Chapter Ten
Aqaba
During the weekend a group of friends and I decided to spend my penultimate weekend in Jordan in Aqaba, Jordan’s sole coastal town on the shores of the Red Sea. Despite being warned of the heat, we made the 350 some kilometer drive early Friday morning, beating the usual traffic that haunts the city nearly 24/7. Being settled for millennia, Aqaba, historically also known as Ayla, served as an important port during the pre-Islamic era, where Roman legions set up camp to monitor the incense-trade route between Roman Syria, the Hejaz, and ultimately to the Southern Arabian kingdoms of modern-day Yemen, known for their sought-after frankincense, myrrh, and other gums. With the arrival of Islam, Aqaba later served as an important stop for Muslim pilgrims from Egypt and the Mediterranean coast of Africa en route to Mecca, though this was brought slowly to an end due the the advent of the Suez Canal, and later the Hejaz Railway. Modern-day Aqaba rose to prominence with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the creation of the Transjordan, where it served as the new protectorate’s (and later country’s) main seaport and harbor.
The weekend was spent wading in the Red Sea, guiltily binge watching episodes of Downton Abbey on my Amazon Prime, and lazily relaxing by the pool where I indulged in some pure-pleasure reading, a welcome change after several months of the likes of contracts, civil procedure, and property law. The current books I’m reading are (1) a history of the Arabic-speaking world from the poets of pre-Islamic Arabia to the present-day situation, post-2011 (a rather ambitious work if I do say so myself), and (2) a collection of stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose Jazz Age works I’m rather fond of. After burning up to a crisp in the Aqaba sun—and bracing myself for the inevitable lecture from my dermatologist that was surely coming my way upon returning home stateside—we headed back to Amman, where, sadly, I was to commence my final full week at CITIES.
Salt & Meeting of the Mayors, part 2
On Monday, Hala, Riyad, and I went to Salt to discuss with the mayor of the city about the upcoming, and final, municipal leaders workshop hosted by USAID CITIES. Salt is a beautiful town, at one point serving as the main city, and administrative center, of the Transjordan region in the Ottoman-era, being the only serious contender to serve as the new state’s capital until Amman was chosen—much to everyone’s surprise—after King Abdullah I had a disagreement with Salt’s Nobility. Nevertheless, Salt’s claim to being the most beautiful city in the country falls on solid heading, with castles and picturesque houses built with traditional yellow-stone that sit atop its hilltops, to a plethora of old mosques and churches that dot the alleys of the mountainside city, denying Salt’s allure, of both simplicity and grandeur, would be like denying the beauty of the full moon on a clear night. It simply was.
A few days on, we held our last workshop, and my last main event this summer. Beginning around 11:00 am, the targeted municipalities for this session were the wast, or middle, municipalities in the country including Irbid, Salt, Zarqa, Madaba, Ramtha, Sahel Houran, and Karak, among several others. The event opened up with a welcome and greeting by our Deputy Chief of Party, and continued with Ruby, one of our C4 community cohesion specialists, speaking about threats to community cohesion and the factors affecting it in the various municipalities, similar to the presentations given at the other workshops.
Many points were made during the session. One of the municipal representatives from the Ramtha municipality spoke to the issues of Syrian refugees in her municipality, seeing as its location on the border between Jordan and Syria has made it one of the most affected in the country. She mentioned how many of the Syrian refugees have become very well integrated in the municipality and work with local Jordanians in harmony and are contributive to the area’s well being, putting a positive spin on things.
Representatives from Irbid spoke of how in Irbid there are streets, which are too narrow to begin with, raising another problem, where vendors open up shops on the sides of the roads that spill onto the streets, making matters worse. They spoke of wanting to improve street maintenance and opening new streets, and their desire as a municipality to fund a project for paving streets over in addition to opening new ones. Important to note is that they mentioned how they were alerted to this problem thanks to the matrix put together by the CITIES C4 team, a recurring trend amongst participating municipalities in the workshop, speaking volumes of the all the hard work put forth by the C4 team.
Realizations
Heading home that day following a quick round of coffee and desserts with the team after the workshop, I couldn’t stop thinking about how, in just a few days time, I will be done with CITIES and have a clear cut departure from the project and the team that I’ve come to know and love so very dearly. Next week I will come in for 4 days, and then I’ll be gone, departing on a plane across the Atlantic, back home to Virginia. Brushing my sad thoughts aside, I resolved to live out my last few days in Amman to the fullest, and spend every last minute I can, engrossed with my friends, loved ones, and work at CITIES. All good things must come to an end, its true, but that doesn’t mean they have to end miserably. As the Scottish writer R.M. Ballantyne so clearly put it: “To part is the lot of all mankind. The world is a scene of constant leave-taking, and the hands that grasp in cordial greeting today, are doomed ere long to unite for the last time, when the quivering lips pronounce the word – Farewell.”
But I shall focus on that farewell next week.