From Jordan with Love

Life is fairly settled her in Amman. I now live with an elderly Jordanian woman of Syrian descent who used to handle the late King Hussein's personal finances. No big deal. This weekend the gang is off to the Badia desert in northeastern Jordan to spend three days with a Bedouin family. Wouldn't you expect a swing of the culture shock pendulum to occur right before I'm to dropped off in, almost literally, B.F.E.? Typical.

I specifically miss Hell's Kitchen and my recording studio. Not so much homesick as I miss the feeling of familiarity, so right now it's kind of hard to be excited about the whole Middle East track because along with it comes some serious discomfort (and not just the kind from a radical change in diet). It's one thing to know that this is what they call culture shock and another to feel it. I don't want to come home, though; I just want things to start feeling familiar.

Another reverse-Orientalism encounter!...maybe.

Two days ago we visited the Higher Council for Scientific Research and Technology, the government developmental and regulatory body for...scientific research and technology. Ummm, when did we arrive in Soviet Russia? The director of the HCSRT's Badia Development Project, Dr. Muhammad Shabaaz, gave a presentation on rangeland management, desertification, etc. etc., but began with a curious little diddy about the history of scientific research in the Arab and Islamic empires -- the Arab contribution to this or that field, the Arab development of this or that concept that laid the foundation for Western science, on and on.

It wasn't that he said anything wrong, but that he felt the need to say anything at all. Growing up, no one ever bothered to tell me that Baghdad and Damascus were light years ahead of European technologies and living standards until the Renaissance, it was knowledge that people in the know were either ignorant of didn't think was important enough to tell me. College has a very good way of supplementing what you learned in high school (particularly if much of that was filtered to you through a B-list private school curriculum), and so as a ME major of course I had learned this stuff. But it stuck me that Dr. Shabaaz, who took a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, felt the need to (as I think he may have) counter certain assumptions that he assumed we held, like, 'nothing good ever came from Arab culture.' Which (and I think so) might just be an assumption that a lot of Americans believe based on what they 'know' about Arabs and the Middle East. And Dr. Shabaaz likewise addressed us based on what he 'knew' of what we 'know' about Arab civilization.

Here's a roundup of some other things on my mind lately:

• Last week, one of the Jordanian newspapers, Ammon News, broke a story that Robert Kagan, neocon thinker and one of McCain's foreign policy advisers, said at an NYU public lecture that the presidential hopeful endorses a 'Jordan Option' to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, wherein Palestinians are relocated to Jordan, which should be their "natural homeland." The next day, another paper, the Jordan Times, called Ammon News' BS, having contacted Kagan and NYU and received a vehement denial, but not after King Abdulluh II made a national address to assure Jordanians there would be no major demographic shakeup or massive population influx.
  
  Living in country during the minor social crises, the story, even though it was bunk, effectively tanked McCain's popularity, which was slightly higher than Obama's. But between all three, everyone favored Hillary Clinton; since Jimmy Carter, Bill showed the most active interest in the Middle East peace process of.
  
  Anyways, Marc Lynch has a good discussion on the public furor of the report here and here.
  
  
• My favorite Christian public figure -- James Dobson -- is on the offensive this week against Obama. Enjoyed this post by Jacques Berlinerblau from the Georgetown/On Faith (Newsweek & Washington Post) blog:
  

  For Obama, the Bible is ambiguous, multi-faceted, difficult to interpret, subject to many readings. It is so complex, so multivalent that it demands humility. A believer--especially one who is a politician-- should never arrogantly presume to have identified God’s inscrutable message.

  Many conservative Evangelicals tend, by contrast, to believe that there is a right interpretation of the Bible. This proper reading may be attained through faith, intense biblical study (“Scripture interprets itself”), and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

  The more demagogic ones, however, raise the ante. They assume that they have actually discovered the right interpretation. Equating their interpretation with divine truth, they try to impose God's word on the social body writ large. Their focus is not hermeneutics, but politics.

  Exactly why I loathe Sen. Inhofe.
  
  The religious right is in a hilarious pickle this November, as most of them, including Dobson, decried McCain during the primaries as a liberal in sheep's clothing, and God knows they would never dare vote Democrat. So what's Dobson doing this fall? Not voting. As the old saying goes, don't rock the boat if you didn't vote; does this mean they might just finally shut the hell up?
  
  
• It's official -- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is returning this fall.
  
  
• Report from al-Jazeera about the effects of oil money on Saudi society. From Juan Cole:
  

  The petroleum is owned by the government and profits go to it. It is hard for the government to inject the money into the economy without risking high inflation (too much money chasing too few goods), which would create an effect like a dog chasing its tail. High inflation would eat up the value of the extra money. The extra money is therefore invested abroad. Good for us, bad for most Saudis.
  
  So, yes, high oil prices are making ordinary Saudis poorer, just as with the rest of us.

• Israel and Hamas agreed last week to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, much needed progress in alleviating the oft-overlooked suffering in Palestine (particularly in the Christian community, I might add), but yesterday rocket fire into southern Israel threatened the already fragile peace. As a result, Israel will not lift its closure of the Gaza points of entry and exit, which are wholly under the former's control. Aside from being the most densely packed tract of land on the planet, Gaza regularly faces 60-70% unemployment, due mostly from the economic squeeze of Israel's control of the flow of goods and labor in and out of Gaza. This is a terribly vicious cycle, wherein Gaza's outrage overflows into violence and against whom Israel enacts collective punishment. The failure of the ceasefire to last will mean more suffering, more starvation, and more heartbreak from both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab families.
  

Hate to end on such a downer, but then again, I don't mind. Really now, I don't mean to prioritize the suffering of one people over another. I know many of my friends are traveling the world this summer to learn about or directly combat injustice, oppression, and poverty wherever it sneaks up.

Time to head home to Rene's delicious, home-cooked Syrian delights!