Letter XXXIII: Full Moons

1 July 2010

“The next time I see a full moon,” I wrote on August 6, 2009, “will be in Jordan."

Peter, the girls, and I were on the beach in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. We’d booked two rooms at the Atlantic Inn for the night en route our summer home, still four hours north and inland. It was a spectacular sight floating over the Atlantic horizon and above the dunes and grasses of the Maine coast. It was quiet except for the rhythm of the waves and my heartbeat. What was ahead? Interesting that the full of August 6 was also a lunar eclipse – but we didn’t know or see it.

Eleven full moons were ahead:

(1) A Ramadan full, September 4, midway through the fasting month; just three days after we’d moved into our apartment. We broke our fast that evening with Dr. Younes Assad who became

friend, physician and grandfather these ten months. He took us to the Oriental Cafe on the road to Sweileh, overlooking a great valley with Amman in the eastern distance. In the valley between is the Baka Palestinian refugee city. We enjoyed a refreshing Mint-Lemonade with our iftar. Remind me to make one for you in Maplewood ...

(2) An Esalen full on 4 October when I was in Big Sur for the board meeting, and Katie and Peter were forging Wadi Mujib ...

(3) A Sisters moon in November at the reception for Directors of Admission for Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard at ACOR (American Center of Oriental Research) in Amman ...

(4) December’s first full was on the second, the day I delivered “Inside Mecca” with Arabic subtitles to Alain at Fulbright to give to Basma at the US Embassy (she has since become one of my best friends) to be ready for the screening of the film at the University of Jordan on the sixth ...

(5) December was a blue moon month. It’s second full was New Year’s Eve. We celebrated with Peter and Janna here and a party for our local friends ...

(6) Under January 30th’s full moon we took my niece Maeve Chandler to the airport after her ten day visit with us. She's on the left enjoying photos taken in the Soldiers Tomb in Wadi Firasa, Petra, with Katie and my first cousin once-removed, Nadia Mehdi, who also visited us in January from London ...

(7) In late February I was in Jericho – I know I didn’t tell you; I was saving that story as I saved the Jerusalem story, which is still an unfinished narrative. In Jericho, staff of the Abraham Path Initiative was meeting with its new Executive Director, Dr. Yunus Sola. I was honored to attend as both a board member and media strategist. In fact I departed Jericho and crossed back that barbed, desolate no-one’s-land late at night under that full moon. I was the only non-Palestinian at the border there so they let me ride the bus with the locals back home to Jordan. Usually we are segregated. You'll hear more in the upcoming "Pilgrimage: Part Two" ...

(8) The March full was at Petra with my dear friend Alyce Faye Cleese ...

(9) On April 28 I gave a talk at Amman’s SAE – a training center for broadcasting and filmmaking ...

(10) Katie played Juliet, Lady Capulet, and Tybalt in the Modern American School’s drama club presentation on May 27. Need I say she was the most skillful actor on the stage and but for another boy who was a complete stage-hog, she stole the show ...

(11) June 26 we saw the full moon in Umm Sayhun, the Bedouin village above Petra where we had dinner, once again, on Ismail’s roof. This time it was Katie, Mark Tremblay and I. Mark was back on business. We went first to Karak Castle and then a farewell pilgrimage to Petra.

The next time I see a full moon I expect to be in Maplewood, New Jersey. Perhaps I’ll pack up from a day at the pool and grill some eggplant and then cook sweet sage tea – Bedouin whiskey -- in our backyard fireplace until the cheap metal pot turns black.