Sandcastles

The new home reaches skyward like a vine, fed by billions of gallons of imported water. Dubai has sprouted, over years of cultivation, in the middle of the desert; on the side of an ocean that we fill with foreign sand. In the land of afar, everything comes from afar. People, companies, hotels, malls, movies--we are the all consuming expats, re-sculpting places in our memories with sand and water. Everything is filtered through a Middle Eastern mesh and the result is something new--something not-quite-right--something better-than-before. The English, Australian, Indian, Filipino, and American masses are young and wide-eyed. It is all new, we are all new. We are children building a playground. The striations of color are apparent, and not limited to the dunes and bulging boulders of the Badia.

In a room, in a building, in a sandcastle, we write. We feed the industry that feeds us in an endless loop. 

Summer Fever

Throughout my difficult, greasy, awkward middle-school years, my mother and father were the sorry recipients of a series of notes with two or three thematic repetitions.  "Annie is not living up to her potential."  "Your daughter is quite bright, but refuses to turn in her homework."  "Annie is failing to apply herself."  I have no further explanation for my three month absence from this blog.

The months of separation have made our hearts grow fonder, filled with excitement, change, perhaps a little unrest, then much needed rest and the telltale signs of settlement.  The summer moon hung low and wet like laundry between apartments.   We moved as the stars from the east to the west, packing our trappings of permanence into a minivan driven by an adulterous uncle and unloading our life into a western style flat near the hospital.  Rick notices Antares, a dwarf star that flickers red and white low in the sky and then sets behind the horizon by midnight as if it arrived too quickly, and then realized it had to leave.

Other people have been moving as well.  Our neighbors to the north come over in droves with far less, and somehow far more baggage.  Ever the hosts, Jordanians have redefined generosity, stretching their already thin resources into a chai we all can drink.  I am reminded that we are all brothers and sisters.  I am reminded that we are all hosts and we are all guests in this world.  I am reminded of Mogadishu.  I want to call my brother.

The volunteers closer to the border have been moved.  We are far enough from the nearest crossing to stay, but close enough to keep a bag packed.  Living in evacuation limbo is like being sick, but not sick enough to go to the doctor.  Waiting for a fever to tip one way or the other, living life in a sort of in-between state.  Always keeping your clothes clean and never buying too much yogurt.

It is, admittedly, normal feeling.  We fast and feast with friends for Ramadan.  We host people from Amman, visitors from Spain, volunteers from Africa.  The city opens it's arms again and again without complaint, a hadja taking in one more, and then another and then just one more, feeding the world with arthritic, weathered hands.

The Desert Castles.

Our home is not a village, rather it is a medium sized urban area.  Home to 80, 000 people it is the desert capital, riding on the familiar cusp of mountain, desert and, a bit distantly, river.  A string of ruined forts, hunting lodges and churches litter the desert and, perhaps as a gilded lily, are referenced as "the Desert Castles."

We are becoming part of the horizon here.  Another castle in the desert, another pair of camels.  We've moved from one side of the city to the other and it is sometimes difficult to remember that we are not living in some kind of bizarro world America where we still fight with our internet service providers and have dinner with friends.  When we are reminded it is a jolt to the system.  A bar or two of English caught while passing the Islamic Charity, a blonde woman outside the Protestant church is all it takes to cause one to stop hard enough to cause whiplash.

There are more reporters coming through our city these days.  Students from colleges in America looking to understand the Syrian refugee crisis from an up close and personal point of view.  They are concerned about numbers.  They are concerned about rations.  They are concerned about experiencing culture shock upon returning to the United States after two weeks in Jordan.

Petra by Night

I found the Lonely Planet review of Petra by Night to be pretty uninformative, so I wrote my own.

Petra by Night

Night falls over the Rosy City.  In the dusty evening, a group of people gather by the gate to Petra.  Like so many Nabatean merchants before, they wait in anticipation of the riches that this ancient city will afford them. 

Meet at the entrance to Petra at dusk, and cross the border from the modern city of Wadi Musa, to the hauntingly beautiful mercantile hub of Petra.  Take the stroll down the Siq, lit by candles and luminaries and bordered by natural sandstone walls.  When you and your fellow travelers reach the Treasury, the most famous and certainly most photographed structure in Petra, find a seat on a woven mat and settle in for a show.

A Petra historian addresses the crowd, providing an account of the function of the Rosy CIty, the Treasury and the countless structures, tombs and places of worship that surround the main building.  The voice of the historian, echoing through the ruins, transports the listener to a time when Petra was a bustling center of commerce, a meeting place for traders from around the Fertile Crescent.  As you are immersed in history, small cups of tea are expertly passed to all 200 listeners.

The sound of traditional instruments fills the amphitheater, weaving its way through the Treasury and bouncing off the walls of the Siq.  The vibrations, deftly teased out of an Oab by a man whose family has been playing this instrument for generations, and the high pitched piccolo blown by his young son, give a special view into the lives of the Bedouins who are the protectors of this place.

After the tourist saturated, sun beaten Petra of the day time, Petra by night is a unique, romantic addition to your visit to Wadi Musa, Jordan.  For only 12JD, you can experience a more intimate Petra, without all of the hawkers and gawkers.  Tickets can be purchased at any hotel or outside the entrance to Petra.  You may want to bring a small flashlight, as the terrain vacillates between sand and cobblestone during the walk down the Siq.  Always remember to bring water.  Though the desert nights are cool, the walk is long and dusty.

Jerash the Memories

The sun and clouds that define our mood are too intimate.  Our trip to Jerash was allowed only by the arbitrary lax attitude of the weather, spring dancing a prelude to a summer that promises to scorch.  Basking in the luxury of no special urgency, we went to visit the largest Roman ruins outside of Rome herself.

Leaving our city is like taking a small minibus into a dream.  Our eyes, having been attuned to a spectrum of desert beige are greedy for color.  Driving into the mountain regions the bus hums a song of envy.  The yellows, reds and purples of spring wildflowers hit us like an opiate, and playing in the same vein, become ordinary instances of life as quickly.

The ruins of Jerash are extensive and well preserved.  The column lined road to the hippodrome is paved with stones worn smooth by Roman sandals.  The theater in the round has tiered seating so steep that on approach to the entrance one can only imagine that generations of patrons to the arts have tumbled to their deaths or injurious demise.  Temples and columns have stood strong for the worshipers of their Gods, and then for the worshipers of the worshipers.

Tourists flock to Jerash, though not in the numbers that they arrive in Aqaba or Petra.  Drinking in the history of the Roman empire means sipping on the trappings of modernity in turn.  Hearing English, seeing exposed arms and legs and couples holding hands, the quality of living in an atmosphere of perpetual dread is momentarily assuaged.  Scarves and prying eyes removed from our bodies, the extremes of modern and ancient are laid out like an undeveloped negative.

Desert Flowers

Spring has come like a promise no one expected to be kept.  The sun warms the desert days, and we are grateful, if not a little bit disappointed that we spent the last month learning to say, "When is this spring coming that everyone is talking about?"  It has arrived and in our desert capital, things are blooming.

Even in this world of covered women, spring means an emergence from layers of thick wool.  Blooming from the warm earth tones of winter spring brightly colored hijab, the balled ends of pins used to secure cling to silk petals like dew drops.  The wearing of hijab, or her more conservative sister niqab, is cause for some political and religious discussion, even here where most women chose to cover.  The extent to which one covers is gently judged by those who chose to cover less or more or not at all.  Religion and politics aside, hijab undeniably affords a channel of expression.  Hijab is religious first and foremost but hijab, with out a doubt, is also fashion.

The word hijab my conjure only confusion for Americans.  Head scarf or veil (a term which seems to mislead people into thinking hijab covers the face, which it does not) may perk a few more ears but often comes with a vision of women draped in sheets of black.  From a neon pink, to a subdued pattern of blue flowers, to stamped with familiar Prada or Coach logos, the plain black hijab of our western imaginations is rare here.  As with any fashion, it is the youth that lead the way in innovation.  It is not only the pattern of the scarf itself, but how one chooses to tie it.  Some choose to don a lining and then tie the scarf so the the lining, in an complementary color, is showing, creating a layering affect.  Tied with the edge of the scarf falling like a waterfall to the left or right of the head, secured with a colorful broach.  They come built up in the back, creating the illusion that the wearer is covering a massive head of hair, or smoothed down to hug the shape of the head and sometimes, provocatively secured so the smallest wave of bang is visible.

Walking through the souq, the river of delicate scarves is as distracting as the crates of multicolored fruits and veggies.  The sun finally on our faces, warming the tops of our heads we are ready for the seasons to change.  The vendors holler out their deals, men sit in plastic chairs on the sidewalk, drinking coffee or smoking arguila. Occasionally an uncovered mess of hair stands out from the crowd and I resist the urge to pull her aside, to ask if she is foreign like me, like some kind of uncovered club.  We have our reasons for letting our hair play in the spring sun.  We all have our reasons for covering it up.

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."

The Rebar of Hope

A pile of laundry, waiting to be hand washed and strung up on a line to dry, can control the weather.  As soon as that pile of laundry is large enough that you think you might run out of line, or patience, when the time comes to let the sun do it's job, there is a thunderclap and suddenly, rain.  Rain in the desert will only happen when you run out of clean underwear.

We are settling into our new house.  As one might expect, the desert lacks wood, and as such the houses are uniformly constructed of concrete.  It will take a few carpets to soften the edges of this new life, and as we pass through the forty days of unbearable cold, we are finding warm corners.

Construction in Jordan is a symbol of hope.  Hope that a son will be born, and that son will move into the a second story add on.  Hope that one day you will be able to afford to turn your house into an extensive complex for all your sons' families and their families, and the families of those families, until you've created generational strong hold family houses.  The result of all this hope is that most houses have the tail ends of rebar exposed, protruding proudly out of the roof of each house, casting shadows on the one or two piles of building materials that wait, with baited brick breath, to be one day built into a second story for the unborn son and his unborn sons.  Walking down our street, looking at unfinished home after unfinished home, the tension between the rebar, the pile of concrete, and the expectation to produce male progeny is palpable.

We live in the bottom floor of a three family home.  The second floor is divided between our landlord's sister's family, and our landlord's cousin's family.  Our house has a formal living room and sunroom, which we have shut and forgotten about until more furnishings come our way, two bedrooms (one of which we will turn into a work out room), a living room, intimidatingly large kitchen, and a bathroom.

Up two flights of stairs to the roof the rebar pokes out of the second floor and stretches to the sky, living silently in a constant state of anticipation.

Deep in the Shita

Here is where I don't comment on our two month hiatus.  Here's where I fail to mention that for the last two months we've been living in a village and learning Arabic, where I refuse to tell you how wonderful and inviting our host family has been and where I do not talk about my new Jordanian father being an Arabic speaking version of my real father.

You are now skipping four episodes and tuning into the new season.

Rumors of snow give way to great swaths of rain and I am reminded that despite thousands of miles, we've only switched deserts.  The Jordanian family-a term which extends three or four degrees further than it's English counterpart-gathers around stoves burning gas, or kerosene, or the byproduct of this season's olive harvest for warmth.  It is no coincidence that our first babblings in Arabic include invaluable winter commands to children such as, "SHUT THE DOOR", "BRING ME THE HEATER", and "MAKE SOME TEA."  Tea pots bubble over with cinnamon bark and water and the smell is a displaced Christmas.

We've landed very close to where we began.  We live about 15 minutes away from the village that we have been staying in for the last two months.  That puts us about 45 minutes from Amman and about 5 minutes from the Syrian border.  The US Government suggests I do not disclose our actual location which seems like fair advice.

How has the conflict in Syria affected our lives here?  Our need to furnish our giant home has bulged over the belt of our Peace Corps settling in allowance like so much unflattering muffin-top and thus we were on the lookout for a small, cheap, refrigerator.  We stopped and spoke to a used appliance salesman who's accent betrayed him as Iraqi.  "The Syrians have bought up all the small refrigerators."  That is all so far.

We are making friends, which is an important and sometimes doozy of a step.  On Thursday, our friend who spent a few weeks in Texas about a decade ago, took us to a party in Amman.  The party was gender segregated, as parties often are, and provided a mind altering combination of traditional Bedouin garb and Fendi hobo purses.  The women around me did not wear hijab and peppered their conversation with English, pronounced in Californian accents so precise they could have been extras on Laguna Beach.  Gun shots rang out in celebration, as is the custom, as Rick shmoozed with pharmaceutical reps and members of Parliament.  We were never able to determine the cause for such expensive diversion (complete with the best kanafa in Jordan), but discussion centered around the brother of a pharmaceutical distribution company's CEO being acquitted on fraud charges.

Leaving our social life up to the mood of fate.  Watch to see what happens next.

Trail blazing.

We went west out to San Francisco for the last American adventure.  When pioneers cut these trails in search of precious metals precious hope they knew they had reached the end of the line.  The point where the land meets the ocean, spouting plumes of fog over the hills marked the end of the discoveries of the New World and the beginning of what would truly become and American dream.

Visitors from the far ends of the world come with an unquenchable thirst to rent Mustang convertibles and cruise down the 101, in the hope that one cool breeze, or minute of the sun on their shoulders will create precisely the same feeling that pushed countless artists to create their California opuses.  We chase their dreams to understand more authentically.

In our cherry red Cadillac we are retracing trails well worn.  Down the coast to Monterrey and back into the chilled fog filled bowl of the Haight.  I can't imagine that much has changed in this place since the last revolution.

Making History.

We spent three weeks in Oklahoma, thinking that it would be more than enough.  We reminisced fondly over our wasted Oklahoma youths, debating the benefits of an adolescence with little distraction and never ending fields.  Those who have found their homes there have searched and nestled into happy lives and I feel privileged to peer into their successes.

The plains roll out in golden rod and wheat and I am thinking about my grandmother.  She was barely a teenager when she went to work as a dance instructor in the City.  The hand made cardboard inserts allowed her to put off buying new dance shoes until even they were worn through.  I imagine her walking, ignoring the pavement encroaching into her mules, to the job that never landed her fame, but did land her a young soldier named Earl.

Three weeks passed too quickly and I wonder if there is never enough time to exist in the past.

The Burning.

Central Texas is a tinderbox.  Driving up the I-35 corridor as the state burns around us it feels more like we are evacuating than going on a planned trip to Oklahoma.  There is a dark haze from Austin to Dallas that tricks us into expecting rain, though there is no hope for moisture.  It's  all very post apocolyptic.

I joke about our "homelessness" and our "unemployment" but am coming to consider that those descriptors are a touch too dark.  We have a destination and a plan to get there, complete with a pillow of savings and blanket of kindness.  The counterparts of our generation are not so lucky.  Either in the midst of the helplessness of job hunting, or hanging on to jobs that seem, at the end of the day, only a way to get the student loans paid, the recession has revealed itself to be a beast that no vorpal sword can slay.

It is the burnt earth around us and the smell of hundreds of homes falling to ruin that make me reconsider my vocabulary.  There is no roller coster of potental future and dashed dreams and time is not running out.  We are without perminant residence or income, but we are not homeless or unemployed.  We are between adventures.

How to Live

As a child my father would take my older brother and I butterfly hunting.  Like tiny Victorian biologists we would  trek out into our backyard jungles, our vacation plains, our temporary mountains and hunt for a new variety to mount and preserve in our collections.  My brother was a master in collection and identification-his ability to interpret swirls of powdery pigment, to translate wing size and thorax into the words of species and variety were unrivaled among 10 year old lepidopterologists.

In grade school, we collected caterpillars.  With first grade fingers both cautious and destructive, the caterpillars were lowered into glass terrariums to be observed.  Overnight the caterpillars disappeared into their leafy cocoons and then...nothing.  School yard days dragged on in a way that would be recalled a decade later, waiting for college entrance letters to arrive.  The cocoons did not move.  They did not wriggle like worms or crawl like bugs or fly like rose petals on the wind. They were ugly, dry and still.  Then, a twitch, and a crack like falling trees that thundered through the microcosm of the terrarium.  We children did not notice.  We had abandoned the cocoons weeks ago in favor of a donated turtle and a blood feud on the four square court.  The cocoons ripped down their natural seems and the butterflies gnashed and fought their way into existence.

Alarmed, the butterflies flew to the upper most corner of their glass universe and clung to the side, trembling with the fear of the unknown and giddy with possibility of flight.  They looked down at their abandoned cocoons, heaped on the terrarium floor, worthless and in pieces and wondered briefly why they ever needed those silly things.  They looked out and saw the huge fleshy faces of our first grade class, suddenly interested again in their progress.  They reached out their antennae to grasp on to each other in butterfly celebration.

"Tom?"
"Yes, Suzanne?"
"Can we fly?"
"I think so."
"Well, this just got interesting."

tl;dr  We moved all of our things, save the necessities into my parents garage.  With the exception of our cars (anyone want to buy the big, red, Jeep?) we have cast off most of our worldly possessions.  Feels good, man. 

The Devil envies Texas.

This coming Tuesday will be a momentous occasion.  On, Tuesday, August 23rd, Austin will break it's record for consecutive days over 100 degrees.  The temperature is too damned high.

The last few days I have not been working-my last day at the Rides was quiet and reflective-but instead I've been trying to pack our lives up into categories, sections of time, seasons.  It is difficult, for instance, to predict what we will need for the dog days of Summer in Oklahoma, then the beginning of Fall in eternally chilly San Francisco, and finally two years of service in Jordan.  Not to mention that from Oklahoma to California and back to Austin we will be flying, and want to avoid checked baggage costs and that the Peace Corps limits our checked baggage to two bags each, weighing a total of 80lbs with each bag not to exceed 50lbs.  It can make one's head swim.

And it is hot.  The kind of heat that conjures images of scorching deserts with weathered soldiers of fortune finally succumbing to heat stroke after weeks of searching for an oasis-and that was only walking to the car to pack in one more load of donations for Goodwill.

I'm no stranger to heat, the thought of winter is much more foreign.  The forecasts from Amman read like a brisk Austin Spring-90, 91, 93-and I think "I can do that."  I walk my poor dog across sizzling concrete from which his princess paws may never recover, amused once again that the first thing to break out into a sweat is always my knees and think, "Jordanian Summer can't be as bad as Austin, I can totally do that," and then I pause, looking down at my exposed, sweaty knees, under the fringe of cut off jeans.  I am between my air conditioned car and my air conditioned home, a place of business for my large refrigerator with automatic ice maker and closet full of sundresses.  Can I survive this heat with no hope of recirculated air?  Will I be so good natured when I am covered from wrist to ankle to chin, praying for a moment of privacy to reveal my flushed skin to the breezes of Wadi Rum?

"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air." Azrael, Dogma


Annie

Peacing Out

This is far too early.  We are selling our bits and pieces of furniture, going through our clothes to see what is really needed, paring down our life slowly to a few 50 lb bags.  We are wrapping up old projects and trying in vain to not start anything new.  We've looked at written Arabic, our eyes wide with a mix of novelty and terror, only to back slowly away from the text book as if it were a camel, majestic, ancient and prepared to spit in our eyes.

We leave for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as Peace Corps Volunteers on October 21st.  Between now and then is months of goodbyes.  First, on August 15th, I will say goodbye to my job at the Hill Country Ride for AIDS and the Texas Mamma Jamma Ride.  Then on September 3rd, Rick will say farewell to the American Cancer Society.  From September 5th until October 5th, we will be playing in Oklahoma, first to say goodbye to the Dooleys in Tulsa, and then to all our friends in Oklahoma City.  Then it's off to San Francisco to play with the boys and girls and then back to Austin for the hardest goodbye of them all, ending in a flight to Philadelphia on October 21st.

We are Peacing Out, folks.  It's feels early, but it's time to get started.