Letter XXX: Pavings

14 June 2010

They paved our street the weekend I rented a car.

Pave Day One was hot, hot, hot. The road crew went back and forth with the street sweeping truck and two guys trailed alongside, in the heat of the day and the heat of the motor, breathing in the exhaust, brushing and shoveling dust and debris at curbside.

Scoop lift heave-into-truck bed, scoop lift heave-into-truck bed, scoop lift heave …

The same motions I make shoveling snow from my sidewalk in Maplewood, New Jersey, working up a sweat on a cold, sunny day. In Amman it was hot. And he didn’t flag. No work ethic issue in this situation. My arms ached just watching.

As the car rental agent and I concluded our paperwork (they deliver the rental car curbside) the road crew was taking a break in the shade of the shade of the tree to the left of our apartment building. One of them asked for “shwayat ma’ee” – would I bring them some water?

I played dumb American while I thought it over and walked away.

But there was really only one possible response.

I filled two liter bottles in our kitchen and returned to the street with them. “Ahalan wa sahlan,” “Welcome,” I said.

Utter relief filled their eyes; tears came to mine. Gratitude with no obsequious overtones; authentic humility. Polite shared smiles and with “assalaamu ‘alaykum” I left.

Pave Day Two the street was loud early in the morning. My rental was the only car parked on the street and the asphalt truck was laying its smelly thickness on the other side. By 7:00 am I was downstairs ready to re-park. My team smiled to the car go and equally glad, I think, to say “good morning.”

We went to Madaba and the Ma'in Hot Springs that day. By the time we were back in the evening, the job was done. The new layer of tar raised the road a good six inches. Now the height of the curb is only eight inches. It’s easier to step on to and less dangerous to open your door. But what will happen next winter in the rains? Foot-high curbs kept the sudden road rivers channeled in the streets. There will be lots of soaked cuffs and jilbabs next January.

The next time they come through to pave the curb may be close enough to the road to park on.

And someone else will offer water.

More on the waters of Ma'in next.

LETTER XXIV: New Eyes On The Ground

March 2010

And then came Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese.

We are trustees of the Esalen Institute, and like rooming together at board meetings. Making connections between Jordan and California is not terribly difficult. Lots of golden, rolling hills that turn green with rain – and we had good rain here this winter. Hiking. Adventure trails. Desert. Good coffee. A penchant for kicking back. And natural hot springs. In fact Jordan is one of the few places in the world besides Esalen that boasts the coming together of the Earth’s three waters: salt water, fresh water, and hot springs.

There are big differences, too, of course. Most obvious is the absence of ocean. Our (very salty) Dead Sea (into which the hot springs and cold creeks run) has two visible shores and very little surf. No otters or whales or anything that breathes underwater.

And making me quite at home there’s a rooster on the Esalen campus in Big Sur, California, too. It doesn’t understand that the sun will come up with or without its crowing; it also crows throughout the night in hope. Alyce Faye and I grew to loathe the rooster since usually we were up late and wanted to squeeze in as many extra minutes of sleep as possible before our own early swim in the pool and mad, freezing cold dash to the hot tubs where we luxuriate before breakfast and hours of reports and spread sheets. We called the rooster “Cheney.”

Alyce Faye has a very good eye. Our favorite public beach at the Dead Sea looks like a five star resort.

My bedouin friends, Manal and her brother Ismail at Petra, made us tea on the high cliffs leading to the Deir (Monastery).

Not to mention visiting Samaher Khameis's special mosaic workshop in Madaba. Samaher teaches at the Institute for Mosaic Art and Restoration in Madaba. My short film on the Institute will be on YouTube soon.

And she didn't miss charming downtown Amman.

This was Alyce Faye's first visit to an Arabic-speaking nation; like most people who come here, she loved it. Ambassadors all of us, who return assuring Americans that it’s safe, friendly, respectful of women, respectful of people of varying faiths, easy to get around, visually compelling, and fun. Of course that sentence is laden with generalities, but generally they are true.

Anywhere we go the evil and nasty is an exception. Except, it seems, when we go to the front page of newspapers or to top-of-the-hour headline news. (Whoops! No offense to my dear friends in media who struggle to balance accuracy, information, commercial interests, subjectivity and good writing every day.)

Peter arrived while Alyce Faye was here and we all went to Lebanon.

SEE "NEW EYES" PART TWO.

XIX: Wadi Rum Rocks

Letter XIX: Wadi Rum Rocks You

January 16, 2010
There's so much to say about a family vacation in Jordan's scenic south. And I will say more, shortly. But briefly, three nights in the WadiRum, two in Aqaba, and one at Petra. We had the best of the desert, gourmet snorkeling, and living history. With my camera we have some fine home movies, too. One day, jeeping and climbing in the Wadi Rum, our car broke down. Mohammed, our guide, wiggled the wires under the hood, we pushed, we flagged down the few passers-by. Stoked on sweet bedouin sage tea we were not discouraged and finally, blistered, overheated and pumped we got it started and got back to camp. That night after a delicious dinner we sat around the campfire inside the big tent and shared songs. We went from Bedouin oud and drums to Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." Then Mohammed and Yusuf suggested Queen's "We Will Rock You." Believe me, Wadi Rum rocks you.

XVI: Amman Thanksgiving, 26 November 2009

It’s Thanksgiving Day. Katie and I spend the morning peeling and chopping apples, hand mixing butter, brown sugar and maple syrup (yes, we brought it from Maine), and finally baking the apple crumble. It’s our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner, hosted by the Zureikat family here in Amman.

Of note: in the years I spent as a working-outside-the-home-mom I didn’t bake cookies with my kids. Birthday cakes, yes, the odd banana bread, yes, too. But I didn’t/wouldn’t make time for the “traditional” mom/child pastime. Now I really enjoy it. We cook and converse. No apron-string hanging, rather inventive, interactive cuisine-ing, and talk about God and ethics and culture and school. I’m glad I did the baking bit in this order.

Now back to the main narrative:

All my life I’ve been host family for Thanksgiving, except for once, in 1998, the year my father died. That year we went to my sister-in-law’s home in Maine. Last year, when her father, my father-in-law died, she came to us.

But all those other years Thanksgiving Day started at 7 or 8 in the morning, with my mom in the kitchen with her apron, stuffing the biggest bird we could find (20 or so pounds) and getting it in early for a long, slow roast. We'd primp the house and set the table with our best dishes -- the ones she inherited from my grandmother when she died. There would be cranberry relish, cranberry jello with fruit in it, white and sweet potatoes, asparagus casserole, pumpkin pies. Ummm.

The best college holiday was always the Thanksgiving break. I remember hitching rides Wednesday night from Wellesley neighbors who lived on Long Island and waking tired but eager Thursday morning for the ritual. For years we had the same core guest group: my father’s Iraqi friends from the University of California at Berkeley (all of whom went on to strong careers in engineering and medicine), their families (they married Iraqi women and spent some time back in the homeland as their scholarships required but returned to settle in the USA). There was Mr. Musa, an Iraqi Jewish bachelor or widower who lived not-too-far from us in Flushing, Queens. There was Danny Bank, my big band baritone sax playing flute teacher http://www.discogs.com/artist/Danny+Bank, http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jcfixqw5ldte~T1 , and Linda Pezzano, my dad’s former assistant who went on to market Trivial Pursuit. We were all delighted when those two had a bit of a fling. Linda, may God rest her soul, died a decade ago after losing the battle with cervical cancer http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/28/business/linda-pezzano-54-marketer-who-aided-trivial-pursuit.html.

When we three girls got to the stage of growing up that meant we could move out, I began hosting wherever I lived. I hosted Columbia Journalism School out-of-towner-classmates back at the Flushing house in 1981. I hosted in Brighton, Massachusetts, when I was a news writer for WBZ-TV and dad and Laila came up from NYC. We used paper plates. When Peter and I lived in an apartment in North Bergen, NJ, we crated our spices and wine glasses a la supplies trekked to the home of those two pious sisters in northern Denmark for “Babette’s Feast” (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/243230.html) to Flushing and served up a sumptuous dinner to a couple of dozen including Linda and Danny. Since we moved to Maplewood, we host annually, serving a brined bird that has a glorious mixture of brown sugar, Dijon mustard and bourbon rubbed under the skin and bubbled into the gravy. Janna and Katie make the cranberry relishes and help peel the pearl onions, and my mother and her husband are among the honored guests. Other regulars are British, Palestinian, and Nebraskan neighbors.

This year, while Peter and Janna carry on the Maplewood tradition, Katie and I were invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with Jordanian friends.

Hala Zureikat is director of Jordan Television. Her friends are a dazzling assortment of talent: a surgeon who lived in Baghdad and photographed daily life there in the 1970s, the renowned journalist Daoud Kuttab (http://www.daoudkuttab.com/), educators, and an Iraq relief volunteer. The women of the group are close friends, getting together when then can for Bible study. The husbands get together when the wives ask them to -- or invite them to a meal.

Conversation flows easily from Arabic to French to English; from regional politics to international affairs; to the best way to roast a turkey. (From left to right, the chef, Hala's kitchen assistant and Hala herself.)

Any body worrying that Katie and I didn’t have a real Thanksgiving can relax. The food was fabulous. The turkey was as moist and flavorful as could be. And side dishes including hommos, tabbouleh, rice, kousa mashi (stuffed zucchini) and spicy greens and beet salad are surprisingly good complements.

(That's Dr. Fadi Haddad carving turkey and Hala's daughter Dahlia passing a plate. Katie standing in the foreground.)

Our apple crumble was served alongside an exquisite homemade cheesecake and a multi-layered chocolate cake. We enjoyed a Bible quiz on the Christmas story (this quiz asserts that – contrary to popular carols -- we don’t know exactly how many kings came to pay tribute to the baby Jesus).

Before heading home at midnight, Katie and I were invited to go to Petra for the day with Dr. Fadi, a surgeon and photographer, that coming Saturday. Notes and photos on that adventure to come.

Thanks to the technology known as SKYPE, we spent a few minutes at our Maplewood table, too, Katie and I on Peter’s computer screen at the head of the table greeting my folks and the beloved cast of Roebuck’s, Riecke’s and Marshood’s.

Just two nights ago now the Fulbright House hosted a Seasons Greetings party replete with turkey, trimmings and pumpkin pie ordered from the American Embassy. Scholars and Fellows brought vegetables, salads and desserts.

Peter and Janna will be with us at the end of the year and we will be feasting with them. There are Butterballs in the frozen food section at Safe Way and I may just store one away for New Year's Eve.