Let’s Go to the Mall!
We ended up with layovers in the United Arab Emirates on our way to and from Jordan. Considering we only spent about 24 hours total in the country, and the first visit was pretty much spent sleeping, the UAE would hardly warrant its own post. Except our second visit – the one we spent awake during a long 12 hour layover – gave us a brief introduction to the over-the-top excess that the UAE is famous for.
We inquired at the tourist office to see what they suggested we see during our 12 hour layover. The woman behind the desk said, why, go to the Dubai Mall, of course. It is what everyone does!
She was right. The mall was packed. And quite a sight. Picture every upscale and luxury brand in the United States and Europe, and put them in the same mall with air conditioning blasting to make you forget you are in the steaming desert. Add a bunch of men and women in traditional Muslim garb shopping for said luxury brands. Throw in all of the restaurant chains you can think of. Don’t forget a giant aquarium, the grandest music-and-light show possible, and an ice rink in the center of it all. And, naturally, the world’s current tallest building built specifically with extra tallness thrown on top just because they could.
Fun, no doubt, but the most conspicuous display of spending money just to spend money I’ve ever seen.
Sean in front of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world
There were even more women wearing the full hijab in the UAE than in Jordan. Sometimes the men they were with were in Muslim garb, but very frequently, their companions were in casual clothes - jeans, t-shirts, even a sleeveless shirt and shorts.
Scenes from the mall
And another
Sparkle, sparkle
The courtyard at the Dubai Mall in the setting sun
The aquarium
View of Dubai from the top of the Burj Khalifa
Light show
Why do I despise chains at home but are drawn to them like a magnet on the road? Just like the Chili's at home, but add a giant aquarium and subtract alcohol.
Arabic sports center
Hard to get a good picture of the ice rink with the glare, but you get the gist. Note the pools of melting ice, which made sense considering it was at least 100 degrees outside.
Just your ordinary mall rules.
More Jordan, in Pictures
To wrap-up Jordan, here are some pictures of places that didn’t really make it into other posts.
Red Sea
Jerash, an ancient Roman city
Mt. Nebo, from where, according to the Bible, Moses saw the Holy Land
Picture of King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman
Crumbling walls in Madaba
Arabic salad from the best restaurant at which we ate in Jordan: Haret Jdoudna in Madaba
Tile floor map of the Holy Land from 6 AD in St. George Church in Madaba
Amman during the Golden Hour
Jordan Beyond the Sites
Going to Jordan was Sean’s pick; to be honest, I felt very little enthusiasm towards travelling there. I mostly wanted to get it over with to get on to the Asia part of our trip. But as things usually turn out on this trip, even if I couldn’t say it was always fun to travel there, it certainly was fascinating.
I knew very little about Jordan before we travelled there. I knew it is in the Middle East; it is mainly Muslim; and they have a very pretty Queen (who I once saw on 60 Minutes).
Looking at Jordan on a map, it doesn’t seem like it is very safe place to travel. It shares borders with Israel, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Despite its position in an area of turmoil, Jordan has managed to maintain good relations with both its Middle Eastern neighbors and the Western world. Jordan’s permissive policies towards accepting Palestinian and Iraqi refugees have left it struggling to figure out how to bear the burden of the additional people it let inside its borders. There are actually more Palestinians living in Jordan than native Jordanians.
Although Islam is the country’s official religion, Jordan is tolerant of other religions and generally keeps religion and government at arm’s length. Jordan has one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East. Most of the Christians live in Madaba, a small city just south of Amman that we visited for a few days. We arrived in Jordan during the tail end of Ramadan, a Muslim holiday that involves fasting between sunup and sundown for a month. It is one of those holidays that never have a set date, so we asked the owner of the hotel we were staying at in Madaba when Ramadan was ending. Um, I don’t know, I’m not sure when it finishes. Hmm, I thought to myself, is he a heathen or something? How does he not know when it ends? After rifling through the calendar, he responded, Yeah, I think they finish celebrating on Thursday. After a pause, he continued, I’m Christian, so I get to eat, drink and smoke whatever I want! I felt ashamed for automatically assuming he was Muslim just because he spoke Arabic and was from a Middle Eastern country. The first of many lessons I learned during our 10 days in Jordan.
Like many developing countries, Jordan has the usual frustrations and curiosities: busses that do not leave until they are completely full; cities that look like they are either perpetually unfinished or falling apart due to empty lots filled with crumbling rubble, giant holes in any paved surface, and steel rebar sticking up from buildings; an ever-present layer of dust and litter; constant exhaust fumes filling the air; and accommodations that make you cringe if you look too closely. Noticeably absent were aggressive people looking to make a buck at your expense. Unlike Morocco, no one hassled us, no one followed us, no one tried to scam us.
Noticeably present, however, were the differences in the way that men and women are treated. Jordan does have a more liberal attitude towards women, but more liberal is relative, of course, to the Muslim countries that don’t give women any rights. I was never uncomfortable travelling through Jordan, but certain things stood out to me. I refrained from wearing my shorts, dress or tank-top for the most part, and do not consider my v-neck shirts to be particularly low-cut, but I could feel eyes gravitating toward what little skin I showed and often chose to wear a scarf around my neck just to avoid any extra attention. Time and time again, we were warmly greeted by Jordanians, with a welcome, welcome. But sometimes, it seemed I was more welcome than Sean, because the phrase and their eyes would be directed at me as if Sean wasn’t there.
Early on in our trip, a well-travelled Jordanian man told us that he was embarrassed by the way that Jordanian men acted because they didn’t know how to act around women. Other than the porn display in the desert, we saw this most clearly when we went snorkeling in the Red Sea. Taking a break from snorkeling, we watched all of eyes of the Jordanian guys sitting under the shelter near us follow a French girl wearing a bikini walk to the shelter from the water. While the rest of them stared, one of them struck up a conversation with her. You have great skin, one of them said, never removing his eyes from her. Um, thanks, she mumbled. Need help with your suntan lotion? The whole scene was awkward, to say the least.
I was curious what exactly people wore to the beach in a country where most of the women still wore at least a head covering. I wouldn’t get my answer at this beach, which was located outside the city close to a cluster of dive centers. At the public beaches close to downtown Aqaba, however, women went in the sea with the same attire they wore on land, while the men wore swim trunks or perhaps a sleeveless t-shirt as well.
Frolicking in the Red Sea in Aqaba
This reminds me of that song, Long Black Veil
There are lots of young children in Jordan, almost always being cared for in public by women
Perhaps this is why it struck me as odd, later, when a woman who was essentially covered from head-to-toe pulled out her breast to breast-feed her child on a public bus. Her child was wailing at the top of his lungs, and everyone on the bus – mostly men – glared in disapproval. I took a chance and turned around in my seat to play peek-a-boo with the child. His cries turned to laughter. The woman smiled at me, and I smiled back. A few minutes later, when I turned around again, I noticed her breastfeeding. Perhaps Jordan views this activity as something that is necessary for a child’s well-being – I see that they have breast-feeding laws protecting working mothers – but this didn’t seem to mesh with the sight of woman after woman completely covered up, some head to toe.
I know the women’s dress in Muslim countries is a complicated subject, and I don’t even present to understand the intricacies behind wardrobe decisions. It was continually jarring for me to see how much most women covered up even in a supposedly liberal country like Jordan.
A women in a hijab at Petra
Women smoking the shisha; a rare site except occasionally in Amman
For its small size, Jordan has lots of interesting and beautiful sites. But even beyond the sites, it is a fascinating country with a distinctly Middle-Eastern culture. In the end, I was glad we made a foray into the Middle East and got to know Jordan more than we did at the beginning.