"We used to cook fish for them."

10 September 2008
“We used to cook fish for them.”

Thousands of yellow taxis fill Amman, swarming in and out of the “lanes” like the killer bees of traffic jams. Car models range from the latest compacts to the 1980s, first-world- reject-specials; their interiors range from plush leather to more plastic wrap on the seats than your first-grader’s lunch. The man at the wheel – only very rarely a woman – might wear a traditional thob and kuffiya and have a bird’s-nest of a beard or he might wear a polo and pants; whether he listens to the news, pop, songs about king and country, folk or religious music, he’s bound to initiate a conversation, especially if you’re a fellow male or a foreigner. “Min amreka? Welcome to Jordan.” Or “Min amreka? (makes spitting noise) I hate your Bush…your war…bad for the country.” In a Jordanian taxi you can expect twice the experience – twice the conversation, twice the price (savvy hagglers abound), and twice the speed, thrills and near-death experiences in traffic.
“You are American…you study here, no? I…I am Iraqi.” My left eyebrow shoots upward; I check my reaction, casually turning from the cityscape out the window toward the hesitant driver. “I’m here two years…I have three children, two boys and one girl.”
“Na’am.” I steal a glance at his face reflected in the rearview mirror; he focuses on the road. I wonder what he will say about my country or the war.
“I have a bro-ther…in Baghdad. He want to come, but he cannot get a visa.” I nod in the darkened backseat. We continue on for a minute or so in silence; anticipating the worst, I almost hope he has lost his nerve. I return to gazing out the window. “He used to cook fish for them.” What? It doesn’t matter whether I respond verbally or not; he continues. “My brother, he used to cook the fish for the soldiers when they come to see the house. They like my brother. They say he cook the best fish when they come to his house. And the coffee.” Rather than express the hatred I expected, perhaps rightfully so at the violation of his privacy and disruption of his life, he chooses to tell me about his brother’s hospitality to the soldiers. Food and coffee – the proper Arab way to treat any guests.
From the Northeast they pour in from war-torn Iraq; from the West Bank, come the Palestinians. They’re here in the hundreds of thousands – urban refugees, not confined by the walls of refugee camps but confined within their poverty and desperation: how to get a visa for their aunt in Mosul who needs that operation; how to pay for the food and water; how to convince the landlord to give them one more month. The Jordanian government grants the Palestinians legal citizenship status and allows Iraqis (only those who have at least 150,000 dollars in frozen assets) temporary residency, but Jordan, over-extended in resources and patience, cannot be a homeland for either. Iraqi refugees seemingly have few advocates here in Jordan; one lady from Voices for Creative Nonviolence dropped by SIT today to relate the situation: all that she shared with us might be summed up in the words of her Iraqi friend: “You [Americans] have taken Saddam’s cotton out of our mouths, and you have put it in your ears.”

*****

“And this one’s from my engagement party!” cries Dunia, waving the photo over Yusuf’s grasping, three-year old hands. My homestay extended family is gathered around the table after the iftar, sorting through a decade of photographs; the television drones in the background. I look up from my Arabic study to see that familiar image of a plane slicing through the World Trade Center and realize the date. Julia, another SIT student studying next to me, also looks up; we remember where we were on that morning. The family notices our talk and also watches the footage playing over and over; I don’t understand the Arabic reporting, but Khatm says it all when she tsks her tongue. Smoke and flames and people fleeing seem to be familiar news images for people in the Middle East. (At least, I’ve seen them almost every time I’ve watched Arab news; most often the family comments to me about Palestine.) Their attention for the reporting is brief. But I don’t want to turn away; I don’t want to accept it as a familiar image here or there. On this seventh anniversary of the attacks, what should I be thinking? Can the United States ever regain trust in this region?

As long as some still cook fish for us, I’ll eat at their table and drink their coffee and hope that benevolence without hegemony is possible.