Xmas in Amman

Seasonal cheer and peace to all! Many thanks to all for the many wintery and Xmas-related messages, and in return let me share with you part of the atmosphere in Amman on Xmas day - sitting in Amman Citadel perched above the centre of town, listening to Friday prayers echoing from the hills all around us, truely magic ...

Food Pt 5

If there's one thing I'm eating probably a bit too much of here, it's meat ... but it is good meat! For your delectation, here are a couple of the many ways in which meat is eaten here ...

So, probably the most common meaty meal is the kebab - apart from the shwarma, there are some damn fine plain kebabs with just the right amount of slightly burnt-ness. Below a variety of kebabs, including chicken chunks and minced lamb;


Slightly wierder (but not if you're French) is the Middle Eastern equivalent of a steak tartare called kibber niye - basically raw minced lamb and spices. When I ordered this, the waiter checked that I knew what I was asking for, and after bringing it to me he suggested that it might be a bit strange ... he then advised that the locals eat it with olive oil poured over it (but then they do pour olive oil over everything!), and actually it was pretty good - really!

Dolphins!

During the evening of one of my days down in Aqaba, we went on a sunset cruise out into the middle of the Red Sea, looking out over Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Egypt as the sun went down. We were joined on our return to the harbour by a pod of dolphins (I think spinner dolphins, but if anyone knows better?), who stayed a while to play and show off - the whole thing with the red skies and remnants of a warm day was magical ...

Not sure if these videos will do it justice, but here is a dolphin playing in the wake on the prow of the ship (are those the right technical terms, sailor types?)



And here is the dolphin / landscape/ sunset combo - bliss ...

Sorry ...

I have heard a wild rumour that it is tad nippy in the UK (is it really -9 in Yorkshire? officially brassic ...), so I can only apologise for the following blog - it is not meant to make my beloved UK-bound friends and family feel rubbish and I so so wish they were all here with me ...

Anyway, I'll jump straight in with a photo of the hard life down in Aqaba this weekend, on the coast of the Red Sea ...


As you can see, bit of a change from Amman - in fact I spent most of the weekend feeling like I was somewhere with shades of Indonesia (coral reefs, palm trees) and the Cote d'Azur (luxury hotels, private beaches and the mountains tumbling into the seas like they do around Nice and Monaco). It does have a few remnants of older culture, like the Ummayid fort (in the background on the right) which is about 1300 years old, and they are currently digging up the remains of a 3rd century church (possibly the first purpose-built one?). But unfortunately the lure of tourist cash has taken hold, and there seems to be endless construction outwards and upwards, mainly consisting of massive ugly luxury hotels and (really, do they need more?) malls selling really rather expensive stuff apparently 'duty free' ...

But there are nice sides of the town and the area, especially the coral reefs down the coast at Tala, and of course the sea ... spent an evening sipping wine by the marina at the Royal Yacht Club (am investigating boating options with them for the future, sailor friends!) and ate some reeeeeeeeally good fish ... I fear I may be heading down to Aqaba fairly frequently over the winter, at least until Amman warms up again - boating, swimming in the sea, fish and sunshine, what's not to like?


Oh, and did I mention it was 27 Celcius there? OK, OK, I'll stop now ....

Now that's what I call Roman ruins ...

Haven't had time to tell you yet about all the adventures in Syria during the Eid holidays - where does the time go? - so here are a some tales and photos from Palmyra in Eastern Syria (miss the turning and you're in Iraq before you know it).



So, we arrived at night and then managed to get up at silly o'clock in the morning to watch the sun rise over the ruins. I climbed to the top of a (dangerously uncordoned off) tower and sat absolutely gobsmacked - the place is vast, and we had it to ourselves until a few Bedouin and their camels turned up to bring some bouncey Spanish tourists to our spot - at which point we slunk off for some well-needed coffee ...






Reinvigorated, we booked a tour of some of the funeral towers, which are located in the valleys leading away from the main site, and which were beautiful in their own spooky way - towers with shelves for all the bodies from a family and stone busts of the 'inhabitants'. And as with everything else, superbly preserved by the desert ...



And after the funeral towers, the city itself - there is soooooooooo much to see here, with large parts of the city having been reconstructed by archeologists in the last century and yet so much more yet to rebuild or even discover. There's certainly enough already to make it easy to imagine Palmyra in it's heydey as a bustling trading city in the middle of the desert, there to make sure that the rich Romans got their hit of Eastern delights - incense, spices and prostitutes among other things ...

View of the central crossroads in town

The theatre (useful fact of the day:
apparently it's not an amphitheatre if it doesn't go all the way around)

The ENORMOUS Temple of Bel,
the largest of the many temples they've discovered so far

I could go on forever (if you want to be subjected to the full photo and commentary one day, just ask when I'm back!), so let me finish by telling you a few of my favourite things about Palmyra;



1. Realising how much more there is to uncover from all the fascinating bits and pieces just lying around ...










2. The oddness of some of the reconstruction work (look closely) ...


3. The recycling of Roman ruins by Arab tribes to build a fortress around the Temple of Bel - here, old column sections being used to make the wall on the right ...










4. Some of the gruesome details - like here, the sacrificing table outside the Temple of Bel complete with dips to collect the flowing blood ...







5. The Arab fortress perched up on high above the city, almost as if it's gloating about the fallen civilisation before it ...

Battle of the sterotypes

Before leaving the UK, I was often asked by friends and family about whether I was apprehensive about the prospect of being a single woman in the Middle East. Being the wishy-washy liberal that I am, I decided to give the whole experience time and really do some digging before coming to any conclusions on the matter, rather than charging in with engrained preconceptions or jumping to early conclusions.

So, after nearly two months I don't feel like I'm any closer to finding out anything about the kind of life that Jordanian woman are living, mainly because I'm not meeting many. So, all I've got to go on instead are my own experiences and those of other expats who I've talked to since arriving. And what a series of mixed messages it has been ... people who love the country and feel happy and comfortable here, but also expat women who ended up actually refusing to go to certain parts of town because of the harassment, and various shades in between.


For an idea of the kind of issues and the complexity of it all, do have at look at this article in the local English-language magazine JO about expat women on the prowl, and then at the reactions to this JO article. The arguments about stereotypes and counter-stereotypes are always important, but I think that they don't really go far enough into the point that we cannot help but use our personal experiences as a basis for developing our general feelings about a place and the people in it - and if you've been harassed not once or twice but many times, it becomes harder and harder to stop this colouring your feelings, even when you know that this harassment comes from a minority.

I don't say this because I am in this position myself (yet?), but I know several expats who have just reached the end of their tether and I can sympathise enormously with occasional feelings of victimisation and just being fed up at sometimes being regarded as a 'loose woman' or a 'sure thing' - as an example, have a look at this article that talks about these complexities and frustrations from an expat who tried the hijab to make life easier.

On the other hand, I can equally sympathise with the very valid outrage of the many Jordanians who strongly condemn both treating any woman with disrespect and the stereotyping of 'Arab men' or 'Jordanian men' as unfeeling, macho or predatory.

So far from just treating each other with respect as fellow human beings ...

Tell us a story ...

My first video - this is a traditional Arabic storyteller or 'Hekawati' doing his thing, you don't need to understand what he's saying (I didn't!) to imagine what's going on ... in fact it's almost more fun to invent your own story! This was in a cafe in downtown Damascus, full to the brim of people of all ages sucking on a nargileh and enjoying the fun ... and the odd tourist to see the man who is apparently the last of his kind in the region ...

Food Pt 4

OK, so here is my current favourite thing to eat - infortunately seems to be more of a Syrian thing than a Jordanian thing, but have seen it on menus here and had some my first day back.

It's called 'mouhammara', which basically means something along the lines of 'the red stuff', and while every version seems to be slightly different, the main ingredients seem to be pomegranate, sesame oil, walnuts, chilli and onion. And as with so many things here, what can usually be classed as 'a good dose' of olive oil over the top ...

Damascus

Damascus is a city that combines old and new in a way I've never really seen before, in that the Old City is still where everyday life happens in the same way I can imagine it did 2,000 years ago - people live and work there, wander around in the evenings and fill the restaurants and cafes until the early hours - a fabulous atmosphere!


Much of the Old City is taken up with markets (of which more later), and you can literally walk around for days, seeking out little nooks and crannies, popping into buildings and even accidentally wandering into people's houses - which they don't mind! So here are a few of my favourite little views (and I know that there is so much more to discover ...)

One of the many covered market streets -
the holes in the roof are from bullets during the uprising against the French (alledgedly ...)

Part of one of the old Roman arches, framing one of the three minarets of the Ummayid mosque ... and of course, electricity and telephone wires randomly crosscutting everything else
(entirely safe, I'm sure ...)

One of the many many small streets - always full of shoppers, tourists and students bunking off!

Arches, alleyways and tunnels ...

(and plastic chairs, the scourge of the planet)
















While the Old City is still defined by the walls built in Roman times, Damascus has spread out around it in a hodge-podge of Ottoman domes, European apartment blocks and the inevitable cement monstrosities ... but even this manages to retain some charm (among the ongoing noise, traffic and smells of the city, hmmmm...)

Sometimes it's hard to be ...

So, been offline wandering the mountains, driving the deserts and and ducking through the dark alleyways of Syria for the Eid holidays, and absolutely loved the place - so much to tell you all.

I have a strange kind of heaviness now that I'm back though, almost a feeling of dread, which I've been trying to understand, and I think it's this - after really working to settle into Amman life and build up a support nwtwork and community around me, a few days out of the country has given me a different perspective on how things are here for me. In fact, I'm amazed two neighbouring countries can be so different. I've talked to a couple of people about this and I know not everyone feels that same way about the two countries, but after this last couple of weeks Amman feels quite reserved and conservative, and definately male dominated, while Syria and in particular Damascus felt so much more Mediterranean and diverse, and so a much easier place for me to be ....

For example, there were many things that I saw in just a few days in Damascus that would be perfectly normal in Brighton or Marseille, but that made me do a double take because I haven't seen them since arriving in Amman ...

- lots of women on the streets, and plenty of them with no head covering and even some quite foxy outfits (although Damascus has a large Christian community, they were certainly not all Christian ...)


- lots of families with their children out in the Old Town's markets and restaurants into the small hours, with children tucking in while Mum and Dad share into a nargileh (water pipe)

- men and women holding hands in the street (not common, but saw this three or four times)

- lots of women smoking, especially nargilehs

- women flirting with men in the street for fun on a girls night out

- bars with men and women, gay and straight, funky music and a relaxed atmosphere ...


More generally, I wandered for days and didn't feel like I was attracting any attention - either as a foreigner or as a woman. And yes, I know this may be partly because they're more used to tourists and travellers in Damascus, but it still was a stark contrast to wandering around downtown Amman where all their tourist attractions are, which is fine if you just ignore the stares and don't understand the occasional rude comments from the men (almost all men) in the street. Many times a day people said 'welcome' and smiled at me as they walked past in Syria, which has never happened to me in Amman. And while people in Amman have been kind when I have asked them for help or been introduced to them in some way, it's certainly been quite rare for someone to strike up a conversation or just smile for no reason, seeming to prefer to keep a (polite?) distance.

The upshot of it all is that I'm finding it really hard to meet people in Amman. Jordanian men seem to prefer to keep their distance from women outside their family circle, unless they have some acceptable reason to interact with them such as working together or while shopping in a market. And as for the women here, the only ones I've been able to sit and talk to have been the women who work at the Embassy and female teachers at my school - and outside of Amman, I've barely even seen any women at all.

I don't know what to make of it all really, and I don't want to jump to any conclusions - I know it's early days, my colloquial Arabic is still holding me back, and it might just be a case of not having found the right way to go about finding a space for myself in Amman society that isn't limited to the (welcoming and supportive) expat community. But compared to places I've lived in before, and even to the country next door, I know that I don't feel as comfortable and am not as optimistic about one day feeling like I 'fit in' or at least have a place in society here that I'm happy with. Never have I missed my friends soooooooooooo much ...

Food Pt 3

My general approach to Jordanian food so far has been to go for some stuff I know, and then have one or two random purchases. Above is one such purchase - no idea what it is called, but there is a dark green version, this lighter green version (with sesame seeds), a yellow version and a red/orange version. Basically, it's a variety of spices and herbs (and in this case, seeds), which you either spread on oiled bread and toast briefly, or use as a dip Bedouin style ...

1. prepare flat bread, olive oil and a small bowl of 'the stuff' ...


2. break off a piece of bread, dip in the oil and then the stuff ...


3. that's it! yum!

And another thing I've been finding and would appreciate your thoughts on - is there anything savoury that doesn't taste better with a bit of tahini?

Fun in the sun!

So, fun things to do in the desert include ...

1. bouncing around in a 4WD - it's really tiring to walk across soft sand, and Wadi Rum is BIG!




2. sand dune sledging - or for the really cocky, sand dune boarding, but seriously fast bum sliding on the board was good enough for me!




3. walking, hiking, rock-climbing - but be warned, the people here seem to have no sense of danger and classify anything that isn't actually completely vertical as a 'scramble' with no need for anything namby pamby like ropes ...



4. getting all historical and pretending to be Lawrence of Arabia - this is apparently the remnants of his house and the view from it to where the Bedouin would have camped is just stunning ...


5. staying in a Bedouin camp - complete with guest room, indoor fire and many many blankets ...

Meeting the Bedouin

Wadi Rum has been my first encounter with the Bedouin way of life, and it's interesting to see how much things have stayed the same as well as how things hae changed.


The Bedouins are Arab tribes who have been based in this area for thousands of years. There are inscriptions on rocks all over the place, and some of these have apparently been dated back to as early as 5000BC, so the Bedouins' claim to be one of the modern world's original tribes has at least some truth to it. I've also heard that the area is home to possibly "the world's first map", a plan of the area carved into stone which is around 5000 years old. What we were doing in Britain then?




The Bedouin tribes have been primarily nomadic herdsmen, living in large but movable tents, but with an element of agriculture when the rains have been good. Now though, while they still raise camels and some sheep, their villages are more solid and have concrete houses.


It seems that those Bedouin that have houses still spend some time out in the desert though, and while some members of the family I stayed with work in tourism and the army and are based in the village of Rum (above), the younger members still herd camels that they use for meat, milk and hair to make their tents.


I did not see a woman in my whole time in Rum - not even any little girls - and the Bedouin have very conservative views about what a woman should do and wear. This meant long sleeves and trousers in company, which was not much of a hardship, but also led to shocked stares when they found out I'm a 36 year old unmarried woman, and plenty of offers of marriage to help me in my dire situation ... however, there is a school in Rum village and some girls do attend, and I was told that they don't get married until their late teens. I'm hoping that after a few visits to Rum, and when I get use to the Bedouin form of colloquial, I'll have a chance to meet and talk to some women myself.

Other aspects of the outside world are also creeping in, some of which I was glad of, like the four wheel drives to take me over large stretches of soft sand, and the gas lamps that meant that we did not have to use up precious wood for light. On the other hand, the inevitable march of American culture seems to have reached every little nook and cranny of the world, including Coca Cola and the eponymous baseball cap ....

Heaven IS a place on earth ...

Well, I rented a car this weekend and drove down south to Wadi Rum - land of Lawrence of Arabia and home to a number of Bedouin tribes. I've been dying to get there, and it was so unbelieveable worth it, I feel like I could go back every weekend! I'd seen lots of photos and thought it looked amazing, but it is actually so much vaster than any photo can give it credit for ...

There's so much to say about it all, but to start off here are a few photos of the landscape - imagine this with barely a sound apart from echoing bird calls and the occasional 4WD, and most of the time not a soul in sight ...

Jebel Umm E'jil, one of the two mountaints towering on either side of Rum village


One of the many canyons, home to sand dunes and echoes ...


Jebel Qattar, which overlooks where I camped out ...


What can I say ...

And after watching the light fade and having a Bedouin stew, we were left with a crescent moon and at least 274 billion stars, with a couple of shooting stars to add to the insane perfection of it all ...

Food Pt 2 - not for veggies

Just a quick one to share with you what a REAL shwarma is like - just meat, tomatoes, onions and tahini sauce. This is one of the most popular shwarma places in Amman, the queues go round the block ...

Taxi!

You can get around Amman by bus, but the numbers and routes are still a mystery to me and everything is written in Arabic - so by the time I've read it, the bus has gone.

So it's taxis all the way, and they are pretty cheap but still always an experience ... Everyone here seems to have a string of stories about 'bizarre/scary/hilarious" taxi rides, here are a couple of my own from my time so far ...

1. About 4 days ago ...

[I get in and ask in Arabic to go the Sports City Circle]

Taxi man - "where are you from?"
Me - "Britain"
Taxi man (in Arabic) - "Ah! I am from Palestine. But I cannot go to Palestine. Have you been to Palestine? you can go to Palestine and yet I cannot go and it is my own country ..."

[I am nodding in sympathy]

"and if I did go home I would have to kill the Israelis, they killed my mother, do you know how many Palestinians died last year when the Jews invaded our country again? And how many Israeli soldiers? They kill us, we must kill them, they take our country, is this right? You are in my car, is it alright for you to take my car? no, this is my car, I bought this car, it is mine!"

[taxi man is getting very agitated and hitting steering wheel, I am still nodding but saying nothing and getting slightly worried]

"and it is all the fault of the Jews, we must kill all the Jews, the Israeli Jews, the American Jews, the British Jews ..."

[I am considering jumping out of a moving taxi, but fortunately we arrive - taxi man has throbbing veins on his forehead by this point]

2. Trying a new strategy yesterday...

[I get in and ask in Arabic to go the Sports City Circle]

Taxi man - "where are you from?"
Me - "France"
Taxi man (bizarrely, in English) - "Ah! France good! France girls very good, very beautiful! I love you France! Any time you need help, you call me, here is my number, I take you to your home, I take you to my house, do you have baby? I no have baby, I no zowaj (married), you want to go to my house now? ..."

3. And have also tried this ...

[I get in, say "Ahlen" and ask in English to go the Mukhtar Mall]

Taxi man - "Aiwa (yes) ...."

[we get to Mukhtar Mall, I pay and say goodbye]

Water ...

Jordan has serious water issues ... a couple of facts for you (from GreenFacts.org)

Total Use of Total Actual Renewable Water Resources: 115 %

Countries with higher Total Use rate - Bahrain, Isreal, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Uzbekistan, Yemen (but many with desalination projects in place, which Jordan does not have)

UNSTATS report 2005 says that "Jordan's water resources are, on a per capita basis, among the lowest in the world"

And as a visual demonstration, here is a photo of Deir Ghubar park, the park in my local area which is considered one of the richest in Amman (the trees in the background are in someone's private garden ...);

Canyoning

Well, had my first taste of the Dead Sea hills and it was fabulous, wild, beautiful and so tiring that I can barely walk today - but loved it!

So, rather than just going for a nice walk, my first foray into the wilds was a canyoning trip in Wadi Assal - one of the many rivers flowing into the Dead Sea from the hills to the east of it, on this map the valley starts somewhere near Rabba and heads towards Al Mazraa ...


View Larger Map

For those who don't know about canyoning, it is all about following a river downhill through its canyons and gorges, so usually includes things like hiking, scrambling, abseiling, jumping into river pools, rockclimbing, rock water slides, waterfalls, jungle bashing and stunning gorges. Well, this one had all of these things, with my only real complaint being that it was way too long - 10 hours with only half an hour break for lunch! Lord knows how many kilometres we covered, but the last hour and a half was in darkness, and this despite leaving Amman at 5.30am!

But on the other hand, boy was it exciting, have a look at this ....



This is the first part of the trip, after a scramble down a barren hillside from the road we started a fairly easy walk into the top of the canyon ...















Then the gorges started getting narrower and steeper, and the proper abseiling began - 7 long abseils in all, with the first five in the dry part of the day before lunch ...















And down she goes ...









After that the whole valley got wetter and lusher ... In fact, we decided that while we have 'damp' and 'wet' and 'soaked', we don't really have a word that describes having been in water, and then half drying, and then getting wet, and then half drying again and again, for hours on end - sort of like Glastonbury but without the water from above ... and yet we still managed to be filthy at the end of it! All good fun ...