Weather, Protests, Abayas & the Hijab

I often don’t recognize Jordan as it’s portrayed in the headlines. The next country to fall in the wave of Arab Spring, one journalist predicted last year, reporting from several nations away. I’ve seen Amman’s protests firsthand as men spill out from Friday’s weekly gatherings at the downtown mosque. How they work their way through the oldest parts of the city. I’ve seen their signs. I’ve heard them chant. I’ve sat in traffic (an act, I’m told, that’s ill-advised) between the shops and street vendors hard at work selling couches, shawls, pistachios, pots, and shoes, as the crowds populated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood press by shouting their terms for reform.

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Jordan is slightly smaller than Indiana. It shares its longest border with Israel and the occupied West Bank. The median age of its citizens is 22.

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I’ve seen masses of people—women, men, and children—at the national park, waving flags in support of the king. I’ve seen them dancing and laughing and playing instruments. Singing and chanting, spilling into traffic circles. Theirs is the counterpart to the downtown protests. I’ve found little coverage of such demonstrations in newspapers or Internet reports.

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Less than 0.1% of the population has AIDS or HIV. Jordan’s is a mixed legal system of civil and Islamic religious law. Its economy is one of the smallest in the Middle East.

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I’ve read news articles describing beatings by the police. Seen photos of the same men shot from different angles, reproduced on various online sites, and identified as different victims. I’ve heard rumors that it was a heart-attack that killed one protester and not an assault by a member of the gendarmerie. I’ve listened to locals in coffee shops accuse the other’s political party of corruption and wrongdoing. I’ve heard women from Lebanon express their condolences for the children of Syria and wonder aloud whether Beirut is next. I’ve heard mothers outline their contingency plans for exiting the country in the event that tensions finally boil over between Israel and Iran.

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There is a water shortage. No oil. Gas prices are similar to those in the States.

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I’ve been asked little about the size and spirit of this place, whether you can see the neighboring countries of Syria, Saudi, and Iraq from certain hilltops; whether from the Red Sea’s shoreline, you can make out Egypt’s beach-side resorts.

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The country has 18 airfields, two of which have unpaved runways.

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I’ve been asked about television programming (Can you get Mad Men? Modern Family?), but nothing about the nation’s natural resources. I’ve been questioned about whether I’m required to wear a burka, but not how Jordan’s Muslim women feel about whether or not to wear the niqab, abaya, or hijab.

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People have cell phones. The Internet connection is slow.

The Dead Sea is disappearing.

It sometimes snows.