Travels in the Levant

Thursday morning, yesterday, begin our long weekend, which marks the midpoint of our time in Amman. Jessica and I met Yasmiin and Lina, our language partners, at the Donut Factory down the street from our hotel. We also met up with Salaam, who we’ll be staying with Friday night, and her friend Dima. Salaam, who lives with her older sister in an apartment in Amman, is a student at UJ and although she is of Palestinian heritage and holds a Jordanian passport, her family lives in the Emirates where her father is a pharmacist. Dima, also a student at UJ, lives by herself in Amman. She is also of Palestinian heritage and holds a Jordanian passport but her family lives in Saudi Arabia where her father is a civil engineer and her mother is a biology teacher.

The six of us went to McDonald’s for lunch and then Yasmiin and Lina had to go home. Jessica, Salaam, Dima, and I then went to Swefiia to do some shopping. We wandered around for a while and found some amazingly expensive shops, most of them French, Spanish, or Italian. I prefer the Jordanian shops, which often have immitation brands (like Diesel or Puma) for $10-15 for pants or shoes. Jessica and I were tired, as we had been out with Ian and Monica the night before at the Irish Pub, and so we decided to go take naps before our big night.

One of the administrators at the UJ Language Center, Nasser Rashiid, recently invited us to his brother’s wedding, which we went to last night. Here’s a picture of Ghassan (a language partner), me, Bruce, and Jessica at the Amera right before we left for the wedding.

It was held in a big hall, especially designed for weddings, about 1km from the Amera. When we first got there professional Beduoin dancers were dancing with (real) swords out front along with some of the male wedding-party members. When the bride arrived (after the groom and his family picked her up from her family’s house) they shot off fireworks into the air and the wedding was ready to really get started. Here’s a picture of the outside part.

The men went up the stairs into one room and the women went around the corner and down the stairs into another. In the women’s room many of the girls and women took of their hejab or burkah (covers everything but the eyes) to reveal elaborate hairstyles and exuisite, prom-like dresses. Some of the older women remained in hejab (head-scarves) and abayyas (full-length coats). We met Nasser’s wife, who is an American convert to Islam who moved to Jordan with her husband 10 years ago. She has nine children. The dancing begin with some of the groom’s sisters and other relatives. Soon the bride and groom (yes, a man in the women’s room, I’m not sure why this is allowed) came in and begin with a slow dance. Everyone danced more after that and Jessica and I were cajoled into dancing by some of Nasser’s daughters. There was hardly any dhabka (circle dancing with set steps), but rather more free-form Arabic style dancing. Here’s a picture of the dancing in the women’s room.

Jessica and I were hard pressed to dance like this and no one really taught us what to do but we tried to go with the flow. Muslim weddings do not have alcohol, and yet the women’s party was probably more fun than any wedding reception I had been to. Partially because there wern’t any men present, the women completely let loose with the dancing. They could wear what they wanted and dance how they wanted; the room was full of small children running around and crying and the recorded music was loud, but everyone seemed to be having a great time, and dancing without any alocohol. Here’s the bride and the groom and a number of female relatives dancing.

There was a 9-layer wedding cake that tasted like cardboard but other than that no food and hardly anything to drink. Bruce and Ghassan said on the men’s side they were served course after course of food and the professional Bedouin dancers entertained them all night and were accompanied by a lived band. I think we had more fun but the men were certainly treated to more of a show. Maalesh.

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