It's hard not to notice a certain Dubai-ification in the Middle East these days, and the shopping malls and other mirrored and shiny developments are a sign of progress for people here. And in this respect they shouldn't be belittled. But it can grate when you're looking for the local heart of a city that never used to be a city anyway. Since Trans Jordan was only created in the 1920's, Amman the capital where we are, was a tiny village back then, and has grown to become a sprawling metropolis built on 7 hills. The hills are covered from bottom to top with pale grey box-shaped houses. Limestone Lego, as someone once described them to me. I find the city scape appealing on the whole and it reminds me a little of how Kabul was built, which I also came to love as a city. The minarets and the occasional church spire are the only things which punctuate the cubic carpet, and then on the outskirts, the shiny Malls sit smugly with Starbucks and fast food joints tacked on the bottom. I wonder if Starbucks have to pay corporation tax here?
One of the main results of globalisation is you recognise every chain store everywhere in the world now. When I first went to Spain in 1992, Zara was really exotic and all the clothes you saw there were different from the ones you could buy in the UK. But now I'm sounding like a Granny, and I'm sure I'll be grateful for the H&M at some point in our time here. Huge congested roads slice up the city into sections and the main road running through West Amman has about 8 roundabouts known as circles which most people use as their bearings as the streets were only named and labelled 3 years ago, and no one uses maps.
The boys and I were whisked off in the Glammy's Merc this week to one such mall - a place where I could feel my heart and soul buzz under the strip lights and die like a fly on a blue kitchen fly-zapper. There was a light drizzle and fog outside which is the equivalent here to a foot of snow. People go very carefully indeed and we were in search of an indoor kids play area in the mall. It was closed, so we ended up in another place called the Jungle Bungle, essentially a huge netted climbing frame indoors with rubber mats - the kind you get all around the world.
All was well for about five minutes, until both L and R, neither of whom had slept well, started to wail and shriek if I moved an inch away from either of them, clinging to my legs like two oversized mussels on a rock. So there I was, in a right tangle wangle in the Jungle Bungle, up at the top of the climbing frame in the netting area, which was so low it was like being on the 9-and-a-half-th floor in Being John Malkovitch, only lower, with one leg twisted round a piece of rubber liana and the other being gnawed by a wailing Rashimi, and listening to a screeching Lozenge 30 feet down below…'I waaaaant my Mummmmmmmeeeeey!!!' 'Soooooo doooo I! I thought.' No one knew what to do, not even the expert (which isn't me). This, I thought again, is really not what I've come to Jordan for. But the same hobbled camel hobbles on…and the perceptive Glammy decided it would be best if I disappeared in the afternoon and left L and R in her capable hands so she could get to know them a bit better.
As luck would have it, J walked through the door at about 1pm so we left a happier looking L and R with their digits in the hummus, and disappeared together in search of….anything, just anything, that wasn't plastic or loud.
This was when we came across Jamal, from Palestine, who runs the elegantly 1970s Coffee House El Farouki, on a road not far from our flat, opposite the Jordan Kuwait bank where we've just opened accounts. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and through it you could just make out walls lined with jars and jars of coffee beans, and men in leather jackets sipping on cardamom laced Bedouin coffee. Bunn means coffee beans in Arabic, and it being only one syllable and using two of the first letters you learn in Arabic (b and n), it figures in the first chapter of the text book I used in London. So I could even say something to Jamal, other than hello, which was very exciting. 'Bunn' I said enthusiastically. And then he replied in Icelandic. This is always the risk of saying you were brought up in Scotland. People often get it confused with Sweden, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and anywhere else that's relatively small and northern, such as Iceland. But he was charming, had actually visited Glasgow in 1976, and we drank lots of coffee, and returned to our pet Lilliputians stinking of cigarette smoke which is probably a bit more of a novel smell for them than booze these days.
We'll definitely be going back to see Jamal, particularly when the container arrives with the coffee bean grinder in it.
One of the main results of globalisation is you recognise every chain store everywhere in the world now. When I first went to Spain in 1992, Zara was really exotic and all the clothes you saw there were different from the ones you could buy in the UK. But now I'm sounding like a Granny, and I'm sure I'll be grateful for the H&M at some point in our time here. Huge congested roads slice up the city into sections and the main road running through West Amman has about 8 roundabouts known as circles which most people use as their bearings as the streets were only named and labelled 3 years ago, and no one uses maps.
The boys and I were whisked off in the Glammy's Merc this week to one such mall - a place where I could feel my heart and soul buzz under the strip lights and die like a fly on a blue kitchen fly-zapper. There was a light drizzle and fog outside which is the equivalent here to a foot of snow. People go very carefully indeed and we were in search of an indoor kids play area in the mall. It was closed, so we ended up in another place called the Jungle Bungle, essentially a huge netted climbing frame indoors with rubber mats - the kind you get all around the world.
All was well for about five minutes, until both L and R, neither of whom had slept well, started to wail and shriek if I moved an inch away from either of them, clinging to my legs like two oversized mussels on a rock. So there I was, in a right tangle wangle in the Jungle Bungle, up at the top of the climbing frame in the netting area, which was so low it was like being on the 9-and-a-half-th floor in Being John Malkovitch, only lower, with one leg twisted round a piece of rubber liana and the other being gnawed by a wailing Rashimi, and listening to a screeching Lozenge 30 feet down below…'I waaaaant my Mummmmmmmeeeeey!!!' 'Soooooo doooo I! I thought.' No one knew what to do, not even the expert (which isn't me). This, I thought again, is really not what I've come to Jordan for. But the same hobbled camel hobbles on…and the perceptive Glammy decided it would be best if I disappeared in the afternoon and left L and R in her capable hands so she could get to know them a bit better.
As luck would have it, J walked through the door at about 1pm so we left a happier looking L and R with their digits in the hummus, and disappeared together in search of….anything, just anything, that wasn't plastic or loud.
This was when we came across Jamal, from Palestine, who runs the elegantly 1970s Coffee House El Farouki, on a road not far from our flat, opposite the Jordan Kuwait bank where we've just opened accounts. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and through it you could just make out walls lined with jars and jars of coffee beans, and men in leather jackets sipping on cardamom laced Bedouin coffee. Bunn means coffee beans in Arabic, and it being only one syllable and using two of the first letters you learn in Arabic (b and n), it figures in the first chapter of the text book I used in London. So I could even say something to Jamal, other than hello, which was very exciting. 'Bunn' I said enthusiastically. And then he replied in Icelandic. This is always the risk of saying you were brought up in Scotland. People often get it confused with Sweden, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and anywhere else that's relatively small and northern, such as Iceland. But he was charming, had actually visited Glasgow in 1976, and we drank lots of coffee, and returned to our pet Lilliputians stinking of cigarette smoke which is probably a bit more of a novel smell for them than booze these days.
We'll definitely be going back to see Jamal, particularly when the container arrives with the coffee bean grinder in it.
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