Jordan Pilgrim returns to England

It is  a hinge time.  The end of September, the start of October.  The end of summer.  The start of a new growing season in Jordan.  On the roof of Rainbow House new leaves shoot from the thorn tree, a pink  flower blooms.  In England, leaves take on the colours of fall[1].  And I am at a hinge in my life: looking back at a year that has seemed like five in experience, demands, rewards; looking forward to a new life in my native land, uncertain as ever what it will hold but hugely strengthened by this time away.

The strengthening comes from the people I have encountered, people in Amman and beyond, people back home who have been supporting, encouraging.  Leave-taking has been a slow, sweet sad affair.   People said I touched their lives and were warm in their thanks for my being among them.  That was kind.  The truth is that these encounters were exchanges: we traded our experience, knowledge, hopes,  wonder, humour as well as sharing our daily tally of frustrations, disappointments, aggravations.   Such trading and sharing is the foundation of friendship, and I hope that some of these people who live so vividly in my heart now will remain friends even in the other worlds, the other futures we are all separately moving on to.  Even if just one or two, it is quality that counts.

I would love to celebrate the warmth of the welcome I have had in Jordan, a welcome which persisted from the first to the last day, a warmth to every exchange.  One reason perhaps why each day was exhausting  -  the openness and evident care for me from people I dealt with demanded a response, something more than the kind of smile we might exchange  with a check-out operator in a supermarket here in England.  My response never seemed quite enough, I always felt a little English reserve there, even a little resentment at being made to answer, “where are you from ?” twenty times a day.  But some of my friends say I made a good difference to their lives  -  and I take that to heart.

No measurable, appreciable difference to the life of the nation.  The nation, alas, is collectively blind to the fact that its young men are smoking themselves to early graves.  Nobody talks about it.  And there are hordes of young men with nothing to do.  This is on the agenda, there is a huge USAID programme for youth, channelled through JOHUD the umbrella charity descended from one fostered by the royal family.  In my best times, and objectively there is something in this, I have felt good to be part of an effort to do vocational training, to up-grade the skills of a few hundred young (and not-so-young) men, and equip them to work in the economy of this country  -  or wherever they go as migrants or refugees.  But no-one seriously questions the origin of the hordes of young men, the high value placed on having a half-dozen sons.  Family planning is something else nobody talks about. 

The difference to me and my life ?  Immeasurable !  There is often a tension between living for today  -  which you must do, because it is the only certainty, and to deny its reality is to deny life itself;  and planning for, making yourself fitter for tomorrow  -   which you also must do, because tomorrow will come round like an express train and flatten everything you have, everything you stand for, unless you see it coming and give it respect.  I got all strung out living for today, living within my means (which gave some satisfaction, not drawing out from a diminishing pot in England), not being on the dole, doing a dozen little things so my house-mates did not need to worry about them.  I thought a bit about the next years of my life, made lists of what I wanted to do; sorted out somewhere to live, decided against making Jordan my home.  Made some notes for a CV in case I ever wanted someone else to employ me. 

But gone now is the hands-on gritty reality of living in Jordan, of navigating the city’s streets without too many times a day tripping headlong on those broken pavings or just-for-fun bits of iron which stick out of the pavements; of chatting to or navigating for or arguing with taxi-drivers; of refusing black bags when out shopping, and juggling notes and coins so as not to be left with nothing but a 50-dinar note for the next day’s petty expenses (shop-keepers have no change, and taxi-drivers, if they have any, will short-change you if they think they can get away with it); of making arrangements by phone and it taking half a dozen more phone calls before the arranged meeting, for work or social reasons, takes place.  Gone too the joy of actually meeting a friend; or of spontaneously with a house-mate starting to cook something rather dull and adding one found ingredient after another, and a spice or a herb, and ending up with a dish fit for a banquet; or of yoga at sunrise on the roof, the citadel sunlit in the east, the cuboid houses opposite still in shadow while we bask in rays; of siestas tuning out the city’s noise and waking to the clatter of children’s roller blades and banter, squeals and games, and the raucous paternal afternoon call to prayer.

I could go on.  I will go back, as there are so many friends and projects dear to my heart that I want to return and will them to succeed.  I have an agenda back in UK of a dozen things I can and should do to help and support those projects and friends.  But the time itself has gone, this year of total immersion in Jordan.  Kiss it goodbye, with fondness.  Even this hinge time has run its course.  Time to live in the now of life here in York, and to look forward.  As Ewa would say:

 “Co bylo i nie jest nie pisze-ze vrai jest.”

 “What was and is not, we do not write as being true (any longer).”

 1^st – 4^th October 2009

 

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[1]          .  I prefer the graphic simplicity of that word to the ponderous Latin of “autumn”  -  thank you, Americans, for preserving it thus.

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