My neighborhood, weddings, and the suq

I will start this post by admitting how negligent I have been. The first post I made came after I had been here for about 3 months. SO, rather than try to be chronological with the next few posts I will try to catch up by posting on major subjects and events. This will allow me to return to a subject and add thoughts and recollections with minimum hassles.

My neighborhood is named Jebel Luwebdeh. Jebel is the Arabic word for mountain or hill. Originally Amman was said to be built on seven hills. Jebel Luwebdeh is one of them and now reflects the name of the neighborhood. The names of the others are also reflected in the names of other neighborhoods such as Jebel Hussein, Jebel Amman and so on. Jebel Luwebdeh is considered by most to be the cultural center of the city. Although it seems quite small when walking around, it is home to numerous embassies, art galleries and studios, political and cultural organizations, mosques, churches and so forth. With all of this activity going on you would expect a lot of hustle and bustle, but is in fact usually a fairly placid place to live. When a wedding happens it can gridlock the entire neighborhood. I witnessed this the first time I ever saw a wedding in progress a couple of weeks after arriving here. I was walking back from the supermarket (about the size of a large convenience store) when I noticed that the traffic seemed quite heavy. As I moved along I began to hear what sounded like bagpipes and drums. As I walked by a large church I became aware that that was the origin of all the fuss. It was here that traffic was at a complete stop. The traffic was at a standstill the rest of the way home, which was quite some distance. There were some upset people in that line. 

The weddings here are quite a spectacle. The bagpipe sounds were coming from an instrument that looked like something a snake-charmer would use. The drums looked like large tambourines  and were stuck with drumstick that had a fat round tip. The group I saw were all men about fifteen or twenty in all most of whom had an instrument, and let me tell you, they were flat gettin’ busy!  They were singing, dancing, playing their instruments, and hopping around. And they were good enough that at first I thought that they were professionals. A couple of them looked tired enough to pass out. It looked like a heck of a party. I hope to be able to post a video at some point. I had never seen anything like it. Now of course I have seen this kind of thing several times. And the fun doesn’t stop there. When the ceremony and major partying are over they drive around in a big caravan shouting and honking their horns. A couple of times they were honking in a kind of a tune. This can go on(and frequently has) into the wee hours of the morning.

At one end of the neighborhood is the King Abdullah Mosque, which i think may be the most impressive one I’ve seen, and at the other end is a staircase which leads down into the center of the city (the older part) which is called the Balad. On fridays which are the muslim sabbath there is a suq (pronounced sook) or market not far from the King Abdullah Mosque in a section of town called Abdelee. I had been to this a couple of times in the afternoon and had been impressed with the experience but the first morning visit was unforgettable. It was about 6:30 am (I had been told to be early for the best selection) and I needed a pair of shoes so I wanted to beat the crowd. I had been hearing what I thought was traffic noise for most of the way there but as I got closer I realized that I was hearing human voices. A lot of voices. I was still several blocks away and I was convinced that it was some sort of political riot. I was about to turn back when I remembered that I had my camera on me and thought that I may as well have a look. Thinking to turn around when things began to look unsafe, I proceeded to a cross street which would lead down to where the suq was supposed to be. When I saw women and children heading that way I realized that it was the suq I was hearing! There seemed to be only a couple of hundred vendors but the noise level was like a stadium full of sports fans! Each vendor was shouting at the top of his lungs! There was an amazing variety of goods for sale from produce to nargilas (traditional arabic water-pipes) and everything in-between. I looked around for about an hour before getting what I had come for and heading back.

1st day in Amman

I will start this post by saying that I have a sleep disorder called sleep apnea. This means that I need a piece of equipment called a CPAP machine to sleep properly. The first thing that I did to prepare for bed was to plug in this device. It is designed to come on immediately without turning on a switch, which it did for about 0.1 second. It is clearly labelled as a dual voltage appliance so I assumed that the outlet was flakey. After trying several outlets with no success I finally tested the outlets with a small lamp and found no problem so I checked the machine and I found 2 blown fuses and a switch  to change from 110 to 220. Not good.

So, after a mostly sleepless night I got up and took a sort walk to have a look around. Amman is a very hilly place which looks a lot like I expected. The streets are somewhat narrow and the houses are built all the way up and down the steep hills. They use stone almost exclusively. I imagine wood is quite expensive here, and they seem to reuse almost all of it discarding very little. The place where I am staying is built not unlike a castle ( a popular style ) with a steel gate from the street, a steel outer door leading to a short hallway, and finally a steel inner door to the apartment. These are all very solid and there are steel shutters ( they remind me of roll-up  garage doors ) on all the windows. I am on the bottom floor (of three ) and could literally jump from my back porch to the roof of the 3 story building behind ( they build on very steep hills ).  The views are very nice from my neighborhood which is called Jebel Luwebdeh ( I’ve seen it spelled a dozen different ways. This is how it sounds to me when a taxi driver says it) as it is built on the top of  a hill (jebel), one of seven that the city was originally  built on. I have included some pictures below of some views from within a couple of hundred yards of my door. My morning walk used to include 5 staircases just like the one in the picture, all up.

view from the back porch

another view from the back porch

a view up my street ( Dhirar Bin Al-Aswar St. )

A view from up the street

another view from just up the street

one of the many staircases leading to the Balad

Anyway, Donald showed up the next day at about 11 am and gave me a tour of the surrounding area, and took me to a grocery store and a mall. The mall seemed huge because it had 3 floors but was all on a single wing, unlike American malls which are usually the other way around. It really wasn’t all that different from what we have in the states. Likewise the grocery store was like a Super Walmart, only smaller, selling mostly  food on the bottom floor and clothing and other items on the second floor. I must tell you after saying this that this mall (Citi (pronounced city)Mall is the largest in the country, likewise the grocery store (Carrefore, a French owned chain) is also the largest in the country.

After getting the groceries back to the apartment Donald dropped the car off at a friends place (they were borrowing it ) and we took a taxi ( a hair-raising adventure that I will describe later) in search of the fuses I needed for my CPAP machine. The exact match proved impossible to find (I’ll spare you the boring technical details) and I settled for what I thought would work, and we headed back to my apartment and some much needed sleep. 

The next evening I had dinner with Donald and his family. They proved very gracious hosts. Donald’s wife Lorri is a fabulous cook, and their five (5? Holy smokes!) young boys proved very entertaining. They seemed dumfounded that an old fart like myself could know so much about their favorite superheroes (I was a big comic book fan when I was young). When Donald is seen by Arabs with his sons they say “Abu Wilad!” which is a nickname (meaning father of boys) given to men with numerous sons and is a very big compliment. If on the other hand he had 5 daughters he would be “Abu Binat” which is a term of mild derision (usually used jokingly). Arab men are very impressed with 5 sons (especially with only one wife and no daughters). Actually I have not yet met any Jordanian who has more than one wife. I’m not sure if it’s even allowed in Jordan.

The things that have struck me most about Jordan since arriving are actually the similarities. Most American fast-food brands are available (and here just about everybody delivers including McDonalds), almost everybody in the city speaks english (most of them better than my Arabic),and most of what is available in the states can be found here (if you know where to look and are willing to pay the price). There are however differences. I will go into differences and similarities in subsequent posts.

The adventure begins!

I have been here for about three months now, so the first few posts will be recollections and I will try to be caught up to present in a couple of weeks.

The trip over was long but uneventful. The first leg was from Orlando to Chicago, and after a layover of about 10 hours I boarded the Royal Jordanian flight to Amman. There were, as expected, mostly Jordanians on this flight and I was struck by the wide variety in dress. Most of the men were dressed in the western style with a few wearing the traditional headcovering and robe, and the clothing of the women ranged from provocative to traditional ( hijab ), although I don’t recall seeing anyone veiled. I was quite surprise by this, as I expected all the women to be conservatively dressed. I was further surprised by the crew serving alcohol and playing an R rated movie (discreetly blurred in some places). Shortly after touching down, before the plane stopped a steward walked back from the front and opened a compartment and took out a huge shopping bag prominently marked “Victoria’s Secret” and handed it to an elderly woman dressed in full hijab! She didn’t seem uncomfortable in the least. I conquered the urge to laugh but it was really quite funny.                                                                                                                                              

I arrived in Amman at about 10 PM on the 17th of September. My very first impression was of how small the airport was. I seem to recall only one baggage carousel. Getting through the visa and passport control was remarkably fast and after waiting a few short minutes for my bags, a man who seemed to be a porter picked them up and motioned for me to follow. So, like a dutiful sheep I followed him to an x-ray machine and loaded everything on the belt. On the other side he picked up the bags and again I followed toward some doors which I thought would lead to customs. About that time I recognized Donald (my contact in Amman, to whom I had been introduced in the states) I also realized that the doors led outside and not to customs. Confused, I asked Donald where customs was and he indicated that the x-ray machine was customs! Wow! From plane to car in 45 minutes! I was expecting to be there for hours.

    I was driven to an apartment that I would be staying in for a while which belonged to a friend of a friend who was in the States for a couple of months. After giving me a quick tour of the place, Donald left telling me that he would return the next day to show me around town. It was about midnight local time and it had been about 40 hours since I had last slept so I got quickly to bed.