My Muzzle With the Stars and Stripes
on representing a government I don't always agree with
Friends, I recently posted a note about how there is too much difficult, vulnerable stuff I haven’t been writing, and that it’s time to open up more. I’m making good on that promise today—this one is going to hurt a bit. Thank you so much to new paid subscribers Jason, Caroline, Doug and Salina, and Catherine. Your support means the world to me.
For more fun free stuff, check out my recent guest post on Petra for ’s Cosmographia, and tune in next Thursday for an interview with of the always entertaining Not That You Asked.
Bright, multi-colored lights from the streets of old Amman wash over the black leather seats of the Uber while I clutch the door handle, knuckles blanched. The cab is a marble on a track as it skates the narrow streets, cresting the hills with momentum, then gliding back down. It is Valentine’s Day, and Nick is taking me to a Jordanian restaurant for a romantic dinner.
At the very same moment, an old man in Jerusalem is vowing to send ground troops into Rafah while another old man in Washington—despite having once egged the first one on—is impotently urging restraint, and Jordan’s 2 million Palestinians wait in terror.
“This is Rainbow Street, the big main road you’ve heard of,” Nick prattles. I am riding in the back while he sits in front, pointing left and right at façades with neon signs. “There’s Al Quds, the falafel place. It’s pretty famous, but I think Hashem is probably better. Oh, and there’s Habiba, the kunafa place I told you about.”
Shut up shut up shut up shut up, I think. I stare intently at the back of the driver’s head and try to see what is going on inside, if he can place our accents, if he is even listening. Nick is enjoying playing tour guide and I don’t want to piss in his Cheerios, but we don’t know who this driver is, and I don’t want him to know who we are, either—because then we might find out exactly what he thinks of us and of everything we represent.
“Hm,” I say, the smallest possible acknowledgment. The less the driver knows, the better.