It’s a Wonder

Five of us headed to Petra for the weekend: two men in their 50s, one Palestinian, one American; one American girl working with the State Department; one Canadian/Sri Lankan doing public health research; and me. We found the perfect approach to discovering one of the new Seven Wonders of the World: stay at a Bedouin campsite, hike for hours through Petra, and then cool down with the five-star hotel's swimming pool and gourmet ice cream. I visited Petra eight years ago with my Grandmother - we spent long enough to get the highlights, and for my Grandmother to shock the Bedouin driving our cart through the Siq when she understood their Arabic curse words. My Arabic's not there yet, but I am getting the letters down. Sounding out words never has quite the same effect though.



We took our time exploring, absorbing both its vastness and its detail. We climbed the 45 minutes to the High Place of Sacrifice, with the carved altar overlooking a panoramic view. On our way down, I saw in front of me an older Bedouin woman. She was obviously struggling to maneuver the stairs with her cane, so when she moved to the side to let me pass, I extended my hand. She ignored it, so I passed. I turned back to watch, and offered my help again, and this time she accepted it. We walked like this for about five minutes until she paused, removed her glasses, and pointed to her two eyes - one blind, the other opaque from a cataract. She put her glasses back on, and we proceeded. Her English was ok - enough to understand that she lives in a nearby village and has 10 children. I couldn't quite get an answer for what she was doing at the top of the High Place, but I think she has one of the many jewelry tables you pass along the way (often quite unguarded). My answer to her "do you have a husband?" must not have been satisfactory, as she asked it, over and over, as we descended. At one point, we took a turn that did not seem intuitive to me, and I wondered just where she was leading me (and did that have anything to do with my not having a husband?). I called my companions (yes, cell phone service is everywhere) and they too were lost. Rather, they were lost. I was with a Bedouin woman. She got tired of my being on the phone and said, yallah, Petra, yallah, yallah. So we continued, arriving not to long after to exactly where I wanted to go. She gave me a kiss on both cheeks, and then went on, to her village.

Back at our Bedouin campsite, we sat on mattresses and rugs and sipped sage tea as we chatted with the other guests, surrounded by the mountains and stars. A number of them were foreigners working in Sinai, Egypt, with the Bedouin there, trying to help them maintain their local customs as development - mostly private sector - brings change. They said the Bedouin in Petra have done a really good job of engaging in the tourism sector while still protecting their traditions. It turned out our campsite even had a one-room museum, with photos, stories, and a collection of herbs.

Find Your Tribe

It was the advice of an American 20-something, sitting at NoodAsia in a swanky part of Amman. We were five at dinner, but each of us knew only one other before the meal began. I love gatherings like that. The three of us newbies sat enthralled as the other two described their impressions of life here, pieced together over a few years of exploring. I welcomed their insight, with only two months to piece together my own picture.

“Find your tribe,” she told us, “get yourself adopted by a Jordanian or Palestinian family.” (It’s estimated that 70-80 percent of Amman’s population is Palestinian). She described days spent hanging out at her family’s home, learning the rhythms and unspoken rules.

I liked her advice; as it's really why I came to the region in the first place. My family’s roots trace to Syria, but long enough ago that we’ve lost all connection beyond names, food, and faint stories. People hear my name and ask where my family’s from, unsatisfied until I claim Syria. It happened here, at the border. They asked where my father was from, and I answered the US, knowing full well that wasn’t what they meant. “No, but really, where is your father from.” “Syria.” “Ahh, yes.” And then they looked after me during the interminable wait for the bus.

I claim this heritage that I really know nothing about it. So I’ve come to explore – Syria a little, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. I started my summer in the region on a Lebanon Immersion Trip with thirty other students, organized by two Lebanese Harvard Kennedy School students. We spent two weeks exploring Lebanon as we met with top politicians. It was fascinating – the access was incredible, and as students, we could push on quite difficult questions. The Immersion Trip also included two days in Damascus, which involved a three-hour Q&A session with Assad. Imagine – I am the first of my family to return in over 60 years, and I enter with a Presidential escort. Our tour guide wanted to celebrate Syria's religious heritage, and so took us to a mosque, a church, and a synagogue. The synagogue is full of the icons collected from the 30 or so synagogues that were once open around the city, and is maintained by the head of Jewish communities in Damascus and Aleppo, and his sisters. The rest of their family left by the 90s, but they stayed - I didn't quite gather why. They don't have children, and, when asked of the future of the community, and the future of such spaces as the synagogue (which certainly isn't on the traditional tourist route), they said they take it day by day. I plan to return to Syria in a few weeks, and will this time make it up to the city my family is from. Inshallah.

My base for the summer is in Amman, working with the UN Iraq’s Information and Analysis Unit. It’s a new interagency effort to use the information available on Iraq to strategically guide humanitarian and development programming and policy. I’ve been put on a few really interesting projects, including a trends analysis of key indicators in Iraq over the last 30 years, and developing district-level profiles of the political and social situation. I’m in search of a topic for my thesis, so hope one of these will evolve into that. For now, I’m reading whatever I can and talking to anyone who will take a few minutes. It’s fascinating.

A post-script: The American who gave me the advice has been here two years, which was how long I lived in Ethiopia before I started grad school. She described the range of emotions she’s felt here, as it becomes more and more her home. They were the same that I felt in Ethiopia, and it helped us both to think of them not as unique to our countries of residence, but more to our own adjustment process. I will return to Ethiopia this coming weekend – my first visit since I left, almost exactly two years ago. I’ve heard it’s changed a lot, but still I find I imagine myself in all my old haunts as if nothing’s different.