Anyway, I fell asleep the minute my butt hit the taxi seat cushions. Sinai had been exhausting. When I woke up two hours later in Nuweiba, it was to Peter knocking on the window of the car and gesturing for me to get out. I rubbed my eyes, scooted over towards the door, and pushed it open. A wave of heat hit me like bulldozer and I slammed the door shut again. “No way,” I mumbled. Even with the air conditioning off, the car was a million times more inhabitable than the outside world.

Sitting in the back seat trying to summon my courage, I took stock of the town. Suddenly, the fresh guidebook-shaped wound in my heart cauterized, and I cursed. Damn that stupid useless Lonely Planet and its euphemistic writing style! “Charming,” clearly, was code for “completely dilapidated.” “Sadly, usually skipped by tourists?” What a tragedy: who could bear to miss the parched and cracking buildings covered in barbed wire, dried-up and shriveled people shimmering in the sun, and the vast expanse of scalding blacktop highway cutting through glass-and-trash covered sand.

I gulped and opened the door again. The heat was incredible. I just looked it up, and the RealFeel index for that day in Nuweiba was 44.5 degrees Celsius, or around 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Stumbling towards the back of the car, I grabbed my backpack and towel out of the trunk and paid the driver. I looked at Peter. “Okay, what now?” He shrugged. “Maybe the tickets are in that building over there?” I looked where he was pointing and saw a dusty, beige, barbed-wired building standing slightly apart from the rest of the dusty, beige, barbed-wired buildings. Looked like a good guess to me.

We found the ferry ticket window and waited. The fellow ahead of us in line was midway through being chewed up by the man behind the counter, who was screaming at the top of his lungs and turning a nasty shade of plum. When it was our turn and I handed him my passport, my hand was shaking so badly I dropped it. The man glared at me, and I took a step back, holding my breath. Suddenly, he beamed at me, picked up my passport, and said “Welcome! Welcome in Egypt!” The change was almost schizophrenic. He happily took our money and handed us tickets to Jordan. Relieved, Peter and I headed out the gate and turned left. Then, Peter grabbed my arm and pointed behind us. I turned around and gasped. The red sea stretched out before us, sparkling turquoise fading to deep blue, curling against mountain ranges on our right and tapping up against the hull of a massive ferry on our left. “Swimming,” I said, wiping sweat off my face and grabbing Peter’s sleeve. “NOW.”

After a dunk in the red sea, it was much easier to be happy in Nuweiba

The ferry was supposed to leave at 2, or so they told us at the ticket counter (it turns out it left at 5:30. We had quite the wait ahead of us, if only we’d known). Thinking we only had an hour till show time, we swam for a bit, fully clothed of course, and then headed to the port. Security was really intense, of course. We were waved through a little side door by a guard, who didn’t seem to think that the metal detector near the main gate was necessary. I put my bag on an x-ray belt and walked through a second metal detector, which beeped at me (maybe it was my necklace?). The second guard, however, seemed to have a similar attitude about metal detectors and waved me on through. The pinnacle of this militant attitude towards security was the man in charge of watching the images generated by the x-ray belt. He was fast asleep, head lolling back, feet propped up on the computer. 

The ferry ride was uneventful. We couldn’t go outside, which was too bad because the inside of the ferry amounted to nothing more than a dirty airplane cabin with a food stand. When we arrived in Jordan, the sun was setting, and I was concerned we weren’t going to make it through customs and security in time to make it to Wadi Rum and spend the night. Luckily, the Jordanians in Aqaba had a similar attitude towards “security” as the Egyptians in Nuweiba. We sat around the port for about a period of maybe 5 minutes (during which the building lost electricity twice), then were pointed towards an impossibly long security line. Yet time and again, a Jordanian security guard would catch sight of us and wave us up in the line. We stepped over security chains, weaved through waiting crowds, and finally got pushed into a security room with yet another x-ray belt. Apparently, however, we were too good for this measure of security as well, and the guards waved us by hordes of people and whisked us out of the building, just as it was losing power for the third time. All in all, it took about 10 minutes to get into the country, and all because we were “min Amreeka!!” I’ve never been so happy to look so foreign.

A horde of screaming taxi drives met us outside, flapping their arms and hopping up and down spouting offers of rides and shouting out prices at the top of their many lungs. Not being able to pick anyone in particular to fight with, I just started negotiating to no one in particular. When a voice finally agreed to a painfully high (remember, 1.7 dollars to 1 jordanian dinar) but still relatively decent price, I looked around to find its owner. A balding, skinny, energetic man waved at me and ushered us to his car. After a brief stop in Aqaba for Subway sandwiches and an ATM, we jumped back in the taxi and headed out to Wadi Rum. I lay down for a nap, trying to ignore the fact that our driver, now freed from the crush of city traffic and surrounded by the empty desert in the dead of night, was driving double the speed limit while still absentmindedly waving his hands around. 

I don’t know how the driver found the random side road that spun off into the dark from the highway and apparently led to Wadi Rum (a famous Jordanian desert valley littered with incredible rock formations, rolling sand dunes, and memories of T.E. Lawrence). As the car rumbled down the path towards open desert, I wondered if I would ever be seen again. After an uncomfortable 15 minutes, a large brightly lit stone archway appeared. We pulled up and bought tickets to Wadi Rum, arranging to meet a “bedouin” who could take us to sleep in the desert. Said bedouin appeared on the road about 5 minutes later, and immediately started to fight with our driver. Not knowing who was in the right (I was too tired to understand my own name, let alone Arabic), I waited to be told where to go. Finally, the angry Bedouin waved at us and opened the trunk of his jeep. “Your driver is scum,” he said in perfect English, throwing our bags in and slamming the door. “He is trying to sell you to me. He said he wouldn’t give you to me unless I paid him 20 dinar for you.” I was impressed: I hadn’t showered or brushed my hair or changed my clothes since I’d left Cairo for Sinai, and I was apparently still worth 10 dinars. We spent the night outside in his backyard after a home cooked meal and a little music session (Peter taught his kids how to play the Ukulele, although the fact that they kept holding it backwards was hindering their progress).

More later!

xoxos

We spent three lovely days hanging around my favorite city. On the first morning, I set out to find a Middle East lonely planet, tugging Peter along with me down all my favorite streets in the general direction of the AUC bookstore.

I saw (but didn’t care) that he was getting more and more worried about my mental state the more we walked. It started when I actually let out a scream at the sight of the dingy old apartment building where the boys lived last year. He probably found my childlike joy at seeing the nearby stores disturbing as well: no one should be that excited about a Hardees. His worried glances increased when I straight up sprinted to a Pizza Hut and demanded 3 orders of their spinach rolls, then forced him to take a totally unnecessary taxi ride across the river to Ahmad Orabi while we ate them. I almost passed out as we drove by the Omar Effendi and my old apartment building. By the time I practically burst into tears at the sight of Alfa Market, he must have thought I was legitimately psychopathic. My decision to buy just a pair of frighteningly-yellow, flower-patterned boys swim shorts and a giant bottle of RedHot didn’t help. When we left the store, he took the Lonely Planet from me and stood blocking my path. “Stop,” he said, looking haggard, nervous, and (I hoped) a little amused. “I have the guidebook. I can read a map. I like to walk. Get out of here.” I paused. He looked at me, pleadingly. I suddenly understood how he must have felt: an unsuspecting tourist caught up in a druggie’s frantic rush to get her fix. He deserved better. Reader, I let him go.

Heading back to the hotel on my own, I stopped to check the schedule for the conference organized by Ashraf Swelam (the coordinator of my internship last year). If you’re interested, its website is here: http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/events.html. I changed into a dress and hopped in a cab towards the Four Seasons. The ‘shraf was there, tall and imposing as ever, and I said a quick hello before settling in to watch a few of the panels. After a couple hours, I headed out to meet Peter. The evening was lovely: we spent it at Sequoia in northern Zamalek in the company of a rose hookah, some sushi, and a group of this year’s interns.

By the second day, my panicked desire to take in all of Cairo had abetted. We wandered around the city till around 5pm, when we took a subway to Ma’adi to play frisbee with the Cairo Frisbee Club (they missed you, Avi!). Four hours of ultimate later, we trudged back to the subway and made it home just in time to shower before the big game: Egypt was playing America. America, it turns out, has a soccer team, and we’re pretty good! We sat down at Al Dumyati for dinner and soon attracted ugly glances from the rest of the room: we were definitely the only one’s cheering when the Americans scored. During the half, we took a cab back to Zamalek and watched the rest of the game outside on the street like everyone else in the whole city, which had basically ground to a halt. America triumphed, al hamdu lillah.

The third day, I visited my old office and had a great chat with my old coworkers. Then we took the Yalie’s horseback riding by the Pyramids (happily no one fell off this time!)

We were supposed to leave for Dahab that night. I know that because I still have the crumpled piece of paper on which I’d carefully outlined our itinerary for the week. The paper was evidence of my anal-super-organized-trip-planning side, a weak facet of my personality that my free-lancing-screw-the-guidebook side tries to repress. As is usually the case, the disorganized-do-whatever side had won out, and the itinerary was scrunched up at the bottom of my backpack. ‘It didn’t matter though,’ thought the pulled-together side of me. I had it memorized. Didn’t I?

I awoke the next morning feeling kind of out of place. I love Cairo, but I felt like I’d been waking to its soundtrack of taxi horns and minaret calls more often than expected. I counted the days in my head, running over our itinerary. Oh no.

“Peter!” I cried, shaking his shoulder. “Peter, we’re supposed to be on the beach!!” Cursing myself for being so stupid, I quickly packed my bag and dragged Peter out the door to a taxi. We got to the bus station and bought tickets to Dahab (a red sea town). We’d get there around 10 pm, a few hours before we would need to leave for Sinai. The idea that we were spending the day on the bus instead of on the beach was painful, but we endured.

Climbing Sinai again was fantastic. There was some drama at the base, though. Apparently, now you need to go with a guide. This was a restraint (and an 80 pound payment) that I wasn’t going to take without a fight. **Mind you, I would have two years ago, but my training at the hands of last years Cairo crew taught me to resist getting totally MsrFkd.

Unfortunately, my story–that we’d been left behind by our tour bus, but we DID have a guide, he was with the rest of them up the mountain, couldn’t they just let us go and catch up with them? –got nowhere with the guards. So we were guided up the mountain, just in time for daybreak. I had to dissuade Peter from taking the 3,750 Steps of Repentance up, a decision we both appreciated when we took them on the way down.

The next stop was Jordan! More on that later.

Also, thanks for tuning in, folks; I’m still completely shocked by how many of you care enough to read these ramblings.

Ta ta for now,
Jennie

I don’t know if y’all know this, but my flight to Damascus at the beginning of this month had been smooth as silk thanks to my parents’ suggestion: screw the valium, just do it old-school and get wasted. It was an incredibly good idea: I don’t remember the flight at all–I’m sure I slept through it all, and the hangover at the end was a small price to pay for the relative peace that 4 glasses of wine, 2 shots of whiskey, and a vodka cranberry brought me. After spending all morning thinking of the EgyptAir flight, I decided that I’d go that route again. So, about 3 hours before our flight was to depart, Peter and I went to the store around the corner and bought (it still makes me sick to think about it) a giant bottle of scottish whiskey. Peter picked it because it came with a free glass. I didn’t really care what it was as long as it worked. Happily, by the time I was done packing, I couldn’t have spelled EgyptAir, let alone worry about it.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the day. I remember being in the taxi to the airport and clutching a water bottle filled with a suspicious brown liquid. The driver of the taxi was asking us a million questions: who we were, how we met each other, how long we’d been married (I allegedly blurted out “5 months!” before Peter could correct him), etc. But I remember when suddenly, taking a break from all the personal interrogation, the driver pointedly glanced over his shoulder at the brown “water” in the bottle. “Shoo Haza?” (What’s that?), he asked. Peter was silent. Tension built as I watched him, waiting for a response. Finally, I gave up waiting and thought up one of my own. Frankly, the lie that my sorry brain generated still impresses me. I started chattering back in Arabic: “Oh, this? It’s water. But it has iodine in it. We are foreigners, and the water here is not clean. Bad for our stomachs. So we put the iodine in it to make it clean!” Pause. The driver considered. “Eye-oh-dine?” he repeated, confused. I tried again: “Yes. Eye-oh-dine. Um.. eye-oh-deen? eeoh-deen?” “OH!” said the driver, his eyes lighting up. “Eeeoh-deen!” All was well.

We landed in Cairo around 7pm and I almost cut a hole out of the plane walls I was so excited to get to the city. We waited for a while at the border for a visa and then stuck around to wait for a friend of ours who we’d met days ago and who just happened to be on the same flight to Cairo (what did I tell you about coincidental meetings over here?). Finally, we left the airport and got in a cab. I watched out the window and got more and more gleeful as familiar landmarks came into view. I almost had a heart attack when the Nile emerged from around a corner, the lights from the various hotels and riverside restaurants splashing off of it and waving hello. We were going to 26th July street in Zamalek to meet up with some Yalies, but when we called them from Peter’s phone, they explained that they were getting kicked out of their apartment and couldn’t take us. So we found a nearby motel and checked in.

Ten minutes later, we were on our way out. I’d decided to wear my Yale t-shirt in case there were any Yalies in the area, and it only took two seconds to find one. There was one sitting in the lobby of our hotel, in fact! Her name was Elizabeth, and she was in Egypt on a dig. We said hello, then headed out to find some food. What does one eat on the first night in Egypt? Chili’s, obviously.

We spent a few hours at Chili’s, burying our hangovers with fajitas and caesar salad and mashed potatoes, watching the service boats snaking around the Nile and listening to the cacophony that is Cairo on a Thursday (aka weekend) night. It was splendid, I was so happy to be back I could have cried.

More soon!
xoxos
Jennie

I think I was on my own from the 9th to the 11th. I remember coming back from my first days of job searching and not really having anyone to rant to about my frustrated attempts. So I’m assuming I hadn’t yet found Peter and Isabelle and Nora and the rest. However, the Hostel is a lively place, and there were some great guests in the early days, so don’t get the idea that I was wasting away alone!

I decided to use a service (pronounced “ser-vees”) that first day of job-hunting. A service is a battered white van with a description of its route scribbled in Arabic on a plaque above the windshield. Catching one is an adventure. You stand dangerously close to the flow of traffic, straining like an idiot against the dust and sunlight trying to read the writing. Then there’s the jumping out in front of it and waving frantically at the last minute if it looks like it might be the right one. Squeezing into it and while twisting to hand the driver the required coins is also a task for the nimble. I “hopped” into one (aka fell all over myself and landed on the floor behind the driver’s seat) on the first day and tried to ask if it was going to the UNRWA (the organization for Palestinian refugees). Unfortunately, I was still speaking like a classical dictionary and not like a normal Syrian person, and my request was met with a confused glare and then (upon its repetition) deafness. I sat in the taxi and gazed out the window, hoping for some kind of sign from God (that sort of thing was supposed to happen on roads in Damascus, right?). Suddenly, on a long stretch of highway, I caught a glimpse of the Palestinian flag. “That’s probably it!,” I thought gleefully.

I “leapt” off the service (aka fell all over myself and the knees of the 10 people near me and almost did a headstand on the sidewalk) and confidently walked across the 14 and a half lanes of traffic and up the stairs. “Is this the United Nations?” I asked a guard. Blank stares. I wish I’d known then what it only took a few more days in Damascus to figure out: that the Palestinian flag is EVERYWHERE. It is painted beside the Syrian flag on government buildings, official ministries, Syrian propaganda posters, shops, taxis, homes, mosques, street signs, and it hangs from flagpoles outside of resorts, embassies, hotels and movie theaters. I was probably at the Syrian Ministry for Donkey and Camel Welfare. Okay, so that’s a bad example, because that’s probably the only organization that doesn’t actually exist in the ridiculously bureaucratic Middle East, but you get the idea: I was NOT at the right place.

Luckily, someone claimed to be able to understand my frantic questions and pointed me towards a “UN office” down the street. “Down the street,” of course, being code for “a grueling semi-suicidal 30 minute trudge between lane-less traffic and on sidewalks that were reserved for pedestrians only in theory.” But I kept asking directions of everyone and everything that moved and was finally led to a dingy pink building with a UN flag hanging limply from a leaking air conditioning unit on its 3rd floor. SCORE.

Of course, it was closed early on Thursdays (the start of the Islamic weekend), but I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least now I knew where it was. Obviously, I’d find out two days later that it was the wrong clinic. The number of wrong turns I took in that first week still makes me giggle.

I spent that evening wandering around the old city. I happened upon a wedding in the big Catholic church near my hostel, and dropped in to watch. It was a beautiful ceremony to look at, but the motley crew of disgruntled teens that made up the choir obviously would have preferred to spend the evening at a movie theater, and were expressing their disproval by flatting absolutely everything.

A little detail I noticed while there might be interesting to some of you folks who think the Catholic church is the same all over the world: the churches here seem to have a differently take on the concept of “holy water.” Right in the spot in the church where you’d expect to find a small puddle of the stuff, there is instead a basin filled with sand. I watched one until I saw a church goer dip fingers in and touch the sand to her forehead. So yes, it’s the same gesture, but quite wisely relies on a far more abundant resource in this desert land. An adaptable Catholic church? Will wonders never cease?

Funny story about that church: I went there again a couple nights later to sit in the quiet courtyard on my own and think over my days in Damascus, contemplate the mysteries of the universe, and stroke my perpetual existential angst. My thinking was interrupted by two women who were out on the town with their Lucky Strikes, evidently hoping to enjoy the quiet courtyard as well. Seeing a lone girl sitting on the ground near a dead fountain hugging her knees, they launched into the typical Syrian ritual of offering me their cigarettes, then their money, then their homes. After I’d assured them that I didn’t smoke, could definitely afford to feed myself, and really did have a place to sleep, we talked a little about Obama and eventually meandered together towards Straight Street (the main thoroughfare of the Old City). We parted amiably and I sort of expected never to see them again. BUT because Damascus is apparently the smallest city in the world, we were fated to meet again. Shortly before Peter and I left for Cairo, I was using an ATM in Mezza (an up-scale neighborhood of Damascus) when I was hit with the sudden and urgent desire to find a toilet (surprise surprise). Running/wadling to the nearest row of stores, I pushed open the glass doors of a Syrian Air office. Following their directions to the bathroom, I rushed through a back office and, just before I slammed the door to the toilet, heard someone say “Jennie! Jennie!” Bodily needs taking precedence over curiosity, I ignored the mysterious greeting and shut the bathroom door. But when I emerged, I saw none other than the women I’d met at the church, dressed in Syrian Air employee attire and looking as flabbergasted as I felt. What seemed like a miraculous reunion seems less insane now, after I’ve grown used to Damascus’ skill at reuniting people on the street. It’s an incredible phenomenon that happens with such frequency I almost expect it now. Perhaps you will too as you keep reading these stories!

I did eventually find the Palestinian refugee office. I went back to the decoy after the weekend, and it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t what I was looking for. This wasn’t the administrative hub of the UNRWA, it was the UNRWA in action. Refugees crowded the small offices; some were picking up prescriptions at a small window with a beleaguered team of pharmacists running around behind it. Some were lined up for medical examinations, which took place on rusty but clean equipment in various corners around the building.

I knocked on a door at random and, when I heard an “ahlan”, walked in. It didn’t seem to bother the women inside that I’d entered an exam room mid-examination. The lady doctor paused, looked up, and asked me what I wanted. I awkwardly looked into a corner to try and give the patient some privacy. I gave a faltering explanation for my presence: I was looking for Sami Safadi, the volunteer coordinator for the UNRWA. Was he here? No, of course not, that was administrative business, I had to go to the UNRWA headquarters in Mezza. Wasn’t that where I was? No, of course not. But if I came back in 3 hours, she’d be happy to take me there herself. She was going for her english lesson (taught by an American girl just like me, apparently!). I’d fortunately learned enough about Syrian hospitality to know that she really would be happy to take me with her, so I agreed to come back. I did, 3 hours later, and she had me sit in a corner of the exam room for a few minutes while she finished seeing a final patient (I awkwardly stared at the ceiling again, although no one seemed to care–people streamed in and out of the room with impunity). The long-haired and actually very pretty doctor then washed her hands and grabbed us a cab out to Mezza.

We drove down the autostrad and chatted about the various difficulties of learning Arabic and English. The city gave way to more and more desert, and the big mountain that is usually covered by buildings in central Damascus suddenly presented itself to my eyes in full. I stared in awe at the thousands of tiny houses that swarmed up and around the mountain, clinging onto its impossibly steep sides. It looked like a wave that had crashed onto the base of the mountain and froze, the little white flecks of houses reaching jaggedly up towards its tip.

We got to the UNRWA offices, and I got the number of the head of volunteers (who I still haven’t met with, by the way). After learning that the UNDP offices were just down the street, I walked down there to check it out. No luck their either. It seems less frustrating now that I’m sort of employed and sitting comfortably at my computer, but at the time it was pretty disappointing.

When I wasn’t job hunting, I was checking out some of the sights in the old city and wandering around its ivy-lined cobble-stoned streets, trying to familiarize myself with the lay of the land. These solo-wanderings sort of ended, however, once I finally met up with Isabelle and Peter. We’d been emailing, and finally arranged to meet one night at a cafe near the Umayyad mosque that was home to the Hakawati. Here, on a throne-like chair, with a cup of tea in one hand and a long sword in the other, the Hakawati (the “storyteller,”) a famed Damascene character, sat and spun an enchanting** tale, punctuated by sharp slaps of the sword on a nearby table. **At least, I’m assuming it was an enchanting tale. We didn’t understand too much of the story. But we did get enough of it that it would have made for a good game of madlibs. “The hunter _____ the grandfather’s _____ tomorrow (or was that the word for slave?) _____ heat? ______ something about a mule? ______ ” etc.

My job wanderings continued, but my nights became less lonely with Peter and Isabelle around, and soon we had Nora and Mohammad and Meranda and the rest of the crew with us. Peter and Nora followed my example and moved into the Hostel full-time. It’s been a joy, having such a great group living together. We cook and play cards and hang out on the roof and watch bootleg dvds on the roof-lounge and play music and read and smoke hookah every now and again up on the turrets of the old wall. The hostel, remember, is built into the old city walls, and there really is still a turret!

On one of those early days, we met up with Peter’s high school friend David (typical of Damascus, I just randomly ran into David again on the street on the way to this cafe. Of course we’d both be on the same random street on the corner of the city at the same random time of day). David is doing the program I considered doing before I decided to scrap all forms of organized travel. The three of us went to a park outside of the Four Seasons hotel (which Peter and I broke into and explored sometime later in the week). We played frisbee, attracting a crowd of locals who all tried their hands at it and made me look positively skilled by comparison (Dad, you’d be proud to know I’ve gotten LOADS better). The game was great, though at one point we had to rescue the frisbee from the road (which was as harrowing and foolhardy as it sounds). Luckily, neither Peter nor the frisbee were run over. We met two hilarious characters there, one flamboyant boy named Omar and his buddy Muhammad, who was SUCH a dude. He looked like he’d been transplanted out of California onto the streets of Syria. Typically, they invited us to dinner at their grandmother’s houses, and we promised to call them soon. Also typically, we ran into them again that night, miles from where we’d first met them, wandering the old city markets. See what I mean about Damascus being the smallest city in the world?

Okay, I think I’ve gotten down at least some of what happened in that first week. I’ll rest my fingers a bit, and then try tackling Peter and my week-long trip to Egypt and Jordan. Ta ta for now!

-Jennie

Hostel Residents:

Jennie Nevin
-Loud American from Connecticut living in Room 3. Eats too much hummus, and likes to climb the rope ladder for fun (especially in heels). Currently the only hostel resident who can blow smoke rings from a hookah.

Raymond:
-Omniscient Palestinian Australian Syrian owner of the Damascus Hostel. Likes to pull up his shirt and rub his belly. Wirey hair, short, easy laugh. The “R” in the phrase “JAR it,” which is the damascus equivalent of “google it.” Just.Ask.Raymond. Example of usage: “Hey, where do you think we could pick up some ping pong balls?” “I don’t know, why don’t you JAR it?”

Julie:
-Raymond’s lovely Australian wife. Likes to go to the post office to watch the employees, whose tight uniforms allegedly show off “their lovely bums.” Calls Peter her “dervish son.” Suggested throwing toilet paper over the walls of the hostel to decorate it, just for fun. Just finished writing her first book, and is now incorporating various goings on at the hostel into her second. Curses the Australian education system with sailor-like gusto. Mother of five children.

Nasr:
-Has the longest, skinniest legs and arms of any human being I’ve ever seen. Flaps said limbs wildly when distressed, which is usually after hearing us speaking colloquial Arabic. Resident self-designated professor of fusshha (“classic” arabic). Calls this our “great opportunity” to speak fussha, and fights with Khalid (see below) when he teaches us colloquial. Corrects our grammar enough to keep us humble. Almost done with engineering school and wants to hit medical school next. Shuffles and slides around the hostel, presumably because it’s difficult to lift his feet when they’re so far away from his body.

Khalid:
-Manager of the hostel. Resident professor of Syrian a3meeya (“colloquial”). Often interrupts our english conversations and claims that one or more of us cannot understand english and that it is necessary that said people be spoken to in Arabic (this results in our conversations dissolving into slow and halting exchanges in broken colloquial). On my third day, sat me down and looked into my eyes and said, voice heavy with meaning, that I had “great energy.” I laughed–me? energetic? what news! “No,” he said, leaning towards me. He meant “Energy.” Taqqa. Lifeforce. Midi-chlorions, or whatever those things in Star Wars are. Colors, Karma, etc. I stared at him. “What?” I asked. He took my palm and looked at it. “Yes,” he said. “See this line here? Great energy. Much force.” etc. etc. This went on for a while, and I got more and more incredulous by the minute. He told me that when he’d picked me up from the airport, he hadn’t needed to even look up to know I was there. “You walked around the corner. I was sitting reading the paper. I felt you. I looked up, you remember? No sign, no calling out your name… I just waved at you. Weren’t you curious how I’d known it was you?” “Yes,” I replied, “but I kind of figured it was because I sent you two pictures of myself a week ago.” He looked hurt. “But they were blurry!”

Two days later, Khalid grabbed me and had me sit next to him on the couch. “Wait a moment,” he said. I waited. He answered the ringing hostel phone and, pinning it between his shoulder and ear, used his free hands to place his cellphone in the crook of my elbow. “Hold it there,” he mouthed, “and focus.” “On what?” I whispered back. “Anything important!”
I focused. I thought about my old horse Bounty, remembered what it felt like when I rode him bareback the week before, laughed in my head at how fat he was. Khalid hung up the phone and looked at me. “Sill focusing?” he asked. I nodded.
Suddenly, the phone in my elbow began to vibrate. “My love must be a kind of blind love/ I can’t see anything but you… shoo be doo be doo waa” sang the phone. I opened my eyes, and saw Khalid smiling smugly at me. He leaned in and, in a slow and meaningful tone, said “See? This song… not on my phone. I’ve never heard it. You made it. What were you thinking about.” I stared. “Um… my horse.” Khalid looked put out. “But wait!” I said, scrambling to rescue the situation. “That song? It’s ‘I only have eyes for you.’ That’s the first song I ever sang with my singing group. And I guess it’s the first song I ever sang in front of an audience.” He looked extremely pleased.

When Peter came to live at the hostel, Khalid sat him down to talk about prices of rooms. I walked out of my room and, seeing them sitting next to each other on the couch, misinterpreted the nature of the meeting. “He has taqqa too, right khalid!?” I exclaimed, glad that someone else was occupying his psychic attention. “Can you see it on his palm?”
Khalid looked up, confused. “Taqqa,” I said. “He’s energetic too, like me. We’re both pretty hyper, right? haha.” Khalid stared at me. “Taqqa? Energy,” I tried again, lamely. Khalid smiled. “oh, Peter? No, not really. Just you.” Poor Peter.

Peter Damrosch:
-Fellow Yalie. Apparently Taqqa-less: hides it behind a veneer of friendliness and a cheerful up-for-anything attitude. Begged me to bet him $10 that he couldn’t grow a beard. Brought his Ukulele, and dreams of learning to play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Has seen every movie ever made, and can fully quote the Princess Bride. Has interesting opinions on sesame seeds, frilly toothpicks, and slides, all borrowed from Mitch Hedberg. 

Nora:
-University of Chicago student from Dirty Jersey. Beautiful, brilliant, clearly the most composed and studious of the rowdy American crew. Likes James Brown and actually does her homework. Can lay the smack down in terms of Arabic verb conjugation; it’s amazing to see what she can do with a hollow verb and 14 pronouns.

Mohammad (aka “Kill”):
-British/Iraqi, fluent in colloquial but lacking above-mentioned conjugation skillz. Enjoys Marlboro lights and teasing Nora. Has many brothers and sisters with lovely names. Has stopped responding to his own, though (it’s hard out here for a Mohammad). Finished 4 years of university and is now a licensed opthamologist (can you imagine graduating from college with actual skills?). Diagnosed my eye (the chalazion on my eyelid), making him the second person I’ve met who knew more than DUH (Yale’s health services) about what was wrong with me.

Maria:
-20 year old strawberry blonde Swedish rockstar. Speaks better English than all the rest of us, knows more about American culture than all the rest of us, speaks better Arabic than the rest of us, has spent more time in Bosnia and Sudan than the rest of us, and hasn’t even gotten to college yet. Will have probably conquered the world by the time she graduates.

Non Hostel Residents:

Isabel:
-Fellow Yalie. Pretty, sweet, smart, sophisticated, independent, trilingual and dedicated as hell to the study of Arabic. Lives in a homestay to further said goal.

Meranda:
-Short-haired, fiery, sarcastic, wry, opinionated, smart, hookah-master, UChicago lass. Lives with two more Mohammads and an Ahmed in an apartment nearby.

Merrit:
-Baller. Despises people who like “networking.” I want to be her when I grow up.

Shana:
-Bold. Beautiful. Kieran for Kongress.

Various other characters will be introduced in later posts. Will try to get pictures up as soon as I can!

xoxoxs
Jennie

I failed miserably at keeping up my blog last year, but I can think of hundreds of inspirational Hallmark phrases that would tell me to try, try again. So here I go! Stay tuned. I’ll be trying to update you on the last 3 weeks of goings-on here in Damascus and on my week-long foray across the Middle East while SIMULTANEOUSLY including current events. A tall order, you say. Indeed, it is, especially since I already have to log-out and head back home to eat lunch with the boy who fell through the roof into my toilet yesterday. 

Yep, it’s been an exciting couple of weeks.

xoxo from Al-Sham,

Jennie