I could not have imagined, 20 years ago, when I was in Amman producing and directing my first big documentary film (that actually made air) that so many years hence I'd be watching it in my own apartment in that same city with my 15-year old, preparing to go the next day to commence coaching documentary filmmaking to Jordanian television professionals. I could not have imagined doing what I plan to do, as well, which is to drop in at the Noor Al Hussein Foundation -- nearby here in Shmeisani -- and give them a copy of the film lo these many years later. And to find Kifah Fakhouri, director of the National Conservatory of Music and hand deliver a DVD copy to him.
There was no such thing as a DVD in 1988 when I came to Jordan with my New Jersey Network crew to follow the journey and concertizing of the Chamber Symphony of Princeton here and in Egypt. In two weeks I'll go to Jerash with my husband and daughter, a mere 21 years after the last visit. And not a day older, either! In a few months all of us, including Janna who's a freshman at Temple, will go to Petra and walk the canyon and hike the remnants of that community. Silly, isn’t it, to say “I could not have imagined.” Because we really can’t. We can envision, we can intend. Maybe that’s the difference between intention and foresight or prediction: the exact particulars. But sometimes, when I really, really mean it, my intention produces the results I want. For example, getting access to the control room in Mecca’s haram to videotape Fidelma and Ismail in tawwaf and sayee; having my crew show up at Mina the first time I covered Hajj, with Abdul; landing the arts reporting job at NJN. My being here, too, is all part of my intention and master plan to travel, to live elsewhere, to teach, lecture and empower others to tell their stories well. But my plan rarely involves the level of detail that determines a specific country, to name a city, to detail a moment in time. But I’m encouraged that maybe my intention to close this Fulbright year with two new (paying) clients who’ll travel me business class (yes, I do think at that level of detail) will, in fact, come to be.
The bird, springing from my fingers to the tree across the street.
“Classical Caravan” the 1989 NJN documentary was the evening’s entertainment for Katie and me. We only watched the Jordan part. Katie wanted to continue “talking” with her friend in Barcelona, now that we can since we have wireless Internet access in our apartment. Now that we have Internet the disadvantages spring up like weeds: the computer’s gravitational pull is even stronger. I can be with others in cyberspace instead of here, where I came to experience another, real, not virtual, world. Still, it is nice to click and tap and suddenly see Peter and Janna on the screen before us, holding one or another of our beloved cats in the dining room at home.
We won’t bring the computers to Lebanon with us.
Thursday we leave for Beirut to be with Samia and her family for the Eid. The prospect is thrilling. Not only to see Samia who’s asked me for years to come to Lebanon, but to go somewhere I’ve never been before! After reporting so much about Lebanon from Boston back in the 1980s, back in the days of the Arabic Hour television program: I was news anchor and editor, also editor of Indian (continent) movies we took on for extra income. I’d ride my bike out to West Roxbury after working the overnight shift at WBZ-TV and cut tape and get tutored on the politics of Lebanon – factions and dissatisfactions, sects and social segmentation, war, destruction, rampages, kidnappings … all woven with stories of Beirut being the Paris of the Middle East and a glorious city. People still say Beirut is the jewel of Arab cities and the Lebanese like Europeans. I want to see the rebuilt, renewed city. I want to see the scars. I want to drink a cup of coffee while the sun is out!
The rubber tree plant we scavenged from a back street near our hotel two weeks ago has produced two new leaves and seems to be rooting itself in its pot. Flowers are coming on the thistle-like stems of the plants we bought and potted last week.
I made a red lentil soup for dinner, with potatos, carrots, onions and lots of almost whole garlic. I added fresh thyme, which I mistook for mint in the grocery store. Wilted spinach on the side. The pickles we love from Food City (ruba’a kilo – quarter kilo, please) and our new, favorite white cheese. Such a clean refrigerator! Only in it what we’re eating today or tomorrow plus bottles of water and bottles of boiled and reboiled water. We’ll see if a faucet filter does the trick. Meantime, thank goodness for the electric kettle Mr. Jalil funded for me.
Other milestones this week? I applied for a bank account at Jordan-Kuwait bank. We went to the Dead Sea! Taking the shuttle from the Marriot Hotel (16JD RT) and the driver agreed to drop us off at Amman Beach (rather than the very pricey Marriott Dead Sea) and for only 12JD each had the day’s access to the saltiest sea and to beautiful fresh water swimming pools. Fabulous treat for both of us. Additional milestones: I got out the external hard drive with footage from Maine, 2005, my short film, and started the edit process. I slept through this morning’s rooster call and heard only the muethen.
I went to a mosque.
Although Katie and I landed here on 28 August, it took me until 10 September to go into a mosque or masjid, as it is in Arabic. The minarets of three mosques are in sight of our apartment. We hear the muethen call all prayers -- in fact, first he only calls to remind or rather invite us to come and pray, and then he calls those assembled to pray. We hear it all. The roosters and ducks in the park across the street hear the calls, too, and they join in acclamation. At first their squawking annoyed me. Now I prefer to believe they are simply praising God, too.
When the duhur, noon, call came last Thursday I put on my headscarf and walked down our four flights. My landlord smiled when he saw me. "I'm going to the mosque," I told him. He said there were two close by. I should check out both. I turned right to the masjid two streets away and asked there in my broken Arabic where to pray. A man said "one moment." He went into the main section of the mosque and never returned. I peeked into the men's section and saw him there, beginning his meditation. Undaunted I asked another man who was coming up the steps. "Ana Muslima min Amrika. Wein mumkin salat?" The man himself seemed uninterested in my situation but his son looked at me with an expression I'm beginning to recognize here: "Ask me! I can speak some English!" "Tatakellam ingleezi?" I asked. "Yes." "I'm Muslim from America. And I want to pray." "There is a place downstairs here for women," he said politely. "I will show you. What is your name?" "Anisa," I said. "Wa inta?" I asked. "I am Omar." And he brought me to the door, made sure it was unlocked, nodded at me, and walked back to his father and the main prayer room.
I went in. It was cool. Nice, thick carpet of a gentle gray-green with coordinating borders every meter or so, suggesting lines for prayer and facing quibla – the direction of the Ka’aba. The door opened and another man poked in his head. He pointed out the shoe rack and gestured to a door on the other side of the room where I might wash. "Hamam," he offered. Indeed it was. Clean, with two sinks and a three-person seating station for washing our feet. It was pleasant, even big for only one. I wondered what it would be like with a crowd.
But there was no crowd. It was I and my prayers that filled that room. I stood with my feet slightly apart imagining the warmth of connecting the sides of my feet to those of the women at Masjid Waris in Irvington, NJ. When the prayer announcement came it was piped into my sanctuary and I felt like the imam was speaking straight to me. I wondered whether someone had told him there was a woman present so he turned on the loudspeaker or whether it was always on, offering prayer sometimes to an empty room. We all prayed: they upstairs and I down. The soft carpet. The mosaics in front. Two shelves with Qur'ans in Arabic which would have been almost impossible to appreciate in my glasses but with contact lenses and no magnifiers it was foolish to even take one off the shelf. Next time, bring reading glasses. I can decipher the Fatiha in Arabic and will do so either here or at the other masjid. Or both.
There was no one to share salaams with afterward. So I shared salaams with the angels on my shoulders and with all of my loved ones. The men who trickled down the stairs glanced at me and away again. Back in front of my apartment building Abu Emad (Mr. Jalil is now Abu Emad and I’m Umm Katie), my landlord, elaborated on the available choices. I told him I was the only one at this prayer. More women go at night he said, for isha and taraweeh prayers. He wondered if Katie would come with me. He said that the mosque I'd gone to was mostly Iraqi. The one down the street to the left is larger, he said, and shemsi: Syrian. Someone else said the one to the right is Sufi. I'll go to that one another day. Mosque hopping? My new sport here in Amman.
That there are mosques for different national communities is a bit of a surprise for me. Polly Anna here thought in a Muslim-majority country everyone would simply be Muslim together. There’s some segregation like that in the States and, when you consider human nature, it makes sense there is some finding-your-own-kind here, as well. I think my kind will be the women, when and where I find them.
This is the last week of Ramadan, our third week in Amman. Every day’s a milestone.
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