Day 1 (continued): Making Friends At the Police Station

Middle East » Jordan » North » Amman
May 24th 2012

Published: May 30th 2012

I awoke the next morning to a somewhat still darkened room. I sat up checking the time: 10:34. Not bad for someone who went to sleep 5 hours earlier and it was 2am back home. After checking my body for obvious bug bites and finding none, I walked slowly out of the door and into my assigned bathroom. I knew now that they called it a Water Closetfor a reason. After trying to take care of getting over the idea of putting used tissue in the trash can next to me instead of in the toilet, I walked back into the room and closed the door quietly. My miniature balcony door was still closed and I could tell that the light behind it was screaming to be released. I moseyed on over and turned the old fashion key in the door. The door swung open.

I had to shield my eyes as the brightest light I have ever witnessed blasted through the doorway. It was more than just the yellow rays of sun I am used to in Texas. It was a white light that I only remembered seeing in the movie Pitch Black when they land on the fatal planet while there is still sunlight. I instantly brought the door close to its frame to only allow a sliver of light, and even that was enough to fill the room with more illumination than the single rod bulb in the room. I took a moment to stare at the sliver of light on the floor to wait out my eyes adjusting. I looked back into the light streaming in from the door and bravely went for another try. I eased the door open, cautiously squinting until I was able to stand in the fullness of the morning sun. The sights, after the light died down, were that of two boys running up the street shouting something playful at each other. I only understood yellaah or “Come on!” There was a tailoring shop about two floors tall directly across the way with the cityscape directly behind it. Up and down the steep hill of the street, cars lined either side and I could see a line of taxis starting at the top of the hill and trailing all the way down. I soaked in the scenery for a moment before I realized that I probably should stand on a balcony in broad daylight with a Victoria Secret’s Gorgeous line nightshirt, Victoria’s Secret ice cream pajama shorts and messy hair. Someone might suspect something. I took a shower, got dressed in a rather conservative outfit for America in the summer, but I still looked cute (…or so I thought), and headed out with my little backpack to start an adventure.

It didn’t take long before I had no idea what to do. I marched carefully down the steep hill into a busy street in Downtown or il-balad. Of course I got a lot of stares; I’m very used to that when I travel. What I wasn’t used to was how many people said “Welcome” with a smile. It was the first warm feeling I’d had about being in a new country where Black people are very scarce. Now, in the end, I did get the typical stares of sexually tensioned men passing me along side the streets. They’d say something about me or to me and laugh with their mates. But I’d become proficient at tunnel vision practicing in America and on the streets of Moscow, along Moscow was for a different reason. It was to avoid the pains of disgusted looks or suspicious glares or looks as if I were a good sale item for the Black Market when we’d go to flea markets and such. But here, I really only felt looks of suspicion from the women. It may be because of my hair wildly blowing in the wildly, even to American standards, or because I was dressed funny to them. I don’t know and won’t find out for quite some time, if I ever find out, but one day I will need to talk to them, and one day someone is hopefully going to listen.

After walking around for about 20 minutes and getting a feel for my little area, I really found myself itching to be productive, so what do I do? I try to find a police station to handled the situation with the stamp in my passport saying “Find nearest police station within one month.” Now, at the time, I wasn’t sure what that was going to do for me, but I wasn’t trying to violate any laws in a foreign country so I walked around with my little Collin’s Arabic Phrasebook” looking for one. I saw a policeman somewhat lazily guarding some gate and approached him with the traditional “Salaam-a-laikum” and he greeted back “Walaikum-a-salaam” . Struggling to find the right words and put them together to form sentences, I asked him where the police station was. He didn’t have a clue as to what I was saying, so I just started pointing at the words in Arabic in the little book. He looked at me hopelessly and then at the book. Still not a clue. Finally, I gave up the ghost “Tetekelam Englezii?” This, my friends, became my most favorite phrase: Do you speak English? Unfortunately he spoke not one lick. A taxi driver passing us by stopped to say hi to the officer and noticed me with my backpack and little qasem, dictionary, and immediately got out to help. I asked him, “Tetekelam Englezee?” With music to my ears, “Yes, a little.”

Sir, a little is more than nothing. I gave a quick sigh and was able to communicate to him that I needed to go to the police station. Bear in mind, I had the prerogative that if it was “walkable” within a 30-minute distance, it was getting walked. But this was a case where I quickly threw that out of the window and hopped in the backseat of the cab. After cordial conversation bil-Arabii waa bil-Englezii, we arrived at the police station. He charged me only 2JD (Jordanian Dinar), which I later found was slightly inflated for the distance and time, but it wasn’t too major of an overcharge, and I promptly began walking beyond the gates.

A few policemen at the entrance stopped me saying “Girl! Girl!” after they’d tried saying the same in Arabic with no reaction from me. I swung around and approached them with my passport opened to the Jordan page and they said, “Ah! American! (Everyone so far had been happy to see Americans) Yes, you go down and around corner.”

“Shukran! ” Thank you, and I was on my way. After some hand gestured guidance, I made it to the right office. Two policewomen sat behind a desk, a relief to my eyes, but I seemed to be an eyesore to theirs. I tried to politely explain what little I could of the situation by holding out my passport. One woman looked down at my passport and then up at me, and then rolled her eyes over to a folder and then handed me a sheet of paper. She gave it to me and said, “Write and sign.” I wasn’t sure at the time if that was the extent of her English or if she was just being blunt. I sat in a little corner, and asked the man next to me for a pen. He quickly, and almost happily, gave it to me and started writing. There were two sides to one section: one side in English and one in Arabic. I wrote in both. The paper was basically a residency form, and unfortunately I didn’t know where I would be living yet. My CIEE program wouldn’t give us those details until June 8^th when we had our orientation: it was May 24^th. I didn’t know the address of my hostel either so I was a bit stuck. After trying to tell that to the uncooperative policewomen, a young man with dark brown hair that was starting to curl in the front, narrow face, and light skin in a green Ralph Lauren polo with a half popped collar, jeans, and Timberland boots stepped in.

“Do you need help?” he asked with an Arabic accent, but the best English I’d heard since being in the country. “You speak English?!” I replied quite happily. He chuckled a little bit, “Yes, I do. I can help you. What are you trying to do?” He leaned in to look at my paper. But I looked at what was in his hand and was sadly overcome with Americanism. He held an Iraq passport. In one instant, I thought about whether he would be angry or happy or indifferent to seeing an American passport. What if he intentionally got me in trouble? Should I say sorry for messing up your country? Are you a refugee? Do you hate Americans? I finally came to my senses. I knew very amazing Iraqis back home in America so why couldn’t it be the same here? My last, snap-to thought was the more appropriate one. He stuck with me in the painstaking process the whole way. It took an hour and several different rooms before a nice older lady fingerprinted every inch of my hands. The helpful Iraqi walked in and out of the new room they put me in, walking and talking with the lady and answering his Blackberry. He handled pretty much everything, and somehow I didn’t feel completely uneasy about letting this perfect stranger handle my legal documents in a foreign country. After all was said and done in the hour, he offered me a ride back to my hostel.

Now I have always obeyed my parents, for the most part, with what they taught me about strangers. Don’t take candy from them. Don’t talk to them. And most certainly don’t get in the car with them. So what do I do? Hop in his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the streets of Jordan. We talked about a few things, why I’m here, why he’s here, how Jordanians are probably some of the nicest and most welcoming people in the world, how, especially since I’m an American, he needs to show me “that there are good Iraqis and one of them” and if I ever need anything to just give him a call and he’ll come right away. That statement caught me off guard, making me realize that he quite possibly made similar assumptions prior to helping me at the station. It put things in perspective. Here’s a bit more about my new friend:

His name is Ammar, and he is 24 years old. He moved with his family to Jordan in 1990, so he doesn’t remember very much of his homeland Iraq. He says he grew up Jordanian while still keeping that Iraqi pride. He studied in England for a time, which is why he knows English so well and his family is filthy rich. I know this because he told me anytime I would like to come over, they have parties and stuff with their pool and football (soccer) field and we can play basketball on their court if I want. Throughout the day I’m thinking it was the neighborhood’s park, and then nightfall swept over the city..

Al-hamees al-leela bilees: “Thursday is the Devil’s night.” Much like our Fridays in America, this is the night when everyone goes wild into the weekend. All the stress from work is taken off, students put away their books and it’s time to cut loose. Ammar graciously offered to have me tag-a-long with hanging out with his friend that evening and even dropped by to pick me up from my hostel. He rolled up around 11:30pm in the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride and didn’t really holler at me because he came into the lobby and brought me out to the navy blue 2008 BMW _____ sitting idly in the street. He opened the door and I climbed in the back. Yet another episode of getting in the car with strangers. His friend turned and looked at me with an outstretched hand. “Hello, I’m Jad, like with a ‘d’ and ‘t’ at the end.” I shook his hand and said “Ismii Brawnlyn.” I spoke in Arabic even though he clearly spoke near perfect English, but with a British accent. “Oh! You speak Arabic?” he exclaimed. “Schwaay,” I smiled with the hand motion for “a little bit.”

“Right on!” he reacted and turned to face the road, and sped off. “Well, that’s name’s a bit hard. Mind if I call you B?” he laughed. “’Ey yo, B! Brrrrrrrra!” He likes to bark and do this tongue roll that I’ve only heard in Don Omar and Pitbull songs. Jad talked up a storm about how Jordanians “do it for real on Thursday nights” and how they “were going to show me a real fun time.” The conversation was very lively all the way out of Amman. The only reason I knew we’d left Amman was because Jad asked, “I bet you didn’t know we’d left Amman already, did you?” Shocked I looked behind me and saw the hills of the city getting smaller and the lights getting dimmer. That’s when my home training and SERE kicked in. Ammar somewhat could sense my reaction and said, “Don’t worry, we are taking you to the farm.” Oh, great, a farm where no one can hear me scream or find my body. It wasn’t until we arrived that I saw it wasn’t a farm at all, quite the opposite.

We pulled up to the gate of a home. A man on crutches walked to the gate and opened it and went back into a small house on the side of the gate. We pulled into the paved driveway and parked at the front door. I got out and Jad took me over past the large pool and to the opposite end of the football field with the goals down and ready for play. We sat on the ledge next to the garden only a few feet from the built-into-the-wall stone BBQ pit, which sat just outside of the outdoor video game room. Yeah, filthy rich like I said. Most of the night consisted of enjoying the view of Amman and the stars and the sounds of the quietest city I’ve ever head. The sound was so beautiful and soothing and only interrupting every now and again by the local goats. I suppose it was a farm in some way. We talked about any and everything you can think of: from cars to food to school to politics to Palestine. Jad is a Palestinian Jordanian, so I tried to stay away from the subject as all of my guidebooks advised. He didn’t seem to mind bringing it up.

“It’s not that I hate America or the people, man. It’s the government, man, I mean just governments in general. It’s all about take what you can, man, and don’t leave nothing for the people, man.” He says “man” like Americans say “like.”

“I just wish people would come to their senses and cooperate with each other. And see, man, that’s why I absolutely love Americans like you. They come to my country and see what we’re all about! I think Americans that come here are the most open minded people on the planet, man. I mean when you think about the way people think about America sometimes, man, you wouldn’t think anyone of you would come here. But look, here you are learning about us, man, our culture, our people, man. I respect you, B. I don’t even know you, but because you’re here I got mad respect for you, man.” I was in. I knew I had found good people.

“You know what, man, we’re gonna have you speakin’ fluent Arabic by the time you leave here. We’re gonna take you ‘round some people and I’ll show you how I learned English. I gotchu, B. I gotchu.”

The night continued with more laughing and talking and culture swapping. These guys were cool, I could already tell. We talked for so long about so much that I woke up on a couch in one of the sitting rooms the next morning at 8:30am.

Day 1 (continued): Making Friends At the Police Station

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