the food

When Rana, my host sister, asked if I wanted a sandwich, I answered with what I thought was a stunning “la, ana ma joann” (no, I’m not hungry). She brought me one anyway, a demonstration of either the impossible generosity of the Jordanian people or just how terrible my Arabic is.

The thing is, it’s probably the former, and quite frankly it is getting out of control: I have been full since I got to Jordan. Because of this—the undeniable importance of food in Jordanian culture—I think it’s probably important to step back from critical social and cultural analysis and talk about something important: food.

On the first real night on the program, at the Granada Hotel, we twelve Earlhamites ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. Bruce, our program leader, had told us before he left to have a quiet meal of his own at his flat that the owener of the Granada, a friend of his, had prepared a special meal just for us. So at eight p.m. we assembled in the restaurant, Rachel, Kelly, Rhea, Leila, Rossa, Arielle, Bill, Tyler, Simon, Ikram, Eric and I, waiting expectantly like little puppy dogs at the table, panting and drooling a little as the servers filed in and we buckled down for our first real meal in Jordan.

It was beyond description: fresh hummus and baba ganouj and falafel and hot, puffed up pita bread and a salad with tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and the lightest, saltiest feta cheese I have ever tasted. Everything was fantastic; it was the best of everything. We stuffed ourselves, asking for more pita to clean our plates and washing everything down with mint and lemon juice, a Jordanian drink that is addictive. When the server, a tall, skinny man with a perpetually concerned look on his mustached face, came back out to clear our plates, we chimed a chorus of sated gratitude.

“Oh, I’m so glad you enjoyed the appetizers,” he said, looking genuinely relieved, as his team whisked away our plates and replaced them with fresh ones.

Leila said: “You’re joking, right?”

The server gave a little bow. I am almost certain that he has never told a joke in his life.

The second course was chicken and rice with onions and cucumber and yogurt sauce. I barely made it, and keep in mind that I am actually famous for being able to eat my weight in, for example, burritos from La Mexicana. What I’m trying to say is, I am not an amateur when it comes to eating—but Granada hotel had me beat. After the entree came tea and dessert, a flaky pastry wrapped around sweet cheese, at which point Rachel sat back in her chair, rubbed her stomach, looked at her watch and declared: “It’s nine-thirty. We have been eating for an hour and a half.”

Somehow, we dragged our round bellies up three flights of stairs, and all twelve of us collapsed on one bed, in Eric and Ikram’s room. “What do you want to do tonight?” someone asked.

“Sleep,” eleven other voices groaned.

I remember that night as the night that my jet lag was completely cured. Not even a seven-hour time change could fight through that much food to keep me awake.

It’s not just at meals, though. Whether it’s pistachio ice cream on the street, a cup of hot sahlab (milk custard with coconut and cinammon) for 500 fils in the souk, or crunchy Lebanese bread filled with salty, rich cheese, bought on the side of the road and eaten in the sunshine in the center of Duwar Itanyi on Jabel Amman, Jordan is delicious. I plan to continue eating this way for the next three and a half months. I also plan to join a gym pretty promptly.

Oh, and by the way, I ate the sandwich— the one Rana bought me. It was a hot chicken shawarma with pickles and tomatoes—and seeing as, since Rana had already gone to the trouble of the buying it, therefore eating the sandwich basically made me a martyr and thus any accumulated calories would not count (that’s true) I just did it. Surprise: it was the best decision I had made all day.