Old Grey Goose International : Israel Journal

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - Day Eight

Two armored Chevy Suburbans driven by Yousef and Mohammad met us at the hotel and we set off on a sightseeing tour of Amman. We saw the Roman amphitheatre, from afar, and the Citadel which is the site of ancient Rabbath-Ammon. Excavations there have revealed numerous Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic remains. Among the ruins on this hill, with a glorious view of Amman, are the Umayyad Palace complex dating from 720-750 BC, the Temple of Hercules, built during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD), and a Byzantine Church, believed to date from the 6th or 7th century AD. A Spanish team is currently restoring many of these ruins. We also visited the museum on the hill that had pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest statue ever built by man, among many other interesting artifacts.

From there we drove to the Haya Cultural Center which included an indoor, round theatre. We played for young children who participate in the Center’s summer cultural activities. The kids were a pleasure and sang, clapped and stomped along through jigs, reels and songs like She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain When She Comes.

The director translated for us, and we met our soundman, Ramzi Abu Mohammad’s, wife and two daughters. David Mees attended, as well.

We had lunch at the Wild Jordan Café in Jabal Amman and were able to spend some time speaking with Tania about the prospects for peace. She stressed that she was offering only her opinions and not those of her employer. As a Christian Arab with Syrian and Jordanian parentage, she has an interesting perspective. In short, she is not very optimistic about the prospects for peace. She feels that some significant opportunities have been squandered over the past decade—opportunities that took several generations to stage. She feels that it takes the perfect storm of leadership on all sides (American, Arab, and Jew) for opportunities to be consummated. She thought these leaders were in place in the 90’s, and that people were sick enough of the violence to actually do something. However, the intransigence and increased extremism on all sides during the past decade has neutralized most of what diplomacy accomplished over the previous 30 years.

We left the restaurant and drove about an hour to the largest Palestinian Camp in Jordan: Baqaa Camp. One hundred thousand people live here in an area that is less than one square mile. Another 100,000 people live in the city that has grown up around Baqaa. The scene was pretty depressing, less from the physical poverty than from a poverty of spirit. It was not dissimilar to some of the Native American reservations I’ve visited. We met some of the United Nations people who are responsible for running the camp. It did not seem that there has been progress here since I last saw the camp in 1971. We heard some criticism of the UN for maintaining Baqaa’s “camp” status rather than trying to recreate it as a viable city, but it is difficult to appreciate the complexities surrounding this sad reality.

The event was very poorly attended, other than a few women and children, and we later learned from Ramzi that the word on the street was to avoid the concert because Americans were playing. In fact, there were signs on the walls referring to the creation and expansion of Israel and the ensuing displacements as “Nhuba” or the “Catastrophe.”

We played a short set, and then watched some Jordanian, not Palestinian, dancers perform. We noticed how similar their dancing is to Morris Dancing from England: using agricultural implements as props, all men, groups of six with single dancers stepping out to be featured. One theory is that Morris Dancing was originally called Moorish dancing, which might explain some of the similarities.

We had thought playing at a Palestinian camp would be exciting and meaningful, but we all felt drained by the experience. The people cannot own their own land, but can sometimes own the buildings sitting on the land. There is very little employment, and there appeared to be many health problems. The Palestinians who came in 1948 (a time when more than one million people were displaced) have full rights as Jordanian citizens, but those who came in 1967 have limited rights. Those who came from Gaza have virtually none.

We later heard from Quil that things do not look good for the Palestinians as long as the current extremist leadership of Hamas is in power. He said there is a leader in prison who has the potential and perhaps political capital to do what Nelson Mandela did, but that remains to be seen. We did play Midnight Special, by Ledbelly, which is a song of hope for prisoners seeking release.

We drove back to Amman and rested an hour before leaving for our evening performance. It was at a beautiful outdoor venue called Al Hussein Park which overlooked the old city. We met up with our friends the Greater Amman Municipality Oriental Band and played a set with their percussionists assisting us. They followed by playing a couple songs, and we joined together for a grand finale. We were interviewed for a web site that shows video footage, and had a very good time overall. We also saw what was either the most spectacular shooting star any of us had ever seen—or a rocket—streaking across the horizon toward Israel.

We said goodbye to David Mees who will be heading to a new posting in Rome in a couple weeks; to our drivers Mohammad and Yousef; to Tania and Katie who had taken us at our word when we said we wanted an action-packed program in Jordan; and to soundman, Ramzi, who did a phenomenal job with difficult venues. Ramzi said he had been particularly impressed with Matt’s maturity and work ethic and that we should be very proud of this young man.

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