Jordan, day eight (Wednesday, April 25th)
We said good-bye to Charlie this morning as he left for the long journey home. His experience and knowledge has made this trip very rewarding and comfortable. Peggy has lived in the Middle East and knows some Arabic. Carla and I are just two good-hearted Texans on an adventure alone now. But we'll do all right.
We spent all morning talking to Dr. Mansoor Moaddal who teaches Middle Eastern Sociology at Eastern Michigan University and has published several books on the subject. I shall quote Russell J. Dalton, Founding Director of The Center for the Study of Democracy, about Dr. Moaddal's book, Values and Perceptions of the Islamic and Middle Eastern Publics:
"This book addresses one of the most pressing questions of comparative political behavior—the potential class of values between Western and Islamic publics. Based on national public opinion surveys from the newest wave of the World Values Survey, this study presents fascinating evidence on the relationship between Islamic values and democratic values in a large set of Islamic nations. Many of the findings will challenge conventional wisdom, suggesting the cultural basis for democratization in Islamic nations may be greater than currently presumed. This book is sure to evoke debate and discussion on the content of political culture in the Islamic world."
Food for thought: Dr. Moaddel receives grants from the National Science Foundation, an organization of the U.S. government, and they are very pleased by his work.
We hung out upstairs a little while and I gave Peggy about ten hours of audio recordings I have done on this trip, as a form of notes for her, and now I have this material on a flash drive as well so if something happens to my purse I have a back up in another location. [Many of these recordings are becoming available on Belinda's podcast site.]
During lunch at ACOR we started talking to Jesse who is doing her dissertation on Islamic fundamentalism. I had heard she had been to Syria a couple of times and Carla and I asked her many questions. She told us procedures, how to handle them, what they should cost, what to expect, what to see and where to stay. We are seriously considering a little trip. We're joking that we'll write a joint story called, "Two Texas Grandmas in the Middle East, Syria-usly Now" or some such. Jesse said she likes Syria much better than Jordan and she loves Jordan. We invited her to go along with us but currently her passport is at the Iranian embassy. She leaves on an Iranian tour Tuesday. If she can get her passport back she may go with us. But we're just talking.
This afternoon Carla and I went out on an adventure on our own. Our first taxi driver was an Iraqi and even though his English was very broken we communicated quite well. He was a Sunni named Omar. He said his name labeled him as Sunni, making him a target for the Shi'a in Iraq. He told us his children went to school here but the schools were not as good as they were in Iraq. He said they spoke English very well. We had asked him to take us to C-Town because we had enjoyed the stores there particularly. Soon we learned that C-Town is a chain, sort of like Wal-mart. There were several throughout the city. We remembered Jabal Hussein and got to the area we wanted. We thought we could find a place to exchange money there because we had seen several banks. Exchange signs usually led us to an ATM which neither of us had a card for or ever used. (Might change that in the future). Then as we were walking around, just looking, I decided to ask a guard sitting at a desk in a little side street mall where we could get money exchanged other than an ATM. He got up and took us to someone who took us a few steps further to a Western Union. Okay, the rate was a little less favorable but we had zigzagged across the street four times checking out what looked like banks (because of the "bank" signs on the buildings) only to find locked gates or clothing stores under each sign. We were thankful for this special kindness. Also, several times when we were crossing streets and perfectly willing to wait until there was a gap in traffic to cross, cars stopped for us to let us pass.
We had fun window-shopping and stopped to have a super-sweet tamarind drink, which wound up making us thirstier, and discovered a top-floor restaurant with a great city view. People were generally very kind, helpful and sweet, and at the very least tolerant, of the friendly American oddballs.
Close to 7:00 p.m. we hailed a taxi and I told our driver, then showed him on a map, where we wanted to go. He came very close but got no cigar. He took us to the college rather than "near" the college but as we turned around we found a local who kindly spoke to our driver in Arabic and we were home within two minutes. Interestingly, he was working his prayer beads the whole time he was driving. He seemed to be ahead of the game. The call to prayer started just as we left the taxi.
Carla is a fine companion and we really enjoyed the day. Peggy went out on her own adventure and this is her last night with us here, although she will have another month in Jordan at a different location.
