The Pella Period

This week was a lesson in contrasts – a week mired in awareness of everything that Jordan lacks, and yet punctuated with a sharp reminder of everything that it has.

In many ways, it is hard to feel comfortable in Jordan. Reasons range from the obvious – the distance from home and loved family and friends, the sharp awareness (as Jews) that merely honestly identifying ourselves could be dangerous, the food, the strange language – to the unapparent: the lack of pleasant sidewalks, say, or the ability to go outside in shorts, or, for Daphna, a t-shirt. There are days when one or both of us have trouble fully enjoying ourselves here. On Friday night, we were sitting around with the Italian girls and the “Turkeys”, and commiserating about the complete lack of things to do in Jordanian cities (which Fellata, our Nigerian friend, encapsulated in his question earlier in the night: “Do you want to go to a café and then dinner, or dinner and then a café?”). There is no movie theater in Irbid, no bowling, no putt-putt, no disco, no live music. . . . And when was the last time you heard us asking about a disco?

And we miss you all.

This weekend, though, was a very bright capstone to a fluctuating week. We traveled to Pella today with the Italian girls and Evan, a Canadian diplomat who is receiving language training before being posted to Saudi Arabia for two years. Pella is completely overlooked in our travel guide, and we hadn’t really planned on visiting it, but it seemed like it might be fun to travel with everyone today. And the sight wasn’t nearly as visually spectacular as Jerash or Ajloun, but it was incredible to be in a place that has been inhabited constantly for the past 6000 years. Our guidebook mentioned that people have been at Pella since the stone age, and there are ruins from the time of Mohammed. Unlike in America, in Jordan you can basically climb all over anything – you stand on pieces of Roman columns, you traipse over mosaics that are just beginning to be uncovered from layers of dirt. . . . and you peer out into the lush area around you that has made this land so desirable.

We walked for several hours, and after an overpriced ($6 each, can you believe it?!?) but tasty lunch, we were waiting for our ride when I asked the owner of the Resthouse what all we were looking at beyond the ruins. He pointed and said, “OK, you see that plastic? That belongs to the Palestinians. And all that water? That’s Israel. That mountain is Israel and that mountain is Israel, and there is the largest castle I’ve ever seen, and it’s in Israel.” And then he said goodbye and went to take care of some new customers. Evan turned to me and said, “You know, there are some moments when you really get that you’re in the Middle East, and that was one of them.”

Perhaps it is this land’s ability to create comfort that has made it so uncomfortable, so crowded. We are close to everything that we read about (there is a road in downtown Irbid called “Baghdad Street” because. . . you guessed it! It goes straight to Baghdad!), and yet, even looking into Israel, it feels we are so far from everything we know. That, I suspect, is the beauty of being here. And the pain in it.

So many adventures, so little time.

Your Arabic phrases of the week:

Ta-bahn layla-tek! Good night!

Leysa shay sachif mithla tofu! Tofu! Hahaha. Not something silly like tofu! Tofu! Hahaha. (From Kung Fu Panda, which we watched dubbed in Arabic this week)