the real ruins of jerash

I had never seen pink pigeons before, but I wasn’t about to rule out a species because I didn’t know about it. (If I did that, there would be no animals in the Amazon or marine life in the Coral Triangle.)

“Uh, what — what are those?”

“Oh, those,” one of our young hostesses explained, “They’re just pigeons that the kids colored.”

“Colored?”

“Yeah, with markers or paint.”

This was one of many colorful elements of a camp on the outskirts of Jerash. There was also a mutilated yellow chick on the hood of an old blue car, makeshift white flags hanging over several houses heralding a child’s betrothal, and stunningly beautiful black Gazan women who (thanks to a combination of Photoshop, white foundation, and racist attitudes) appear as ghostly white figures in their wedding photographs.

But let’s save that rant for another day.

This was my second visit to a camp known as Jerash Camp by officials and Gaza Camp by everyone else. At this contentiously named camp, over 90% of the residents are what UNRWA calls ex-Gazans, families who were displaced twice, first internally to Gaza in 1948 and then externally to Jordan in 1967.

Some say that, of all of Jordan’s Palestinian refugees, this lucky bunch is denied citizenship because Egypt is the (irresponsible) adoptive parent of Gazans. Jordan already begrudgingly adopted all the West Bankers — isn’t that enough? Others say that it’s because Jordan has come to accept Israel’s ’48 borders but not the lands occupied in ’67. Therefore, these refugees must remain stateless in order to encourage their return. Still others say that all this is rubbish and that, really, Gazans are being denied Jordanian citizenship because they’d flood the job market and, with their hearty fertility rates, tip the already-precarious political balance.

The reasons are many but the result is one.

The absence of national ID numbers means that Gazans hold 2-year Jordanian-issued passports. If those prohibitively expensive documents aren’t renewed, residents say, they become undocumented immigrants, even if Jordan is their country of birth. The UNRWA neatly summarizes the conditions of ex-Gazans here:

Ex-Gaza refugees cannot vote, work for the government (except on a casual basis), and benefit from government services. Access to domestic employment by (larger) private companies may also be denied, as national Intelligence may not grant the required approval. Also certain government licenses, like public drivers’ license, are not granted to ex-Gaza refugees. The ex-Gaza refugees often lack the skills, licences and resources to start their own small business. Further, they do not afford higher education,

as they have to pay disproportionate tuition fees.

Now that your acute social sensibilities are sufficiently offended, allow me to point out the parts of the camp that are offensive to the senses.

Paris is known for its Eiffel Tower, Italy for its Leaning one, Jerash for its Roman ruins and Gaza Camp for its gutters.

Nowhere else in Jordan will you find a fifty-year old neighborhood that has open sewers, a pipe poking out of every zinc-roofed home and little rivers of sewage running alongside children in every alleyway. The place has a stench and is reputably revolting in the summer.

My friend and I benefited from the hospitality of a dozen families there. We therefore sat in a dozen guest rooms and, as our taxi driver assured us, had the best refreshments the families could offer.

Did anyone on the street beg? our driver asked, concerned. No, they hadn’t. He nodded knowingly. It seemed his confidence in the pride of his own community was restored.

“We aren’t starving,” a resident with a hijab twisted into a flower told me. “What we need is education. Money to get our young people through college. They can help themselves after that. Even if they can’t be employed in Jordan, they’ll be employed elsewhere. They’ll help their families out of this situation.”

S, a 23-year old in a jilbab, however, told me that she didn’t want out. “I like the camp and its ways. I love the community here.”

“You’re a reporter?” S’s father asked me as he adjusted his red keffiyeh. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you what we need most. Take note. Yes, write this down: better healthcare and a closed sewer system. That’s all. Healthcare and sewers.”

Even though I don’t know who to report to, I took note.

It’s not a lot to ask. Heart surgeries shouldn’t be luxuries and everyone has a right to wake in the morning to the smell of flowers or coffee — really, anything but sewers.

–

A bunch of girls gave us a guided tour of their camp. One of them, A, had drawn a thick line of kohl under her slanted brown eyes. She wore a regal black abaya with a rose print at its hem. Her black heeled shoes were square-tipped and slip-on. She walked through the camp as if it were a garden and showed us into her home as if it were a palace. Her composure, gait, poise — everything bespoke a person who refuses to bow to even the cruelest context.

Just as I was thinking these thoughts, the worst happened.

It was just as she was excusing herself to go. She stepped back and her foot fell into the gutter. When she regained her balance and withdrew foot, we saw that it was shoeless and green.

I had a water bottle. Did she want to rinse it off? No, she maintained her poise. Several men in a nearby store — a little hole in the wall — men whom she knew or did not know, were already moving swiftly to get her figuratively back on her feet.

My help was graciously refused. And I didn’t insist either.

It was as if, by stepping into the sludge, A’s heel had broken a hole in the glass floor of the camp. So long as the glass remained intact, so long as the hole was quickly repaired, the residents could block out their degrading circumstances.

The girls we met treaded upon the dirt of the camp with the elegance of Balqees (Queen of Sheba) at Prophet Suleiman’s palace.

So real was the illusion, so necessary, that we, too, after several hours’ walking, no longer saw the ground as it was. We, too, walked in denial of our surroundings.

If not that, then I don’t know what we were thinking, why we were so surprised.

Inevitably, a delicate ankle would slip, the glass would break, and the crystal rivers underneath would reveal their true colors. The foot would emerge green, and the putrid smell would rise, repugnant and undeniable.

great expectations

“So,” the question emerged from one of the aunts, “Are you thinking of marrying a shabb (young man) from here or…?”

The rest of N’s female kin tuned in to our radio station. All eyes on N.

This was a hard question to answer without offending. If you said “No” there’d be a “Why  not? What’s wrong with us and our sons?” And if you said “Yes” there’d be a flurry of excitement, a few gasps at your unseemly audacity and quite possibly some (unwelcome) knockers at your door.

N was honest, brutally so.

“From here? No.” She shook her head. A dozen eyebrows asked the formidable question, so N explained, “The men here have these expectations — about their women. They expect them to cook and clean and take care of the kids.”

“And…?”

“And they act like it’s not their business. At all. The Prophet (pbuh) used to help around the house.”

“Her husband helps with the children,” they all turned to one of the women who, ironically, had a child on her shoulder and another at her foot.

“But they don’t help ‘illaw biminnu ‘aleich (except that they boast about their help), so much so that you regret accepting help in the first place.”

The women turned back to N, conceding the point.

“And men here are controlling–” N continued. She wasn’t letting anyone off the hook tonight.

“Of course,” one of the aunts remarked to her neighbor, “she’s used to coming and going without anyone standing ‘adda’ra (at her every step). It’s hard to go from this to that.” She raised her hand and tilted her head understandingly.

“So who would you marry?” They asked but looked afraid of the answer.

“An American.” Highly suspicious.

“An American Muslim –” I interjected.

“Do they exist?” Their faces seemed to say.

“Like her. Like us,” I tried to soften the blow.

“And shabab in Ameirca do those things? They really clean and help with the kids?”

“Well,” I interrupted, afraid that they’d think ours the land of Merry Men. “They don’t all do that, but there is more of an expectation that men should participate in chores, especially because women are most often working.”

“It’s because the women work!” Nods of satisfaction went around.

“I work,” one of them confessed, “and my husband doesn’t lift a finger, so I work inside and out.”

Another seconded her sentiment. Again, the swing states voted in our favor.

“It’s true. Our men don’t do that, but what are we to do? If you wait for a guy who’ll do those things, you’ll never marry.”

“Aunt, it doesn’t have to be this way,” N seized a teachable moment, “You can change this. You’re the only people who can. You’re the mothers. If you raise your sons to help out and to be less possessive vis-a-vis women, they’ll be that way. Sure, it won’t be your generation, but the next one — your daughters — they’ll benefit. That’s how society changes.”

“It’s hard. Hard.” The skeptics muttered. From others’ faces, I could tell that the  ideas were percolating.

After a long meditative silence, the aunt who posed the marriage question turned to me.

“And you? The same?”

“The same.” I said, as if indicting myself.

She shook her hands with (melodramatic) worry for us and our looming spinsterhood, and they laughed at us and we at ourselves. Then, from all around the room, little duaa’s (supplications) came flying towards us. Duaa’s for marriage and happiness. We were, after all, girls who were looking for ethereal partners, made of light, not clay. We were the kind of girls who made mothers’ hair grey early. We were girls with great expectations.

playing cops and robbers

“The tenth guy was killed yesterday.”

“Who killed whom?”

“It’s internecine violence. It’s been going on for three years. Palestinians killing Palestinians. It all started when a bunch of kids from one prominent Khalili (Hebron) family beat up a crowd of kids from another prominent family. Just kids playing rough. Then, youths from the beaten family came over and beat up the offending kids. The youth of that family then met them man-to-man, and violence broke out among them. First, fists and feet, then someone pulled a gun. And that’s how it started. The latest in the revenge killings was yesterday.”

“But–” This was all bewildering to us. We were just in al-Khalil. “Where do they get the guns?”

The taxi driver laughed at our naivety. “Where do they get the guns? From Israel, that’s where.”

At the risk of further evincing our stupidity we asked, “But — how?”

“The black market. Where there’s demand, supply follows. You think Palestinians don’t have guns? The men of al-Khalil alone, I assure you, have more guns than the entire American military. So long as they keep using them on each other, even Israel doesn’t mind.”

taking jerusalem

We were making a U-turn. A family was out on the street, adults on metal chairs, children playing with sticks, all gathered around a fire in a rusty metal barrel.

A night under the stars? No, our driver explained. The IDF has taken this family’s home. There it was, actually.

We looked up and saw an apartment on the second story of the building in front of which they sat, an apartment smothered in blankets of white-and-blue.

As we passed the dispossessed family, they mistook us for Israelis and jeered at us. Not a moment later, we passed an Israeli boy — this time close enough for him to see through our tinted windows.

He spat at us. Our driver spat back.

It was tit for tat and that was that.

***

At my home in Amman, I had made a makeshift centerpiece for my coffee table. The pine cones hailed from forests at University of Jordan and the acorns smelled of Amman’s northwestern countryside.

I walked the vistas of the Noble Sanctuary in search of a rock or pine cone to take home. I wanted one of them to preside in regal fashion over the rest of my collection. Was there not a fallen prince for me restore to his former glory?

Pine trees dotted the place and pine needles were in excess, but not a pine cone was to be seen. I looked up, and there they were.

N pitied my pathetic attempts to procure a pine cone, so she called out to her cousin. (For the physics-minded, his displacement from our location was 5 meters and counting. His speed was increasing, his acceleration constant.)

He returned to humor my childish wishes, but at the last moment, released the branch into the air.

“It’s better we leave them here,” he said as if he’d almost forgotten. “The boys use them to pelt the soldiers.”

The pine cone was a fish that slipped through my fingers. But there, in its element, it looked lofty, dignified even. And, when the breeze shook the pine-laden branches, I could hear the swish of the river that all these stubborn fish called home.