Wast al-balad

We had a three day weekend awhile back, and most people in our group went either to the beach-side town of Aqaba, or the barren desert of Wadi Rum. I stayed at home and did nothing, or at least that is what I had planned on doing. After a week of being dragged around old buildings in Israel/Palestine, I didn't want to go anywhere. It occurred to me that every single weekend I had been in Jordan, I had gone on some kind of trip, so I thought it would be nice to just spend the next three days with my host family. On Saturday, I got a call inviting me to go to Umm Qais, and ancient city in Northern Jordan with my American friends. I really didn't want to go, but I felt compelled to for some reason. I took a taxi to the bus station and met up with everyone. To get to Umm Qais, we had to take a bus to the city of Irbid, then take a taxi to the northern bus station in Irbid, then take a bus from there all the way up to near the Syrian border where Umm Qais was. The bus on the way to Irbid broke down half way due to a flat tire. Everyone got out of the bus and stood around watching as the driver and some other guy put on a new tire with rather primitive looking tools. It took thirty minutes to fix, and some of the other Americans I was with played Haki Sack on the side of the road. I really wanted to take pictures of the whole ordeal because it seemed so funny to me, but I'm sure that wouldn't have been a good idea as pictures can be a touchy subject with some people here. When we finally got to Irbid, we got in a taxi to take us up to the other bus station. We could tell that the driver was purposely taking the long way as we were driving down little narrow streets in what seemed to be circles. When we finally arrived at the bus station, there was a bus to Umm Qais that was almost full and ready to take off. Here in Jordan, buses usually don't have a time table. They sit at the station until the bus fills up...then they leave. There weren't enough seats for all of us on the bus, but the driver insisted that we could fit more people on each seat. As we were pulling out of the station though, we realized that two people were missing. We got the bus to return to the station where we jumped out and found the two missing guys looking for us. Eventually we got on a new bus and drove about 25 miles to Umm Qais. By the time we arrived, it had taken us almost three and a half hours to get there, much more time that we had anticipated. The little town next to the ruins seemed to be completely empty when we showed up. When we arrived at the gate, the guard let us into the ruins for free because we spoke Arabic and told him we were living in Jordan for the summer. The sight was rather disappointing in my opinion though. Maybe I felt that way because we had visited a number of similar sights the week before and I was burned out with antiquity. After an hour, we decided to head back, but we were a little worried about how we were going to get back to Irbid since we were practically in the middle of nowhere. As we started walking in to town, a little old man walked out of his shop and told us, in really good English, that we had just missed a bus to Irbid and that the next one wouldn't be there for another twenty minutes. He invited us to wait in his shop for the bus to drive by. We had learned in Egypt that when someone invites you into his shop, they are going to be really friendly with you and then try to force you to buy something, so we were really skeptical about his invitation, but we went in anyway. We sat down and made pleasantries with the man who spoke flawless English, but he never gave us a sales pitch. His store was even catered to tourists, but he only occasionally hinted that we could buy something from him...if we wanted. Eventually the bus came and we went back to Irbid. At the bus station in Irbid with buses to Amman, we had trouble tracking down the right bus. We were followed by a beggar who asked us for money in really good English. He asked us to give a gift to God, a.k.a give him some money. Jordan is pretty good when it comes to beggars, there are hardly any. Egypt, is swarming with them. I always feel really horrible when people ask me for money because I could give them money, but you never know if that is the right thing to do. On the way back to Amman, the bus broke down...again...only a few miles away from where it broke down earlier that day when we were going the other way. We didn't get home until late that night. It ended up taking us almost 4 hours to travel from Umm Qais to Amman. I promised to myself that the next day I wouldn't do anything except chill with the family.

I was awoken by my cell phone around 10 the next morning. It was Ryan again trying to talk me into going to a place called Wadi Seer. I exercised self control and declined. I stayed in bed until 12 reading. It occurred to me that this was the first day since the program began that I just didn't do anything. Kind of like a normal Saturday. That afternoon, I went with my host brother down to what people here refer to as "Wast al-balad", which is the old part of town. It's crazy going there because it's almost like going to Egypt with it's crowded streets, dirty cockroach infested sidewalks, and counterfeit merchandise. This was maybe my fourth visit since arriving in Jordan to this part of town, but this little trip was the second time in my host brother's life that he had been. The family we live with lives in West Amman, the nicer western part of town, and "Wast al-balad" is in East Amman, the impoverished section. For someone who has grown up in West Amman, East Amman might as well be a different country, so it didn't surprise me that much that this was only his second time traveling only 5 miles to the East from his house. But it did surprise me that he wore shorts to "Wast al-balad", something that is totally taboo in that part of town. Even though he is Jordanian, people still tried to rip him off because they thought he was an American who spoke really good English since he was with two other Americans and wearing shorts.