Zach is wonderful. He is a sage in all the areas that I severely lack. His humor is wonderful, his common sense, knowledge of the practical and his easy fluid way of interacting with everyone and anyone. Most places we go, the people take an immediate shining to him and kind of blow me off. I'm not sure if it's because his Arabic is so much better than mine, if he is way more outgoing than me, or if it's like an art dealer in Damascus explained to me - at heart, Arabs tend to be very racist against other Arabs and Africans as well. Whatever, it's given me the detached ability to simply observe without being self-conscious. Like verse 7 of the Tao says - The master is detached from all things, that is why she is one with them.
My Arabness has become so present by now that I feel wholly incognito here. People only look at me because I'm dressed like Aladdin while they're all dress like midwesterners. When they talk to Zach they ask if I'm Arab and he says من اصر لبنانى which means, " of Lebanese descent." this morning, the guy at the hotel where we paid $3 to sleep on the roof asked us if we wanted coffee or tea (actually he asked Zach and didn't look at me). I said sure to coffee and Zach said no thank you. It took a lot of repeating before he accepted that Zach didn't want anything but that we did in fact want one coffee. Then he brought it to Zach and not me while Zach pointed to me the whole time. He sneered at me and addressed all questions concerning the both of us to Zach in the singular interrogative tense. Whatever, I find it funny if anything at all.
Yesterday we went to the Dead Sea and discovered how incredible/miserable it really is. It was the first time this summer that standing in the sun for more than 3 minutes caused me to sweat profusely and there was no cover at all where we were except a tent the guy wanted to charge us $6 to leave our stuff beneath. We took it to rocks that cast just enough of a shadow to prevent spontaneous combustion. Then I ran to the water but stepped in some mud that sucked my foot in and started to scald and boil it. Mad painful. In the water, it was one of the weirdest sensations I've ever felt. All scratches and orifices began to burn, including my lips and when I made the mistake of running my wet hands over my face, my eyes began to burn like I had put acid in them. I hurried back to the shore as it got worse and worse and used what little was left of our drinking water to flush them out. Then we went back in more carefully. When you lay on your stomach, you can't kick to swim because your feet stick out of the water. If you look at your hand just below the surface you see the slat swirling around like smoke or oil. The temperature switches between hot, very warm, and little cold patches. Your skin feels slick and oily and doesn't dry in the sun (though I suspect it was because my sweating was replacing all the evaporated water. When we were ready to go, we were burning from the salt and the heat and were surrounded only by rocky flatlands. We put our shoes on and dirty, salty, sweaty, and extremely uncomfortable, wandered up to the highway while I swatted away the flies that seemed only interested in me (side note - this has been freakily consistent. Everywhere we go I find myself swarming in flies and no one else in the vicinity seems remotely touched. I don't think I smell that bad, but I can't think of any other reason they would be so magnetized to me!). At the highway we found a police station and I washed myself off in the sink while Zach had the most confused conversation with the captain about the 2 cities named Amman in Jordan. They kept pointing in directions we knew Amman wasn't in and saying distances that made no sense. Also that there were no buses when we could see them and had ridden in on one. Everywhere we go people keep telling us there are no buses when we know there are. THe skeptics in us are so wary that everyne is trying to swindle us into expensive cab rides. Which is strange because the first Jordanian we met told us the Jordanians are not like the Syrian - they are good people who are not just after your money. I stand by my assert that they are the hippies of the Middle East (they talk slow, have a kind of melodious ease to them and are content just living and being pious - there isn't the manicness about them that you find in Syrians and Lebanese). But we've still had some strange run-ins. We spent last night with a sheikh bookseller and his partner (who reminded me so much of my cousin Tyrone), who were interesting to talk to until they both went on their separate rants about Israel. I talked to Mahmoud (the assistant) while Zach talked to the sheikh, and Mahmoud explained to me that even in the time of Muhammad the Jews were violent towards muslims and selfish, only believing in themselves as the chosen people, killing and hating everyone else. The sheikh went on all these rants about how there was ONE GOD!!! and how Christians, Jews, Sufis, and everyone else who wasn't a Sunni were wrong. LIke usual, the first question we were asked was "Are you Muslim or Christian." At first I found it charming, but more and more it makes me really uncomfortable and reminds me of a lecture we got at SINARC in which a professor said Westerners think of people first and foremost as humans, and secondly as members of a community - but Arabs think of people first and foremost by their religion and secondly as a fellow human being. However true that is I wopnt judge, but I will say that it does feel like everything that follows will be determined solely on how we answer that opening question. I generally go with Catholic (because my father was raised Catholic and in this culture you inherit as aspects of life from your father) and it seems the least offensive to people who I really don't want to get into it with. I thought it was funny though because they both ranted against the modern Sufis. They like the ancient Sufi writers but they think of modern Sufis as un-Muslim "hippies" or "Gypsies." We laughed because we had just been talking about how they, the Jordanians, were the hippies of the Middle East.
We also hung out with a Duke who got his food by raising it on a platter with a rope. We met him through Soumaya's grandfather.
Today we go to Petra where on of the Indiana Jones movies was filmed and tomorrow we hit Egypt - Sinai peninsula, Mt. Sinai St. Catherine's monastery. Wednesday: Cairo.
All my love,
tcm
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