We Made It Over...

(Again by Ori, but it counts for me, too)
As i find myself typing from an internet cafe in
jerusalem, it is hard to imagine that only this
morning we were moving out of our apartment in amman.

classes finished earlier this week and as our
classmates began to leave for home or more traveling,
we thought that we, too, should make our exit. For me
it was a good excuse to try to see friends in hebron
who i haven't seen in years and for tov it meant that
she would have some help carrying her bags and getting
situated in her new home (which is temporarily in a
hostel in the old city).

it was more diffucult than i had imagined to say
goodbye to amman - our friends at the university,
acquaintences at local haunts, etc. just when we were
mastering the public transportation system and finding
wonderful shops and restaurants off the beaten track
it was time to leave. i am already trying to plan in
my mental calendar of how soon i can return.

what i will miss most are jordanians. people are
always eager to talk to you - to practice their
english or to find out if you are an intellegence
officer (they love conspiracy theories and assume that
any non-arab spending more than a night in amman is a
spy) - it fuels conversations to enjoy over coffee and
argilehs (hubbly bubbly or hookahs). jordanians are
polite in a way i have never experienced - maybe
because i am from boston and generally sheilded from
good will from strangers, but everyone is more than
helpful when it comes to asking for
directions/assistance, to the point where you will
sometimes have to take a minute to drink some coffee
or tea in a store that offered directions or advice
before continuing on to the actual destination. it is
the kind of place where people will offer you whatever
they have without any questions, and people feel
comfortable coming up to you and asking for something
- not for money or anything that resembles begging,
but if you have a water bottle and someone is thirsty,
they will approach you asking for a sip, or to borrow
a pen or read a part of the newspaper.

i think i am also being a little nostalgic after a
traumatic border crossing experience that has left me
very fond of jordan and quite resentful of israel. we
were told that the border crossing process, especially
at the allenby/king hussein bridge than at the 2 other
israel-jordan bridges, is a lengthy process that can
take 7 hours with various security actions. maybe i
should be greatful for it only taking 6 1/2 hours for
us to make it from amman to jerusalem - a distance of
about 80km that should take 1 hour by car. on several
occasions today israelis would take our passports for
'further investigation' - into what i have no idea, as
we submitted our plane tickets, told them that we had
lived in jerusalem before, had friends there, etc. we
were speaking in english since, although we are both
pretty fluent in hebrew, it has been supressed with
arabic grammer and colloquial to the extent that we
were feeling more than rusty switching gears to a new
language. out of frustration, when we would finally
speak in hebrew (because of course we still remembered
how to complain in hebrew), the security workers would
invariably looked shocked and ask if we were jewish.
when we said 'yes' (duh at tova's name) they would get
a look on their face like 'oh shit, we've been
harassing jews for hours instead of speeding them
through the line' and they would apologize and make it
seem like the security searches and unnecessary
scrutiny was more routine and anything other than
unjustifiable harassment from them treating us like
all of the other arabs around us - although you could
see in their faces and actions that they did not look
at us or our bags or ask a single question after
learning the jewish bit. welcome to israel where you
must declare your unique 'birthright' in order to get
treated with any sort of respect or dignity.

after spending about 4 hours experiencing a tiny
amount of what non-jews go through over here, i cannot
wait to get back to amman. maybe its the shania twain
playing in the background of the internet cafe and my
own frustration of being much more comfortable
speaking in arabic than hebrew, but i hope to move on
from west jerusalem as soon as possible. tova will be
working/interning at an NGO based in tantour, a small
village between jerusalem and bethlehem and today we
are beginning the apartment search (beginning with
ducking into a bookstore to find a dictionary for the
hebrew word for apartment - first things first). now
we're set to go although it is weird to think of us
parting ways after 2 months of being so close. i
think we could both use the space, though....

after some food, some caffine, and a shower i will
probably have a much rosier perspective on being back
here, but for now i long for the middle east and not
the bubble of jerusalem that is caught between being
an ancient city and a modern recreation of american
consumerism.

sorry to end on such a low note,

ori