Castles and Super-Half Marathons

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Hey all, I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoyed my last entry. I am slowly winding down my time here and will probably only post one or two more times before I head back to the States. My studies are going well and I feel like I am really advancing in the language both in the Jordanian dialect and the Modern standard and apparently look confident enough wandering around on the street that I was asked for directions which was awesome.

One of the main events that happened recently must have been a first in the history of Amman. One of my friends here, Willow, was supposed to do a half Marathon down in Aqaba at the end of the month but then found out that she had to go home early and was going to miss the race. About 5-6 of us had been planning to go down to Aqaba and cheer for her and another one of our friends, Ryan, who was running a 10k. There had been a running joke about a cowbell before the race because I was ranting about how terrible they were in cross-country. This lead to me buying an old, very experienced, iron cowbell from one of the stores in the Balad. When Willow found out that she was not going to be able to go down to Aqaba, but that I had brought the cowbell for the race, we decided to hold our own half Marathon in Amman. We plotted out the course on GoogleEarth and it ran all over the city and was ultimately 14.2 miles. We deemed it the Amman Super-Half Marathon and held it at 8am on a Friday when there were very few cars out. In the end, Willow ran all over the city with a group of us meeting her about 6 times through the course to hand out water, yell like hooligans, and of course, ring the cowbell madly. The combination of a white female foreigner running around the city (people don't jog for fun here) and a group of crazy looking foreigners yelling at her and ringing a cowbell was, I would imagine, a first in Jordanian history. Ryan joined her and ran the last 10k (6.2 miles) and they both ran through the gold-string-I-found-on-the-side-of-the-street finish line. It was epic and everyone really enjoyed it, especially the Jordanians who were cat-calling Willow as she ran by them.

We also recently rented a car visited the Desert Castles in Eastern Jordan on our day and 1/2 off. We rented the tiniest black, standard, car and the adventure began when we drove out of the rental store. Driving in Amman is insane. There are no lanes for cars, no one uses turning signals, people honk like crazy, and overall everything that they teach you in driver's ed is thrown out the window with the rest of the trash Jordanians throw on the streets. In the 5-10 minute drive that it took us to pick one of our friends up, I was afraid for my life or most of it and breathed a sigh of relief when we got to each new stop. On our way out to Azraq we were unable to find our way out of the city in part because there were few signs but mostly because the signs that we did see were covered in the faces of candidates from the recent election. We asked for directions about four times getting answers like "go to the mosque and turn right" which is not too helpful in a place where every neighborhood has at least one mosque. We eventually found our way when we saw a sign that had just three Arabic letters showing out from the collage of candidate faces which were the last three in Azraq. We arrived in the Southern Azraq where we were planning on staying for the night and found out that the town was in our reckoning, a giant truck stop. It is a main stop both on the way to Iraq and the way to Saudi Arabia so the whole town is filled with trucks, truck stops, tiny stores lining the one street in the town all filled with the same generic goods, and a host of restaurants that were all modeled after one another. There were absolutely no women in sight and there were goats penned up in front of the restaurants where they were going to be eaten at, often next to one of their kin hanging skinned next to them which I do not agree with. The whole town was also fairly dirty and had the feel to it of a place that people always stop off at but never want to stay in. Our hotel was interesting as well. Being poor students, we went for the budget option in the guide book and after circling the town a couple of times (driving up and down the only real street) we found it and realized that we were the only customers. We woke up the caretaker and after having him misspell our names in the registry we went to our room which was very plain but adequate. The reason why the whole hotel was interesting was that it ha the feel of a perfect horror movie set. We were in a small town our in the middle of nowhere, in a hotel that is unoccupied other than us and filled with odd sounds and general darkness, and a group of young students that always seem to get killed in horror movies. The whole night we made jokes about it and eventually I was half expecting to see something in the mirror or a ghost in the hall, which luckily did not happen.

The next day we began our adventure and visited the Azraq wetlands. This was the most depressing part of the journey because the whole vistor center and park itself was a tribute to a destroyed paradise. All of the pictures and descriptions of the place were all pining for a lost time of beauty and abundance that had been slowly drained away as Amman sucked more and more water to feed its growing needs. We walked through the whole area all the while wishing that we were here 10 years ago so that we would be seeing flowing springs and not barren dusty flats that more resembled the desert. You never really think about the tole that our actions are having on the planet until you see the people and places that are directly affected and it was a sad sight to behold. From there we went and visited Castle Azraq which was in the North section of the city (much nice than its truck-stop-resembling bottom half). It was a nice spot, but overall not very striking so we took a couple of pictures and climbed all over the place which is the benefit to seeing ancient sights in Jordan, you can touch almost anything and go basically anywhere. Next we visited one of the better castles on the loop which was Castle Amra. This castle was is known for being covered in art depicting people and animals which in the Muslim world is quite a rarity because of the belief that pictorial representations are prohibited. Some of the lower more reachable art was defaced by particularly pious Muslims but the other sections were amazing and I never thought that I would be in the Muslim world looking at naked or half-naked people covering the walls. During the whole driving section of this trip we were in the middle of what must me some of the most boring desert landscape in the world. The land is flat until the mountains in the far distance, the ground baked hard and covered with black rocks from about the size of your chest down. I took few pictures and was glad to have not been a Bedouin who traveled these parts for weeks on a camel. Our last stop was Um Jamal which was a massive abandoned city which we decided would be the final scene in the horror movie where the remaining students are chased through the black stone ruins at dusk as night retakes the city. From Um Jumal we participated in our first major Jordanian traffic jam on the highway. What was interesting was not the accident, but how the Jordanians reacted to it. A two lane highway became 4 lanes as all the cars drove around the sides to pass the large trucks waiting for the accident to be cleared. Then some adventurous drivers started 4 wheeling in their trucks up the rocky hill on the side of the road to get around. At first we were incredulous but after a while with little progress on the main road we took our tiny car and did the 4-wheeling ourself which was now a stream of Jordanians tired of waiting. I just could not see that happening in the US. In the end it was a great trip and I got back in time for my Ammiya class covered in dirt and supremely grateful for traffic laws in the States.

The last interesting event that I would like to tell you about is another Sufi ceremony that I have now attended twice. It is held in the same building where I go to hear the lectures but is a very different experience. There were about 50 people there when I came the first time and it all started out with everyone sitting around the sides of the large room listening to 3-4 men singing prayers or poetry or verses of the Qur'an. Then Sheikh Nuh enters and we all crowd around him in one side of the room and the process begins. Everyone starts with reciting the name of God (Allah in Arabic) in the same way that a group of people recite the word "Om" which I found to be very familiar and calming. Then everyone (all males, the women are in a separate room) gets up and forms a huge circle clasping hands. There are still the 3-4 main singers but now everyone else starts a rhythmic rocking motion that is comprised of a forward bow and then coming back up and bending your knees a bit before straightening up and repeating the movement. This is accompanied by the whole group of people rhythmically breathing in and out forcefully, which creates the beat for the singers. Throughout everything that happens there are 1-3 people in the middle circling and directing everyone in their breathing and movements. The sounds and movement speed up and then slow down to start the next section where everyone keeps the same breath but instead just dips up and down. In this stage the singing and the movements slowly build speed and energy until people are literally jumping in the air while still holding hands and continuing the breathing. Eventually this dies down and then the whole rocking returns, to be followed again by the dipping. The second time we started dipping slowly built higher and higher with the energy of the group and in the end Sheikh Nuh came out into the middle of the circle and was conducting the whole process with movements that can only be described as those of a wizard from a time long past. At the end there is so much power in the room that nearly everyone is jumping and breathing out so loudly that it is almost a shout with each out breath and then suddenly it stops and everyone comes back into their bodies and listens to a lecture by Sheikh Nuh in Arabic. I loved this whole ceremony and although I might not have connected to God in the same way that many of the participants did, I was able to lose myself in the movements and breathing of the group, and especially in the end, leaving my body and just being. That is the best way I can describe it, but it is something that has to be experienced to really get it and I hope to go again this Friday. At the end of the whole lecture was a ritual that I really agree with. Everyone creates a line and in a row each person goes down the line, grasping the hand of the person across from you kissing it, and looking into their eyes. Often people greet each other with "salam alaykum" or just a smile. I love it because you connect with every person in the room for just an instant and the smiles that I received from some of the people there really lightened my soul.

I won't bore you with any more of my adventures here, but I have attached pictures on the same site:
- http://picasaweb.google.com/luke.bolton514/SuperHalfMarathonDesertCastlesSuqJumA02
I also included some pictures of the huge flea market in Amman and a shot or two of the stores and restaurants in the balad (downtown). I hope you enjoyed the newest installment. Feel free to write me, I love to hear what is going on in your lives or just what you thought of the blog, questions etc.

Ma Salama

Luqa

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Comments

[Abdullah]

Good Description
That is a very good description of the Hadra. I hope we can get more into the deeper spiritual meanings of it, because it the outer form is so amazing, imagine what the inner aspect must be like. Abdullah Misra