My Adopted Watan

Today is Blog About Jordan Day. Here is my say.

I remember landing at the airport in June of 2000. I remember riding in the caravan of people I had only spoken to on the telephone but had never seen in person. I was naive and full of excitement, and it was all good. I remember we had left a very humid and sticky Birmingham behind, and had been transported to the magnificently cool and breezy Jordanian summer night. I remember sitting on my sister-in-law's balcony with tears in my eyes, gazing out over the green-lit masajid that dotted the scenery as far as my eyes could see.

So much has changed since my first visit in 2000, and since moving here in 2002. But it is not the availability of brown sugar in the supermarkets or the arrival of a French-owned hypermarket or the fact that I can now get high speed DSL that make me want to stick around. Nor is it (anymore) the burning need for my children to learn their father's native tongue. We speak the Arabic, we make the chocolate chip cookies, we surf the net. We can do this anywhere.

What keeps me here is hope. I feel like this place is one of the last strongholds of hope in this region. The people are amazingly tolerant, resilient, and yes, many are introspective. People here want change. Goodness can be found around every corner. When I do venture out of my house, for each and every frustration I might experience, there is an equal amount of respect and courtesy and decency to match. There can be balance here, but one must seek it. Balancing one's life in Jordan is not an easy task, but those of us who persevere--man, the fruits of our struggles are everywhere.

When those old ladies pat me with their hands that have become crooked from all of the squash they've hollowed out, saying mashaAllah alayki ya habibti; when the taxi driver refuses to take money from me because I am an American Muslim and he is happy to see me (but I always pay him); when the dukkaneh clerk lets me walk out of his store with 10 JD's worth of merchandise because I really did forget my wallet and he knows I will be back to pay him; when I sit with amazing sisters I have come to know in this city, the ones who truly hold me up; when neighbors I have not seen for months suddenly show up at my door with gifts from their travels; when my mother-in-law awakes from a surgical procedure that had her scared to pieces, and the first face she sees is mine.

Where diesel fumes and inflation cannot keep hope suppressed; where my name on my identification is mine, my father's, and a grandfather I never knew. This place of red tape and a maddening lack of infrastructure is the same place where Prophet Musa and John the Baptist and countless other men of God walked and breathed and prayed. Where bougainvilleas sprout and cannot be stopped, and thus are called crazy, crazy flowers. Where your host will feed you until you cannot breathe, then feed you some more.

It's all Jordan, my adopted watan. Here we remain.