Glory Ho

The ride to Rania was a roller coaster. Great America’s Screaming Eagle with its shockless, wooden construction comes to mind. Zana’s no-name car was the epitome of luxury—beige and gold, proof of purchase still stuck to the windows, digital dash, cruise control, compact-disc player and leather interior with head-rest to floor-mat dog-fur covers. Unfortunately, drivers below the age of 40 from developing countries who have managed to somehow own a car tend to drive as fast as they possibly can whenever they can. This includes the fifty meter space between Kurdistan’s frequent speedbumps, which makes the halt they come to five inches before the speedbump rather difficult. But steady breathing, focusing on the black smoke of a distant horizon-perpendicular oil well and absolutely no reading make it doable. Besides, by now we have stomachs of steel. We have eaten straight grease, unpasteurized milk, tap water-washed vegetables and other unidentified objects from many living-room-floor spread plastic picnic cloths and have yet to become truly ill.

So when we pulled onto the shoulder in the middle of nowhere, chose a bright-red-and-white chicken, watched a man cut its head off and stick it in a blood-draining funnel, and then wrap it up in a plastic bag which we then put in our trunk and ate with rice the next day, neither of us even flinched.

We’d been invited to this mountain town by our couchsurfer’s students, Zana and Nejad, for the weekend.

The rockstar alert was a little higher here in Rania. The fair faces of the Kurds stared and followed us through the bazaar full of kebab stands, barber shops, lurid god jewelry displays and basic goods like power strips, soap and spark plugs. Some Kurds pumped our hand with a grateful glee, some said “Hello!”, others couldn’t bother. One clothing store clerk with a friendly, eager and somewhat sad smile started a conversation in English and invited us to take a seat. His story gave us chills.

“From Kirkuk, but I lived to UK for two years, but then they make problem to me. I must leave. My father, he worked to Saddam. My brother he killed someone two years ago. I was just a little boy. But people make problem to me. Now I am in Erbil. But people make problem for me here, too. We will see. ”

Stories of Kurds escaping to the UK was common. One of our hosts, Nejad, had lived there for four years. He lived in a low-income London suburb with his brother, worked day and night in a Soho falafel shop, then sent the money home to his parents for rebuilding, medical costs, basic needs.

But other kids were luckier. Zana’s father lives in Norway and sends money home to provide for the family. Zana attends the University of Kurdistan and goes home to visit his mother, the patriotically-named Kurdistan and his sisters Soma and Sonya every weekend (which in here, is on Friday and Saturday). Kurdistan is a warm, busty woman with skin the color of muddy coffee and henna-highlighted hair. She hugs me tightly and instantly and lets me help in the kitchen, a rarity. The bathroom here, like all others we’ve seen so far in Rania is a wet squat without toilet paper.

Zana took us through family albums in the living room portraying a typical teenager’s life with friends, relative’s weddings, picnics and graduations. Except Zana has two grandmothers because his grandfather had two wives

Just another day in Northern Iraq.

The Pashmerga, the Kurdish police and security officers were everywhere. At intersections. At fountains. At soccer games. There were never any less than four guards at the gates of our compound, which includes ten-foot high walls. There were always two or three in front of the school, where our couchsurfing host taught English. During the drive to Rania with two University students, we encountered four checkpoints, two which required a look at our passport.

But our first real run-in with the police happened while taking photos there last week. We were caught off guard by two Kalishnakov-swinging camoflauged men who were not especially friendly. One minute there were two of them, the next more than 10. Our host’s face lacked reassurance or comfort.

So we followed the soldiers through mountain-surrounded Rania, a town known for its clever strategies and participation in the 1991 Northern Uprising in Iraq. We walked casually past the cement walls which contain brown courtyards, marble pillars and squat toilets. Past the women in their headscarves and ground-length velor housecoats, past the children in their fluorescent, synthetic clothing and rubber sandals. Past bench after medieval cart of men in their olive-drab traditional Kurdish garb, a cross between a Carhart worksuit, and a brown cummerbund-wrapped tuxedo, minus the bowtie. Past the Armani belt buckles and pin-striped suits. Past a Jack Daniels-bragging liquor store, sometimes a sign of a Christian neighborhood.

At the police station, four gun-wielding guards chaotically search us for a mobile phone. It was hard for them to believe we didn’t have one. Soon, we were herded toward a room and told to sit down. In the next sixty seconds, at least 15 people came into the room. We couldn’t tell if we were the excitement of the day or if they considered us a serious threat. Soon, it was another room. Then another. I wanted to hold onto Michael, but I couldn’t. Not here. Still, no one smiled. Still, our host was expressionless. I was calm, but fearful. I tried to look simultaneously scared, friendly and apologetic, my passport in my hands, ready to submit. Finally, a man behind a big desk in a heated office examined Michael’s passport. He waves mine away. I am just a woman, after all.

No problem. We can go. We can take all the pictures we want. They just had to make sure we weren’t Turkish spies gathering information about the PKK.

Cool.

Not Baghdad, Iraq. Northern Iraq. Kurdish Iraq. Kurdistan, if you will. And we found plenty of research, testimonials and even an English-teaching couchsurfer by the name of Josh Overcast before we made our decision to be tourist pioneers. Oh the places we’re willing to go.

On our second night in Iraq, we danced to Madonna’s Vogue at a party thrown by an English teacher. There was a lot of wine, Betty Crocker brownies and bugles to eat as everyone told their stories. Brits, Australians, Canadians and Americans, a Turk, and even a few Kurdish showed up. Some had studied Middle Eastern culture and history for years. Others were just adding Iraq to the list of past teaching assignments in Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Croatia. Most were on a two-year contract and found strange comfort in the gossipy, but gurgling insta-family which expat communities so often provide. It didn’t matter that they never would have been friends at home. Whatever differences, no matter how obvious, were overshadowed by one thing in common: they had all freely chosen to come to Iraq and they were all tired of being here.

Our first day out in Kurdistan felt a little like Africa. Out of the secure, suburban but heavily-guarded ghost-town of a complex and into the real town center. Unlike Damascas or Amman, the streets were wider, catering to fast cars. But Erbil was much more rundown with a thick layer of grime and a general disinterest in itself. A 10,000-year old citadel still inhabited by one family sat like a dusty, lazy lion who had long since fallen into a deep sleep in the center of his kingdom. In the souk, blenders with pomegranate purple and guava garnet inside sat on white counters ready to pour. Most fast food “restaurants” didn’t have napkins or bathrooms, just a hanging cow carcass, a slippery floor of fallen food and a sink for washing your hands. Roads with deep grooves, like a permanently fired, vertical pieces of pottery led the way. As in every country we’d visited, the black market was ever-present with rechargeable, (but useless as we discovered) Sony batteries, mobile phones and flash drives. But here, despite a public space full of striped umbrellas, metal benches and fountains, infrastructure was a bit weaker. Electricity was sparse, international ATMs were non-existent and gas stations were no more than a man with a pyramid of petroleum-filled plastic gallon containers at his side.

The faces of confusion and awe were what reminded us of Madagascar. It was apparent that even the IT professionals, teachers and contractors living here didn’t often venture into the souk because the Kurds just didn’t know what to do with us. They stared, suspicious and shy, but not threatening. One man in traditional garb took our photo twice as we drank tea at his outdoor stools and learned a little Kurdish.

But even once we knew the basics, getting a price was never easy. Whether you wanted a falafel-stuffed pita, a haircut or a taxi ride, your first inquiry was waved away as if to say: “well discuss it later”. Then, when it was time to ante up, they hushed up, waiting for you to over or under-pay them.

We ventured into an tangerine-trimmed barber shop where the men all wore avocado-colored chemises. Michael was saddled up within seconds. The cut took less than 10 minutes and before long I was having my eyebrows and mustache (I didn’t even know I had one) tweezed through the string-squeezing method. As I gasped for air and tears slipped out of my eyes, the entire shop laughed and snickered at my pain and Michael told me to be tough. My eyebrows look fabulous but it was sufficiently traumatic.

Again and again, we hear about the safety of Erbil. Stuff doesn’t happen here. The only violence occurs in the form of illegal honor killings, Kurdistan was yet another ethnic group without a homeland—over 30 million people worldwide (20% of the population in Turkey, 15-20% in Iraq) Between the near-decade-long Iraq-Iran war in the 80s and the devastating 1988 incident in Haljaba when Saddam killed off five thousand Kurds with a single drop of mustard gas, the Kurds are not only without a homeland but were often without protection from Iraq’s ruler. But when the US established the no-fly zone in 1991 following the Gulf War and the Oil-For-Food Program distribution was revamped by the UN in 1996, Kurdish life has been steadily progressing forward. Now their flag, a 21-ray sun, symbolizing their Nawrooz holiday on the 21st of March and the white (peace) red (blood) and green (nature) stripes is flown freely. There are still honor killings, where women aged 10 and up are executed by a male relative for having inappropriate relations with the opposite sex. Their crimes range from having a strange boy’s mobile number to being caught in a clandestine meeting with him. Honor Killings are illegal, but police don’t always intervene or prosecute.

Our timing wasn’t perfect, however. AlthoughTurkish-PKK conflict had been relatively quiet for months, the day we arrived, Turkish troops began a fresh incursion into Northern Iraq in an effort to undermine the PKK, “a militant Kurdish organization with the objective to create an independent Kurdish state” to some, and a “terrorist organization” to others. What was worse, the incursion was prompted by a “green light” from the United States.

When we were in Turkey back in November, the U.S., a long-time ally, wasn’t doing enough to help Turkey fight the PKK, whose goal, if achieved, would create a separate Kurdish state. But now that we were in Kurdistan, a homeland-less group which the U.S. has supported and protected for nearly two decades, the U.S. government had decided to put their foot down in defense of Turkey. In other words, we were in the wrong country. Again.

Yet. It didn’t seem to matter. Separation of individual and government, as usual, was clear. Kurdish students welcomed us at the University. We attended a political science class and gave talks to classes about Peace Corps and Bulgaria. We checked books out of the library, used the computer lab and attended a protest against Turkish forces organized by the Student Union.

Just like Syria and Lebanon, Iraq had skidded from dangerous and exotic to reasonably safe a so-not-a-big-deal in a matter of days. The difference was that this was I-R-A-Q. The difference was that Lonely Planet had not only called it “the most dangerous place on earth” in it’s 2006 edition., but had printed this message under the Solo Travelers subheading:

Until yesterday, airports, despite their stress, had always given me a rush. I’ve always loved walking confidently through any terminal with some trendy new handbag across my chest. O’Hare with its Accenture ads, neon-mod walkway, Mrs. Fields cookies and convenient gates. DIA with its Native American art, view of the plains, ridiculous tram and turquoise for sale. JFK with its dodgy Union Station bar, sunglassed heads and no-nonsense staff. Paris with its silly airbus system, original metrosexuals and hottie flight attendants. For years, airports were the beginning of something good. Sure, they were also fraught with stress and schedules, but I kinda live for that shit. And running through an airport makes for a very good story.

I swallowed my first spoonful of reverse culture shock yesterday at Queen Alia Airport in Amman. Our destination: Erbil, Iraq or Kurdistan. This had been a big decision for us—we’d labored over it for weeks. But not because it was Iraq. We’d researched Erbil extensively, found a couchsurfer, received two friend-of-a-friend testimonials and read blogs and even tourism articles. We knew we wanted to go. We knew it was safe to go. The problem was the money. This one transaction would be more than we’d spent in our first six weeks of traveling. But with complicated visa issues coming in and out of Syria and the PKK at the Turkish border, this was the only way.

We were going.

Wearing our most presentable attire and switching my backpack to rolling mode, we arrived precisely at 10:00 for our noon flight. With little signage, all we could do was follow the crowd and look for our airline’s logo. At some unidentified time, some unidentified person gave an unidentified signal, which prompted the waiting area of Arab businessmen and Muslim vacationers headed for Dubai to jam their way toward a small security passageway. This happened just as Michael returned with a sandwich and a latte. Note: typical airport stress.

But because we’d been taking cheap buses and trains for the past three months, because we’d rarely maintained a schedule that wasn’t 100% flexible and because we’d learned that hurrying takes all the fun out of traveling, we weren’t used to fighting for a place in line.

The difference today was four-figure prices. Suddenly, a schedule mishap was NOT an option.

Note: switch to present tense to increase panic level.

Michael expertly slides the sandwich plate into the top of his backpack and hands me the coffee while putting everything on his back. We attack the line from both sides in pitiful coordination and end up together just in time. After a quick passport inspection, a man who would within minutes make everything more complicated than it needs to be because he was in search of a tip, grabs my bag and leads me toward a conveyer belt, nodding and yelling CHECK! just a little too loudly again and again.

Suddenly unable to think for ourselves, we think: check? But no! We don’t want to check our carryon bags. He motions me one way and Michael another. But no! We’re together! But then we realize that DUH we are not checking our luggage yet. And that DUH, we are in the Middle East and there are gender-separated lines. Though I’ve blogged about it before, I am struck once again at how being treated like a child turns you INTO a child. This time the result being a man in a blue suit who now wants a tip.

Then there is that horrible confusion about which one of us has the tickets and which one of us has the passports and I am left wondering how I have been reduced to someone who MUST have her coffee and therefore carries it through airport security.

But then I am pushed toward the “Ladies Inspection Area” and there is no line and the buzzer keeps sounding and the woman behind the curtain keeps saying BACK! BACK! but never indicates when to come forward and I finally get there and I think she’s trying to tell me to take the lid off my coffee but I’m not really sure I don’t want to because OBVIOUSLY that’s where my bomb is hidden but when start to she indicates for me to put the COFFEE through the conveyor belt and I’m like: WHAT? But that’s what I do. And then I cut back in line, playing hardball with the rest of them and I am finally frisked by this same women who gets ruder by the second and I come out to find my purse and a man yells “Who is this coffee?” And I’m all defensive and say: “But she told me to put it there!” pointing in no uncertain terms at the women hiding in her curtained box and then some man hands it to me across the machine and I look over and watch Michael being interrogated by a man at a small brown desk with not enough to do, who I will soon find out is confiscating his rechargeable camera batteries because basically, he has to confiscate SOMETHING.

So, for the record, I am now incredibly annoyed with three people who are all basically just doing their job the best they can. I can feel the tightening of my skin as entitlement (I paid big money for this flight! Don’t treat me like shit!) and arrogance (Can you BELIEVE how disorganized this country is? And why can’t they speak a LITTLE more English?) pop my skin into the loofah-crying scales of a reptilian monster.

From here, things only get worse. We are due to depart in 40 minutes. Another wait, an immigration window, and another round of frisking later, we are somehow in the holding area for a flight to Milan. Which does explain the barrage of middle-aged German women with big pocketbooks and Frommer’s Guides, but does not help our current cause. It turns out our flight is not boarding yet. What can we do but believe someone and have a seat? I dive into Sudoku, Michael goes into his meditation mode and we attempt to change our energy before the next panic attack hits roughly twenty minutes later.

Note: Back to past tense.

In the end, we departed two hours late because of a delay in Baghdad. The flight was uneventful and I even got a shot of Michael in front of the Iraqi Airways-plastered plane before the flight attendant told me to “kindly put away my camera.”

But we felt we’d been slapped in the face by familiar patterns of the past. What hassle! What stress! If only we could have taken a bus!

Was money behind this negative energy? Could it be that lavish expenditures turn me into an instant asshole? It made some sense. The original paradigm is about possessions. When you have an expensive camera, you have to worry about losing that expensive camera, about someone stealing that expensive camera, about damaging that expensive camera. And it’s worth asking: Is the expensive camera’s benefits worth the stressful experience of keeping track of it? About the witch I become while I worry?

Our airline tickets represented the same quandary. Had they been worth it?

Yes. While jewelry, excessive gadgetry or $100 sunglasses are not, the flight was. The trick is to simply internalize frustration and panic, maintaining pleasant expressions, measured movements and soft-spoken, head-tilting reactions while the world goes to pieces in front of you.

Yes. Well. Of course. Next time I’ll know. But damn that G.I. Joe. It sure doesn’t feel like half the battle.

Current Location: Amman, Jordan

Oh, you’ve heard it all before. Pity the last Middle Eastern country on our path as nothing is surprising by now. Created from the overflow of Palestinian refugees from Israel and now those having fled Iraq, Jordan, although atop land with centuries of rich it-happened-here stories, is a nation more like America, with an immigrant-mixed identity.

As we bused in on that sunny Saturday in February, this desert city of little beige boxes against an azure backdrop resembled a two page Pottery Barn spread—just the right amount of pastels, lines and curves to round out a living space. Unlike the uneven wafers of desert where Syria rested, Amman was built upon nineteen hills and so like the shoebox diorama you built in the 5th grade, it pops out with multiple dimensions. Architecturally, there was a lightness to it. Embassy flags flew more freely, strip malls were more plentiful. Big-city tunnels, tall, cut-glass hotels, Burger King and even Benihana did make it feel a little like Omaha. The only difference were the framed shots of the royal family which decorated building after billboard like American Dental Association ads. As if receiving a tour of an empty-nester’s new condo, we were privy to posed photographs of the Hashemite Kingdom’s royal son. I could just hear his parents glowing now: “Here he is with the family. There with an Arab headdress. And look at this one—isn’t he dapper with his uniform and three-finger salute?”

While in Amman, we stayed in the oldest and most authentically Jordanian neighborhood in town, which alas, meant the most run-down. The Cliff Hotel was terrible. But we bought new DVDs for around a buck a piece, sat in cold Internet cafes and sucked down fresh juice and falafel from stands with plastic grapes lights and grumpy owners. Pantene and Pert Plus made their old false promises from carefully crammed shelves. Some people noticed us. Plenty others did not.

Travelers had warned us that Amman was nothing special. They were right. But we needed these down times for video writing and video uploading. So we settled in.

Within a few days, I found a recording studio to do my recent voice-over assignments for Infowerk, a contractor which provides aviation e-learning modules for military units. Random, I know. We also spent a day at the American embassy completing forms, trading travel stories and most importantly, acquiring more pages for our passport.

As in every capital, we managed to quickly attach ourselves to a foreigner-filled bookstore and cafe not far from our hotel off Rainbow Street. The whole place was a cliché with moving parts. A girl wandered around interviewing expats for a new travel forum, mashed potatoes were on the menu, lattes were tall with free refills, wireless internet brought us infinte pleasure and American voices were so plentiful that I stopped hearing them. We probably spent 25+ hours on those couches, one night watching a new episode of Lost from our laptop, Ipod plugs in our ears, while having a margarita and eating a chef salad with cheddar (!) cheese. It seemed too good to be true.

But I know, people, I know. Jannis and Jana especially, this is not the Jordan you’ve been waiting for. It’s coming, I promise.

But first we went to Iraq.

You never know what travel might do to you. I mean, yeah, all that deep stuff. But even my tastes are changing.

(Photo by Hurina)

Take coffee. Somehow, back in the early 90s, when putting a Starbucks in a Starbucks was a funny joke, I just never needed the caffeine. And who wanted something bitter? Blech. But it was also about the morning ritual. I just couldn’t be bothered. In fact, I frequently wondered how people could spend precious time and dollars on mere liquid with a clearly marketeered mocha-triple-blend-Indochina title. But, I’ve come around. Sugar, milk, and the schwe schwe (slowly slowly) inshallah (God Willing) Middle East attitude, is making me take time to stop and drink the coffee. And it tastes good.

Olives. In Greece, Andy turned me onto the garlic-stuffed variety. Then I found them bursting with almonds. In Turkey, there was the olive farm. It seems only right to consume the product you grow, right? My father was a corn and soybean farmer for a fifteen years. While his kind of corn fed mainly cattle, I took pride in consuming the little yellow kernels off the cob, as if I was somehow helping to earn our living. So when picking them by day, I knew that all olives, which lets face it, are really just salt and oil dressed up in a silky cape, must become a part of my life. And oh, how they have.

Cats. When I was 7 or 8, I got bit by a cat. Looking back, I see that this particular cat was tired of my endless game called “I-want-to-hold-you. No-I-REALLY-want-to-hold-you.” But I avoided cats from then on. A decade later, my roommate in college, as part of joint custody with an ex-boyfriend, exposed me to Alex, the evil of all felines. Likely due to kittyhood trauma, this cat was fearless and defensive 24/7. A hisser and a scratcher, at parties, she’d perch on the arm of the couch and swat at people walking by. What’s hard to believe is that my roommate then married my brother and so this cat has become part of my FAMILY! But no matter. From this, I entered into a full-on cat-phobia, including nightmares. If anyone argued, pop culture was on my side. From Lady and the Tramp to Pet Cemetery, the cat had been typecast as a villain who was always picking on the dumb blonde dog long ago.

But at the olive farm in Turkey, for reasons a therapist will one day determine, I withdrew from my usual position within the skin of the social scene and found connection and reassurance with fur. I felt more at one with the animals. In particular, petting the cat, this self-sufficient creature which cleaned itself constantly (when I was, at the time, relegated to just a few showers a week,) seemed like a win-win situation. Somehow, my need to nurture finally swelled past human relationships.

However, upon wandering the streets of foreign cities ever since, and witnessing just how defensive cats are, especially compared to their canine counterpart, I realize that what I’ve never liked about cats was what I’ve never liked about myself. They’re always freaking out as if every passing human is plotting to kill them or they’re not gonna get enough milk. It’s as if I have realized, noting the goodwill and generosity of every stranger, that the world is a good place. That I shouldn’t be a fighter, but a lover. And after crossing that line, I looked back to the see the cold, bitchy cat, armor still strapped across its fur, paws up, ready for a rumble. So I went back, scooped it into my arms for life and consider it my duty to beckon this beast toward a better place.

The other day we realized that we’d hit hotel bottom here in Amman.

Besides the piles of decade-old dirt in the corners, the obscene toilet, and the smelly blankets, its usually about 50 degrees in our room. To combat the cold, we’ve been sleeping together, in one very small bed to keep warm. Which would be a good idea, except that due to our two-inch thick, malformed mattress, it’s like sleeping in a bathtub, with both side at a 70 degree slope. The owner, gold-toothed Tony, with his cardigan, Palestinian symbolizing keyeffieh and New York baseball camp shuffles around with his father and another unidentified mustachioed man. Mealy but mellow and always acting as though he just smoked a doobie, Tony embodies flow. Which would be great if the whole place didn’t have such a nursing home feel to it. Or if he didn’t say it was okay to “ash on the floor”. Or if the alley its in didn’t include a bum hangout.

But here we are, at $10 a night in the Cliff hole hotel, boiling eggs, drinking Nescafe coffee, sleeping in our clothes and finding a sliver of sunlight to sit in as we start the day. And we’re still lovin’ this life, always ready to get on the road again, goin’ places that we’ve never been, seeing places that we’ll never see again. (We usually can’t wait) to get on the road again.

(Graphic compliments of the graphic wizardess and new mother, Keri Smith at Wish Jar)

Willie Nelson. . . .Herman Hess, maybe mixing icons is a little like mixing metaphors. Just another rule I’m choosing to break.

We’re alive and doing fab. Please don’t anyone worry about a thing.

Sometimes I wonder how I end up where I do.

This was my thought as I walked atop the shoulders of an icy, starry night on a road between Syria and Lebanon, humming Islands in the Stream (it was playing at the duty free shop) and searching my coat pockets for toilet paper.

Our morning departing Beirut had been a hellish nightmare of false starts, perfume peddlers, taxi scams, bus ticket tricks and below-the-highway bust-ups. We’d finally managed to find a five dollar mini-bus, which along with eight other smoking, shifty-eyed males, took us up over the mountain pass and even stopped for a currency exchange. Six weeks ago, on our way in, we’d exchanged cash in panic through a barbed wire fence at the Lebanese entrance while we prayed that our bus didn’t leave without us. It sucked. But this time, despite the confusing conversion of Lebanese Pounds, Syrian Pounds and American Dollars (which were also used in Beirut) we fared better.

But getting our cash was only the first step. At the Syrian entry point, where not one officer spoke English, we discovered via a kind bilingual bystander that it would take five or six hours to issue a visa since they’d have to contact Damascus and wait for approval.

No problem. We’d been warned and were well-prepared with snacks and our books: Eastward to Tartary and Beirut to Jerusalem. Plus, there was a Dunkin Donuts nearby. Swell. All day long we watched hundreds of border-crossers come and go and the moustachioed pea-green-uniformed officers change shifts. But eight hours later, we were still hugging the radiator in our little bucket seats, going a little stircrazy. That’s when paranoia began to set in. We had no idea what was going on back there. Had our request been sent? Were they checking on it? Were visas issued after business hours? Shit, what had I written in my blog about Asad? Bloggers had been recently arrested in Egypt. What was the problem? Damn it America! Look at those Japanese tourists–in and out in five minutes!

Finally, just before 10:00 they motioned us over.

The visas would be issued.

Whew. But now we had to find a ride to Damascus. It was just a forty minute drive, but dark and cold by now, hitchhiking did not sound good. About that time, we heard American voices. Texas accents.

Fifteen minutes later we were sitting comfortably in the front seat of our own knight on a white horse. Except this hero had a 1974, velour interior dirt-dusted Caprice Classic–so big and white it seemed like it would fly. It’s driver, Abu Anas, a friend of the family spoke little English, but lucky for us, Abeer the pharmaceutical rep, Kinan the real estate guru and Zak the attorney spoke good Arabic. Somehow, it was arranged that we would stay with Abu tonight at his home and tomorrow morning he would drive us to Amman, Jordan for a small fee.

So we dropped off the Texans, then headed far out of the center to the cinder block shantytown of his suburban home. It was rockpiles and late-night fruit stands, dark alleys, corrugated tin and cement compounds. But his smile was as wide as the Caprice Classic as he called his wife and told her the good news. Though nearly midnight, he was bringing home guests. American guests. So would she plug in the space heater and put on the tea?

That night we slept in our clothes on a firm bed under three blankets. Harsh security lights courtyard, the outdoor space between the living spaces of his “house”, flooded our room, setting aglow the literally hundreds of garish ceramics displayed in our bedroom, a strange status of wealth in these Syrian communities. The next morning, after a quick teethbrush at the outside faucet, we sat around the kitchen diesel stove while Koran verses san across the television. Did we want tea? Well of course we did. As Abu’s headscarfed wife flowered with facial expressions and three of their nine little boys watched us with delight, we knew we were at a red-level alert for another kidnapping. This would be a close one.

But this time was different. This family was at ease with each other and that made us at ease with them.The energy was buoyant and we relaxed into the comfort of confusion we had come to know so well. I practiced my Arabic numbers. They practiced their English greetings. It was shy smiles and photos all around. Soon, Abu Anas made a move to go and we followed the nonverbals. Onto the white horse we climbed, one leg at a time and he drove us to. . . .not Jordan, but the bus station, where he arranged our seat with a bus-driver buddy of his. A miscommunication. Not too shocking. But it didn’t matter. A free bed, a culture-rich evening and a personal delivery to the bus’ two front positions, the best seats in the house. Abu refused to accept any money.

The Jordanian border, with King Abdullah and Queen Rania smiling at us with delight as if we’d just arrived at their private dinner party, was full of shiny marble, modern mosaics and velvet ropes which swung with order.

Amman here we come.