One day is honey, one day is onion."

6 September 2008
“One day is honey, one day is onion.”

I’ll forgo the awful details; it was the fast fast. While determining to join my family in fasting for the month of Ramadan endeared me to them, and while it was a meaningful experience for me, it was, alas, short-lived. Better the fast short-lived than myself. The Qur’an mandates that the sick (or those who become sick during the fast) cannot continue the fast, and when my family discovered me sprawled on my bed after a miserable night of sickness, they decided I was dehydrated (considering the general indifference regarding food preparation/storage/expiration combined with the arid 115 degrees of the other day, this was no surprise; we SIT students often comment on how much we sweat in this un-air-conditioned place: just sitting in class, lying in bed – even in the shower. The temperature in my room has hovered around 90 the last few days). Each family member rebuked me in turn for feeling sick and trying to fast, Khatm last of all, patting my hand tenderly and saying “Ya, habibi (oh my dear)”.
The Arabs have a proverb which says “one day is honey, one day is onion”. Having gotten past the onion, I spent some of the weekend recovering – doing some much needed laundry and spending time with my family, the highlight of which was teaching my host mother’s four grandchildren how to play checkers. Watching them learn and in turn teach each other was fascinating, as they are bilingual in Arabic and English and frequently code-switch (they’re unaware sometimes of which language they are speaking to me and seemingly to each other). The day was hot, the sunlight seeping in through the heavily curtained window of my bedroom warm and golden, slow and thick like honey. Ismein had spread her homework papers on my rug and was absorbed in them. Aiman, her younger brother and taekwondo fiend, marched in donning his usual camouflage pants, and demanded to know what Ismein’s younger sister and I were doing. Ismein, intrigued and now merely pretending to be studying, kept stealing glances at the checkers game as three year old Yusuf flung himself on my bed to watch. Soon all four kids were entranced by this new game; they played it for three hours until iftar (the evening fatoor when we break the fast). “I like this game,” Ismein said to me. “I forgot how hungry I was.”
*****

The Temple of Artemis, the Roman ruins, Jerash, Jordan (north of Amman): Craning my neck, I’m squinting, staggering into a fathomless blue and a sun so intensely bright I can’t locate its position in the sky. It’s somewhere behind one of the columns soaring fifteen meters above me and bowing outward like my wobbly legs. As I teeter on the top of the temple steps in the 100+ degree heat, I don’t feel hot or thirsty so much as fragile and trembling like a dry leaf. From this high place I survey the ruins of an Roman city, circa first century. In its heyday, this marvelously unearthed complex of temples and residences housed 15,000 people – until 749 when an earthquake leveled the pagan Decapolis. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”