I’ve uploaded the bulk of the pictures I took during the visit to my Picasa, check out my Mount Nebo album for intriguing visuals.

The priest in a brown habit lighting some candles…

The center stained glass window…

During the service..

Short video clips from the service. These are surreal:

Well of Loneliness, 1943
Carl Kahl

What do you do when your soul mates drift away?

Do you lull your melancholy with hopes of future quick, poor visits every now and then? Do you anxiously wait for them to be cloned, replaced by exact types to keep you company when it rains and you’re hungry? Do you propose unnecessary plans just so you can bask in the memories only they share with you? Do you sit alone and get acquainted with yourself, and miss them all the same? Do you secretly wish they would not go away to a distant land, to the arms of a lover, and wish they remain yours forever?

What do you do, what can you do that is not in vain? Tell me.

Yesterday was one of those particular days that live on to become excellent stories. I was home alone and dulled by my very long Eid vacation, and I was especially bummed because I couldn’t organize a trip somewhere during that vacation.

Eventually not being able to imagine how wasted I would feel if I didn’t do something, I decided to go on a solo road trip. When I thought about it initially, I wanted to go to the Dead Sea and get tanned. The Dead Sea was an ideal choice because it is close and equipped with touristy places and I could have driven back home in no time if my parents decided to abort their awayness. Then I figured that bikini-ing alone would probably not be so much fun, and reading a book in the grilling sun as random people pitied me for being alone would be even less fun.

After some quick thinking, I decided to go to Madaba if I could find it. I thought if I did Madaba and had some extra time I will go down to the Dead Sea and drive up to Amman just for the heck of it. That was the plan unless I thought of something else along the way.

I’ve been to Mount Nebo some years back and it seemed closer then. I guess because I was going there on my own this time, and hesitating in trusting the touristic signs leading me there, that it seemed so distant. Nonetheless, once I got to it, the place was as majestic and divine as it ever was.

To my utter delight, I was welcomed with a free pass at the foot of the mountain. I walked up towards the famous Brazen Serpent and then entered the church. The vast majority of the visitors were foreign, there were French, Italians, Spanish, and Japanese. I saw only one or two Jordanian groups of little numbers.

Once inside, I renewed my fascination with the typically gorgeous stained glass artistry that is usually iconic in Christian places of worship. Not much of it was present in Mount Nebo but since I do not get to see much of it in my daily life anyway, what little was there was spectacular. I wish they would add to the four stained glass windows already present.

I spent close to two hours inside the church, sitting on the first bench closest to the ancient rotund altar and looking out through the image of the Father and into myself. Then a clergyman appeared from out of nowhere, wearing a long brown habit, eyeglasses, and a watch, and started getting peculiar items from a small corner closet that I had not even noticed until he touched it. He got a red Bible with two bookmarks dangling from it and placed it on a center table in the altar. Then he got little bottles and mixed some of their ingredients and placed them on the table as well. All of this was fascinating to me and I sat there watching him with the utmost attention.

I have always wanted to attend a prayer, or a sermon, or a mass in a church. I have had this desire for the longest time and I was never able to realize it. So when I saw preparations taking place for something quite unfamiliar to me, then I had no doubt I must stick around unless otherwise instructed. I thought I would stay and watch until someone kicked me out.

Minutes later, a group of Italian tourists joined the clergyman in the alter ring. They sat on the sides and the bench where I was sitting no longer had its viewing advantage. I decided to join the believers in the altar ring and I did. Luckily for me I could understand their language and I understood the instructions of a black clergyman telling them what to say at certain intervals. It was something to the effect of “Praise the Lord” — but in Italian.

The black man was putting on a pure white habit and he was joined by two other religious leaders. Now the total of the holymen present was four and I was excited beyond description; nobody told me to get out and nobody objected to my being in the altar ring. I think they thought I was Christian too.

The prayer started and the whole church went extremely quiet. Tourists coming in to look at us, the worshippers, were practically mute and the tallest clergyman gave a sermon about Moses and Mount Nebo. Then the Italian crowd recited “Lodate il Signore - Praise the Lord” and a couple men read from the red Bible. The best part to me, and the most familiar, was when everyone started singing Hallelujah at Biblical reading intervals. This event was raw and spiritual and I loved it. The weirdest part was when everyone crossed themselves and I didn’t.

Since I am not a Christian thinker, I did not know what will follow. I thought maybe after some time the believers will take the offering of the Holy Bread and I imagined it would not be appropriate for me to join in that activity. Of course, there was no way for me to be sure what they did next because I slipped quietly out of the altar and out of the church, filled with content and acceptance. I had not attended any prayer in just any church, but an Italian service in a Biblical site nonetheless.

On my way out, I looked at the Brazen Serpent and mused a little, and walked on. Right there in the middle of the small walk beside the church I saw a long snake wiggling off-road and I watched it slide and hide in the plants nearby. There was no reason to panic, I felt nothing watching the snake since I caught one like it in the past, and I felt no danger on the people moving about because the snake went away. Besides, Mount Nebo is a divine site in the wild and these creatures have been there before religion. I even saw a lizard in the church, high up next to the right stained glass window.

I got to my car and it wouldn’t start. Naturally, to add to the adventures of the day, I asked the tourist police to help me out and they did. I drove off down towards the Dead Sea. Now the road from Mount Nebo to the Dead Sea, in case you do not know this, is pretty dangerous. I didn’t know that. The road is technically a gallery of half-circles going down steep, cruel mountains in the scorching sun.

Eventually though, the road relaxed into a sane straight line hugged by dry salty lands and shantytowns and tired half-grown crops. To add more to the excitement, I was stopped twice by the police. Once at a regular check point where the officer noticed I looked nothing at all like the person in my ID, but chose to let me pass, and the other time when I was doing 120 when the speed limit was 50. Also then the officer chose to let me go, possibly because it was really hot and my car was filthy.

So there I was. Driving around the Dead Sea area, unsure what to do and feeling spiritual and tourist-like at the same time, when my parents decided to inform me they were 45 minutes away from home. That brought my wanderings to an absolute end and I gladly stepped on it to beat my parents home. They would have killed me if they knew I went wandering around Jordan alone, unprotected and all. What blasphemy!

Reader, I was so tense driving back home I have no idea how I made it in one piece. Fortunately, I did make it ahead of my parents and I even managed to wash the then-stinking dishes forgotten in the sink. No harm done and I lived to tell this story today.

Two years one day ago, I started my first real job while still in college. Before that, the bulk of what I did every now and then was freelance work and dreaming.

I sent a neat little CV as a response to a newspaper ad for a vacant post. The post was open for online editors. I didn’t believe anything would come out of it, but I sent the required anyway just to lull my sudden desire to find a job.

Five days later while hanging out around the languages center on campus, reading some book, I got a call from my future employers. They wanted to meet me! I could not believe my ears and yet, in a controlled sense of self-importance, I decided I was not available for an interview the day after. I had class, or something.

The interview got shifted to another day that suited me. It was a Monday. I went, there was an exam and I was surprised. I remember the strangest thing about that day; I had recently returned from the states and I kept talking in English for no apparent reason. It was very ridiculous especially since the lady at the office talked to me in Arabic. I must have been nervous underneath it all because I could not stop my linguistic clumsiness.

I also thought that lady was a bitch. But maybe I was projecting.

On Thursday I went again, this time for the interview. According to my Armenian lady boss*, who has since become one of my best friends, I did very well on that sudden exam. I waited for about five minutes for her to arrive, and I remember reading some Greek drama in the meantime. My very decorated “Turkey” bookmark caught her attention, and when she asked if my mother was Turkish I could sense some hostility in her voice. I said no. Of course not.

Several months later, I made the connection that explained the hostility. Armenian, Turkey, I’m slow.

When I reflect on that, I cannot grasp how two whole years have gone by already. Somewhere deep in my mind I am still the over-dressed girl reading a book and waiting for her interviewer to arrive already, still the girl who hated wearing high heels to the office, still the girl who found out how stupidly sensitive people get during the FIFA World Cup. But at the same time, I am not any of these girls anymore. They are gone, and that time has elapsed.

Is this the way I will feel about my life when I am 50? By asking the dumb question of “how did that happen?”

*Not the same lady I mentioned earlier as the “lady at the office.”

Tonight while driving home,
I saw two cats by the side of the street
And it wasn’t a busy street
I stopped and just looked at them
And found myself smiling
When they looked back at me

Extremely disappointing logic behind two instances of internet censorship in Jordan, reported in today’s Al Ghad newspaper. I could not find the articles in English:

“Al Qaeda Poet” sentenced to 18 months in jail. According to the Al Ghad piece, this person was sentenced to jail based on poems he wrote and published in online forums praising Osama Ben Laden.

President of the Jordan National Movement, Ahmad Oweidi Al Abbadi, accused of several charges. According to Al Ghad, Al Abbadi also published his opinions, deemed offensive to the state and the royal family, on the JNM’s website.

So basically, the reasoning of the Jordanian Big Brother is to jail any locals who publish materials online that do not sound like the talk of any given state official. Authorities seem to believe that this strategy will be effective in changing people’s whispered opinions, improving the public mood, and eradicating poverty and corruption. Free speech and cyber openness topped with a jail sentence.

But what about the people who live abroad and have a lot to say?

A few days ago, Mahmoud Rimawi had a good article on the latest decision of Jordanian authorities to subject online publications in the country to the same press law that governs normal publications, newspapers, and whatnot.

Are these subsequent incidencts an indication of the government’s tilting towards less openness and less tolerance of different opinions? Or are they steps on the way towards more cyber-intelligence (which could either serve the General Intelligence Department or free speech) aimed to understand the booming business of Jordanian online self-expression?

What say you?

I am not sure how well “modest” and “shy” mesh with “assertive” and “leader,” but that’s what the quiz says about my daemon. I just love the fact that it’s a feline.

What’s your daemon?