Sweet Home Amman

It's amazing how much better I feel now that I've made it to Amman. Even considering the Great Unpleasantness, I did actually enjoy my time in Egypt. It was an amazing experience, and in a lot of ways having to go through the Bataan death march of getting a new passport - and the more humble tourist adventures brought about by limited financial resources - gave me a much richer, and maybe more realistic, picture of life in Egypt. I would definitely go back to Egypt - and considering the enthusiasm for the GMs shown by the American University in Cairo and Alexandria University I suspect I will. That said, I felt very good getting off the plane in Amman. This has become sort of a second home to me - or maybe third behind India (although I've now visited Jordan more times than I have India) - and I just feel much more secure here. For some reason I'm just much more certain that everything can be worked out now that I have Amman as a central location for organization - and I certainly have a lot more friends here in Jordan. The Jordanians are remarkably warm and supportive folks. I'm staying at the Amman International Hotel (more on that later). Normally I stay at the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR), but there were no rooms at the inn this time around. I suppose it's just as well because it would help to have someone at the front desk twenty-four hours a day when it comes to issues such as FedEx deliveries, etc. ACOR is great, but everyone goes home around 4:00 or 5:00 and sometimes it's tough to even get a phone call in - the phone will just ring downstairs and if someone is around they might answer and might even track the person down (again, it's very much a large dorm for nerds, which has its own appeal). The University of Jordan contacted the hotel and guaranteed my stay so that helped out a lot (and reaffirmed my faith in Jordan). It's funny how warm I feel about Jordan. I tell the story - and I'll be honest about it even though I'm a little embarrassed to admit it now - but I can remember that on my first trip to Jordan, which was for a three week Council of Independent Colleges seminar on Middle East culture supported by a state department grant (late December 2004 into January 2005) I was actually a tad nervous about the trip. Because of travel problems (I actually always have travel problems, but I just never let them stop me) I arrived essentially a day late and at 2:00 a.m. I didn't know where ACOR was and didn't think that there would actually be a driver waiting - but, hamdil'allah, there he was. We took off into the night and made it to ACOR in around a half-hour - and was greeted at the gate by the guard with the machine gun. I found my little key for my room in an envelope left by the mailboxes, dropped off my suitcase, and then went exploring the building to find the best place to hide in case of a terrorist attack. Within about twenty-four hours I realized how ridiculous that feeling was, and the memory now makes me smile (and wince). It's, however, one of those teachable moments because if I had that moment of unease - and I'm a historian and knew a fair bit about the Middle East before I ever made my first trip here - then you can imagine what the average American thinks about the Middle East when they watch the corrupted, if not intentionally biased, coverage of it on the nightly news every night. Anyway, I'm in Amman and feel a lot better.