Fanning the flame

When she answered the phone my Filipina friend must have been crying. “I can’t go with you today,” Emily said quietly. She sniffled.
“Isn’t today your day off?”
“Yes, but I’m packing for Syria.”
“Syria! You said you might go next month…” I began.
“I know, but the supervisor wants me to go today. They have a new restaurant with all new waitresses, and they need someone to manage them.” I didn’t know what to say. Emily had signed a two year contract with a multinational company which moves its employees almost without notice. Only two months before she had been uprooted from Beirut and placed in the sushi restaurant in an upscale Amman mall where I had met her two days ago. She had talked to me longer and more openly than the other three waitresses, and she had served me sushi without letting me pay. We had agreed to spend together her one day off during a week of thirteen-hour working days.
“I’m sorry, Emily.”
“I know, but I will sacrifice for my family. Yeah, I will sacrifice for them.” I heard the sound of her moving things, probably packing. “I don’t want to leave my friends here,” she said, her voice breaking. After a pause, she recovered and said flatly, “Look, I will call you back, o.k.?”

I don’t expect her to call me back, I thought as I checked and rechecked the mobile phone in my pocket. From First Circle to Third Circle I stumbled over the blocks of breaking pavement and dodged litter, construction, pedestrians and cat-calls from Arab men leering at me from open doorways of dukkans (shops). The sun beat down on me from above and from below in the bright reflection on the beige stone used in buildings and sidewalks in Amman; the hot, sooty air burned my nostrils; taxis honked incessantly, either to attract business or as commentary on my pale skin, now pink, and my blonde hair. Just as my Arabic returns slowly and with it confidence, so grows my resentment for the general treatment of a foreign woman walking alone. While it was safe to walk all those city blocks in the daylight by myself, I was more than a little relieved when I finally arrived at the Zahran police station.

“How did you come into Jordan?” The woman in uniform and hijab held up my passport and flipped through the pages as if to show me she could not find something.
“I flew into Queen Alia Airport on June 2nd,” I said pointing to the initial entry visa. She turned and spoke to the man at the adjoining desk, who listened, looked up at me suddenly and stood up.
“Follow me,” he said, leading me into the adjacent room which was dominated by a large wooden desk with an outdated computer model; he sat behind this and studied my passport. There was no chair for me, so I stood at attention, steeling myself for an interrogation.
“Where is your visa?”
“Here,” I said firmly, pointing again to the 2 June 2009 stamp.
“This is your most recent visa?” His accent was too thick; I shook my head in that confused way which Jordanians shake theirs at me when they cannot understand my Arabic.
“Yes,” I said. He gestured rapidly, and again I followed him out of the room, back to the female officer with better English.
“You’ve been to Palestine?”
“Yes, last week.”
“And how you came to Jordan, from which crossing?”“King Hussein Bridge.”“Did they not give you a paper?” Oh, this is what they want, I thought as I flipped through my field notebook, retrieving a crumpled slip of paper handed to me at the border crossing; I laid it on the counter.
“You must go to the Borders Department,” the woman promptly replied. After a trek across town, an hour of processing from bored Jordanian officer at one window to another bored Jordanian officer to another ad infinitum, I returned to the same station, where the culmination of those three trying hours was a simple stamp and customary “Welcome to Jordan.” I could have punched someone - for Emily’s deportation, for the cat-calls, for the taxi driver who tried to cheat me, for the five banks which refused to cash my traveler’s checks, even for the weather.

I needed to cool off, literally, and I remembered I had decided to buy a fan. When I stepped inside a tiny appliance shop humming with the noise of display fans, I was ready to give in and pay whatever the owner requested. No matter how hard I haggled and explained in my limited Arabic that I am a student on a research budget without funds to pay for an overpriced fan, the shop owners felt little or no sympathy. I looked back at Manila street as it is called, and studied the littered gutters, the empty shops, their owners leaning in doorways, haggard and hungry for a sale. Maybe I expect too much in this country, I thought.

“Can I help you?” asked a kind voice behind me. I began my spiel in Arabic, but the man interrupted with me interest, asking more details. Astonished, I told him more about what I study (anthropology), how I had come to be in Amman, my research and the hard day I was having. After a pause he said, “You know, these are hard times for everyone. These people,” he said gesturing to the surrounding shops, “they don’t have the money either. But I will let you have this fan, and you can give me whatever you think best, because you need it, and you are a polite girl.” I felt almost ashamed, because I could pay the asking price, though it is overpriced, and because he probably needed the money.
But we both understood the principle of the matter, I think. “I’ll give you 10 JD (about 17 dollars) now, and before I leave Amman to return home, I’ll bring the fan back and you can keep it or resell it.” He agreed and introduced himself as Imad.

Stepping out of Imad’s shop and into the brilliant sunshine, I bore my happy blue fan through Manila street, smiling inwardly if not outwardly. It was one of those contented moments when faith in the power of compassion and of sacrifice is restored.


(my happy electric blue fan)