Dog Days

I don't really know what the phrase "Dog Days of Summer" is supposed to mean, but whatever it means, I think we're in it. Although the website we check for the forecast is always several degrees lower than the temperatures given in the newspapers here, beginning August 17, for example, the recorded highs in Fahrenheit on it have been 95, 99, 99, 95, 88, 88, 90, 88, 93, 99, 97, 100 and 97. In Celsius, that's 35, 37, 37, 35, 31, 31, 32, 31, 34, 37, 36, 38 and 36. Today it's supposed to be 94/34. Next week the forecast calls for highs in Fahrenheit of 93, 93, 95, 101, 101, and 99. Or, in Celsius, 33, 33, 35, 38, 38, 37 and 36. What I'm trying to say is, August has been hot.

It's been tough for the cat too.

Some Days Are Like This

A few days ago we were walking not far from our apartment when an empty Coke can landed on the street behind us, having been flung from the rooftop of the building at our side. Several months earlier a rock thrown from the same rooftop had also just missed us, so I shot into the building and ran full speed up the stairs, ready to catch the perpetrators before they could flee to the safety their homes. When I arrived at the top I could hear several voices behind the door to the roof, fumbling for keys and excitedly whispering, "hurry, hurry, hurry!" I thought they were on their way out, so I didn't open the door. Instead, though, they locked the door to prevent me from coming onto the roof. So, silently, I waited.

After just a couple minutes, the keys grew active again, the lock clicked, and I readied myself just inches from the door--for full theatrical effect--to startle whoever was behind it when they came out. And when they did come out, they were indeed startled. However, I was startled too, for walking through the door with a young boy and young girl was a woman wearing shorts and a t-shirt--an outfit she would never wear on the street--who appeared to be their mother. "Don't come in! Don't come in!" she said, jumping back behind the door. She may have been a little frightened at seeing a strange man standing there, especially considering the state of her somewhat scandalous attire in front of a man she didn't know.

"I don't want to come in," I said, "but I want to know why a Coke can just came from this roof and nearly hit us on the street" (I couldn't remember the word for "throw"). She played dumb at first, insisting she had no idea what I was talking about. Then, after I persisted, she said that yes, the can had originated from the rooftop, but it was an accident that it had almost hit us. I brought up that this was the second time something originating from that roof had landed near us on the street, with the first projectile being a rock. "Really?" she said, looking surprised while glancing at her son. "Yes, really," I replied. "I wouldn't be so upset if this wasn't now the second time."

She eventually left the safety of the roof and with her children we began walking down the stairs. She apologized for the flying Coke can. She also said such an incident wouldn't happen again. Both apology and promise, though, came without any admittance of guilt on the part of any of the rooftop pranksters. I wasn't entirely satisfied with this, but I decided it was all I was going to get, so I left.

A couple hours later we were at home waiting for a new mattress to be delivered. We had agreed on a price beforehand and paid half at the shop, so when it came we just had to pay the other half, plus the 5 dinar delivery fee we had also agreed on. Things are never this easy here, though, and when it came and it was time to pay the rest, the delivery charge had suddenly jumped to 20. Now, relatively speaking an extra 15 dinars is not a huge sum of money, but a prior accord had been reached, so 5dinars is what I was going to pay.

"I'm not going to pay 20," I said. "We made an agreement."
"But I came from far away," said the driver, who was probably in his late teens or early 20's and was not present when the deal was made.

We continued with these basic arguments for some time in broken record fashion until the driver asked to call Ali, the man at the shop with whom we had made the aforementioned agreement. So, I called Ali's cell phone. No answer. I called it again. No answer. The driver then called the office land line. No answer. He tried it again. No answer. I tried Ali's cell several more times, with still no answer. The driver called the office several more times, until finally someone answered. He gave the phone to me. Ali was not there, though; he had gone home for the day. And after I started explaining the issue to the person who was there, I mysteriously lost the connection. When I called back, there was no answer. Another try, and no answer. It appeared the office would be no help in sorting out the issue.

After some seconds of confusion, the driver and I shared our main arguments a few more times. Then, after several awkward seconds of silence, I finally decided it was over. We had an agreement, and five dinars was all he was getting. I felt bad, since he was not involved in the original bargaining process and could very well have sincerely been expecting 20. This is difficult to gauge, though. It isn't always easy here to tell who is being a cheat and who isn't, so I went with what I had expected from the beginning. Begrudgingly, the driver took his 5 dinars and left.

A few hours after this I left the house to run an errand. By the time I finished it was late in the evening, and I went to a busy section of road to wait for a taxi to take me home. When I got one, though, the driver didn't turn on his meter, even though it is against the law not to. This is not unusual, and many times when this happens I tell the driver politely not to "forget" abut the meter. Sometimes they turn it on, sometimes they don't, sometimes they claim it is broken. This time, though, I let it go, since I travelled the route often and knew basically what the fare would be.

Unfortunately, when we reached our destination and I asked the driver how much he wanted, the price he quoted was at least twice what it would have read on the meter. So, a confrontation ensued yet again. The distance was short, I said, and I wasn't going to pay so much. "And why didn't you turn on your meter?" I asked. He argued back, angry that I was refusing to pay his price and telling me why I should. These arguments can go on for a while, but at this point in the day, after the previous events that had occurred, I was tired. So, I just put the money I owed--the real price, not the fake--on the passenger seat and walked away, not saying another word. Some days are like this here, but on this day, I had had enough.

The View from Our Apartment

Every time we look out the front windows of our apartment our eyes are inevitably drawn to this garbage bin, which sits directly in front of our building. Often it is overrun with wild cats, occasionally it is the source of stale smelling black smoke when a certain neighbor boy sets fire to its contents and almost always it is overflowing with trash. One time I even witnessed our next door neighbor fling a bag of trash from his third floor balcony in the direction of the bin in lieu of actually walking down and placing the trash in the bin. He missed.

On this particular day, however, it seemed to be overflowing with more trash than usual, so I took a picture. It was water day in our neighborhood, so probably while everyone was busy sweeping and mopping their apartments, they were also throwing out a lot of accumulated trash, not all of which made it into the bin. If you look closely, in and around the bin you can see at least three of the aforementioned cats, an old chair, a pile of brush and a stream of water which is either run-off from someones cleaning or unfortunate overflow from the tanks on our roofs. Enjoy the view.

Why Not Non-Violence?

Several posts ago I described discussing at a conference I attended in Lebanon how dispossession was the root cause of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and not Islam, as others may think. I also mentioned in that post my general support for the Palestinian cause. As I alluded to, though, I have serious problems with the way Palestinians fight for their cause, which was discussed at this same conference in sessions about peacemaking.

During the conference there were two joint sessions with representatives from the Muslim community in Beirut, and both times the question of peacemaking in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was raised. I went straight to the point in the first session, asking one of the Muslim representatives this question: "Why has there been no large scale movement of non-violence in the Palestinian community against Israel, such as the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Gandhi in India? I believe such a movement would bring Palestinians the desired results more quickly." My question was serious and sincere, and in the absence of a serious movement of non-violence in the 60 years of bloodletting since the creation of the state of Israel, I really hoped for some thoughtful reflections on this topic. Who knows, maybe there were perfectly good reasons for the lack of such a movement. The answer I received, though, disappointed me, as the gist of the response was this: Israel has attacked the Palestinians, so the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. That was it. End of story, next question. No reflective consideration as to the merits or effectiveness of non-violence was given. Just a brush off.

The second joint session was held a few days later at an Islamic center in a Shi'ite neighborhood that was heavily bombed by Israel in their 2006 war with Hezbollah. The imam of the center discussed Palestinian resistance to Israel, but his consideration of non-violence was also disappointing, as it basically mirrored that of the previous session: Israel has attacked the Palestinians, so the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. He even compared the use of violence on an enemy to the use of chemotherapy on cancer. Although both chemotherapy and violence cause all sorts of unwanted, undesirable side-affects, he said, they can also bring about positive results.

Now, I wasn't necessarily expecting any of the representatives there to side with non-violence and/or call on Palestinians to begin a non-violent movement. I'm also not saying their responses--basic statements on the right to self-defense--were anything out of the ordinary, or different from what most people in this world would have said or believe. After all, pacifists or adherents of non-violence are a minority in this world, and more than likely you are not one of their number.

As I said, though, their responses were still extremely disappointing to me. However, they were disappointing not so much because I didn't like or agree with them, but more so because so little thought went into them. I believe there is a place for non-violence, but in each case the question of non-violence was swiftly whisked aside and instead violence was defended, without even the tiniest reflection as to whether non-violence had any merit at all, or whether the more acceptable violent tactics were even working to better the lives of Palestinians or helping them to reach their goals. I mean, as I alluded to in my question from the first session, non-violent tactics worked for Gandhi against the British and for Martin Luther King, Jr. against the American government. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have been fighting the State of Israel with bombs and guns now for 60 years and their situation has only gotten worse. Again, I believe the cause is just, but how long will it be before new methods are used to fight for this cause, and how long will it be before non-violence gets a serious look, and not just reflexive rejections?

Taste the Reconciliation

Just before we went to Lebanon at the end of June about 18 months of struggle between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government--followed by a couple weeks of violent fighting in the streets of Beirut--ended. What brought an end to this struggle were talks initiated by Prince Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani of Qatar, which were held in the capital of Qatar, Doha. The work of Qatar and the prince to help bring an end to the deadlock was not lost on the Lebanese people, and we saw signs all around Beirut thanking them for their involvement. Below are two of them.

This one says, "We all say thank you Qatar."

Even Haagen-Dazs got in on the act with a new marketing campaign, offering the "Doha Agreement Cone." It was tempting, if only to have the opportunity to say "I'll have the Doha Agreement Cone please," but we just took the picture instead. Tasting the reconciliation required spending more money than we were willing for ice cream.

Shooting in Amman

Six people were injured in a shooting outside the Roman Amphitheater in downtown Amman after a concert there last week. Their injuries were thankfully not severe, and according to the Jordan Times they have basically recovered. The gunman, however, shot and killed himself while being chased by police. According to Reuters, the gunman--identified by Jordanian authorities as a resident of a Palestinian refugee camp just north of Amman--apparently thought his victims were Israelis. Only one was Israeli, though--Israeli Arab--and four were Lebanese members of a choir that had just performed at the amphitheater. The sixth was a Jordanian bus driver.

This is the third incident against foreigners--or people thought to be foreigners--that I am aware of that has taken place since we moved here in 2006. In September 2006 a British tourist was killed and six others injured in another shooting outside the amphitheater, and in March of this year a German tourist was stabbed in an area downtown not far from the amphitheater. According to the authorities, all three incidents were the work of lone perpetrators.

Although I wanted to post something about this latest incident, I was hesitant to do so, lest it contribute to the general perception I think some people have at home that the entire Middle East is a swirling cauldron of violence in which Westerners are apt to be shot or kidnapped at any moment. We have had a lot of visitors since we've been here, and most of them have told us stories about co-workers, friends and/or family members who thought they were crazy for wanting to come here. I also didn't want to sound like an alarmist (Look what's happening in Jordan!). However, these three incidents do represent something of a pattern--albeit over a long period of time. Also, since they involve the targeting of foreigners--or in this case people assumed to be foreigners--they are particularly newsworthy to me, a foreigner.

That being said, though--the closest I have come to being involved in this type of an incident still is from when we lived in Minneapolis. One night several years ago I was sitting on a friends' large front porch near our apartment doing some homework when I heard gunfire so loud it seemed to almost come from within the house. Without thinking, I bolted inside and ducked behind the door. Soon after, as police cars and ambulances converged on the area, I discovered that my ears were not lying: a man sitting in his back porch in the house directly across the alley behind the house where I was had been shot. The man's death was one of 47 homicides in Minneapolis that year.

So, although war rages on in Iraq, Israelis and Palestinians continue to fight, another burst of trouble just ended in Lebanon and Jordan may or may not--only time will tell, really--have some sporadic issues to deal with regarding violence against foreigners, we've got some problems in Minneapolis too.

Lebanon: Outside Beirut

Here are some pictures of our travels outside of Beirut.

Jounieh, north of Beirut.

The small port of Byblos, about 45 minutes north of Beirut, where we saw...

pomegranate trees...

backgammon played in the market area by some small Roman ruins...

beautiful gardens...

flowers...

and churches.

A stream south of Beirut.

The city of Sidon, about 25 minutes south of Beirut, where we saw...

the old souq, or market...

a jumble of wires...

and watermelons overflowing.

Lebanon: Beirut

Yesterday we returned home to Jordan after spending about one month in Beirut. We really enjoyed enjoyed our time in another Middle Eastern capital, and came away with two big impressions of the city.

For one, from both the 23rd floor of the apartment where we were staying and from street level too, the buildings of Beirut shows the scars of violence and civil war it has suffered over the last several decades. After a 15 year civil war that ended in 1990, heavy bombardment by Israel in 2006, and sporadic bouts of unrest and fighting between and since--including skirmishes downtown and in other areas just before we arrived--the city probably has not been able to revamp its infrastructure and keep up with general maintenance the way other cities can. For example, many buildings are still pocked with bullet holes from the civil war, with occasional severely damaged buildings still holding residents in the units that are still somewhat liveable. Although much of the damage has been cleaned up, the 2006 bombing campaign of Israel left empty lots where buildings once stood, the result of vacuum bombs that--after impact--created a hole in the ground and then sucked their target down into it. Also, the paint or stucco of many buildings is peeling or falling off, leaving the brick underneath exposed. Combined with the pollution that had turned many of the buildings a dirty black or grey, parts of the city just looked in need of a 2008 makeover.

One shouldn't have the impression that the whole city was like this, though. A lot of work has been done and is being done in the city, and many new buildings have been erected and others have been restored. We are just not used to seeing bullet riddled buildings and the like, so such images tend to stay with us.

Also, Beirut is also a much more liberal city than Amman, or perhaps it is better to say it is much less conservative. It was rare to see a woman wearing the hijab, and many women were wearing the same kinds of outfits one might see women wearing on hot summer days in Minneapolis. Matt wore shorts every day--men rarely wear shorts in Jordan--and Annamarie wore tank tops and skirts. Also, it was common to see men and women hanging out together, which--as we wrote in a previous post--does not happen much here. To us, this liberalism gave the city a more relaxed feel, and because the atmosphere was so different from Amman, gave our time a vacation-like feel. Here are some pictures.

Looking out from the 23rd floor.

From the boardwalk.

Translation: America is the head of terrorism.

The former Holiday Inn, used as a sniper position in the civil war.

Construction near the waterfront.

A restored building.

Restored area of downtown.

In the neighborhood where we stayed.

A mosque.

The Root of the Problem

Last week I attended a conference at a seminary in Beirut—we’re still here in Lebanon now—in which three subjects were covered: Islamic Law, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Christian Peacemaking. I left with many things to think about, and I’m not sure exactly what I would say had me thinking the most or left the biggest impression on me. One statement on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, though, made by one of the speakers—an Anglican minister who had spent many years in the region and who had written several books on the conflict—struck me as important to remember. “The root of the problem,” he said, “is not Islam, but dispossession.”

This is an important point to remember, especially considering the images we see and the news we hear in the United States. When it comes to this conflict and story, we hear on the news about suicide bombings and rockets attacks on Israeli civilian areas, and we hear about Hamas, the Islamic group that governs the Gaza Strip that the U.S. government classifies as a terrorist organization. To a U.S. audience, these are frightening, foreign things to hear about, and as such they can overwhelm all other considerations when contemplating this issue. An American watching the news and seeing images of cafes and discos blown to pieces and civilians heading to bomb shelters—because of suicide bombs attached to or rockets launched by Muslims—probably thinks, “Wow, Islam is a menace, it is the cause of this problem, and they will never give the Israelis peace.” Or something like that.

However, despite all this it is important to remember that the root of the problem is not Islam, but dispossession. I basically already believed this, but have never quite heard the issue articulated so succinctly. Very simply, there is a problem today because Arab Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—lost their homes. There is no problem without dispossession.

As I learned at the conference, 130 years ago the inhabitants of the land that is now the state of Israel were almost entirely Arabs. In the 1880s, Palestinians made up 95 percent of the population, with Jews at 5 percent. By around 1920, due to immigration from anti-Semitic Europe, Jews had become about 10 percent of the population, and by 1947, 31 percent. Palestinians probably weren’t losing their homes yet at that stage, but at the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, they started to. In the months before, during and after the subsequent war between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, around 750,000 Palestinians left, fled or were forced out of their homes. Dispossession. This flight continued as the years went by, and accelerated again in 1967 with another war between Israel and its neighbors. Today, the population of Israel is 80 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab. Recently I read there are also today around 5.5 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world. Dispossession.

Several million of those Palestinians now live in Jordan, so I also know this from experience: I have a friend—a barber whose salon is around the corner from us—whose father’s family was forcibly removed in 1948 from their home in Safed, in the Galilee region of Israel. Nothing is left of the Arab village that once was there. The family of one of my Arabic teachers in Amman was forced out of their home in Jaffa, just south of Tel-Aviv, in 1948. They assume a Jewish family lives there now, and is also taking advantage of the fields of orange and lemon trees they once cultivated. Another friend—an old man who owns a tiny shop near us—remembers fleeing his home in Jerusalem amidst the chaos of bombs and explosions. I’ve met people who fled their homes in what is now Israel in 1948 and escaped to what is now called the West Bank, only to flee again in 1967. I know of people who still have the keys to the homes they left and lost. Dispossession.

I have problems with how Palestinians in general and Palestinians influenced by Islam in particular have gone about fighting for their land, and certainly the Arab states around Israel are no angels. This is a topic for another time. But this whole history of Palestinians being forced from their homes—indirectly out of fear or directly by Israeli forces—is why I think, and why we in the United States need to remember, that the root of this bloody, seemingly never-ending conflict in which both sides are constantly violently reacting to the other, is not Islam. It is dispossession. Dispossession.

Sites of Jordan II: Wadi Rum

After over two years of living in Jordan, last week we finally visited one of the most famous places in the country--the desert of Wadi Rum. As soon as we entered it, I wondered why it took that long.

Located in the very south of Jordan, Wadi Rum is a unique desert wilderness of about 420 square miles. Wadi means "valley" in Arabic, and the wide and flat desert of fine, red sand is surrounded on each side by tall, mountainous outcrops, many shooting straight up to the sky. There are also many places where the wind has created large sand dunes that rest like giant waves, frozen against these rocky walls. Amazingly, until recently the desert was home to seven nomadic tribes--Bedouins--who lived off of and roamed the area with their goat herds, living in huge tents made of goat hair. There is even a phrase in Arabic for this type of tent--beit shar--which literally means house of hair.

We drove out in a jeep and spent the night with a local guide who said there were about 20 families who still lived in the desert. He was 28 years old, and said his family came in from the desert to live in the small village of about 1000 people on the western edge when he was 20. He said he didn't like the village as much as the desert, though. Too noisy. Click on this link to find out more about Wadi Rum. It's difficult to describe how truly beautiful and different it is, so here are some pictures of our trip.

From the bottom of a sand dune, and the next two are from the top.

Carvings of camels, said to be about 3,000 years old.



Some Saudi Arabian friends and relatives of our guide arriving to spend the night at our campsite.

They eventually brought out the biggest argileh we had ever seen.

What Happens When Genders Mix

Last month we posted a story about gender mixing in Jordan. However, a few days ago an article in the Jordan Times that shows what happens sometimes when the genders do mix--women get harassed--caught my attention. In this case, it seems that in Jordan there is an epidemic of assaults on female nurses, with 86 reported assaults since the middle of 2007 and 6 last weekend alone. What's more--according to the article--the government seems ambivalent enough about the problem that the Jordan Nurses and Midwives Association is suing the Ministry of Health for their alleged unwillingness to deal with the problem.

Obviously Jordan is not the only country where women are harassed and assaulted. Sadly, that is not unusual in the world. However, I did produce an audible exclamation of shock to myself when I read about this problem. Anyway, I didn't want to say too much really; I just wanted to set up the article and link to it. Here it is. Read it.

Rachel Ray: Terrorist Sympathizer?

A few days ago I heard some rumblings about Food Network star Rachel Ray causing some controversy for sporting a black and white Palestinian head-dress--called a kaffiyeh--in an online advertisement for Dunkin' Donuts that began running at the beginning of May. So, as I do, I went online and looked it up.

I discovered that several weeks after the ad first ran, she and Dunkin' Donuts were heavily criticized in a conservative blog called Little Green Footballs for using the kaffiyeh, saying the ad was "casually promot[ing] the symbol of Palestinian terrorism." Also, conservative blogger and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin condemned Ray in her blog for donning "a jihadi chic kaffiyeh." According to this article from The New York Times, a firestorm then erupted online--I saw hundreds of references to the ad in just a few minutes of searching--and finally Dunkin Donuts pulled the ad on May 7. Another article on the controversy can be found here on the website of MSNBC.

I spent some time on the Little Green Footballs blog and sifted through a couple hundred of the mostly very angry 493 comments that people left in response to the kaffiyeh controversy. I was surprised by the sheer passion that the respondents had for the issue. They were were quite serious in their disgust, many taking the opportunity to blame the nebulous "left-wing" for the appearance of the kaffiyeh and calling for boycotts of Dunkin' Donuts and discussing writing letters to the company too. Some even sincerely debated whether Ray knew about the symbology of the kaffiyeh or if she was just "clueless" or ignorant" and wore it because it looked nice. Someone even casually wondered if perhaps Ray was "of Muslim heritage." I did not share their passion, though, and to me, it seemed that such anger over a wardrobe accessory meant that these people were just waiting to get mad about something. So they did.

One of many reasons I don't share their passion is that I have a much different view about the meaning of kaffiyehs. Here, I see them almost every day, and mostly on the heads of old men who used to live in Jerusalem or Jaffa or some other city or village in what is now Israel. The kaffiyeh is just their traditional head-dress, and nothing more. It doesn't mean terrorism just because some people or groups who commit acts of terror also happen to wear it too. That's like calling, for instance, the cowboy hat the "symbol of bank robbery" just because Jesse James used to wear a cowboy hat when robbing banks.

Of course, the simplest reason I don't share their passion on this issue is this: what Rachel Ray is wearing in that ad is NOT a kaffiyeh. This was clearly evident to me not after careful scrutiny or meticulous examination of the above picture, but literally after looking at it for a half second. Yes, what she is wearing around her neck is indeed black and white--the traditional colors of the Palestinian kaffiyeh--and there are tassels on the edges. However, the design of what she is wearing--the arrangement of the black and white colors--is not the same as the design of a traditional kaffiyeh. No kaffiyeh looks like this, or would ever look like this. Instead, a traditional kaffiyeh--as worn here by the deceased Yasser Arafat--looks like this.


Yes, there is a certain similarity between what Ray is wearing around her neck and what Arafat is wearing on his head. Both items are scarf-like, and as mentioned above both are black and white. However, all black and white scarves are not kaffiyehs, and what Ray is wearing is not a kaffiyeh. It's unfortunate that so many people got so bothered and that so much angst was spent and wasted over Rachel Ray's scarf. Just a little research and open mindedness would have shown that there was no reason to be so irate, but unfortunately--and ironically--so many people chose to remain "clueless" and "ignorant", and thus they became upset.

Gender Mixing

Recently the two of us spent some time in the company of a Jordanian man and woman who were not related to each other in any way. This may sound unremarkable to you, but as far as I can remember, this was just the second time in our two years here that we have spent time in a mixed gender social setting in which the mixed genders present were not related. This is indicative of the segregated nature of Jordanian society. Men and women don't mix much, and when they do, often times they are related.

It is this segregation of the sexes that creates vexing problems for me sometimes. For instance, even after two years in our apartment building, I still would not recognize two out of the three Jordanian women who live here if I ran into them on the street. I've had conversations with them, but only through the closed doors of their apartments when I've come to ask a question of their husbands. Hence, I have no idea what they look like.

A further issue occurs when I see women on our street that I have seen outside before and know live nearby. My instinct is to be friendly, to say a simple hello, perhaps engage in small talk, and move on. This is what I would do at home, and perhaps after a time we would move on from small talk to something more meaningful. Here, though, such friendliness would be considered somewhat forward, and who knows who might be looking down on me from their upstairs window? As a result, if I happen to cross paths with a women, usually I just put my head down and keep walking. This even troubles me, though, when I come across women I do know. Recently I happened to be at the falafal shop nearby when a women from church came in. I talk to her at church, and she has been to our home more than once. However, because of the stigma that surrounds gender mixing here, I was unsure of how to acknowledge her presence. I wanted to greet her, but I didn't want to appear too friendly in front of all the guys at the falafal shop. So, we did speak for a minute, but it was an awkward conversation during which I wondered the whole time what everyone else was thinking.

Of course men and women do mix here--there is no 100 percent adherence to any cultural norm--and Jordan is not Saudi Arabia, where gender segregation is so strong that women make up only 5 percent of the workforce. However, since I am a foreigner transplanted into a different culture half-way around the world I do not always know which women I am allowed to talk to, and when and where I can talk to them.

Interestingly, though, when I expressed this frustration to a Jordanian friend of mine, to my great surprise, he said he that he had the same problem! He also did not always know with whom it was appropriate to speak, and when and where it was appropriate. He was born here, raised here and lives here still, but the question of gender mixing--and more simply, of the basic friendly greeting on the street--was still difficult for him. He said if he came across the wife of one of his friends outside, he would feel comfortable greeting them. However, that is about all he felt reasonably comfortable with. Instead, the best thing, he said, was just to wait and see if you are greeted first. So, I am trying to do that. I am waiting, and looking forward to one day putting a face to those voices behind the doors.

Planning

Recently online I came across a couple of interesting items from the past that relate to current events in the Middle East and to current American politics. They also have to do with words matching actions, and with planning.

The first item concerns the rising gas prices, which makes headline news nearly every day now and which often is mentioned in emails we receive from home. Gas is, by the way, still cheaper in the United States than it is here. Anyway, a week or so ago President Bush was in Saudi Arabia to commemorate 75 years of US-Saudi relations, and while there he politely asked the Saudis to increase output in order to facilitate lower prices. The Saudis, however, as you may know, declined his request. You can read about it here.

I found this to be interesting because I happened to discover online the other day that asking the Saudis for a break is exactly what Bush said he would do while on the campaign trail in 2000. If gas got too expensive, he said, he would talk to the Saudis or Kuwaitis "and convince them to open up the spigot." You can read about that here. So, here is an example of a presidential candidate doing exactly what he said he would do, even eight years after his statement was made. Unfortunately, though, it didn't work. So I wonder, was that his plan for dealing with energy related issues from the beginning? And, if so, what's Plan B?

The second item concerns the war in Iraq, and the issue of giving American troops and the American people a timetable for American withdrawal. This is a hot issue because Bush is steadfastly opposed to such a timetable, while many in the Democratic Party support the idea, and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both discussed what their timetables might be if elected. Although I was steadfastly opposed to making war with Iraq--complete with protesting in anti-war marches, peace buttons, a sign in our front yard and plenty of conversations with people about war not being the answer--I haven't totally made up my mind on the merits of a timetable or early withdrawal. After all, it is possible that pulling out early may unleash even more chaos on Iraq if the instability created by the war isn't cleaned up. All that said, though, also as I happened to discover online the other day, then candidate Bush actually supported setting a timetable for American involvement in Kosovo when on the campaign trail in 1999. At that time, during the campaign designed to protect Albanians from being attacked by Serbians in what was then Yugoslavia, he said that it was "important" for then President Bill Clinton "to lay out a timetable as to how long [the troops] will be involved and when they will be withdrawn." You can read about it here.

So, here is an example of a presidential candidate seemingly at odds with a previous statement regarding a similar situation. Yes, it is true that the two wars aren't totally analogous--and people and situations change--but his current rhetoric in which he deplores the very idea of a timetable as "defeatist" language seems out of step with his earlier rhetoric. So, again I wonder about the plans he had from the beginning. Since he seemed to have believed a timetable was appropriate for his predecessor, why was and is it not appropriate for him? What was his plan for leaving Iraq at the start of the war? After five years, are we on Plan B, C? It just seems that whether the early rhetoric of President Bush matched his later actions or not, it appears obvious--as the price of gas continues to rise and the violence rages on in Iraq--that better plans were needed.

Twins

While walking through the old city of Damascus one time we came upon a row of portraits tacked on to an old stone wall near some even older Roman columns, in the square just outside the most famous section of the market. Although the portraits were of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, I couldn't help but think that they bore an uncanny resemblance to a basketball player I grew watching in the 1980s. What do you think?

Bashar al-Assad

His NBA Look-alike

One day in Syria

This week we took a quick trip north up to Syria. After an eight hour wait at the border and catching a new taxi about a half hour later after a collision with a wild dog on the dark night road rendered our original car undriveable, we made it to Damascus and pleasantly found our room at the convent where we were staying to still be reserved for us. Here are a few random pictures of our time.