Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 1/29/05: The Lurking Horror

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

In which Nick may finally, finally have lost his mind. - Ed.

I have been avoiding this day for many months, but necessity has, finally, made my fate inescapable. There was no way out; the lurking horror had to be faced.

I had spent all afternoon hunting for one elusive computer component, and I didn’t have time to go back for reinforcements. If anyone cares, which I rather doubt, it’s interesting to note that s-video cables come in two different species, the 4-pin and the 7-pin, which, while phenotypically similar, differ wildly in their habits and habitats. While the 4-pin is as common as field mice, the 7- is a rare and difficult breed, apparently not known in captivity in all of Jordan. The little electronics markets on my street didn’t carry either kind, neither did the computer shop in Shmaisani (inexpertly named FUN DIRECTORY). I even tried the Radio Shack and PC World out in garden street – both had the 4-pin, but not the 7-.

The guy at Radio Shack told me that it was completely impossible to find 7-pin connectors in the middle east, presumably because the 7-pin arrangement is somehow offensive to God. At PC World, however, the proprietor gave me a clue where I might find the elusive component I sought… but to go there would mean facing that omnipresent, lurking horror.

So this afternoon I went to the Mall.

Amman’s one mall, on Mecca street on the outskirts of town, is a shining example of how architecture imitiates life: it’s a building built by somebody who really, really felt like they had something to prove. Five stories tall, a cyclopean mass sheathed in marble and guarded by jackbooted security agents, Mecca mall far outdoes the average American suburban consumer mall, and probably comes close in size to some of the giants like Tysons or Carousel. (And is it any coincidence that it’s called Mecca and shaped like a big cube? I think not. Come and worship.)

I shouldn’t have gone alone – unsure as I was how I would react to being surrounded by that much imitation-America. Would I be overtaken by nostalgia for the simple pleasures of Cinn-A-Bon and Sharper Image? Or would the sight of all those logos drive me into a fury of unimaginable violence, culminating in a full-fledged invasion of Banana Republic?

But the reality was more horrifying than I could have imagined. From the moment I walked through the 3-lane automated sliding glass doors, I was seized by an unattributable feeling of uneasiness, comparable only to awakening from an extended binge of psychedelics and coca-cola; there was a persistent sense of something wrong with the world itself. I felt like a cinephile watching a John Carpenter film, hearing the creepy music swell behind the hero, knowing disaster was immanent, but simultaneously unable to accept the reality of the impending calamity.

Dear God, but the place looked exactly like an American mall: huge glass-walled shops, sunglass kiosks, piped-in music and the smell of movie theater popcorn. For a moment the sense of being back in Northern Virginia was so disorienting that it crowded out all other thoughts, but my sensation of vertigo was quickly replaced by a growing uneasiness and horror. Where was I? What was going on?

It was, I knew, too late to flee the assault on my senses and my sanity. I had no choice but to press on and attempt to uncover whatever otherworldly force was making me feel so strange.

There was the music – Dear God, the music! Even after months of exposure, I cannot get used to the sound of Arabic pop. I try to be understanding of cultural differences, yet how can one not retain a certain suspicion towards a culture that describes the sound of small animals being tortured to death as music? And here it was, that unearthly caterwauling, piping out of the speaker system into the sea of shoestores and cell-phone kiosks.

The next thing I noticed was the disturbing preponderance of stores specializing in babies and children’s clothing. How strange. There was, too, a noticeable lack of the corporate pseudo-art and bathtub-sized islands of vegetation that grace most new U.S. malls. Whoever built Mecca Mall made no attempt to camouflage his creation as an 1800’s town square or a rainforest grove. Why would he? The Mall’s attraction, after all, is its Mall-ness. People are happy that there is now a Mall here. Its builders were not trying to disguise the bright fluorescent lights, the slick floors and antiseptic walls: they reveled in them. Perhaps this was the cause of my unease.

There were other strange perversions of retail – one shop, for example, appeared to specialize in the twin fields of expensive-looking glass and ceramic artifacts and war-themed children’s toys. There was no food court, but there were five or six different coffee bars in sick imitation of Parisian sidewalk cafes, with rows of tables set outside their windows, so customers could sip their coffee and watch… the Mall.

Stranger still, there were people at the tables, sipping coffee and looking up at the fluorescent sky. Gangs of teenaged kids perched at tables and leaned against stair railings.

And then I noticed: they didn’t have bags. I looked around the crowded hallway. No one had shopping bags.

Dear God in Heaven, I thought, they’re hanging out! At the Mall! In high school my friends and I never hung out at the mall. Actual teenagers do not hang out at malls. Only in movies and WB sitcoms do people hang out at malls.

And then I realized, like a sleeper throwing off the veil at last, that Mecca Mall was not like a movie, it was a movie. A fantasy version of a mall, created by some strange alien race who understand malls only through movies and television.

I stared at the smiling faces around me with a new suspicion. What planet were these creatures from? And what sinister design would compel them to construct such a daring and unconcealed imitation of humanity?

In the face of that unspeakable horror, I had no choice. I ran, clinging to my last shreds of sanity as a drowning man clutches at a shred of driftwood: even in this clever charade of a mall, they must have exit signs!

I escaped, thank God, with my mind intact, though without a 7-pin s-video cable. But a new terror is growing inside me, more horrifying even than the faceless horror I glimpsed there in the mall. For I cannot, in my own mind, be sure if leaving the Mall-world has allowed me to return to my own familiar reality, to the Yankees and chemical warfare and genocide, or if I haven’t, in fact, remained, unknowing, in that eerie movie-world of unthinkable alien designs.

I must keep my eyes open; there will be clues. Are the EXIT signs the right color? Did Shakespeare write 36 plays, or was it thirty-nine? Is Charlton Heston still president? I have to remain alert, to monitor the changes I see. What subtle and unnameable horrors may exist in this nightmare world into which I have stumbled?

- Nicholas Seeley, 1/13/05

Posted by rjt at February 1, 2005 04:16 PM