Mideast Diaries

I’m in my five-star hotel in Amman right now, luxuriating in air conditioning, minibar, room service, and I’m watching Seinfeld on TV (even though it’s the crappy last episode).  It feels almost too good to be true.  I slept most of the day.  Saw a couple bad movies: Daredevil and, please forgive me, Maid in Manhattan.  Amman doesn’t have many good movies.  Had a great dinner at Amman’s best Italian restaurant last night with a friend.  The point I’m making, is that it’s just lovely being here.  Though, I am struck by what a boring town Amman is, how little there is to do, how unlovely the place is.  I feel kind of in a fog, really. (more…)

The frustration is through the roof.  Actually, that’s not even true anymore.  I’m not frustrated, I’m just sad and disappointed and angry at myself.  A couple weeks ago I had this panicked feeling that Jordan was just the wrong place to be to cover this war.  I thought about going to Kuwait.  But I didn’t do it.  Part of it is just I have so many friends in Jordan, made so many contacts, and I like it better than boring and crappy Kuwait.  But now I’m so sad.  I’m back in Amman, feeling as far from the story as I would feel if I were in New York. (more…)

Ruwayshed is the town in Jordan closest to the Iraqi border–which is still another hour away.  It is such a miserable place: dirty, small, kind of angry.  THere are two really bad restaurants (I’ve barely eaten in days).  Me and a few friends rented a big house and decided to share it with others to help get the cost down. But the landlord freaked out at the fact that everyone else in town has rented their houses for much more money than he got from us, so he used the excuse of us having more guests to raise our rent.  Which means that we are now paying more money for a crappy house with lots of people and one toilet that is now stuffed up because it can’t handle so many people.  It’s really gross.  Another reason not to eat for days. (more…)

It’s five in the morning here and I just heard the loudest military airplane over my hotel.  There is such mad nervous energy around this place.  After months of sleepy, lazy life here–where I got obsessed with bureaucrats keeping my DVDs from me–the place is on fire.  This young Jordanian guy who I wrote about visited me the other day and said that he just felt so anxious walking around my hotel, everyone seemed so anxious. (more…)

Things are changing here, people are getting ready for the war.  After a few months where Amman has, overall, felt like this sleepy, lazy place with few stories to do, few of anything to do, it’s now in a sort of near panic.  For the past few days, most reporters are going on massive gear hunts.  The experienced war correspondents are telling us the things we absolutely need to have, things I’ve never heard of. (more…)

This whole week seems to have disappeared into a black hole.  There was a massive two-day snow storm in Amman.  It shut the whole city down.  There don’t seem to be any plows or shovels in this country.  The snow was thick on the sidewalks and the roads until today’s and yesterday’s hot weather started melting it.  I didn’t leave the hotel for two days.  Nobody did.  Well, I walked a block or so to another hotel at one point and my feet were wet and freezing.  I wish I was able to do a lot of work while trapped in the hotel.  (more…)

My brother shipped me some DVDs so I would have something to watch other than the horrible American sitcoms on TV here, like Reba, Ned & Stacey, and The Single Guy. Here’s how international shipments work in Jordan. He sent it Airborne Express, and it arrived from LA in two days. Then Customs wouldn’t release it until I gave them something like $150, which is almost the full value of the DVDs. I complained about this and they said they’d put it through an appeals process which took a few days, but finally they agreed to release the DVDs for $30. So, the guy who works for Airborne Express here called me up and said he was bringing them by. When he arrived, he just had these paper forms and no DVDs. He said the DVDs are in the censorship office and won’t be released until they are deemed safe to be watched in Jordan. That would take several days. He told me, today, to go and pick them up. I asked where, he said the censorship office is on the Third Circle. (more…)

I haven’t heard the Arab response to the Columbia disaster, but I’m looking forward to it. I can guarantee this is what I’ll hear tomorrow: the Israelis arranged it to get sympathy. Bush arranged it to get sympathy. This might sound horrible to say, but I’m telling you, this is what people will tell me tomorrow. I was actually at the big rally against America, against the war, when the Columbia disaster happened. Nobody knew it happened there, at least nobody mentioned it. They were screaming, “Saddam, Saddam, bomb Tel Aviv.” And “We are With Hamas.” (more…)

I haven’t left the hotel barely in two days. I was working so hard yesterday and today I’ve done nothing but watch DVDs of OZ and read Robert Parker. It’s amazingly nice to take a lazy day for the first time in a long time. I’m hoping to do the same tomorrow and then start traveling again: Yemen, I think, then Kuwait, Dubai. I don’t know. I’m hoping that taking a break will allow some thoughts to form and bubble up in the absence of constant work. (more…)

I’m getting sick again of hearing the endless anti-US, anti-Israel speeches. I’ve had a bunch of them the last few days. Particularly annoying are the conspiracy theories. It seems like every young adult in Jordan, at least almost every one I talk to, is 100% convinced the Mossad took down the World Trade Centers. (more…)