Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 8/2/2005: Ahlen Wahsalan

filed under: Despatches

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

Ahlen Wahsahlan. That’s the Arabic (or at least, the Jordanian) for “welcome.” It’s what everyone says to you when they find out you’re a foreigner. Ahlen Wahsahlan. Welcome to Jordan.

It’s been a long time – three months, I suppose, since I had anything I felt like sharing with my faithless readers (all five of ya’!). It’s hard to say exactly why. Part of it is that I’ve been working a lot. Then I went to Syria – I’ll tell y’all about that, sometime. I went out into the desert again – I guess I’ll tell you about that, too. I wrote a lot of articles, and life continued pretty much as it has been for the past 10 months.

And maybe that’s it: that even as I gain something more like an understanding of this place – its people, politics, art - I find it at the same time becoming invisible to me. The way any place you live sooner or later stops being a place and becomes a backdrop. I don’t notice things as sharply as I did. And, at the same time, I begin to notice the threads that hold me to America getting thinner. Things that would once have shocked or surprised me, I dismiss with a shrug and “ahlen wahsahlan” -- my sarcastic code for “that’s life in Amman.”

Two weeks ago a friend of mine got a bullet through the windshield of her car because she parked to close to a wedding. They fire up into the air in celebration, blissfully unaware that what goes up must come down. Ahlen Wahsahlan.

Every summer night there will be fireworks, and when they go off, you always see someone jump, thinking they’re bombs. Ahlen Wahsahlan.

I spoke a cab driver about Palestine today -- I got told I couldn’t write an article that would offend someone -- someone tried to rip me off because I’m a foreigner, someone else welcomed me with a smile. Ahlen Wahsahlan.

Somewhere, a disabled man tries to decide how to split his JD 130 a month pension between his two wives, one of whom has 10 kids, the other has 4. He gives each wife JD 50, and spends the rest on cigarettes. Somewhere a glittering new apartment complex with 100,000 square feet of retail space goes up. Across town, someone preaches a sermon about the evils of the western music and culture that are corrupting Islam, and someone listens. Someone got denied a visa; someone else lost an eye trying to defuse a landmine from the ’67 war. Ahlen Wahsahlan.

Some nights I’ll drink a pint of whiskey and throw beer bottles at the wall. Other nights… I won’t throw the beer bottles. Ahlen Wahsahlan.

I walked into Books@ the other day, and there was my psychotic Iraqi translator buddy, sitting at a table (some of you may remember him from a previous despatch, “Killing is My Business…”). He looked a bit different than I remembered, though I can’t be sure that wasn’t just a trick played on me by my own expectations. Was he really thinner, scruffier, older looking? Tired around the eyes? Or was that just what I figured anyone coming from Iraq must be?

(MORE BELOW...)

As much as I dislike him, I was surprised to find myself pleased to see him again. At least he was alive.

“How was it?” I asked as I came over.

“Hell,” he said, shaking his head. Something in the gesture seemed both hopeless and rueful to me -- though if he had any regrets, he never told me of them. I asked how long he was here for, he said ten days.

“I am being targeted. I have had three friends of mine killed in the past month. Others have tried to kill me. See this here—“

On the top of his head is a small, hairless patch, puckered in with fresh skin. “That is shrapnel from a mortar. It went through my helmet.” He’s not bragging, this time – at least it doesn’t seem so. He sounds more astonished.

“All the men in my unit get purple hearts, except me. Because I am not a regular soldier. I get a ‘good job’ from my major.”

Whether he’s fed up, or scared, or tired, or some part of all three, a good portion of his previous bravado is gone. He wants out, he says. He’s going to try to register as “regular army” when he goes back. If he succeeds, he says, he will rotate out when this tour is up, with an American passport, and be able to go live in the states. He wants to live in Texas.

I know nothing about how military recruitment works, or how it relates to US citizenship, but I’m suspicious of this story. Asking around, I hear rumours about members of various militaries – British, in particular – lying to their Arab ‘fixers,’ promising them visas they will never get in order to get them to risk their lives in Iraq. It’s sad to say, but I know a lot of people in this part of the world who will believe anything, however patently false, if it appears to offer the chance for them to go and live in England or America.

The translator starts talking about the book he wants to write; his own story, of an Iraqi who invades his own country, working as in interpreter, side-by-side with the soldiers. He asks me to help him find a ghostwriter; and I promise to try – why? Perhaps because I feel like it would be a terrible thing if even this thoughtless, arrogant, violent SOB’s dreams were all unfulfilled. I hope he isn’t being lied to about his visa. He’s obviously suffered for it, as well as making others suffer. America deserves this guy.

He’s still on the book he wants to write, and the writer who will help him: “whoever I get, they must be a war supporter, because that is 50 percent of the book – it is about the heroism of the troops in the field. The soldiers – not officers, but privates, corporals, sergeants, who risk their lives every day.” Fair enough, I suppose. Though I often wish we could come up with a better way of glorifying people than sending them to die.

Ahlen wahsahlan.

But then, the other day, I was talking to a guy – his name and rank I won’t mention, but he was a fairly well-placed official. I wish I could recall his worlds perfectly, but here, alas, my memory fails.

He said something about how most of the countries in the Arab world are trapped by fear, anger and mistrust. In Arabic, he went on, there is a saying, there must be one madman in every family – or perhaps it was the other way around. In any case, there must be someone who will stand alone, who will take risks and oppose the will of the multitude.

Someone must encourage the Arab countries to engage diplomatically with each other, with the world, with the international community. Someone must remind them that we all share one world. That the Prophet told us we should respect the earth, and the other people on it, as much as ourselves. That, he said, was Jordan’s role – or at least, the role he hoped it could have. To be the sane voice in a screaming crowd.

“There has to be a door, through which peace can enter,” he said.

And that, I suppose, is where I will leave you, faithless readers – for a little while, at least: a killer on one side and a visionary on the other.

Ahlen wahsahlan.

- Nicholas Seeley, 8/2/2005

Posted by rjt at August 3, 2005 11:58 AM