The Sheikh of Amman

Last night I was introduced to the self-appointed “Sheikh” of Amman (not to be confused with the equally self-appointed Duke of Amman). The “Sheikh’s” more earthly name is Ali Maher and he is currently the Commissioner of the Royal Film Commission and a Professor of Architecture at the University of Jordan. Even more impressive, the man stands two meters tall with a mustache that could hide a pair of sable teeth and probably a family of orphan gnomes. The man literally looks like a huge white rhino standing of his hind legs, neck as wide as, well, as a rhino’s. Not a man you want to pick a fight with unless you happen to carry an elephant rifle. Also, which tickles your imagination, he has pinned to his coat jacket a metal brooch in the shape of a flamboyant mustache. Go figure.
Vanessa, the woman who introduced us, is a British subject and has been in Amman longer than she dares to admit (four years or so). She is a heritage and cultural preservation specialist and today she had to get up a 4 am in order to take a taxi to Petra and escort a reporter for Conde Nast (the company that does Vogue, the New Yorker etc.) around the ol’ Nabataean city. Cheap money, she called it.
Apparently this “Sheikh” knows everything worth knowing about Amman, hence the self-endowed title. In the 30 seconds I spoke to him, he managed to tell me that he was the teacher of a certain Rami Daher (the architect of the new Rainbow Street and a million other projects around the city); that before him a very sweet Swedish woman ran the Royal Film Commission (I forgot the name). Our brief introduction was interrupted by a massive herd of people moving in to the theater to catch a contemporary dance performance, part of a festival here in Amman. It’s all for free, paid by the various embassies that send their crème de la crème dancers to this remote, dusty town for the inhabitants to have some modern, Western culture to chew on. Equally predictable and ironic, the most frequent visitors are foreigners who could well afford to pay the entrance fee – and would gladly do so. Anyways.
In about a minute or so I will write an email to him requesting a meeting over a coffee here on Rainbow Street. I will try not to forget my elephant rifle, just in case.

Daliaworld

So after having first met this Dalia some six years ago at a party in a modernistic suburban Ammani house with fake Greek columns, I got in touch with her again through new friends here in Amman and, more improbably, through a Swedish filmmaker friend. How? you might ask. I will tell you – and this can be categorized in the world-is-so-small category.
The filmmaker was in Morocco last month for a petite documentary film festival. He meets a snus-chewing Jordanian filmmaker with a rather pleasant demeanor (yes, Dalia). He mentions this encounter in a chat with yours truly the following day. And after the Ahs and Ohs, I get her number through him. Now to the real small-world thingy.
On my and T’s trip to Aqaba last week, I sit by the Red Sea with my feet in the tepid water, watching kids and T snorkel. A head appears from under the surface, followed by a surprised look and a high shriek (yes, Dalia). Turns out that she had been there three days (we just arrived) and was leaving in an hour or two. Of all the small heads bopping up and down the Aqaba coast…
Anyways: she agreed to tell me her Life Story (a thing I am doing as part of my thesis) once back in Amman. And speaking of which: now I am sitting at Books@café waiting to do a Life Story-interview with a friend of hers, Amar O (referred to in an earlier blog as Amar no. 1). I wouldn’t be surprised to see her head bop up behind a plastic cup of Lemon-with-mint juice. Wish me luck. Oh, here he comes.

West vs. East or something like that

Dalia lives in a bubble (self professed), likes “snus” (Swedish form of tobacco) and has a young Barbara Streisand look (and I mean that in a positive way); big, bright eyes that seem to smile even when her mouth doesn’t, although the latter never happens. Just-got-out-of-bed hair dew. Jeans and t-shirt. She is a Jordanian documentary film-maker. Her latest film, Arabizi (think Spanglish or Swinglish), discusses the ongoing trend in the Arab world to forego written Arabic, instead settling for a watered-down English. It was shown on Al-Jazeera last year and got enough attention and praise for her to get green-lighted for another piece with them. This time, she is focusing on West vs. East Amman.
Also: a Japanese publisher wants her to write the love story between herself and this Japanse-Canadian pilot who died when his plane crashed in the Wadi Rum desert some four years ago. They were an item back then, and had so been for a couple of years. He used to write children stories for her, don’t ask me why. But his mom now really wants them published, kind of as his legacy. The Japanese publisher only agrees if the children stories are intertwined with some heart-breaking, mushy adult love story. She is currently contemplating what to do.
She sees herself as middle-class; can’t afford a car, but somehow affords to travel abroad every six months or so. Got a degree in filmmaking from Goldsmith institute in London. And yes; she admits that she and her friends live in a bubble here in West Amman (which is more a mental state than geographical). She has no friends from the East side, although she would like to have, she says she would be hesitant in marrying one from there; cultural differences and all that. She says it in a very self-conscious way, really trying not to sound elitist. But does an elitist usually admit to being an elitist? I sound harsh, I know. I only barley mean to, though. After all; am I so different?

Leninu Akbar!

The Jordanian Communist headquarters lies, perhaps surprisingly, on Rainbow Street. Since the hyper-capitalism seems to be crumbling down upon us (even here in Jordan) I decided to sneak in for an informal chat with some people who I thought would be rubbing their hands in delight with I-told-you-so smiles on their faces. A literally open door meets me, and an empty room with 1970’s style conference furniture. Posters of Ché Guevarra and what I presume are pictures of local comrades adorn the walls. I even spot a plastic bust of Lenin in larger-than-life-size on a coffee table next to a leather chair that probably has warmed thousands of asses (or maybe not since that would exceed the total number of comrades in Jordan at least threefold).
From within an inner room I hear faint laughter and subdued chuckles. I shout hallo a couple of times before they surprised come out of their slumber. They seem genuinely taken aback by seeing a new face in the locale.
They offer me tea and the pepper me with information brochures, in English as well as in Arabic. We talk about Rainbow Street, about the neoliberal turn Jordan took some years back; how the poorer get poorer and the richer richer. Nothing spectacular. One of them says, however, that to be atheist here is to be a Marxist and vice versa. They really seem to treat it like a religion here, in the dogmatic sense, and are also treated that way. The kingdom has not been kind to the Communists; not now under Abdullah II, not under his daddy’s reign either.
Our discussion covers everything from Jordan’s recent economical history (seen through red eyes) to the damned cobbled stones on Rainbow Street, which seem to upset everybody. After an hour, I bid adieu and leave them promising to come back to see them on first of May when they are organizing a big (sic) demonstration.

Takaseem store

I often see Hannin stand in front of her shop on Rainbow Street. Actually it’s her brother’s shop, but she manages it most days. She could almost pass as an American tourist: she wears her shoulder-length, chestnut colored hair down, and sports jeans and jersey. Still unmarried (ya Allah, ya rabbi) although being well past her “prime” marrying age (I’d guess she’s about 35), she said she will work here until she found a husband – and then she let out a big, warming laugh, as if to say: like that’s ever gonna happen.
Sure, she says, there are benefits with the Rainbow Street make-over. But also drawbacks, mostly personal. Since she lives just below the JARA café, she claims that the shabaab (youths) many times keeps her up until 1 at night, with their constant chattering about girls and proverbial measuring of their tiny dicks.
Before the remodeling, they boasted more designer things. Now, they have expanded the goods sold to include aromatic soaps and scented candles (for some reason, always very popular amongst a certain kind of tourists) in all the colors of the rainbow. It’s a cute shop. And yes, there are more tourists now – especially during the summer when Souq JARA is open. She sides with the million and one taxi drivers I’ve heard complain about the bizarrely uncomfortable cobbled stones on the street. Huge mistake; my knees always hurt walking to work, she tells me, even though I only live 200 meters away.
I can only nod my head in agreement.

And darkness fell upon us

So earth finally got its hour in the spotlight, or so to speak – even in Amman. Between 20.30 and 21.30 on March 28th the city became if not black, a shade or two darker, at least in some areas. The Royal Society for Conservation of Nature (everything that strives to be something here has “Royal” in it) owns and operates a conference room, ecological handy-craft shop and a café in a hyper-modern building that clings on the slope of Jabal Amman, where the terrace overlooking Jabal Qal’a with its Roman ruins and Umayyad leftovers. It is a place that wouldn’t look out of place in Soho, New York, or any other Western place where people don’t mind (and can afford) spending 3 dollars (excluding service charge) for an ecological cup of coffee served in an equally ecological cup.
Lots of Humvees parked outside. And this is the place the orchestrated the “celebration” of Earth Hour here in Jordan. We all know the Middle East is the promised land of the black plastic bags. They roam free and can cover an impressive fifty kilometers per day, if they fly well. But of course: Every barren tree has a few wind-ripped bags enmeshed in its twigs. The carcasses. It’s almost poetic. It’s for sure sad and definitely not pretty. Come to think of it, I guess we could call it materialistic poetry, where reality is cut up in pieces and only haphazardly put together again. The black plastic bags as the scars.
Hmmm.
Anyway. Earth hour passed quickly, like hours in the dark tend to do. The whole thing consisted of some lecture, the screening of Al Gore’s film and the climax: a candle-lit procession emanating from the Wild Jordan, the place mentioned above. The around hundred-people flock managed to stay intact til Rainbow Street, then kind of dissolved into small candle-lit islands who at their own pace headed back to the café.
The minister of something (probably Energy) got his few seconds in the limelight as he was interviewed by TV inside the café. He was wearing the t-shirt especially produced for this occasion: a smiley-face with closed eyes and text in Arabic that probably said something catchy (I wonder, though, how much energy was used to produce those hundreds of t-shirts used by practically every participant). The street lights on Rainbow Street were turned off. The next day, for whatever reason, I noticed they were turned on in the middle of the day.
Go figure.