From East of the Bank: People, Anashim, Al-Naas

My last night in Amman I called my mother in the States as I slowly wandered down the main road in the Tla Al’alia region where I live and searched for an empty taxi for the final ride to a friend’s. Amid the bustle of honking horns and blaring radios, I reviewed with her the departure and arrival plans for my approaching day and a half of transatlantic travel when the call to prayer began to resound over the loudspeaker of a nearby mosque. Caught in the intensity of the Muezzin’s sound, my dress whirled with the evening wind as I drifted closer to the local minuet adorned with the common green glow sticks, transfixed by the call that temporarily calmed the consuming noises of the streets. I held the phone out before me so that my mother could better hear the chant publicly repeated five times a day throughout the streets of the Muslim world.

In the taxi that evening, I felt uncommonly content. The melodic voice of the Muezzin still resonated in my mind as the night lights and liveliness of the city passed by my window for the last time. I realized then with certainty that this was a country I could and would return to in the future.

While it is true that my experiences here have been to a degree quite sheltered, as much of my time has been spent with exceptionally supportive SIT teachers and American students (who have themselves offered countless lessons) or in self selecting areas of the city, even in this circle of comfort the prevalence of politics and religion is impossible to avoid. At times I have chosen to remain as an anonymous American, to communicate with another on a level of simple contact without needing to qualify every aspect of my identity. When a cab driver tells me that my name, Miriam, is Arabic, I smile and say that it is a name from all around the world. Other moments I have preferred to simply listen. I will never forget Muhanid, a large, lively Jordanian-Palestinian wearing a Homer Simpson t-shirt who one night at a Western styled bar amiably joined our table and, as the night progressed, passionately told of his disgust with both Fatah and Hamas and of his sole desire to no longer be a refugee.

Other conversations too resonate within me. One evening I arrived home to a house full of relatives of my home-stay mother, Madam Basma. I soon found myself in conversation with her eldest brother, now a civil engineer in Saudi Arabia, and told him, in response to his question, that I was an American Jew and not a Christian. The aging man smiled broadly and lively told me in a mix of English and Arabic that back when he was abroad at University, he was a Communist – and therefore friends with all the Jews. But, he continued leaning in towards me, if I attacked him, he would be obliged to forcibly respond, as he now saw it to be the way with all peoples. When he later learned that I have studied Hebrew, he asked me to recite for him the numbers one through ten, repeating after me the Hebrew words that differed only slightly from his own. His large, pudgy hands grasped mine as he left, reminding me with a sincere look that we are all just people and that he was pleased to have talked politics with me that evening. 

A weekend night I sat in the semi-darkness of the garden of an SIT student’s home-stay house enjoying the carefree, coolness of the city with a mix of Americans and Jordanians. I was asked in English by one of the Jordanians, a twenty-three year old Arab-Christian and past participant of Seeds of Peace, whether I had a ‘Jewish’ or an American passport. I responded that there was no such ‘Jewish’ passport, and that as an American I was entitled to an American passport. Then I tried to clearly articulate my self-identification as an American Jew and what I consider to be my historic and cultural connection to the region of Israel. In response he countered my claim by telling me that in his understanding Jewish sovereignty had never existed in the past and therefore had no legitimacy today. Such a claim he made to me on Tisha B’av, the fast day in commemoration of the destruction of the Temples, the ancient centers of Jewish life and rule.

Another day I spent the afternoon in the Sports City complex in West Amman with an American student from my program, her home-stay brother, and his friend, Laith. It grew late and we decided to walk to the nearby Jabal el-Hussein area for the brother wished to take us to his favorite Shwarma restaurant. We walked two at a time along the edge of a traffic filled street, discussing American and Arab bands and laughing at my mispronunciation of Arabic words. When I requested that we include into our plans a falafel stop, Laith inquired why and I replied that as a Jew it was my family’s tradition to eat only certain meat. I knew that Laith was a Palestinian whose family was originally from Ramallah, and that unlike his half-Palestinian friend he had strong feelings regarding the current State of Israel. Yet he responded respectfully to this news and engaged me in conversation about the beauty of what I know as Jerusalem and he as Kuds. Over fruit juice later that night he told me of his anger over Gaza and the Israeli presence in his land. I told him of my frustration with the direction of the current Israeli governing coalition and of my sincere belief in the necessity of the creation of two states. His boyish features and loose posture sharpened as he called Tzipi Livni a nasty name, but he then returned to his previous calm and told me that I was someone he could not hate. 

Living in Jordan I found myself craving the ‘normalization’ of relations that peace treaties were meant to bring. Yet I was daily reassured in the classroom and streets by the cross cultural, historical, and linguistic connections of these two peoples, lessons which I take as a grateful sign that an acceptable peace can, and will, be reached. I urge those with the available time and resources to take up the study of Hebrew and Arabic and to visit (permissible) regions of the Middle East, to look from beyond the shores of Tel-Aviv and the walls of Jerusalem to the permanent neighbors of a Jewish state. We must accept the existence and rights of Arabs in this region just as in my travels I hope that others can grow to accept me. As Herzel said, “If you will it, it is no dream.”