Traveling Curse

VI- Amman, etc.

Isn’t that just the traveling curse, meeting people who become fast friends in a mere 2 days, then being untimely ripped from them as the friendship is mid-bloom. There is yin and yang to this system. I respect Qasim so much, we are like kindred spirits in many ways. I feel for his sorrow, he is an intellectual outsider in his own society. I don’t know what to say. But he has such good in him. I just feel sad. Sad. Off on another lonely bus.

Belly dancing prancing dancer jingly jangles, a time gone by, those Wahhabis ruined it for everybody, now I don’t get to see no Arabic girls shake their shakers, janglin hips, hiding in their hijabs. -God made girls for men, for men and men only, it must get lonely in the house I’m thinking. I don’t make eye contact with most of them. Trying to be “respectful”. Sometimes I do though. Specially the ones in the burqas. Sly big brown eyes are peering through a slit, furtive glance at the foreigner. A little curious perhaps? Kill the infidel!!
I’ve got Arak in the brain. Distilled four times in “wooden” barrels, so the bottle says, made from asine seeds. Taste like sweet ouzo, looks like milk or a sperm donor sample if you add water. feel fuzzy like a peach.
At the Turkish baths steam kept making my eyes sweat and my vision’s still blurry. Then the little guy comes out in BugleBoy jean shorts to scrub me down with something like a camel-hair loufah. Taps my back when I should turn over. Pours soothing warm water over me to wash away that dead skin. Then they change my loincloth and another guy massages oil into my back, arms and legs. Doesn’t linger long on the feet- curses and drat! Drums my back too. I don’t go get massages often. They usually hurt. Plus I associate them with sex and I’m nervous my blood will betray me and pool in the wrong place at the wrong time, by association. Fortunately not. I lie on the side-bench with the tube pillows when it’s done, look at the ceiling, listen to Arabic football on the TV, wait for my tea to cool.

Last night Nahar wants me to come to this pre-wedding street party. We catch a cab and head to East Amman. How come the rougher sides of cities are almost always the east? East LA, East London, East Vancouver. We ask someone where the party at, but our eardrums are already telling us. It’s a sausage-fest street party bachelor night, light-bulbs strung from telephone poles, synthesizers set to “Arabic”, and a guy wailing on the mic. Plastic chairs all around, head-covered women leaning to watch from upper-story balconies as the young men, arm in arm, dance around in a half-circle, step, step, all together, KICK, step, step, squat, KICK- the kid with the pit-stains and the wooden stick leading the way, feet this way and that, I’ve never seen so many men dancing together except at punk shows, but that’s not really dancing, now is it? Step, step, turn-and-kick, laughing, stumbling, drunk from paper-bag booze down the street, just watery tea and pastries allowed here, the guy with the feathers and traditional red pajamas will see to that. Now the groom is hoisted on a plastic chair, his father laughing, shouting to Be Careful in Arabic, probably remembering his chair-hoisting day years ago, and then CRACK CRACK, the greasy hair in the corner returns his revolver to the small of his back after letting off a couple celebratory rounds. -That’s nothing, says Nahar, In the village it’d be everybody doin it and they’d all have Kalashnikovs. Now I’m wondering how many of these drunken dudes are packin heat, barely a woman in sight, testosterone thick in the air. But it’s pure joy- they take turns leading the dance with the leading stick, jumping over it, twirling it, passing it on, singing along, more gunshots ring out while me and Nahar sip contraband Amstel. What is the bride doing right now, while this is going on? I ask. Nahar says, She’s probably having a party with her friends, dancing and singing too. A house-party though. Indoors. They gotta stay indoors.