Little Glimmers Everywhere

vignettes from life in Amman

The view of Amman from the Citadel.

Friends—I want to paint you a picture of my first month in Amman. The wondrous, the commonplace, and the resonant. I’m settling still, and I’m not yet sure what it all means. But I see little glimmers everywhere.

The wondrous 

A couple weekends back, Nick and I went to Petra—the pride of Jordan, that two-thousand-year-old city carved out of the mountains, where Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail. We hadn’t planned it, really; I was supposed to be on a work trip that was canceled last minute, and we saw our opportunity and seized it. In a rented car, we fired up a 70s rock playlist and headed south on the King’s Highway, our backpacks stuffed with pastries and canned coffee.

It was my first look at the Jordan that lies beyond the steep streets of Amman, and the road stretched long and flat in front of us. It cut through green hillsides where Bedouin shepherds, their heads wrapped in traditional red keffiyehs, meandered with their flocks of goats and herding dogs. Then the landscape dried and flattened, and A Horse With No Name began to play, as if the band had been waiting in the wings for its queue. It felt good to be out of the rain, indeed. The dampness of the city had been wearing on me, but the air was crisp in the Arabah desert. I rolled down the window to breathe it in.

We pulled up to the Petra visitor center in the early afternoon, buying tickets for just one dinar with our residence cards. As we reached the entrance to the tourist path I simply could not walk fast enough; I had the sensation of being carried along it as though swept downstream by a fast-flowing river, at whose delta were all the riches of the kingdom of Nabataea. There are tourist attractions, and then there are the places like Petra—the ones that are true magic, where if you don’t feel a sense of awe and wonder, then you probably never will. I have seen many things, but nothing quite like those exquisite facades, chiseled by hand from rainbow-colored rock.

The hard-carved façades of Petra.

Around lunchtime, a set of rock stairs led us to the cliffside tombs of the Nabataean nobles, where a smooth piece of sandstone invited us to sit and unwrap our sandwiches. The whole of Petra sprawled in front of us while we gobbled roast beef on crusty baguettes, and we watched cumulus clouds move over the age-old rock formations, casting light and shadow over their jagged peaks.

We dawdled for hours, hiking up and down the escarpments and wandering time-worn paths.

By the time we left, the sun was low in the sky. Then we got up early the next morning and did it all over again. 

It’s for moments like this that I’m willing to drift around the globe—living as an outsider with nothing but what I can carry in my suitcase for months at a time, always calling friends and loved ones at odd hours—these chances to catch the wonders of the world like fireflies in a jar, without even having to try.

The commonplace 

We painted the walls of our apartment last weekend in soft Mediterranean blues and greens, and the first of our household shipments finally arrived. It’s amazing how some old bric-a-brac—a set of napkins, a couple familiar candlesticks—can make a place feel like home, how smoothing a beloved tablecloth can prompt you to exhale with contentment. All that to say, our place is coming together nicely. Except for one critical piece.

You know that vegetable patch I waxed poetic about two weeks ago? The one in my new garden, the one being nourished by the rains that had so surprised me? Well, it died. Or rather, it was murdered in cold blood, by a certain puppy whose name rhymes with “blue.” I’ve let her become a yard dog, and every day, she goes out for hours and does whatever she gets the notion to. Maybe this isn’t ideal, but having a dog in a foreign country—and more specifically, an Arab country where not everyone shares my affinity for our canine companions—is still new to me, and without many pet-friendly public spaces, I tend to keep Boo at home. I figure if I can’t take her on adventures, giving her some freedom to roam is the next best thing.

You can probably see where this is going. The other day, Boo was sitting quietly—too quietly—in her bed and dozing in the afternoon sun, when I noticed her holding her mouth slightly ajar.

“What’s that you’ve got, lovebug?” I asked.

She stared back at me, one ear up and the other flopping over sweetly, as if to say, who, me? She froze for a beat, and then: crunch.

I dove for it. Boo has a strong jaw and isn’t very good with “drop it” yet, so it took all my might to pry her thieving teeth apart. Out popped a green pepper. I took an educated guess as to where it could have come from, and Boo’s muddy nails bore witness to her crime. That little cuss had been stealing from my already struggling garden!

After confirming that bell peppers are not toxic to dogs, I decided to let Boo keep her ill-gotten gains—she’d already eaten half of it anyway—and shuffled outside to assess the damage, expecting to see a plant or two out of place. But apparently Boo is an overachiever. Fresh dirt littered the pavement, paw prints were stamped all over the beds, and a few stems had been pulled up roots and all. I stood over the flaccid stalks like Don Corleone over Sonny in the morgue: look at how they massacred my boy! I would need chicken wire, and pronto. Then I’d need trowels, a kneeling mat, and lots and lots of seeds if I were to have any hope of ripe peppers by summertime. 

I suppose this is the stuff that matters to me now. This garden, this dog, this making of a home. Who would have thought, what with my fancy master’s degree in international security, that the conflict dominating my life in the Middle East would be puppy vs. vegetable garden? I am surrounded by war zones on all sides, yet here I am, picking paint colors, dog-proofing my garden, tending my homestead. 

The resonant 

An enormous Jordanian flag waves over Amman, visible from any high point in the city. I watched it flap languidly from the decaying walls of the Roman-era Citadel and made two mental notes on it: first, that it must be preposterously large, because even in the thrashing wind it dragged through the air like a parachute, and second, that if not for the six-pointed star centered on the red chevron, the flag would be exactly the same as Palestine’s. 

It seemed fitting, to be eye-level with this patriotic symbol on such an auspicious day for Jordan. The national soccer team was set to make their first ever appearance in the Asia Cup finals that very night. The match would start at 6, at which point the streets would empty, but in the last golden hours of the afternoon the Citadel hummed with anticipation. I overheard couples whispering about where they should watch the game, and a group of young men gallivanted through the ruins singing anthems for their team.

The view of Amman from the Citadel.

Then the chants of the muezzin broke through the din, reverberating from the mosques of the seven hills of Amman and sending the city into a hush. I had heard the call to the asr prayer from my apartment every day for weeks, but this felt different. Amman’s acoustics are like those of a Greek amphitheater, its valley floor the stage, its seats the limestone buildings that terrace the hills and carrying sounds upward. Do you know how sound waves move through limestone? The rock quells low frequencies while reflecting higher ones, tamping down background noise and amplifying human voices.

Clear, resonant sounds like these never fail to move me to tears—it is something physical that rises up from my chest to my throat, like the irrepressible flow of a tide—and I had to employ all my best tricks not to be spotted crying in public. Sunglasses on, chin up, blink fast, dab nonchalantly at the corner of your eye as though it itches. I felt as though the singers may as well have been whispering into each and every ear in this city, the largest in the Levant, and all stood in suspended motion, listening, meditating.

It couldn’t have lasted for more than thirty seconds or so before the excitement started back up again. Had I imagined it? 

Later that night, more sounds: rhythmic honking, shouts of yalla! out the windows of sports cars, celebratory gunfire. The Jordanian team lost, but they’d done their country proud all the same. The next day, half the Arab world looked at Amman and said, how dare you celebrate in the streets while the children of Gaza are ripped to shreds and left to starve, to which I answer: let Jordan have this. Let joy exist in one place even as tragedy exists in another. There is no other way to live.