people

Seven Seconds in Madrid

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Chocolatería 1902, Calle de San Martín. Centro. 10.22.

I’m waiting in line to grab some churros con chocolate for breakfast at 1902, the same chocolatería I drop in on every time I’m in Madrid. It’s not yet half past ten on a Sunday, so the interior is still pretty busy with the usual morning traffic. The handsome lady manning the takeaway stall bustles in and out of the booth to resupply for the family of three in front of me. My attention is drawn to three punters sitting by the window. Locals, surely – only a Spaniard would keep their winter coat and furs on inside when there’s even the slightest chance of a draft slipping in. After all, it is a bitingly cold 16°C out there.

They look to be in their seventies, there or thereabouts. That means that the man on the right served his country for at least a year in the mili, before Aznar did away with national service in 2001 in a bid to win votes. It also means they probably remember very well what Madrid used to be like under Franco, before La Transición and La Móvida swept the city into the twentieth century like the rest of the European capitals.

Do they miss the way things were, perhaps? It must have been an altogether different place, back when the city’s demographics were primarily madrileños de raíces, before scores of regional migrants were drawn to the capital for work, followed by a larger tally of visitors from further corners of the world. Before Ale-Hops and Starbucks replaced the boarded-up shopfronts of local businesses. Before every sign and tannoy needed an English translation tacked on, to cater to a growing tourist class who were not expected to learn the language for their visit – another reminder of Spain’s falling status on the world stage.

I do not regret the end of Franco’s Spain – after all, it’s because of him that my Spanish family was torn apart. But I do understand why some might look back fondly on a time when the world seemed a whole lot more familiar.

Librería La Central, Calle del Postigo de San Martín. Callao. 10.36.

Further up the street toward Gran Vía, I pass La Central. It’s not yet open, and an Amerindian in marigolds and workers’ blue pantalones laborales is sweeping the street in front of the door, which is open only just enough for a person of slender build to squeeze in untouched. It’s mostly confetti and spent chasquibumes that he’s clearing away – there aren’t nearly as many cigarette butts as there used to be.

A girl stands nearby, picking up some of the easier wrappers by hand. She’s dressed like a passer-by, but there’s a familiarity to their easy interaction: she could be a relative, a friend, or a lover. Neither of them are wearing the white worm-like earbuds that seem to have encrusted the faces of so many of the city’s inhabitants, and that makes them stand out.

I bought four books in the nearby Casa del Libro (after nearly two hours’ decision) and it cost me around 70€. Spain is often ranked as one of the least literate countries in Europe, with fewer than 9% of the country reading books on the regular. Statistically, that’s not all that far behind the UK, but there’s no escaping the fact that reading is a luxury activity in Spain. FBP (Fixed Book Price) might be a worthy attempt to level the playing field and prevent the market being swamped in Taylor Swift trash and cheap chick lit, but it does drive up the prices of everything as a result.

My great-grandfather dreamed of having his own library, and I’m doing pretty well at bringing that dream to fruition. But it’s not a cheap enterprise in this country. I wonder how much traffic the man in marigolds sees.

Outside The Madrid Edition, Calle del Maestro Victoria. Centro. 12.55.

The queue for Doña Manolita’s legendary lottery shop stretches all the way along Calle de Mesonero Romanos and away up Calle de la Abada and onto Gran Vía. The throng of hopefuls is a real mix: young and old, local and out-of-town, Spanish and French and American. El Gordo – Spain’s Christmas lottery – is much more of an event in Spain than it is elsewhere in the world.

At the end of one crowd, another begins: a great mass of children and their parents waiting for the giant animatronic train and its attendant polar bears on the Cortylandia shopfront to come to life and sing, as it does every hour, on the hour (until 10pm, it seems – it’s within earshot of my hostel room).

Two glamorous citizens standing apart from the hubbub seem to be above it all, watching the crowds come and go with unmoving eyes. One leads the conversation, the other listens, eyes skyward. Sometimes it’s hard to see how the haughty, angular beauty of a youthful Spaniard finds its way into the compact, shrunken shape of its senior citizens, but every once in a while there’s a flash of that future in the expressions of its youngsters: that look of casual ennui would be right at home on the face of a woman three times her age, still dressed in expensive furs and commenting on the world going by.

Outside Heladería Galia, Calle del Arenal. Puerta del Sol. 12.57.

A West African mantero plies his wares alone on the Arenal. They usually operate in groups – there being safety in numbers, I suppose – but this one seems to be his own agent. He has also upgraded his drawstring blanket to a couple of glassware boxes. While other mountebanks dressed as a gorilla, Eevee and Mickey Mouse try to fleece passing tourists of their loose change, he hawks a number of luminous splat toys, which he promotes by blowing into a bird whistle and hurling his devices onto the flat surface of the box, where they slowly revert to their original shape.

It’s hardly worthy of a moment’s notice to most of the adults passing by, but it’s the children he’s after. One girl is absolutely entranced and convinces her mother to buy one – no, two, as they will have to get one for her brother.

It can’t be an easy job, hawking cheap goods on the street, but from my casual observations, these manteros do seem to have a fairly good hit-rate when it comes to a quick sale.

Plaza de Isabel II, Puerta del Sol. 12.59.

Before it became synonymous with one of C.J. Sansom’s greatest works, winter in Madrid always meant roast chestnuts. These warm, smoking stalls are as much in evidence now as they ever where, though they now often come with the modern niceties of a wireless card machine and an Aquarius-bearing fridge. Here, like everywhere else, the signs are written twice: once in Spanish and once again in inglis. The point I try to make in the classroom about the usefulness of this or that topic for traveling is increasingly redundant in the face of the relentless march of the English language.

The girl with the pearl earring isn’t as heavily dressed for the chill as the other madrileños in the street – but then, she is standing in front of a roasting dish all morning. She looks bored. The telltale rounded edges of a smartwatch bulges beneath the tight elastic of a sanitary glove on her right hand, and a swish handbag – presumably hers – sits nestled in an alcove behind her, so the chestnut business must be doing a reasonably good trade. I haven’t seen as many people tucking into the delicacy as I have in previous years, but then, it really isn’t quite that cold. Not yet. Not until the peaks of the Sierra de Guadarrama are covered in snow and the north wind blows chill across the plain and into the capital.

She’s cute – in a genuine, homely sort of way. There’s a natural beauty to people here. Not as many piercings, lip fillers, unconventional hairdos or fake tans. I don’t know why we go in for that so much in England. I already miss this place, and I’ve only just arrived.

Jardines de Lepanto, Plaza de Oriente. 13.26.

Sitting between the marble statues of the Asturian kings Iñigo Arista and Alfonso I is an exceedingly odd fellow. Like many of the city’s inhabitants, he is dressed in furs for the cold, but the similarities stop there. If the tassels on his black leather buckskins weren’t a metallic shade of blue, he might be a fur trapper from the Old West lost in time.

No – wrong continent. His regal nose, his dark, hooded eyes and the salt-and-pepper beard emerging in a neat diamond from his black headwarmer gives him the look of an Arab trader. A wise man, perhaps. It’s that time of year.

A curious assortment of symbols hang by threads across his naked torso: the Tau cross, an ivory pawn, a set of small keys and a card cut-out of the words “Ho-Ho” in gold letters that looks like it came out of a Christmas cracker. A fold-up umbrella pokes out of the smart yellow satchel at his side and there is a roll mat strapped to his waist. If he is a tramp, as his demeanour implies, he is a wealthy one.

Today the city of full of people in fancy dress. Ecuadoreans in tasselled hats and masks. Mountebanks in oversized costumes. Zambomberos in black and white and red. But he belongs to none of these clans.

When I return from watching the first of the zambomberos parade past, he has disappeared. I do not see him again.

Palacio Real, Plaza de Oriente. 14.36.

The fiesta zambombera is over. The crowded musicians begin to disperse, and with them, so too the clouds, bathing the Jardines Reales in warm winter sunlight. A modern dance troupe takes up where the traditionalists left off, showing that movement is as much a part of this country’s soul as its music. Still dressed in their folklore finery, the folcloristas return to their groups and prepare to depart. One huddle near the dance troupe stops to take a selfie. The red banner of Castilla flutters in the wind and the little cymbals in the tambourine shudder for a moment.

I must be a fool to have traded my life out here for England. So help me God, I will find my way back out here. I have to. It’s the only way I’ll ever assuage this restless heart of mine. BB x

Streets of London

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

2.20am. I’m riding home on the 2.08 from London Victoria. I didn’t even know trains still ran at that ungodly hour of the morning. Apparently they do: one every hour at eight minutes past the hour. They lock the station until ten minutes or so before the train leaves, and there’s quite a crowd loitering outside the gates just before they open them. Three Bridges is clearly the place to be at two in the morning. Who’d have thought it?

I did some much needed “getting out” today. With a couple of exceptions I’ve more or less turtled for four years or more. I guess that’s the nature of life in a boarding school: whereas most other folks can play their weekends and snatch evenings here and there, in teaching you block out your free time by your holidays…

The chap two seats ahead is fast asleep in his seat. His phone alarm is going off for the third time. The lads on the row of seats opposite looked annoyed at first, but one of them has struck up a conversation with the sleeper and asked if he’s going to get home OK.

I killed some time with my sketchbook on the Underground this afternoon, and again waiting in the street in Holborn before the party. A homeless man wandered over, cap in hand, to ask for help. Normally I have to admit I’d probably turn a callous blind eye, but something about London draws me in, makes me think differently. I asked for his name and we got talking. He said his name was James, and that he was trying to find a place that would take both him and his dog for the night. I gave him something to start his hunt – for once I happened to have a loose note on me. We shook hands and he set off at a run.

I didn’t have to make the trek home quite so soon. A friend offered me the key to his place for the night, if I could find my way there. I turned it down, partly out of habit, partly out of pride, and partly because of James. Having such an easy solution in London when so many are out on the streets… for some reason it didn’t sit right. You think in a different key in the small hours.

I remember sleeping rough in the wastelands beyond Almeria years ago. Gaunt from a month of under budgeting and undereating and feeling hollow. I remember the fear of that first night, the isolation. It could never compare to the real thing, of course, but I was young, foolhardy, and I wanted to have an idea of how it felt. One night I was curled up in the dunes when a couple of cars rolled up onto the beach around two in the morning. Men with flashlights climbed out and scanned the beach. I got the jitters and decided to move – they were probably night-fishing, but your brain plays all kinds of tricks at night. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the genuine pit-of-my-stomach terror when, barely a few yards down the beach, I saw two of the torch beams slowly sweep the beach and lock onto me. I ran. My God, did I run. I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life. I must have gone at least a kilometre or more before I collapsed in the dunes.

Almeria seems a long way away. London is surprisingly busy in the small hours. Not the city that never sleeps, per se, but one that keeps at least one eye open all night. Offices lit up, calendars and Macs on desks. Lads coming home from the lash. A girl tottering home on heels, makeup streaming, eyes weeping. And many, many sleeping bags in doorways.

It felt good to go out again. I haven’t danced in years – not since university, I shouldn’t wonder. And as it’s London, the music was both a) quality and b) perfect for dancing shoes. I should do this again sometime. Not that I’d make a habit out of catching the 2.08, though.

Gatwick Airport ahead. Only another five minutes or so to go, and then it’s the long walk back through the forest. I’ll probably be in bed by 4, with or without the moonlight to guide me – I’ve made that journey so often I could probably do it blind.

I’ll sign off now so my phone has enough juice for another chapter or so of Michelle Paver’s Ghost Hunter on Audible. That will take me at least as far as the forest – there, at least, I will feel safe again. BB x

The Difference a Smile Makes

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Riding the train across the southeast corner of England can be a rather impersonal experience. Over the course of the three different trains I have to board to reach my destination, I rarely have to say a word. A flash of one’s phone or ticket is enough for the ticket collector and human interaction tends to be limited to the odd pleasantry, such as confirming that this is indeed the train to Redhill, or some such assistance. Besides that, you can travel for three hours or so and hardly have to say a word to anyone. In any other country I suppose it would seem dreadfully out of touch, but it seems to suit the English very well. To each their own; an Englishman’s house is his castle; don’t go looking for trouble and no trouble will come to you, and other such expressions. The English love their personal space so much, it’s easy to assume that the loss of low-level human interactions in the face of the endless march of technology was welcomed here with open arms.

I might as well talk for myself. Sometimes I feel as English as the soil itself. Here I am, alone, barricaded into my window seat by my luggage and hoping the four tracksuit-wearing twenty-somethings don’t occupy the seats opposite. A damp narcotic stench, reminiscent of straw at the back of a big cat enclosure at the zoo, drifts up the carriage as they enter and I wince. I wince at the smell, and at the swiftness of my judgement; for the smell pervades long after the lads have moved on, lingering about the hawk-eyed man in the suit sitting opposite. I hadn’t even noticed him take his seat.

When the times comes to change trains, I do so quickly and willingly. I cross the platform and board the waiting train, finding a mirror-image window seat, onward-facing, back to the doors. Same seat. Same service. Same train design. It’s as though somebody just pressed the reset button on the passengers. And it’s silent again.

There are flashes of hope, though. The ticket conductor on this service greeted everybody when he got on, a cheery, wiry-haired gent, with a smile so warm you could put your feet up in front of it. He looks like a regular. At least, he knows the other regulars anyway, commenting on a girl’s new blue-dyed hair and how he’d not be brave enough to do it himself; inquiring after a young man’s onward travel; and confirming for a second time that this is indeed the service to Redhill to a doubtful older woman. The smile does not break even once.

One of the most intelligent men I ever met was a ticket inspector. I wish I’d taken more detailed notes of his reasoning, but it was something like this: “It pays the bills, it keeps me on the road and allows me to think when the day is done”. He spoke Finnish fluently “because Finnish culture is fascinating”, had an intrinsic understanding of musical harmony and was a profligate Europhile. In another life, I should like to give ticket inspecting a go.

The sun is setting behind the white spring haze. Albion, the White Island, continues to live up to its name (insert topical Jon Snow reference here). I hope the last leg of the journey is as personable as this one has been. BB x

Commuter Vignettes

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

A collection of observations from London and Madrid.

14.38 – The Lonely One

A girl gets on the Metro before me. She has that listless look of a twenty-first century child, of a face torn away from the blue glare of her mobile phone. The phone is there, of course – it always is – sitting dormant in her hand but very much alive. Maybe she’s sad because nobody’s messaging her right this instant. There’s something Latin about her look: behind the white Adidas shirt and the pale blue jeans, there’s an arch to her nose that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Montezuma, and she wears bold red lipstick on her thick-lipped pout. It looks a little out of place on her frown. She looks about eighteen, but with that tricksy Latin blood in her veins, she could be anywhere between that and thirty.

The tannoy goes off for Nuevos Ministerios and she leaves.

10.40 – The Spider

A London micro-manager discusses his six-month leave and coffee with Tom this morning, at a volume just loud enough for the carriage to hear. If the asking price rises into the millions, he suggests waiting for the results to deteriorate, like a bald and very well-dressed spider. Business is the meal of the day. His latest victim, a Gucci exec, writhes in his binds down the line, whilst the shadow on the receiver worries about growth. All of this is, yep, yeh, very good, cheers. The flies will just have to resign themselves to another day of good business.

The tannoy goes off for East Croydon and he leaves.

10.46 – The Ghost

Could the onboard supervisor contact the driver please.
Could the onboard supervisor contact the driver please.
Could the onboard supervisor contact the driver please.

‘Perhaps he’s not onboard,’ says an old timer. He gets a lot of laughs.
‘Gone AWOL,’ says a glamorous matriarch. She gets a few more.
‘Gone home,’ says a jumper-round-the-neck. The laughing streak dies out. ‘I mean, I haven’t noticed anybody check our tickets, so perhaps there isn’t one.’
…
Three minutes later, the train pulls out anyway. It doesn’t sound as though the onboard supervisor made contact.
‘Gonna be late now,’ says the matriarch, looking at her phone. ‘Ten minutes delayed.’

The tannoy goes off for Clapham Junction and she leaves.

11.23 – The Sardine Run

The 10.09 Southern Services train to Redhill is delayed. Apparently this is still newsworthy. Downstairs, the Underground splits at the seams. Giants with sports shorts and mop-tops jostle for standing room with Catalan sightseers, Russian students and a Rastafarian flyerman, dozing silently over his stack of pamphlets. The driver on the tannoy is profusely apologetic about the frozen train, citing an earlier faulty train as the reason for the blown lines ahead. The three-minute delay becomes a five-minute delay, which in turn becomes a ten-minute delay. Five was enough to oust the man in the navy pinstripe suit and the other big fish. I’m only going one stop so I really could have walked, but people-watching isn’t so easy on the move.

The tannoy goes off for Green Park and I leave.

22.52 – The Platoon

Small talk sweeps Cabin Six. Three late-twenties girls types discuss renting flats, grown-up men and which was the most distressing Harry Potter death, Dobby or Hedwig. One of the three isn’t contributing so much. Another keeps the flow going. Their ringleader dominates the conversation with perfectly formed silences and sentences. Corporal, Captain and Commander. They each tell a tale: the tale of the bright orange Maine Coon and a cactus, the tale of the old lady who fell asleep watching the BBC news and the tale of the silent nurse. The underlying moral of this urban saga? If you live in a flat, you can hear someone go to the toilet. A twenty-first century aphorism if ever there was one.

The tannoy goes off for Redhill, the Corporal gets off, but the Commander’s tales go on.

10.43 – The Herd

Three stag parties board the plane. Two of them are your standard bunch of square-jawed gym jocks, joking loudly about how muntered Gavin is going to get, how he’ll be flat on his face, gatted, smashed, trolleyed. The other herd follows their oddly-dressed leader down the aisle like a pagan procession, their Chosen One wrapped up in a pink and purple sari with all the bells and whistles – except, of course, the kameez that usually covers a Hindu bride’s modesty. Nip slips are clearly less of an issue for six-foot tall white men. When your average Joe has umpteen problems getting through airport security, it’s frankly ridiculous that he walked through untouched. He’s obviously done his homework if he’s going as an untouchable, though somehow I don’t think that’s the idea his cronies had in mind. The Arabic music crawling out of the speaker in his back pocket would seem to suggest that. At least in Madrid he won’t look out of place. In Gatwick Airport on a Friday morning he just looks like a prat.

15.16 – The Slaves

Jenny Seville might have painted the scene in front of me. A perfect tableau. Three commuters stand over me with their hands on the rail, facing out across my head, with their eyes glued to their mobile phones. A smart, short-haired man in a blue suit with his earphones in, a disgruntled middle-aged lady in a pink blouse and a professional women with a sharp nose and dark eyes. They stand before me like some grotesque Swiftian pantheon, their smallest features blown up and illuminated in the backlight. To their left and right, lesser gods scroll soundlessly in the blue glare. I feel tiny, sat pressed into the chair at their feet. All along the train, heads are down, faces are blue and conversation is fleeting. There are islands of humanity in the slave ship: a huddle of Latino men talking jovially with no electronic assistance, and a couple of old women discussing train delays in central Madrid. Every time I look around me, I catch the eye of the Green Woman, the only other person in the slave ship who isn’t glued to her phone. She looks like a slightly larger and slightly less airbrushed Anne Hathaway.

The tannoy goes off for Atocha and she pulls her phone from her pocket. I have no binds, so why do I feel so shackled? BB x

Splash: Fear in a Hoodie and a Baseball Cap

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I was sitting in the park sketching when one of the local malotes loitering around the bridge lobbed a brick at me. It fell short by a few feet and landed with a heavy splash in the water, but the message hit home. I took my blonde hair and foreign appearance out of firing range and returned to the safety of my room to listen to a podcast on South African townships in peace.

It’s a sad fact of the world that one of the things that scares me most is my own generation. It always has, far more than all the villainies of our world. The romantic in me would like to point out that I’m currently living in the land that birthed both Cortés and Pizarro, those butchers of the New World, as well as the most ferocious wing of the Spanish Inquisition… but I’d like to think I’ve got more than enough common sense to eliminate any racial motivations behind this morning’s unfortunate brick incident. The simple fact of the matter is that it’s a world I just don’t understand. And, to quote a Batman villain (for want of a better source), ‘you always fear what you don’t understand’.

Why? What’s the point? What would lead anyone to revel in a deliberate act of aggression? If it’s a misplaced act of pumped-up testosterone, I disown my sex here and now. I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m British and I’d rather die than tread on somebody else’s toes. Or perhaps it’s because I’m the kind of person that bursts into tears over King Kong or The Green Mile. I guess I’ll just have to content myself with the simple fact that everyone is different, for good or ill. Without fear and violence, how would we define that which is good?

As a kid I remember being chased by thugs from down the road when I was out with my camera watching buzzards. The same suspects called “carol-singing” a few weeks later – a six-second, tuneless rush of We Wish You a Merry Christmas for which they expected payment – and pointed me out as ‘that kid with the sick camera’. At the time I had no idea what he was on about; ‘sick’ as an adjective meaning ‘impressive’ had developed in the nine months I’d been out of the country and it caught me unawares. I still find it substandard as a slang term. France’s verlan is simply streets ahead, no pun intended.

It’s this bastardization of words, of filling the English language with redundant dual-meanings, that bothers me. Standard has come to mean excellent. Lad has come to mean exemplary individual and gay has been a blanket, one-size-fits-all insult for as long as I can remember. Especially the latter, since it’s been used on me since I was at primary school. It shouldn’t have offended me in the slightest, since it was neither true nor (I hope) intended as such, but the ignorance of it all has frustrated me for years.

Who am I to comment? I’m a relatively privileged white middle class English boy with two jobs in a country where most of my generation struggle to find one. Is it any wonder they’re angry? A small part of me occasionally resurfaces at moments like these, telling me to mind my own business and go home. But then, it’s a hateful phrase and one that’s no match for my own curiosity. Honestly, if it weren’t for my aforementioned issues with causing trouble, I’d have all the fittings for a journalist.

Nevertheless, here I am, holed up in my room. It’s less shock than the warmth of my bed that’s keeping me from going back to the park now, but it’s had me thinking; doubly so over my South Africa plans. What right have I to fork out on a self-styled adventure to a country where my own brick-dodging incident pales in comparison to the terror of the townships? A younger me would have cited white-guilt all day. These days I simply wonder whether or not the problem is seeing us and them in the first place.

And strangely enough, it’s only left me keener than ever to go there.

In that sense, it’s not the hooded youth I’m afraid of. It’s the potential for violence in all of us. We are, by record if not by roots, a violent race. It’s our imperative as a species to overcome that and nurture our caring side, which is certainly not unique to us in the animal kingdom. A line in one of my favourite books says ‘there’s so much human suffering that the whole world should be wailing’. She’s right. But if we all become so afraid of ourselves by drawing lines in the sand that we have to live in compounds like today’s South Africa, what kind of a world are we leaving for those who come after us?

The drone buzzing about overhead just crashed to earth with a loud smack right at the feet of the malotes. The kids to whom it belonged ran to collect it none the wiser to their jeers. A lesson in bravery from two seven year-olds.

I’m keener than ever for South Africa. Fears must be faced, not avoided. It won’t rid me of all of my fears, but it might just put my troubles into perspective. BB x

Giving Amman a Second Chance

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Had I known the Kievans would throw a violent protest four days before my return flight to the UK, I might have forked over that extra £80 and come home three days earlier on the two hour layover, instead of holding out for one last fling on that twelve hour layover that awaits me now.

The last stretch always seems like the longest. Only three nights remain, which is a damn sight closer than three weeks, and I have a bed for only two of those, as my 4am Saturday morning flight means that Andrew and I will be on stakeout at Queen Alia International Airport all night, catching sleep when and where we can. I’m still up and raring to get out and see Kiev during our ridiculous layover, protest or no protest, but it won’t be much fun on less than an hour’s sleep, and I’ll probably need my wits about me in the current climate. Especially when I speak about as much Russian as the hornet buzzing about my window. Still, that’s as much of an adventure as I could ask for, and the more I think about it, the better I feel for being so parsimonious with my flights back in May. Let’s just hope they let us out of Borispol first, or the whole thing will be dead in the water. 

But let’s not jump too far ahead! I’m still here in Amman. The breaking of the fellowship has come about at last, and a great deal more sincerely so than the last time I used that turn of phrase in Casablanca. We said farewell to Mac yesterday, after five days on the road together. Kate and Katie left for home in the early hours of this morning. Of the original Ali Baba team, there’s only three of us left. Andrew and I are practically the old guard. When first we arrived, it looked as though the end wouldn’t be ‘farewell’ so much as ‘until next year’, with all five of us set to return next summer; same people, same time, same place. Fortunately, life is a constantly fluctuating thing, and I’m bound for other lands next year. In truth it’s most likely that I won’t see the bulk of Team Jordan until we’re called back to Durham next October, now far in the distant future. So perhaps it really is farewell- until the next time.

It’s coming up to five o’clock in the afternoon, which means this post has taken me all of an hour and a half to write. The midday sun is just beginning to think about giving up the ghost, Andrew’s penning a couple of final postcards and the fan’s on at full blast, as it has to be if we aren’t to pass out in the fug. The hornet’s gone, thank heavens, and the orange vendor is back on the job, driving lazily up and down the streets with his pre-recorded pitch on a tinny repeat. We picked up our luggage yesterday and made a gesture at packing up, even though three whole days remain. It’s the thought that counts. Trying to fill up the final hours is a tedious affair, but on the plus side, downtown isn’t as frightening a beastie as it used to be. I guess that has a lot to do with living two minutes’ walk from the centre. Date bread and street pizzas from 25p a piece, slushies for half a dinar and plenty of cheaper eateries than the falafel mothership that is Hashem’s – and best of all, all of them within walking distance. So we come to it: it’s not the crush that bothered me so much as it is the needless expense on the taxi rides to and from wast al-balad. Diagnosed, at last. And that, I hope, is my last spark of angst off my chest.

For two months I’ve bombarded this blog with big city blues and saturated you all with my town mouse tantrums. I look back on all of that and laugh. It’s easy to do when I know I’ll be home in four nights’ time, of course, but it’s the final and most important part of the therapy. I’m not about to turn around and say that Amman is a great place to live – it’s not – but I’ll concede some ground to my detractors in that it’s not the Hell on Earth I made it out to be. It’s a question of willpower, living in a place like this, and I’ve learned a great deal about that here. Whether it’s a choice between holing up in your room with a book and braving a night on the town, or striking up a conversation with a local without a prompt, or even finding a functional solution to the ten-foot tall, sixty-foot long man-eating slug in the eleventh room on the left, one of the most important lessons you can learn in life is conviction. Being true to yourself. I thought I was pretty on it before I came here, but I see a lot of what I thought of as conviction now as my natural stubbornness, and there is a difference. You shouldn’t do things because you feel like you have to, just as you can’t be made to love a place you don’t like, but if you don’t make an effort on the inside to see the good in all things and stand by it, you’ll be on an island forever. Take it from the king of the castaways: man up. Some troubles in life are insurmountable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re unassailable.

I’ve come close to breaking my golden rule and slipping into despair out here, but it’s that brush with the very worst emotion of all that’s given me the strength to go on. And Amman, for all its flaws, is built on a bedrock of warm, friendly people. Sure, you might have more adventurous encounters outside the city limits in provincial backwaters like Tafileh, but Amman itself is a very good place to start. Don’t make the same mistake I did and allow yourself to be freaked out by the size and speed of the place; beneath the rush are a host of charming characters who simply want to know how you’re getting on, if you’ll give them the time. The guy who runs this hostel, the Bdeiwi Hotel, told us last night that you often judge a language by your experiences with the people who speak it. He’s got a very good point, too. Sit on a step off the main road like a local and you’re bound to have somebody come over and strike up a conversation, in Arabic or in broken English. It’s heart-warming once you get used to it, just how much these people care. The sheer extent of the hospitality of the Arabs can seem so great as to be insincere to the untrained Western eye, as I once had to explain over a failed homestay offer in Morocco; we, a country so used to living off the hospitality of others. I think back to my trek across London with sixty-three kilos of luggage on my back, when I collapsed flat on my chest from exhaustion in the Underground and it took all of eight minutes for somebody to ask if I was alright; Amman is not as faceless as that, nor could it ever be.

Three nights remain. Twenty six dinars are left in my wallet. My city angst is exorcised, I’ve had a good two months’ run of it, and Andrew agrees with my final judgement. All is well with the world. BB x