April 28, 2006: Canvas, canafe, and a dead body

It’s hard to believe I just arrived this morning, especially since I just awoke from a second nap. I’m going out tonight with Victoria and some of her friends to a bar called Canvas, a swanky place that’s popular with hip Ammanis. I’m anxious to see what a bar in Amman is like and also to meet other people our age.

Canvas does not disappoint. It’s a beautiful restaurant and bar filled with beautiful people, candlelight, a terrace with cushioned seats, huge umbrellas, and pots filled with flowers and plants. They also have their own security staff. Our purses were checked by a metal detector and all men were frisked prior to entry. We take a seat out on the terrace and slowly the rest of the group arrives. Victoria is anxious for a drink. I’m still in a fog of jet lag, but of course, have a drink. The men in the group all introduce themselves formally; they shake my hand and say their name. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if they were saying their name or a greeting in Arabic, all of the sounds meld together to my ears. So I do what most foreigners do in a strange land, I smile, nod my head dumbly, and murmur something that sounds like a greeting.

An interesting group, one of Victoria’s friends, Jareis?, is part of a program called Operation Smile, which is comprised of a group of doctors who volunteer in the Middle East, particularly Iraq, to do reconstructive surgery on children who are born with hair lips and other facial birth defects. It’s amazing to think that what they do in a few hours will change a child’s life forever. Jareis said one of the most amazing operations performed was to a child who was born without a nose and without an upper lip. Victoria had covered Operation Smile for the Jordan Times during a mission they did in Jordan and was able to be in the operating room; she said for days afterwards she considered starting over and becoming a doctor.

Then there was Lina, from Abu Dhabi. She had lived in the Emirates most of her life, but had studied in San Jose, California and was anxious to make new friends, having just arrived to Amman as well. The beginnings of a dinner party began to form. I learned a few new words: sahtak, Arabic for cheers, aseer (juice) which I initially had mistaken for cheers and it became a great joke around the table, mensof (traditional Bedouin dish) which they had quite a lot of fun eluding to a special “surprise” that came on top of it, and canafe (traditional Jordanian desert made with filo dough, cheese, and sugar). Victoria decided that she would forego the banana split that was tempting her on the menu so that I, and consequently she, could have canafe.

On our way to canafe we stopped off at a cash machine as I was getting desperately low on cash and needed to give Jacob money so he could get me a mobile phone. Victoria and Jacob dropped me off on the corner and rounded the block to pick me up on the other side. As I slid back into the car, they pointed behind them. “There’s a dead body back there,” Victoria says. I look back and sure enough there is a crowd of men standing in a circle looking down. It must have just happened. I wondered if it was happening while I was getting my cash, only half a block away. “I want to go over there,” says Victoria, her journalistic instincts kicking in, “but, it just doesn’t work that way in Jordan.” She explains that the press doesn’t have the freedom and rights like they do in the states. We park the car a block and a half from the dead body and head for the canafe stand. Sirens and ambulance lights come from behind us and stop at the scene of the…what? Crime? I wonder what had happened. Was it foul play? An accident? A heart attack? Street crime is rare in Jordan, I’ve been told, but not knowing what had happened was still a little disconcerting. We walked through a small dingy alley, whose only light came from the pastry shop. Here we were in for another shock–they were out of canafe! Defeated, we headed home making promises to ourselves that the canafe would be all the more sweet because of the wait.