Strangers and Pilgrims

6 December 2008

Strangers and Pilgrims

The low, twangy notes of the oud player reverberated through the cloud of argeelah, laughter and hand-clapping in Jafra cafe. A cool wind blew in from Wast al-Balad and I sank deeper into the sofa, embracing the warmth of the curling argeelah smoke around us. The little lights above flickered, suspended in their woven-shades and keeping time with the oud player and the clapping. People sang the familiar songs, the old songs everyone knows – Jordanian, Palestinian, Arab songs. We felt a certain solidarity with the crowd, and a sense of belonging, yet longing for somewhere else, someplace we call home. If I could reduce my experiences in Jordan to this moment in Jafra with a few good friends who I probably won’t see again for some time, I would. I would roll it up into a ball and carry it with me. And when I’m back home with my family and friends, and find that I can’t quite express what I want to, I would take it out and let it slowly unravel before you.
We are strangers and pilgrims, just passing through Jordan, and tomorrow I won’t call it home anymore; won’t settle into the back of a smoky taxi, the arab beats buoying me away to Dahiat al-Rasheed, to my little room with a window facing the bare, hazy desert sunrise, bringing Bedu and flocks of sheep whose clinking bells wake me at dawn; won’t duck in Al-Quds, the best falafel place in Amman, where the old man behind the counter winks at me behind his thick glasses and knows I want one sesame falafel, so cheap and so good; won’t enjoy rolling the L’s off the back of my teeth when I order it; won’t wander through certain streets and feel the cobblestones beneath, breathe the air dusky with cardamom and coffee, see the earthy, vibrant colors – the reds, browns, golds – in store windows; won’t see red, green and black flapping in the breeze.
Today is overcast, and I know I am romanticizing. I can’t help but feel nostalgic for Jordan. I love this place.
I packed my Jordanian clothes first: the dishdasha which I wore in al-Badia (the desert) when I lived with a Bedouin family for three days; the hijab I wore with a friend when we went shopping at the mall, and we felt more conspicuous with than without the veil; the ivory dishdasha with gold sequins my host mother, Um Dunia, gave me when we broke the fast after Ramadan. My red and white koffiya, the national cloth of Jordan, I set aside, then wrapped securely around my neck. I don’t intend to remove it for quite some time, at least figuratively.
After scouring the bedding for stray socks which seem to collect at the foot of my bed, I turned to look at the bare room and remembered the first time I sat my bags down, back in August.
At breakfast the zeit (olive oil) was clouded; the zatar (thyme) was dry; the pita stale; I didn’t care.
On the way to school this morning, the last “on the way to school”, I passed by both the Indonesian and Sri Lankan embassies, and I wondered about the women, runaway maids, I met in the shelters there. They taught me so much, and I am indebted to them. The feeble 50 page report I produced about women migrant workers in Jordan does not capture their humble and courageous spirit as I wish it could.
Somehow I feel my experiences are already being reduced to snapshots which capture and yet don’t capture my time in Jordan: exploits of camel riding, hiking through Petra or Wadi Rum, and floating in the Dead Sea, the ones which will remain with me in the form of photographs people want to see and stories they want to hear. What’s in my heart, so full from my time in Jordan, can’t be reduced to such snapshots. The real experience doesn’t fade like photographs, but becomes more complete, as it is lived and relieved in the recesses of my mind and heart. And in time, what remains of my time in Jordan is myself. Myself, more fulfilled in Christ as he has used this time to prepare me, in ways and for what I can scarcely imagine.

Goodbye, Jordan. Until next time.