If you can keep your head whilst people around you are panicking, you've probably misread the situation.

An afternoon of sunshine is punished by desert winds.  The gales freeze our eardrums and throw sand in our faces and we are forced to be homesick for Oklahoma.  Another freeze, another blanket of rain has pushed it's way in to our city.  It's almost spring, we are told, and I almost believe its true when I see that our neighborhood Goat Man has a half dozen new kids.  Goat kids, to be clear.

I imagine a line of refugees at the border crossing just a brief jog from my house, reaching in to Syria, curling around like a damp fuse.

Our lives are blessedly unaffected so far.  Work continues, laundry piles up and then is washed by hand and strung up on lines for the world to judge, trips to Amman, breakfasts of eggs and yogurt.  We are invited to people's homes for coffee, we are invited for tea, we are invited for dinner and we accept.

Jordanians, and more largely Arabs, are the best hosts.  We accept an invitation for lunch, and enormous platters over flowing with lamb, chicken, almonds and yogurt are set before us.  We are fed fresh onion tops and home-pickled vegetables.  We drink coffee, we drink tea, we eat apples, we eat sweets.  An Arab will freeze through the night to make sure his guests have enough blankets.  There are stories of great kings at war with other nations, who by political circumstance must host their enemies in their own palaces.  The enemy of an Arab should feel no fear as the guest of his adversary, as he is just as likely to die from being overfed than some clandestine poisoning.

Jordan is host to the world's betrayed.  We pass a refugee camp, built as a temporary reprieve 40 years ago, host now to generations of a diaspora.  Almost 2 million Palestinians and 1 million Iraqis have sought out the peace of Jordan.  The country is preparing for another wave of guests.  The national tea pot is bubbling on the stove as camps, aid centers and, in our small city, field hospitals are erected to tend to the injured and to warm those who ache for a life lost, for a future to come.

An American, a paraplegic and a custom's officer walk into a post office.

Houses in my city do not have addresses.  This is not unique to my city, but true in most cities and villages in Jordan, with the ever excepted exception of Amman.  To find a physical residence, one must rely on a narrative description of the location, accompanied, sometimes, with a touch of personal information about one's self.  For example, our physical address is, "The southern neighborhood with mostly Ahlaimats (a family name), the tall house across from Father Ahlaimat's gas can store."  Though, you would do just as well walking as far south as you can before hitting the main highway and shouting, "WHERE THE WHITE PEOPLE AT?"  You'd find us.

This lack of sleek, efficient street naming and house numbering presents a problem for those of us that would like to receive mail.  There is no trust in, "The American Couple that live in The South Neighborhood" on a package, and the people at FedEx probably wouldn't appreciate it.  The solution is, on the surface simple, but when played out, somewhat of a cultural exchange experience.

1. Opening a post box.  
1. To open a post box, please present your passport or residence card to the nearest Post Office.  The Post Office opens at 7am...opens at 8am...opens when we employees get here...after tea.
2. The cost for opening a post box is 12JD...14.50JD...18JD.  Where are you from again?
3. Please provide you name.  Please be prepared for confusion if your given name also happens to mean "I" or "me" in Arabic.  Please do not try to explain that your name is not "Me Bricker."  Please hold for laughter.  Please hold while we explain the joke to each other.  Please present your passport again.  Please hold while we pass your passport around and chuckle that your name means "I".  I am I.  I am me.  We invite you to take a moment to engage in an existential melt down.
2. You've Got Mail!
1. To receive an alert that you have received a package please provide your phone number, we will call you.  We will speak in a language you do not understand.  We will try our best to be accommodating.  We will try.  We will then tell you your Arabic isn't good enough.
2. Your package is available for pick up between the hours of 11am and 11:30am.  The term "hours" is used loosely.
3. You may be charged a fee, at 12.5% of the determined value of the items in the package.  You may be charged nothing because you have been honing your postal wasta since you discovered you need postal wasta.
1. Postal Wasta: (n) Influence or social pull with postal workers.  Often increased by means of candy and blondness.
4. Upon arrival to the Post Office at 11:15am, you will be told to wait 10 minutes...20 minutes...25 minutes.
5. Please proceed behind the counter.  Collect your package and follow the paraplegic Post Office employee down the dark corridor, past the bathroom, to the left, to the right, past another door, through two men smoking and into the dark room with the ripped couches and the custom's officer behind the desk.
6. Please open your package and explain what each item is, and what it is used for.  Is it expensive?  Why is your mother sending shampoo?  Does she know there is shampoo here?  We have shampoo.
7. Please present your passport.
8. Sign here.
9. And here.
10. Initial here.
11. Share your marshmallows.

See, just two easy steps.

I am from Los Angeles. Fuck you.

People want to show off their English skills.  Most people who choose to passively show off their skills (without coming up and actually addressing the listener) speak in a way that fully betrays their lack of understanding.

The following are different ways that people show off their English skills around town.


A group of children on the corner.

"Hellohowareyouwassyourname!?!"

"My name is Annie.  What is your name?"

"WelcometoJordanIloveyou!"


A man sitting in a restaurant on the other side of the privacy curtain that guards us women from being seen eating.

"ohmygod.......(waiting for a reaction from our table of Americans)........Ohmygod. (waiting)......  OHMYGOD."


While I was standing at the bus station waiting for a friend to arrive, a young man holding a box of old shoes passed by me.

"I am from Los Angeles.  Fuck you."