Remote

I have never been to Iraq, and so have no real sense of how it differs from my present surroundings. Some days as I leave work, having thought and read about Iraq all day, surrounded by Iraqi colleagues and maps of Iraq covering the walls – some days, I forget where I am. I once passed a line of people waiting in front of the US embassy, and caught myself assuming they were Iraqi. I might work on Iraq, but once I leave my office compound, I must transition back to Jordan.

But what I know of Jordan is limited as well. My friends visited last weekend, full of questions on Jordan, and we set out to discover them together, as I certainly wasn’t a source. I’ve pieced together some things, from reading and asking questions of Jordanian friends – mostly though, from what you absorb by living in a place. But I miss having that strong overall frame, in which you can insert each piece as you gather it. And so I’m stuck between worlds, with little sense of the country on which I work and of the country in which I live. I am building that frame slowly though, and it’s exciting. And to be fair, I have only been here a month. . . a summer is much too short.