It took me until the morning to come up with something I could realistically rattle on about for that amount of time (no, seriously), but after stumbling over my words as usual, I ended up putting Andrew up to a bet whereby he had to talk about Kanye West. Naturally, Andrew tried to make his presentation somewhat relevant to what we’d studied so that he could activate the vocabulary, or whatever buzzword you want to use. The result was an exploration of the modern wedding through the Kimye phenomenon, complete with all the gory details, ego, sex tape and all. Highly entertaining, of course, but our teacher took umbrage at the subject, claiming that it was ‘hardly suitable’ for class, and debarred us from asking any questions so as to bring the topic to a decided halt. Still, the man did a good job, and he held his ground in spite of all the criticism, so I held up my end of the bargain and rustled up a pretty neat lentil and vegetable stew for him and Andreas, as promised.

To kill some time in the post-class hours, Andreas took us to an underground church in West Amman to help him to teach English to a group of Iraqi refugees. Just a couple of hours in a church not too dissimilar in style from a Worth Abbey chapel, which made me smile almost as soon as I set foot in the place. John 3:16 was up on the wall behind the lectern in golden lettering; it was pretty clear from the first four words, even in Arabic. Beautiful stuff. The Iraqis themselves, Christians from Basra, were just about the nicest bunch of people I’ve met here in Jordan yet. Andreas and his teaching partner Jason assigned Andrew and I four to teach, and we discussed hospital related vocab to get the ball rolling. Whilst we worked, the children of our students scampered about the church at full pitch. I haven’t seen such unfettered happiness in a while. One of our group was a lot quicker on the draw than the others when it came to learning all the new words and expressions, but Raja’, the oldest of the group at seventy-one years old, was an utter delight to teach, especially when she came out with a flawless sentence at the end of the session, primarily because she was so shy. It kind of reminded me of how I must have been earlier down the line. Boy, but it was good to be teaching again, though. Getting back into practice for my assistantship in two months’ time. Better still, Iraqi Arabic is the closest to fusHa out there and a joy to listen to. Basra sounds like a beautiful place, as if Iraq needs anything more to make it more appealing. Land of the Abbasids! Home of Abu Nuwas! Man, why can’t I spend my Year Abroad in Iraq?

Wait, on second thoughts, don’t answer that one.

There’s a lot to be said for this religion malarkey. With any luck, one day the moment will come and I will believe. Warm fuzzy aside, I’ve got to say that those two hours were a godsend, no pun intended. All of my frustration and anger from the past week simply disappeared. I have Faras and his friends to thank for that, for being so friendly and eager to learn; and of course Andreas, for giving me the chance to get in on the project. All is well with my heart once again. I’m still going to fight for the chance to go back to Morocco next year, but I know now that I can and will survive another month out here. I can do this.

Hold the phone, according the beeb there’s a storm coming. Rain. You have no idea how happy this makes me. That it’s going to be 41 degrees at the peak of the storm is beside the point. Bring on the rain, I say. Bring it. BB x

  

Cracks at the Seams

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The slump returns with greater force. Amman has clawed me back from that wonderful week of traveling and spewed me back up into the noise.

Andrew’s using my laptop. I don’t even know why; frankly, I’m past caring. He went out for an ice cream with a couple of the girls when we got back from downtown and took the keys with him, so I guess I must have been waiting outside the apartment door for half an hour or so, by his watch. I wasn’t counting. I might have done had I known, but I’d chosen this particular sortie to leave my iPad at home for once. Mistake.

Much against my better judgement I was led away from preparing for tomorrow’s exam and press-ganged into checking out a cafe in Abdali this evening; Amman’s posh district, with open-top restaurants sitting high atop the glass monoliths that shadow the soulless five-star hotels below. We ended up in just such a place: one of those £3.45-for-a-lemon-and-mint establishments. You’ve got to agree with me, that’s bonkers, right? And that’s without factoring in the 15% VAT and the standard fare compulsory bottle of water that you have to pay for wherever you go. For a country with a chronic water shortage, they don’t half throw the stuff around like it’s worthless. But that’s besides the point. Who pays that kind of money for a drink? Do I look like I’m made of money?

Breathe, Ben. Breathe. I admit that I’m none too good around classy venues. It brings out the spikey anarchist in me and he’s not much fun to be around, trust me. When people start flashing their wallets and eyeing up resort hotels and all that I get all jittery and feel the need to rave about how nobody needs to spend when it’s so much more fun to rough it. I guess I get so into it that I put people off; heck, I wouldn’t want to be around me in that kind of situation. It’s just awkward. Thus, we return to that class on personalities and how much we all love our own, right? <ugh> Of course right. You just keep telling yourself that.

The trouble is that we’ve hit the four week stage of this venture. Make that five, as we weren’t exactly studying during Eid al-Fitr. That’s about the point when things usually get rocky, and you only need a cursory glance to notice that. My city angst must be getting on everybody else’s nerves just as much as it gets on my own. More and more I find myself wanting to retreat to the flat and work on the novel, which would be no bad thing, but everyone else is opening up and wanting to explore. I guess I just don’t work like that. Different strokes for different folks. ‘But you just have to force yourself to try these things’, they say. I disagree. I’ve been forcing myself to try city-living for a month now and I can tell you in no uncertain words that it and I are not made for each other. But you know that already. It’s not like I’ve been talking about much else for the last few weeks and, like Morocco, I’ve been trying to keep a lid on it. Shame, then; if I’d kept my mouth shut earlier, I might have been able to talk about this situation tomorrow, but I’ve already done two presentations on what I think about this place, so I guess I’ll have to move on to pastures new.

The good news is that a dear friend with a heart of gold will be visiting this weekend. That’s a ray of sunshine through the gathering clouds if ever there was one. It’s not all doom, gloom and majnuun here, of course, but it is Amman. Oh Durham, hear me if you can; please let me try somewhere else next year. Two months here is trying enough. Another two months next year and all the expense that will entail just seems ridiculous, especially when I get less and less keen to go out there and practice my Arabic with each passing day. Isn’t that the point of a Year Abroad? Quite apart from being ‘the best year of your life’… Morocco, please. Or even Egypt. How about Yemen? Anywhere but here. October just can’t come fast enough. BB x