Racing to the Finish Lineٍ

With just a few days left here, I have been shopping madly, and trying to visit some places. (I haven't been studying much because I won't have time to take the exams, and my brain is overloaded.) Tomorrow I should be going to see Mount Nebo, from which Moses viewed the Promised Land. This is if all goes well with the taxi driver, who is very nice but doesn't speak English. We had a little trouble arranging our meeting time for tomorrow, and the rest remains shrouded in mystery.

Like many of my classmates, who do cover their faces. However, to answer the question very late, I am only covering my hair. I'm thinking if I happen to return to study here, I may cover my face at the school. Why struggle to look wakeful and interested during hours of class when one can simply wear a veil? Of course there are other, less frivolous reasons why it could come in handy.

This evening I went out to eat with some friends, and tried mansaf, the "national dish". It's a Bedouin specialty- meat with rice and yogurt. Tasty. I did cheat and have chicken instead of goat or lamb, though. Calling it the national dish is kind of optimistic, since the population is largely Palestinian. The royalty and original people are of Bedouin background, though, and seeing as it's not a democracy, the king can decree whatever he likes to be the national dish.

On the way back, we ran into a traffic problem- a crowd of young men celebrating a soccer win. They streamed through the six-lane divided highway, stopping traffic completely for a couple of minutes. All the rules of decorum were dropped as shirtless (!) guys grinned at us and banged on our car. They even opened one of our doors, so we had to lock them. Our extra-religious driver, who had asked us when we got in the car where we wanted to go, if God willed, and hoped to take us there if God willed, breathed a sigh of relief when the tide had passed and muttered, "There is no god but God."

This photo is of the doorperson at the Umayyad fort (ruins) in Amman. He offered to take a picture of me, which I wasn't keen on, so he stood and had me take a picture of him. Then he tried to take my picture after all, but it didn't work right for some reason. Then he looked in all directions and whispered urgently- "a dinar!" I protested that there was no picture! However he was insistent, so I gave him a few coins, which he clinked dolefully in his hand while I strolled around the building trying to figure out what it was. He didn't seem to know.

The driver on the way to the fort had been a classic- my only information on the Archaeological Museum was from the Tourist Bureau brochures, in English. So I got in the taxi and asked to go to the "historical museum", on Citadel Hill. He wasn't sure which museum I meant or what Citadel Hill was. Repeating didn't help. I said surely someone else must know, and could he ask. The other driver he asked had no clue either. Finally I decided to call it "Fort Hill" in Arabic, and the breakthrough arrived. He berated me for not telling him earlier that that was where I wanted to go. My excuse that I hadn't known the name in Arabic was no good. I still wasn't sure if I would end up in the right place, but I did...