Ramadan Mubarak!

So being in a majority-Muslim country during Ramadan, I hadn’t thought that something as basic as finding a good place for iftar would be as difficult as it has been so far.

On our first night of Ramadan in Jordan, we put together a master plan: we coordinated with some of the other Fulbrighters and decided that we’d leave after maghrib (the sunset prayer) to head to this Indian restaurant for dinner. We thought that we’d break fast with a date and some water, head to the mosque to pray, then grab a cab and meet up at the restaurant. The only problem that we didn’t quite evaluate correctly: how to catch a cab after iftar.

We really thought that we had accounted for this in the master plan. Multiple people were consulted and we decided that it would be harder to catch a cab while people were rushing home to eat with their families (really, everyone is driving like a maniac before iftar) then to catch a cab after the initial iftar and prayer period had occurred. Clearly, we were wrong.

In my two weeks here, I hadn't seen the streets of Jordan so empty. Walking through our usually boisterous neighborhood after maghrib, there wasn’t a sound to be heard or a soul to be seen. I'd only felt this kind of a contrast in noise and activity once and that was when I left Manhattan to visit friends in Oregon (yes, it was quite a dramatic difference).

All of the teenage hoodlums who are usually out on the streets smoking cigarettes and mocking passers-by were nowhere in sight. None of the shops in Kharabsheh were open. We couldn’t even hear a car, person, animal or even television. Everyone seemed to be in their homes, with their families, silently stuffing themselfs with food. Meanwhile, here we were, a Malaysian, a Korean, a Pakistani and an Indian, wandering through the streets in search of a cab.

We walked out of Kharabsheh, over and down a hill, through another neighborhood and finally to the main road and even then, there were almost no cars driving by. The few taxis that we did see were occupied or zooming by with no intent of stopping before making it home for their own meals.

Finally a cab stopped and I told him where we wanted to go. He looked at me, said “Sorry habibi,” made a kissing sound and drove away. Apparently we weren’t on his way home. Thankfully, there was a vacant cab on the road and we were able to grab it and get on our way.

The cool thing about being in a majority-Muslim country during Ramadan is that everyone else is fasting too, which is quite a different experience from the US. People are rushing through grocery stores in the afternoon, grabbing last-minute items for their evening dinners and everyone seems to head to the mosque at sunset before returning home to eat with their families. The problem with all this is that immediately after sunse, the entire city becomes eerily empty.

Unfortunately, this was causing problems for our friends too. When we all finally caught cabs, Albert didn’t know how to direct everyone else to the restaurant, other than by telling the others that it was near a Popeye’s (yes, there’s Popeye’s in the middle east and it is HUGE). When we called one of our friends to tell her to redirect the cab driver to the Indian restaurant, the driver refused, as it was likely not on his way home, and she had to get out of the cab and wait. Luckily some of the other girls had gotten dropped off at the Popeye’s too, so I walked over and met up with them before heading back to the restaurant.

The food was surprisingly good. I didn’t think that I’d be able to find good desi food in the Arab world, but alas, I felt like I was at home. Everything was good, except for the butter chicken, which was identical to the chicken tikka masala, except with a dash of butter on top.

After dinner Kristine, Unaza, Jafer and I decided to head to an ice cream shop that Kristine knew of in a hip area called ‘abdoun. When we got there, I had forgotten how westernized Jordan can sometimes be. I had been living in the old school area of Kharabsheh and for some reason was extremely shocked to see upscale cafes with Wi-Fi hotspots and TVs displaying MTV music videos.

I was also shocked to see more westernized young Arabs who seemed to be grabbing ice cream with friends while eye-flirting with other customers. As soon as Jafer and I noticed, we were stunned. I guess we both forget that this country can be so western and so traditional at the same time, depending on where you are. I can’t say though, that it wasn’t a pleasant shock, even if there were hijabis involved.

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On the second night of Ramadan we thought we’d leave early and make sure we got to our destination on time. Albert, Faheem and I decided to leave and head for one of the biggest mosques in Amman, the Malik-Al-Hussein mosque, which is located on the top of a hill, in the middle of what seems to be a fortress. Well, it’s not really a fortress, it’s just a hillside full of parks and fields (of FieldTurf) all of which no one seemed to be using.

We arrived at the mosque on the top of the hill exactly on time for the maghrib call to prayer. The mosque was beautiful and grand, with an enormous exterior courtyard and four giant minarets. But for as grand and as attractive as the mosque was, it was incredibly empty. We walked through the vacant courtyard toward two of the many mosque doors. We put our shoes in the empty shoe racks and walked through the doors to find what seemed to be the Royal Mosque staff offering dates and water to each of the maybe 20 guests in this cavernous mosque (I don’t really know who they were, but they had pretty official and Disneyland-esque costumes, which varied depending on which task each staff member was doing).

The call to prayer was very impressive, as was the recitation during the prayer, but all of the magic of this special selection of staffers seemed a little weird as the mosque was so empty. We attributed the attendance problems for the maghrib prayer to the mosques isolated location on the top of a hill and in the middle of this campus of parks and gardens.

After the prayer, we decided to make our way to one of the nearby malls to eat, but somehow we forgot that it was going to be hard to get a cab after maghrib and that we were in an extremely isolated location. We ended up trekking for about 40 minutes down the hill and through the fortress of walls, walkways, trees and fields, then across a highway and through a valley before going up another hill to get to Meca Mall for our dinner.

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When I got home that night I was watching Arabic serials on TV when I noticed a powerful commercial. It was by a telephone company in Iraq and it showed a famous singer walking through Iraq with a child as the country was being reconstructed in the background. I found it to be really powerful and even tracked it down online to share! Watch it if you can!! I thought it was really cool.