How Unromantic

At our orientation to the Arabic School, the director – a friendly man from Pittsburgh, humorous in a self-deprecating way, with a skullcap and a bushy black beard sternly trimmed into an exact rectangle – made an important point.

We encourage you to blog, he said. It’s important for you to share your experiences. But keep in mind that initial, unqualified impressions aren’t the same as fact, and that the Internet is notoriously bad at distinguishing the two. You can cause a lot of damage by disseminating your own hasty conclusions.

Wise advice, of course, but what caught me was the dry humor – perhaps mingled with a tinge of bitterness – in his voice when he said, “And I understand the need for you to share your heroic narrative.”

Ouch. For someone whose Internet name actually has the word “heroine” in it, that single sentence felt like a direct hit. Of course I want to imagine that this is some epic journey in which I demonstrate my inherent worth by conquering, Indiana Jones-style, everything from the language of the country to the trust of its people to its most explosive political issues. Unfortunately, the fact is that I’m quite lucky to perform the Arabic equivalent of pointing and grunting without embarrassment and this scholarship program does everything for me but wipe my ass. Is this trip going to help me learn Arabic? Yes. Is it a heroic narrative? Not unless I get kidnapped by terrorists and escape by blowing up their secret compound. Insha’allah, this will NOT happen. (Do Jordanians knock on wood?)

There’s also the issue of balancing a considered analysis with a first impression. Obviously, the latter is probably more valuable, but I think there’s something to be said for the former, too. A stranger has the benefit of being new to everything, which tends to throw both details and generalities into a very sharp focus that may not be available to locals. With that in mind, my first impression of Amman is this:

Though a long ways away from any kind of shore, Amman reminds me of a very large beach town. There’s the same clear blue sky, the same box-shaped, heat-resistant architecture, the same vague sense of rapid development and impermanence. There isn’t really any grass in Amman, just yellow brush and bare stretches of ground between some of the buildings. This, along with the large number of construction sites, makes Amman feel a little unfinished. It certainly brings into sharp awareness how much the city has grown in just the last five years.

The streets are extraordinarily wide, leaving one feeling exposed to the traffic and the inevitable stares, and the sidewalks have a tendency to suddenly narrow, jump ten feet to one side, or simply end. So irregular are they that there are times when taking a walk through the city feels more like a hike than a stroll. The pedestrian bridges that span the busiest thoroughfares are utilitarian metal affairs with advertisements on the sides and a Godsend, as Amman traffic is unceasing, unpredictable, and surprisingly harmless.

The buildings themselves are all of textured white stone, worn-looking and streaked to a varying degree of yellow or gray. I like the buildings’ arched windows and simple, timeless lines. They feel unusually stable in these volatile times. They range from one story to six or seven, and all are short enough that, if one looks down on the city from a hill at night, the little dots of lights are visible all the way to the horizon, like a blanket of stars.

“Blanket of stars.” I really am succumbing to the worst excesses of travel writing. I think I’ll get some sleep and try and find a way to rephrase that sentence…