Goodbye and Thoughts

Al'hamdu'lillah, we will be heading back to America within the next few days, cutting our trip short so that we can have our baby back home, insha'Allah.

We look forward to being reunited with family and friends, although we already miss our close ones here. So the conundrum goes, pointing, as all things do, to something more lasting and permanent than the temporal frustrations of life's tiresome compromises. There is no "having it all," is there? Those who think otherwise often end up in rehab.

So we say goodbye to Jordan, and we pray that Allah allow us to hold fast to what gains He has allowed us, that He forgive us the opportunities that we were too sick to make use of, and that He make firm within us the desire to please Him wherever we are.

Amin

Dolph!

Sweet Footgear

Mom's Visit

The laundry situation here is tough, especially when it's cold out. Nobody's got a dryer. What you've got instead is a really wicked spin cycle on your washing machine that kicks out most of the water. Then you line dry. Except that it's raining out, so you set up your little drying rack inside, where it's a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and wait until next week when you can put your clothes back on. With only two pairs of long underwear to my name, I was forced to choose between warmth and hygiene.

Thankfully, Mom was scheduled for a visit. She lives across the way, in Syria. Stuff is generally a lot cheaper over there owing to a really solid trade policy, or so I've been told. Apparently, the Syrian government has mandated that Syria is not to import any more than it exports. The sum total is no trade deficit with lots of homegrown goods for cheap. Add to that good clean water and abundant natural resources and you've got all the qualifiers for inclusion in the Axis of Evil.

So Mom's on her way and if she hopes to see us alive could she please bring us more long underwear. Al'hamdu'lillah, she did. She also brought lots of yummy treats and socks.

I don't know why, but she brought me socks with pictures of spaceships. Actually, not just spaceships. There's a picture of Saturn and what I take to be a comet streaking over the whole mess. The spaceship is obviously in full throttle, flames shooting out the back and all. I asked Mom about it. She said she hadn't noticed the pictures.

Hadn't noticed!? Good gravy! The whole scene from flame tip to comet tail takes up the palm of my hand! These aren't subtle starscapes, a few dots hinting at the Milky-Way. No sir, this is Buck Freakin' Rogers raising intergalactic Cain on my ankles! This is the Empire Striking Back at my Achilles tendon!

They are comfortable, though.

We had a nice time with Mom. She stayed for two or three weeks, mostly just hanging around town. I was busy with classes, so we couldn't really get out for any sightseeing, but we had our meals together and the kids got to spend time with Nana, and that's really the important thing. Afterward, Mom and I took a cab to Damascus, Syria's capital, and from there we caught a bus back to her home city, Aleppo.

The bus ride to her place was OK. We were sitting right up front which had two serious disadvantages. There was nothing blocking the driver's view of us, so I got busted for trying to put my feet up, twice. Also, there was nothing blocking our view of Dolph Lundgren.

Remember comrade Dolph? He made his debut at the height of the Cold War as Stallone's Soviet nemesis in one of the Rocky movies. In the end, he went down, like Mr.T and Apollo Creed, subdued by Sly's big, honest American Fists. But few of us will ever forget that moment, when, locked eye to eye with the Italian Stallion, Dolph's mouth twisted into a wry, Bolshevik sneer to meet Rocky's palsied pucker, he muttered with thick, rolling Russian inflections:

"I will break you."

He didn't break Rocky, but he sure put my lights out about 3 minutes into his on-board screening en route to Aleppo. He was the star of some post-Apocalyptic B-flick, alternately flexing and blowing things up. I couldn't take the similarities to my own life, so I did my best just to check out.

Ain't It Cute?

Lump Discrimination

A thought occurred to me while preparing my oatmeal this morning. I don't typically eat oatmeal here because it's expensive, but I do eat quite a bit of farina (like Malt-O-Meal or Cream of Wheat) because you get bucketsful for cheap.

Now the thing about farina is that you can really wear yourself out trying to beat out the lumps. We mix and mix because we want our farina smooth.

But oatmeal's different. We don't mind as much if our oatmeal has some "texture." In fact , if someone served me smooth oatmeal I think I'd leave. So what's the fuss over lumpy farina? It seems to me that this is lumpist thinking. Bigotry has no place at the breakfast table.

After all, what are those farina lumps except farina? But, for many people, awareness of this fact is not enough to overcome their lumpism. You may have been raised by lumpist parents. If so, you might try throwing in nuts and raisins and whatever else sounds good to sort of chunk up your cereal. That way the farina lumps won't stand out so much.

The point is that we should be neutral in our initial assessment of lumps. Take the little lump wife recently found in her belly. Given a few months and God's good graces, that little lump'll be a little person. For now, we'll call it lumpy-wumpy in order to distinguish it from farina lumps, or any other mass of congealed material. It is also widely recognized that adding "y" to the end of a word makes you fall in love with it and so a skunk is to be avoided, but you might very well pet a skunky.

We're very happy about this. Babies are fun and they go over real big here in Jordan. I've talked to lots of cab drivers, not a few of which claim having 5, 10, or even 15 kids- and they all want more. "A house without a baby is a problem," says one cabbie. When wife was real little, she was a bridesmaid or flower-girl or some such at her aunt's wedding. Now this same aunt has tons of kids, the youngest of which is younger than our kids. They love babies here.

This has it's downside. God have mercy on the woman who doesn't have a baby to show nine months after her wedding night. The idea that a couple might want to wait a bit before having kids is totally foreign, and will only sound like a really sad attempt to mask the fact that in reality the new bride is barren and sterile, her uterus having been flipped inside-out from riding too many ponies in her youth. If she goes so far as to defend her reproductive capabilities, she will only succeed in shifting attention to her husband who will be advised to move to Italy where he might sing with the rest of the castrati.

Already potential names are being discussed. Wife, when not vomiting, will ask, "What should we name it?"

"I don't know."

"You don't love our baby [vomit]!"

5y has taken to calling her pending sibling Kissy-Bear. This is nicer than lumpy-wumpy, and it has the requisite "y," so Kissy-Bear it will be until further notice. While we aren't certain what we'll call it after it's born, we have ruled out the following two names:

Skyler Chase

Kaitlyn Mackenzie

Besides those, pretty much anything goes. What do you think we should call it?

Ice, Ice Baby

All thanks and praise are for God alone. So we thank Him for bringing an end to our first Jordanian winter.

We'd heard the horror stories. We brought our coats. We froze.

Here's the real deal on winter in Jordan. The weather is not the problem. A couple of days of snow, some rain, a chilly wind, really not too terrible outside. The problem is inside. There is no cost effective way of properly heating a cinder block apartment. It's like living in a cave- damp, weeping walls and an inescapable chill that'll have you bundled so tight that you can't really do much except sit in front of your little portable heater for hours on end ruminating about how you'll never take sunshine for granted again and how stupid you were for ever complaining that the weather was ever too hot, and how when you get back to Southern California you'll have to try super hard not to hit people who live in the suburbs with central heating and a constant supply of hot running water who still find something to grumble about come winter.

There are places here that have what they call "central heating." It isn't really. What they are are diesel-fueled radiators installed along many, if not most of the walls in an apartment. These are actually extremely effective, both at warming your home and completely draining your wallet. We have heard stories of people paying upward of $400 a month to keep their diesel tanks full through the very long winter. That's the other thing. It starts cooling off late October into November, and now, a week or so shy of April, we're just starting to come out of it. We still need to wear our jackets inside.

We brought a little travel clock here, one with a built in thermometer. It broke. I think one of the kids sat on it. But before it broke we were noting the temperature. We were averaging around 50 degrees Fahrenheit inside. I suspect it dropped even lower, but I don't have any numbers to back me up. We could see our breath. My brother will tell you that he's been able to see my breath for years, independent of weather conditions, but this was new for the rest of the family. Watching your children play inside your home with little puffs of steam billowing from their mouths with each chuckle, it's kind of frustrating. The walls were streaked with moisture, rolling drops pooling along the edges of our floor. Here, the mold would grow.

We bought two little electric heaters, and we have two working gas heaters. A third was making really scary noises, so we stopped using it. We kept one electric heater going in the baby's room all night. But the rest of us would have to tough it out under blankets and lots of clothes.

I spoke to my father in the States at one point during the winter. I mentioned that we were cold. He told me,"That which does not kill you will only make you stronger."

We aren't dead.

The Cookie Crumbles

It seems a little silly mentioning it now, so long after the collapse of her sugary empire, but for a span of about two months, wife had a job. She was our muffin making bread winner. She baked and sold treats. I had a sugar-mama.

Every morning I'd take her fresh-baked goods with me to school. It got so that some of the students would be there waiting for me, cup of tea in hand, "Whatcha' got today?" Was it some of her delectable muffins, zucchini, pumpkin chocolate-chip, orange-spice, or apple-strudel? Or perhaps some of her scrumptious cookies, chocolate-chip, chocolate chocolate-chip, peanut-butter, or M&M? Or could it be some of her warm, crispy, homemade biscotti, dipped in chocolate, with just a hint of almond?

"Well, boys, " I'd say, popping the top off her Tupperware boxes, steam rising from her still-warm goodies, "Feast your eyes on these!"

Oohs and ahhs would reverberate throughout the halls of the language center, followed shortly thereafter by the clink of change in the tin cup we used to collect payment. Life was sweet.

And then, disaster!

It was wife's habit to prep and mix her batter in the evening, and wake early the following day to do her baking. One evening, I could hear her sobbing in the kitchen. Waves of chivalric gallantry lapped at my sandy, pericardial beaches! My chiseled, knightly visage became red with anger and despair! That the mother of my children should shed even a single tear while tucked under the griffonic wings of my matrimonially sanctioned guardianship was a heretofore unanticipated trial, but one, I assure you dear reader, that I would respond to as Hercules at the stables!

I threw open the door of our kitchen, being careful not to rip the hinges out of the wall. There wife stood, her cheeks a doughy mess marred now by tears and flour.

"What is it woman! What manner of evil hath beset you that you should wail thus, your cries kindling within my bosom a fantastic tempest, her gales lusty enough to harrow even the Red Spot of Jupiter? Pray tell me! Do not vex me further!"

She glanced at the far corner of the kitchen. I took the cue and had a look myself. Our laptop was sitting open on the counter. The keyboard was buried in cocoa powder.

Two words:

Oh God.

Two more words:

Buy Mac.

Sure, it was over a month before I had the courage to type on the thing, but after repeated bouts of violently shaking cocoa dust out of our iBook's innards, running all over Amman to track down even a little bit of that canned air gassy stuff (it was like $7.00!), and numerous consultations with the neighborhood cybergeek, I wrote my first email. And everything has been fine since, wal'hamdu'lillah.

Wife's business took a strange turn, though. People were excited about her stuff. They kept right on eating her stuff. But at some point, they stopped paying. We don't know what happened, but there was all kind's of oddness, people paying with Filipino money and such. She got stung pretty hard a few times. So we stopped.

Huzzah!

Our Trip to the Mall

Many months ago, we took our first trip to one of the local malls. Malls here are a pretty big deal, a way to cheat the weather and go broke all at the same time. They are often several stories tall, anywhere from 4 to 9 floors. An amusement park and food court will often occupy the top couple of floors, a supermarket the first floor, and we haven't seen a mall yet that didn't have a dedicated prayer hall.

We've got a mall about 15 minutes walking distance from us. Generally speaking, malls rank somewhere near the 6th or 7th circle of Hell in terms of my desire to spend time in one, but I will say that there are some refreshing differences between the malls here and the malls in the States.

First off, the Jordanians are family people. It really is very sweet to go to a mall and see the place filled with families- mom, dad, the kids, all dressed to the nines. Somehow the experience is a bit less carnal. You've still got your teeny-boppers with all their gum-cracking and gravity defying hairdos, but families are the rule. That's why they build the play-parks.

Ahh, the play-parks. Thoroughly unregulated arenas of kinetic release! Anything goes in these places. We have seen these indoor parks virtually demolished over a course of weeks, without the fun-factor suffering even one little bit. This "creative restructuring" just makes for more exciting play. Why not throw the rocking horse into the ball pit? Who says a slide has to be standing in order to be fun? Tear half the planks out of the rope bridge and now you've got yourself a real challenge!

There were some annoyances, though. The little coin-op carousel brays a particularly annoying version of Jingle Bells. Nice, I suppose, for those who are into co-opted pagan festivities, but we were irked. Also, the bumper cars move way too fast. We watched quite a few kids go to tears with the first slam. One kid came out with a bloody lip.

The other thing we like is the prayer hall. It's really something to be shopping, or eating, or washing the gore from your child's face as he comes out of his bumper car and suddenly the call to prayer is sounded out over the mall's PA system. Helps one keep perspective.

It was during our first trip to the mall that we saw the disturbing consequences of not following Fashion Rule #32:

Do not wear clothing printed with words in a language that you cannot understand.

Since our trip to the mall I have seen three young men wearing jackets emblazoned in HUGE block letters with the words:

Negro Sport

I don't know what they think it means. We can't say we even really know what it means. We hope it's merely a trend that goes the way of jelly sandals.

I'm Not Your Friend

Big apologies for not posting sooner. We've sort of settled into a routine and things are pretty status quo.

No real news as far as wife and I are concerned, but 5y's life is becoming suddenly so very dramatic. It wasn't long ago that one of her schoolmates, a boy that we'll identify here as Ratface, bit her shoulder. She was at a loss to explain the reason for his sudden rabidity, only saying that he bit her and that she was ok. No skin was broken, al'hamdu'lillah.

Then there was the time that a younger girl told her that she was no longer going to be her friend. 5y answered the rebuke by gift wrapping a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book that she'd already colored and presented it to her. That's the sort of gift that makes eternal friendship incumbent, wouldn't you say?

The kids eat breakfast and lunch at school, so we send her off with her little yellow backpack stuffed with all kinds of stuff to eat. She'd been getting juice boxes, but this last time we packed something extra special. It's like a drinkable yogurt. It's popular stuff with the Arabs- thin your yogurt with water, add salt and chug. She was excited to have some. To hear her tell it, she'd just sat down near the bottom of the slide and cracked her bottle when some boy, we'll call him Heartless Savage, comes flying down the slide, kicking the bottle right out of 5y's hand. I hate school.

It's getting a little chilly, particularly in the mornings. We're running in the low 60s/high 50s, usually clear, but sometimes rainy. This got us thinking about 5y and her getting to school. As it was, I would walk her to school (about 10 minutes away, uphill, like everything else) and wife would bring her back (I'm still in school when 5y gets out). That puts wife and 11m outside for 20 minutes for the trip to school and back. Uphill, in the cold, rain, snow- wife wasn't having it.

So wife met with the teachers to look at options. Turns out one of the teachers has a husband who drives a bus. It's not really a bus. It's a black minivan, but sometimes it has other kids in it, so that's good. For a few dinars a month, this young man, who we'll identify as Super Hero Black Mini-Van Driver, comes by to pick up and drop off 5y. It's working out so far. We'll keep it up through the winter, insha'Allah, and see how it goes.

We've mentioned before that when children congregate, pestilence proliferates. Today 5y vomited twice. She had a couple of homemade cookies last night, so it could be overindulgence, but it's just as likely that she picked up a bug. That put her in a clinical state of mind. Tromping about our apartment in her fleece pajamas, she diagnosed wife with a case of "Kydancy Largesse." That's what she said. We don't where she picked that up, or what it means, but 5y was convinced that wife had it. When pressed as to what the symptoms of Kydancy Largesse were, we learned from 5y that wife was looking "like a dorky frog," and that this was diagnostic for the illness. She assured us that wife's was a mild case. 5y gave wife an injection (she clicked a ball-point pen) in her wrist and all has been well since, wal'hamdullilah.

Keep warm!

Barbecue!

Cows!

Village People

The Eid prayer fell on Tuesday morning here in Jordan, the 24th of October. By 7:30 am all of the local mosques were packed with families celebrating the end of Ramadan, our month of daytime fasting. After the prayer and a brief sermon, 5y and I left the mosque and walked across the construction yard back to our home where wife and 11m were waiting for us. We were scheduled to leave for Hofa, the village where my father-in-law grew up. Wife's uncle would be taking us.

Hofa is a 2 hour drive north of Amman, not too far from a fairly large city called Irbid. The drive would give us an opportunity to see some of the Jordanian countryside.

It was a huge relief to get out of Amman. It really is a very large, crowded, busy city. Within 15 or 20 minutes we were enjoying the open country, scrubby hills and valleys not unlike the less developed areas of southern California's Inland Empire. Here and there we would spot Bedouin tents. We'd breeze by flocks of sheep tended by young boys on donkeys. 5y would really get excited about that.

We arrived at wife's grandma's house in Hofa just a little after 10 in the morning. People use the word "village" when talking about Hofa. When I hear "village" I think of huts. There are no huts here. It's really just a very small town. There are a number of homesteads here, small houses and a handful of animals in the yard. As far as I could tell there is only one main road. Wife's grandma's house overlooks the graveyard.

This was our first time celebrating Eid in a Muslim country, so we weren't real sure what to expect. We were met by wife's grandma, aunts, uncles, and tons of cousins. There was much squealing and kissing and hugging and shaking of hands. After several rounds of introductions, our family and a few others were divided up between two cars and we were off.

This is how Eid works in the Arab world: you visit as many relatives as you possibly can as quickly as God will allow.

Coming into contact with a traditional culture is a huge learning experience. Life's intangibles are fixed in a way that would be hard for many Americans to relate to. America is so new, only a couple of hundred years old versus the thousands of years over which time the Arabs have come to adopt their ways. So Eid goes like this:

We pull up to somebody's house. We get out. Wife and the kids are received by the ladies of the house. The rest of us (all men) are received by the men. Hugs, handshakes, kisses. Everybody sits. The host approaches each guest in turn with a teeny glass and a carafe of super hot, super bitter, super strong Turkish coffee. He pours you a shot. You swig and jiggle the little glass a bit before handing it back to the host.

I'm not sure what the glass jiggling is all about, but everybody did it. It seems to mean, "Thanks, but no more please."

After everybody's been offered their shot. The host comes around with a little candy dish. He stops at each guest, a piece of candy is taken, and then he moves on. After everybody gets their candy everybody stands for another round of hugs, kisses, and handshakes, and we're off again. I think the longest visit was maybe 10-15 minutes.

And that's exactly how it went for all 7 or so houses that we visited. What I couldn't determine was how it was decided who would visit and who would host. It seemed possible that with everybody out and eager to get their visiting done, that you'd show up at somebody's house only to find that they had gone out visiting others. In any case, I had a serious buzz going from all that coffee.

I had the drill down by the time we returned to grandma's house. In fact, shortly after we got back, everybody retired to the back of the house for I don't know what reason. I was left out front when who should come to the door but a bunch of male visitors. No problem. I hugged them, kissed them, shook their hands, invited them to sit down, poured them their shots, gave them their sweets, and sent them off.

My wife's grandmother lives on the ground floor of a two-story home. My wife's uncle, his wife and four children live upstairs. They've got about 3/4 of an acre with a number of olive trees, an herb garden, three cows, two calves, a bunch of chickens, and about six or seven sheep. Wife's uncle got the idea that he would slaughter one of his sheep for a barbecue the following day. I was invited to help.

It was late in the evening, probably around 8 or 9 pm when wife's uncle dragged a very resistant male sheep from out of it's pen and onto his back porch. The sheep was about a year old, maybe around 70 or 80 pounds. Sheep really are quite sweet and docile. He would stand still, quiet, look around a little bit. Then he would start and try to make a break for it, forcing wife's uncle to jerk him back into place.

Everything was all set. Wife's uncle asked for a knife. He swept the legs out from under the sheep so that the animal was instantly flipped onto it's side. The sheep was kicking a bit now, so it was my job to try and keep his legs under control. I was kind of laying on him.

Wife's uncle pulled the sheep's head back and with a very rapid sawing motion, the knife was pulled through the sheep's trachea. Another stroke or two, this time more laborious, and the knife was well into the sheep's neck, severing both carotid arteries. This is where things get messy. We got up off the animal and watched.

It is an awesome thing to take a life. I don't mean this in any triumphant way, but I really do think that everybody should have the experience. I'm sure you'd eat a lot less meat just because the price becomes so immediately apparent. Lots and lots of blood was spilled to put that steak on your plate. Not that meat is a bad thing, but it is serious.

Anyway, our sheep had by now arched it's nearly severed head back into a very unnatural position. There were strange noises, sucking sounds, gurgling sounds, something like a moan, "the soul, " wife's uncle whispered.

The sheep was still for several moments when suddenly there came a flurry of kicks. I understand that there are reflexive movements that can come on some time after death. I remember after slaughtering a sheep in commemoration of my first daughter's birth, that even after the meat was all chopped up into little pieces, the individual pieces would jerk and shimmy. Weird.

It was now time to dress our sheep. The head was removed and a hook run through near what I guess would be the sheep's ankle. He was hoisted up to allow the remainder of the blood to drain. Wife's uncle and his wife got to work.

Here I'll say a bit about village women. Perhaps you fancy yourself a hard worker. Maybe you are, but here's a breakdown of village woman's day. You make the comparison:

Wake up and milk the cows. Get the kids up and make breakfast. Clean up and get started with preparations for lunch. Get started? Yup, because you've got bread to bake, and yogurt to make with all that fresh milk you pulled. Woops- the cows are acting up! They're busting up the walls outside (this happened)! Corral the cows. Hubby's decided to slaughter a sheep. Dress it, chop it up, and clean up the mess. This means hands-and-knees scrubbing so the blood doesn't set in the concrete. Lunch time! Lay it out, clean it up. Check the chickens for eggs. Get started with dinner. Sun's setting- time to milk the cows again! Get the house in order. Serve dinner. Clean up. Get the kids off to bed. Now do this without a washing machine, without a dishwasher, with only spotty electricity, and rationed water. Hard work, but the people seemed content, the ladies talking and laughing while busy with their chores.

It was pretty late by the time we were done chopping up our sheep. Our family tried to get some rest, but with the exception of 5y, we were up all night. Country living has some serious drawbacks, not the least of which are the mosquitoes. It was crazy, beyond belief. We felt them all over us, buzzing like dental instruments in our ears. The kids got it the worst. By the time morning came they both looked like teenagers on a steady diet of deep-fried chocolate.

The day after our slaughter we had a huge barbecue. This was much closer to a campfire experience than a backyard Weber deal. They set these little metal troughs in the dirt and filled them with twigs from around the yard. They got that going and then threw in some heavy wood chips and fanned up a good flame. Seated on the ground a few feet away from the troughs were a bunch of ladies chopping vegetables and sliding chunks of meat and fat onto skewers. Outstanding sheep kabobs! Wife doesn't eat sheep, but she was loving this. So were the kids.

A great meal, a great time, al'hamdu'lillah.