the Jordanian state of mind

At around five-fifteen p.m., which was my ten a.m., the captain came over the loudspeaker and announced that we were flying over the holy city of Jerusalem. All around the plane there was anxious movement: we were reaching the last twenty minutes of what had been a twelve-hour flight.

When we descended over the West Bank, Ani, my Palestinian seatmate, leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. “You can see the settlements,” he said, and then sat back in his seat so I could look out the window. From the sky the camps were little black boxes littered in the sand, like something someone had carelessly spilled and then forgotten about.

“They’re illegal,” Ani said, “but that doesn’t really mean anything to anyone.”

Then we were over the Dead Sea and our descent had quickened so only a little bit of cloud was between the plane and the windy water, and then the rocky brown landscape stretched out in front of me, and I had my first sight of the Middle East.

When we landed, the flight attendant came on and said, “Welcome to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” and the plane burst into applause, because so many of the people on the plane that had taken me 6000 miles from my home had finally brought them back to theirs.

Nour, whose brother owned the hotel where our program orientation was held, met me outside Queen Alia International Airport with a sign said “Earlham College” and then my name. In the car conversation was sparse, but between my broken Arabic and his little bit of English, we cobbled together a language we could both understand.

“You’re going to Petra?” he asked. “Wadi Rum? the Dead Sea?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I answered. At this point I was so manically excited to finally be in Jordan that my exhaustion had disappeared. “I can’t wait.”

“Petra is very beautifully,” he said approvingly, and then added, “When you go swimming in the Dead Sea, you can see Palestine on the other side. You can see the Israelis on the other side.” He let go of the steering wheel and mimed holding a rifle, firing it.

The conflict is everywhere: our tour guide at Hercules’ temple at the citadel on top of Jabal Qalal dropped in comments about Israel and Palestine in between the Ammonites and the Romans. On the street, vendor stands are named “Jerusalem Falafel,” or “Jerusalem Coffee” or even “Jerusalem Refrigerators” and the “Jerusalem” is a clear sign that the owners are Palestinian. And at Yalla Talk, where we sat in a circle with two Muslim men and four Muslim women, all in hijab, we were encouraged to share openly on every aspect of our religious beliefs and questions—until one student on the program suggested that perhaps “tolerance” was too reserved, too quietly hateful, a thing to aim for when it came to Jordan’s relationships with Judaism. It became immediately clear that friendship with Jewish people was out of the question.

“You need to put yourself in a Jordanian state of mind,” one of the men explained. “Tolerance is a huge step for us. You don’t know what it’s been like.”

I opted to take Political Economy of the Middle East instead of Conflict Resolution, but I have a feeling that this conflict, which is everywhere, on every street corner and everyone’s mind, all of the time, will define my studies here. Some fast facts: 75% of Jordan’s population is Palestinian refugees; 92% is Muslim; 70% is under the age of 30; 50% is under 15. The population of Amman will soon reach 4 million, and we know that there have been people here for as far back as history will take us. From home in Indiana and Virginia, these facts are what I had. The conflict is interesting, puzzling, and of course tragic—but I underestimated the effect that this proximity to it would have on me. I never really got it. I never really understood Nour, and the Israeli soldiers with guns on the far side of the Dead Sea.