PGO Jordan 2016: 25 May

Happy Independence Day! It is currently almost midnight and our group got back from an excursion to the Baadia. This page is a placeholder until I get to updating it, as I am exhausted.

Okay here's the actual update. Our group left Amman around 2PM and drove to the city of Mafraq, north of Amman and only about 15-20km from the Syrian border, along a highway to Dara'a, Syria. Driving through the city of Mafraq, it's notably a much smaller city than Amman, with about 60,000 inhabitants. Outside the vast, sprawling city of Amman, the remaining half of Jordan's population is spread out in many small cities, villages, and tribes. Around Mafraq, you could see the military present, with offices, signs, even tanks and planes in roundabouts.

After Mafraq, we headed east. Along the road, we passed the Zaatari refugee camp, a refugee camp for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees crossing the border into Jordan. Zaatari has a population of around 80,000, making it one of the largest cities in Jordan. The camp is overcrowded and has subpar conditions inside. In recent years, informal leadership and organization have arose out of the chaos of the camp, but issues like water, sanitation, and security still plague the camp. As a response to the conditions and overcrowding in Zaatari, the Jordanian government created a new camp further in the interior of the country, the Azraq refugee camp. It gained a bit of publicity when John Green, of the Youtube channel vlogbrothers, visited Azraq and made videos about the refugees there. Our group didn't actually enter inside the camp, just pass by the gate. But we did have a lecture about the Zaatari camp beforehand.

A screenshot from Google Maps, with annotations, to put it in perspective. The refugee camp is about 10 km from the city.

Our first destination was the archaeological town of Umm Al-Jimaal. The name means "Mother of Camels" in Arabic. However, in Arabic, only the consonants are written, so Jimaal, written like "jmal", could, and apparently once was, known as Umm Al-Jamaal, "Mother of Beauty", showing the importance and admiration the Arabs have for camels. Our guide told us that camels could survive a week crossing the desert without food or water. It's no wonder the ancient bedouins would value camels so highly.

The ruins itself were from every period in Jordanian history, from the Nabataeans to the Umayyads. It truly felt like an ancient city. The ruins were filled with the remains of buildings, community centers, water infrastructure, temples, homes, etc. The site was so extensive you could get lost in all the remains. Interestingly, our guide explained that the volcanic rocks that made up the ruins were locally sourced.

Our guide told us a little history about the region. The entire western part of Jordan used to be renown for being heavily forested, a far cry from the desert we now live in. A traveler in the time of the Caliphates wrote that a naked man could travel from modern-day Aqaba (along the Red Sea) to Damascus, and no one would see him due to all the trees. Even in the late 19th Century, the Ottomans decided to build a railroad from Damascus that crossed through modern-day Jordan to Mecca, and they had to cut down millions of trees in the process. However, western Jordan is just barely on the edge of the more lush environment along the Eastern Mediterranean Coast, and the interior desert. Although people farm the region extensively, and hardy plants and shrubs can be found everywhere, there's very little that could be considered a thick forest, not to mention the millions of trees that used to dominate. So what happened in just a century?

After Umm Al-Jimaal, we traveled into the desert to visit a Bedouin Sheikh, Sheikh Khaled. One thing to note is that, in Arabic, there's a distinction made between two different kinds of deserts, the Sahraa' (صحراء), and the Baadia (بادية). The desert that we imagine as the the lifeless, sandy, hot desert, the classic "desert", mostly exists in places like Morocco and the Arabian Peninsula. The plural of Sahraa', Sahaara (صحارى), is where the name Sahara Desert comes from. The Baadia is what exists in Jordan. It's more of a semi-desert. It's inhabited by nomadic bedouins, features some level of agriculture, and shrubbery and grasslands. The conditions are still extreme, being very hot during the day and very cold at night. Water is still scarce.

Our second destination was an apricot farm in Shiekh Khaled's tribe, owned by a friend of his. Our guide explained that there's an Islamic norm that when a traveler visits a Muslim's farm, the traveler is permitted to eat from the farm to his content, but he should not take any food with him. In the same spirit, the farm owner allowed us to eat apricots from his farm. They were delicious.

The farm was actually just around a mile away from the Syrian border. Many in the group took selfies with Syria. We could actually see white trucks that apparently were from the Syrian Army. The experience actually demonstrated how strange the concepts of national borders are. National borders seem intuitive when viewed on a map, and they do serve important purposes. However, they seemed strange and far away when actually standing next to the Jordanian-Syrian border. After all, there's nothing you could see that made Jordan look any different from Syria. People in Jordan conduct their lives, like growing apricots, barely a mile away from the border. The government here is one of the biggest military allies of the my home government. Yet, if I happened to cross the invisible line, I suddenly am in a country ravaged by civil war. My home government is actively supporting rebellion against the government. I'm considered to be in danger just by being an American in Syria. As someone else in our group put it, "this is the closest I've been to an enemy of the US".

Our third and final destination was the home of Sheikh Khaled. We washed and entered a small structure, where we listened to the Sheikh as he told us a bit about life in the Baadia.

In Jordan, the word "Bedouin" is an adjective describing a way of life. To be a Bedouin, one must live nomadically in the Baadia, searching for food and water. If a member of a Bedouin tribe moves to a city and lives a settled life, his descendants are no longer considered Bedouins. Our guide told us that he is not a Bedouin, but is very proud of his Bedouin heritage. And many Jordanians who originated in Jordan are similar, being not Bedouin, but proud of their Bedouin heritage.

In Jordan, a sheikh can an Islamic scholar. But in the context of Bedouins, the sheikh is the leader of the tribe. He's the authority and arbiter. Whenever there's a conflict or argument, the sheikh is brought in to resolve the dispute. This can be small disputes about property or personal relationships. Or it could be crimes like unintentional murder. If a man disputes the judgment of the sheikh, he's basically dead to the tribe. He's no longer considered a member and will be ignored by the tribe. However, if the sheikh loses the approval of the tribe, he can be replaced. Some sheikhs have one hell of a job managing and arbitrating for large tribes up to 12,000 people. But they do play a very important role in Jordan.

They're also the representatives of their tribes in Jordanian government. They present the concerns of the tribe and protect their interests to the king. The duty of the Jordanian king is to develop and maintain relationships with the sheikhs in Jordan, and meet their needs. In turn, the sheikhs support the sovereignty of the king, and the stability of the Jordanian kingdom. The tribe's choice for sheikh is then presented to the king, who in turn appoints the sheikh of the tribe. It's both a bottom-up and top-down approval. Nowadays, many living in Jordan come from outside the tribal system, especially refugees who come from urbanized and settled places in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. But the members of the Bedouin tribes still make up much of the population, and their satisfaction is key to the survival of Jordan.

In Arab culture, hospitality is very highly valued. When an ISIS fighter was poisoned in the house of an Arab, it made big news because it broke deeply held norms in the culture. However, this importance on hospitality is dialed up to 11 in Bedouin culture. When a traveler arrives at a Bedouin home, he is entitled to eat, drink, and stay for three days. In that time, the host is not allowed to ask who he is, where he is from, or why he's here. Professor Sullivan shared a story where a student on a study abroad program was assigned to a Bedouin host family. Armed with only an address, he arrived to his hosts, where he was fed and housed for three days. After that time passed, the student realized that the family had no idea why he was here, and never heard of a being a "host family" for a foreign student. Turns out he went to the wrong place.

Afterwards, we had dinner in Sheikh Khaled's home, bread and various dips and dishes. Very delicious. We also were served tea around a fire. Afterwards, we loaded into the bus and headed home, where a pile of Arabic homework greeted us.