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Published: March 29th 2007
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As a sportswriter for Al Ghad - Jordan’s leading Arabic daily - Akram’s managed to remind me what a complete powder puff I am in the world of serious journalism. Working six days a week, chained to his desk deep into the night as I’m eyeing the girls in Abdoun, he’s a source of both boundless admiration and abject pity. There are about four hundred degrees of separation, I suspect, between me and legitimate press credentials; but as I chat up a young teacher in the Broadway café - a half-Columbian, half-Swiss beauty with eyelashes that can practically hail a taxi - I admit there’s something to be said for my own half-assed brand of softball journalism.
When we decide to take a day-trip to Umm Qais - an old Roman city just a few miles from the Syrian border - Akram has a look of panicked exuberance, as if the fuzz and the copy editor are both in hot pursuit. He’s invited his cousin along, partly because Mohamed’s a friendly, mild-mannered guy who’s eager to give his rusty English a spin, partly because he’s offered to give us a lift. We’re off at the ungodly hour of
7am, a time when - for those of you who haven’t noticed - a certain scribe is usually busy counting the sheep that aren’t grazing along the highway median. Mohamed - lean, smiling, threads of gray in his neatly trimmed moustache - takes us to his favorite breakfast spot, ordering up hot bowls of
foul and
hummus as thick as spackling putty.
Mohamed’s turning out to be invaluable company. At the butcher’s, stocking up for an afternoon barbeque, he shoots a wary eye toward the scale. Though he’s shown himself to be a sweet-tempered guy so far, he proves to be an absolute shark when there’s meat on the line. He catches the wily butcher picking out the fattiest pieces and clucks his tongue. “
La la la,” he says - “No no no” - wagging a finger. He reaches across the counter and starts to fuss with the bloody pile. The butcher makes a face that suggests he can come up with quite a few places where those skewers of fat-marbled meat might feel right at home. In the end, having exhausted all diplomatic channels, Mohamed shakes his head and mournfully sighs. “Would that your integrity were not
like this meat, my friend,” his dour smile implies; “heavy on the fat, but without much to sink your teeth into.”
We make it to Umm Qais by late-morning, the sun bathing the grassy hills, the daffodils bobbing in the breeze. From the top you can look across the Sea of Galilee to the Palestinian border, or to the Golan Heights, where Syria and Israel have been keeping a tense stalemate since the Six-Day War. It’s a panoramic view of some of the most turbulent places on the planet, but from here, it looks more like a scene from Samuel Palmer than from CNN Headline News. Cows are lowing on the hillside just below us; Mohamed sneaks off to scoot his way up a tree. A few plump, harmless clouds blow by, too content on this mild day to worry about whose side of the border they drift across.
We spend a few lazy hours among the ruins. Mohamed, who’s worked in building and construction, shows a keen eye for detail. He notes the grooves on a long, cobbled road where chariots must’ve rolled hundreds of years ago; he marvels at the crude irrigation system used
to catch the rainwater, squatting and patting the earth like a forensic scientist on “CSI: Middle East.” In a clump of weeds he finds a shard of some ancient Roman pottery, a jagged piece of clay that he holds up to the sun and squeezes between his fingertips. “A small jar, like this,” he says, holding his hands a few inches apart, “you pay $2,000 today.” He offers it to me as a souvenir, though after a brief bit of wonderment, I flick it back into the grass.
By lunch-time we’re barreling down a winding road into the valley. We set up the grill in a small patch of shade off the highway, collecting branches and dried leaves for the fire. Mohamed fans the flames with a piece of cardboard, squatting and eyeing the coals and tsk tsk-ing with disapproval. He digs through some weeds nearby and pulls out what looks like a door panel from a ’73 Ford Pinto, its massive surface area, I suspect, enough to fan a fire in Damascus. After a few vigorous swats he’s breaking a sweat; with a stroke of misguided ingenuity, he pushes the grill behind his car’s tail-pipe and guns
the engine, hoping to ignite the coals with exhaust. “This is not like the barbeques in New York,” Akram says matter-of-factly, and I don’t have to break out a brochure for Weber grills to confirm that no, this is not what I’m used to back home.
Mohamed skewers the meat and works the grill, his mild face hardened into a look of carnivorous expertise. I don’t know the Arabic word for “grillmaster,” but it’s clear that we’re in capable hands. He turns the skewers and appraises each tender cube like a jeweler, finally getting up and grabbing a loaf of bread and pulling the meat off in one deft stroke. He sprinkles some salt over it, tastes, and wrinkles his nose. “It is not very good meat,” he says apologetically, a fact he’ll keep repeating as I work my way through skewers two through four.
The drive back takes us through the Jordan Valley, a lush stretch of citrus groves and farmland being worked by armies of men. It’s a long way from the wind-blown plains of Wadi Rum and the south, the hills painted green and the Jordan River shimmering like quicksilver under a hazy
sky. We stop to buy some sodas, a few chickens clucking at our feet around the fridge. It’s been, I note, a lovely day. Mohamed takes my hand warmly when we get back to the hotel. “Very pleased to meet you,” he says. Akram wants to visit a small town nearby the next day, and I wonder how much work I can really blow off this week as I reluctantly agree.
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