Tuesdays in Jebel Amman

Photo: A stroll on Rainbow Street

Note to self: don't blow a fuse when you can't access your blog site – just post it the next day, so here goes:

Today is Tuesday. The Hamseen weather conditions that wreck havoc with the air we breathe, and colours our lives with a layer of dusky pink desert dust, has moved on and the sky is blue again. Even the traffic was behaving itself – it was as if there was a collective sigh of relief to feel the crispness and clarity of the air on the face.

I passed an old man leaning against a tree in quiet contemplation. All was calm, for once.
I parked the car in a quiet and quaint neighbourhood of Jebel Amman, and was warmly greeted by Mohammad, my ten year old smiling friend who looks after my car.

I kept wishing I could help Mohammad go to school. He doesn't you see, because his widowed mother cannot afford the basic fees to send her son to government school.

So Mohammad happily cleans cars for his Uncle who has taken him under his wing.

Tuesday also means breakfast at Umm J's – a gathering of ladies from all walks of life who range in age from mid twenties to late seventies – it is a glorious hour filled with lively political and literary debate, a bit of gossip (one minute's worth), networking for voluntary work, and above all a feast of culinary delights prepared by the matriarch herself. And today was her birthday. And I shall never forget the day I inadvertently set her skirt on fire! Thank the lord we lived in Jordan … within a few days the skirt was fixed by one of our skillful invisible menders. But Umm J, however, has endured much worse – try giving birth in a closet with no electricity, as a military occupation is in full swing – read curfew with bullets flying by a zealous Israeli army whose only intent was ethnic cleansing.

That was her introduction to life in Palestine;

1948, 67 … and all that …

and hence the reason why Mohammad grew up in a refugee camp.

"Life and its curve balls!"

J