Arabic

I've been having Arabic tutoring twice a week, but am now a victim of my own success. Over the last 20 odd years, I've picked up a bit of Arabic (I'm quite useful on the repair of wheelbarrows), but it is all pretty dodgy dig arabic. Verbs are only employed in the imperative ("Give me the bucket", "Go away, boy!" "Stop!!" "Drink tea!") with only occasional phrases learnt holus bolus ("shemet howa" lit. tasting the breeze, means "hanging about"; "shu bit sowi??" (with hands raised in astonishment) means something in the order of "what the hell do you think you're doing??"). I have spent the last two years staring at the Arabic alphabet trying to learn to read and write. I got part way on the reading last BAP field season, because most road signs here are, helpfully, in Arabic and English. Also buses have their two destination points written on them, so driving along behind a bus for about half an hour gave me enough time to work out that it was going from Amman to Jerash, say.
So I didn't start lessons as a complete novice. However, Hilda is so please with my progress that on Wednesday she said, we've pretty much finished the past tense, just learn these extra 25 verbs and we can start the present tense on Saturday. So I came up to my room 2 hours ago to try and learn some vocab before my class at 10 tomorrow morning - and all I've done is check emails and write this blog!!
And since the armed guard outside the building spent the entire night last night entertaining his mates, who left their cars running while they chatted, and having his walky talky on volume setting 11 for dumb messages from the barracks (you see, the armed guard doesn't really have anything to do here, but they want to appear to be putting in an effort for security - but the slacker the guard the less likely there is to be a threat, which by and large I like, except when the guy talks ALL night outside our windows). So, I'm now too tired to learn ate, brought, sold, returned, slept over, felt jealous - when will I ever need to know that in conversation? - flew, left, emptied, filled, was hungry, entered, went, drank, did something, knew, understood, paid, drew, studied, lived in, moved something, walked, took, was absent, was afraid, became, slept, saw, said, drove, went around or died.
(early page of homework - at least my handwriting is going well)

Religious Tourism in Jordan part 2

Last Sunday I went with Feras and his cousins Bilal and Usama (Shadhi we decided was not as interested as the other two) and Carrie Swan, a Brown University doctoral student, out to Mt Nebo for another go at the tourists. This time Feras was pretty tooled up - nicely printed signs with easels, id tags for the crew, sets of questionnaires in a variety of languages (though Portuguese would have been handy as it turned out, and definitely Chinese) and seats that didn't collapse.
(Bilal, Feras and Usama, with id tags)

(professional looking research camp)

Carrie is here for the first time in Jordan, though she's worked in Turkey, Greece, Egypt and Israel. She had been stuck in ACOR, and was only too happy to lend a hand with the questionnaires in return for a trip to Mt Nebo (Feras gave her time to check out the mosaics and museum on the site) and a look at the mosaic map in Madaba after a late lunch.
(tourists doing research observed by tourist police)
Tour leaders. Mmmm. They're a mixed bunch aren't they? Some were friendly, and clearly on good terms with their groups with whom they could communicate quite well in the relevant language. Others, it's another story. A number of them told us that no-one in their tour group spoke a word of English, so couldn't do the questionnaire. Another got really cross with Feras for talking to his group without permission - South Africans as it turned out, who'd struck up a conversation with Feras behind their tour leader's back upon noticing the nicely printed University of Sydney Research sign. One took a set of 20 questionnaires to give to his group on their bus, and returned them, untouched 5 days later in Amman saying that they had had no time to fill them in. Feras subsequently visited a few in their offices here in Amman, to have one guy go through the questionnaire, toss it back across the table and say, these are stupid questions, this is rubbish research.

Feras was quite down-heartened, especially since they got blown off the mountain on Wednesday with a dust-storm - but I just got a text from him, and they got 100 completed questionnaires today from locals and internationals, so, phew, the doctorate is back on track. Bilal has taken over as registrar of the project, coding all the questionnaires as they're done, and keeping track of what is where with whom. Usama, who is a shy young man, is happy to pass around the lollies, keep track of the pencils, and spends a lot of his time plucking pine cones from the trees for elderly lady tourists of various nationalities, which for some reason they all want as souvenirs.
(Bilal, registrar)

Rose and Kate get kulcha part 1

One of the things I have been looking forward to with the Endeavour fellowship has been to have the time to get involved in the life of Amman. So today Rose Espinola (fellow Aussie Endeavour researcher, here to look into discriminatory citizenship laws for women, and intersections of sharia and international law on same) started our art gallery crawl. Barbara Porter thought we could do the National Art Gallery, the Darat al-Funan ("House of Arts") and all the Second/First circle + Rainbow Street galleries in one day. Ha! Rose and I like our art slow.

(Rose is photographing a giant slingshot called "Weapons of Mass Destruction" made by a Palestinian woman artist )

So we went off at about 10.30 - you don't want to rush this kind of thing - to Jebel Weibdeh, up from old Abdali where the Mattaf Watani (Art Gallery) is located in two buildings each side of a park which has been turned into the sculpture gallery, and Japanese garden.
I'm really disappointed that the Gallery shop did not have a single poster or postcard reproduction of any of the art in the Gallery, because some of it was just great. I'm going back to pick up the catalogue raisonne and a few other books on Jordanian artists next time I have a chance after work. I didn't have my act together to write down the names of the artists - will try and fix that later too - but here are some photos I stole (not sure on their policy about taking photos in the gallery, but heh, this is public relations):


Sculpture Park














It appears that the garbage bins of Amman breed in the Sculpture garden - or else they are Arabic daleks!










"Unity" - it's hard to tell, but the entire canvas is covered in calligraphy




Outfit from chocolate bar wrappers; I loved the pose of this Turkish oud player (1960s?) with his head back singing

I really want one of these Palestinauts:



This made me happy (Tunisian):



This made me sad (Benin "The refugee baby's bottle"):



The Gallery is run by the Royal Fine Art Society which also provides workspaces, technical facilities and this excellent library and cafe upstairs in the main building. Last year when Rose was here learning Arabic, she came to the Gallery for art cinema evenings.






Then we walked through Jebel Weibdeh to Paris Square and had lunch at the Libr@irie Cafe (complet avec French chansons playing in the background) which has a room next to the ladies labelled, I am not joking, "Stuff Closet".

Then we walked past the Luzmila Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Nazareth in 1948, named after Contessa Luz Mila, a Bolivian woman whose second husband was a cousin of Prince Rainier and who donated the X-ray department to them, down the hill to the edge of Jebel Weibdeh to the Darat al-Funan (click on link to website - I'm getting this blogging thing down now!)
This is run by the Khalid Shoman Foundation (Arab Bank founders) and seems to be the spot for contemporary art.


It is made out of 3 1920s houses, and some archaeological remains (they claim a church and a temple - but I didn't see them this time around).


We'd left our run a bit late by this stage - the disadvantage of slow art - so only really saw the exhibition by Halim al Karim Witness from Baghdad. This is a pretty confronting photography exhibition. The photo here doesn't do the works justice.


The faces are so blurry that when you get close to the panel, you can't even see them. But the eyes, without even eyelashes, are perfectly in focus, stunningly printed in colour and absolutely mesmerising. The eyes refer back as far as Sumerian art, where the sculptors also paid particular attention to the overlarge eyes. These men were disconcerting enough, but at the other end of the room were triptychs of children. Each set was made of three views of the same child's head, using the same technique of b/w blurry faces and startling colour eyes. But their mouths were taped closed.

Shiver.

Quality Removals

ACOR have instituted a pottery conservation and restoration project, and Stephen Bourke sent 50-odd boxes of pottery up from Pella a couple of years ago so that Naif Zaban could restore any whole pots from the Iron Age destruction levels. 9 complete vessels and 4 partial ones have been put back together. Last Thursday Issa and Aladdin Madi and me had the task of transporting the restored pots, and the left-over sherds back down to Pella.
I made another amateur mistake - instead of going down to the basement in working hours to check the deal, I had assumed that the message "the pots are in crates and are ready to go" meant that it was a matter of putting everything in the pickup on Thursday morning and off we would drive. So late Wednesday I discovered that while the pots were in crates, they were none of them in crates big enough to transport them properly (ie they were balanced in small boxes so they didn't roll around on the floor) and "ready to go" meant simply that Naif didn't have any more sticking together to do.
So Thursday morning meant a typical Jordanian scenario of 5 Chiefs (me, Aladdin, Issa, Abed - the maintenance & fix-it guy at ACOR - and Naif) and no Indians deciding how to organize the packing. Two of the pots were over a metre high and and nearly that in diameter. I was taking advice from Christina, a very sensible field conservator from Italy who thought that sturdy red plastic crates and lots of sheets would probably do the trick (for those of you who have had experience with conservators - Wendy Reade excepted - will know that this is not a common response. Usually it would be "Where are the large wooden crates and bespoke cut out solid foam casings??". Christina says it's because in Italy they have too many antiquities and not enough resources either, so they are used to winging it).

Eventually we got all the complete pots and about 15 boxes of sherds in the pickup - the half pots were too unstable to move, and there was no room for the remaining 27 boxes of sherds - that'll be trip 2 in late October.








The very big pots took up most of the back seat, and I was inserted into the remaining 15cm of seat space in order to cushion the pots on the right hand side. Issa drove very carefully, but very slowly to Pella, so after nearly 2 hours squashed as padding in the back, when we arrived at the dig house the only way I could get out of the car was to open my door and fall sideways onto the carpark. Eventually my legs worked again.

Jordanian Attitudes to Archaeological Heritage part 1

One of the main reasons I'm here in Jordan is to work with staff at the Jordan Museum on a project, probably called what's in the title of this blog. I say probably, because one issue is of language. In English, the technical meaning of heritage is the use of the past in the present. On the street, heritage probably has a slightly different meaning, often I think perhaps, stuff from the past (objects, behaviour) that we still use or do, so that in everyday talk very old objects are not heritage. But we do still have the wider meaning in English of our national heritage meaning everything (or not, if you prefer to ignore the bad stuff people did and think that heritage is only good things).
But in Jordan there is a legal definition. Heritage is the word for everything made after 1750AD. Before that, everything is called archaeology/antiquities (the word in Arabic is athar). So archaeological heritage is in a way a contradiction in terms.
This is the kind of stuff we have been talking about at the museum over the last couple of days I've been in, and we are grappling with other nuances like the right word to use for custodian (many of the Arabic options have religious overtones, whereas the standard translation, hares, is usually used for the guy in the carpark who looks after your car, which is not the concept we want to use).
And we're talking about the form of questions, and the general themes we'll be investigating. So far, I think my favourite question will be:
What are archaeologists doing when they are walking across fields?
a) looking for treasure
b) looking for any kind of archaeology
c) measuring the land
d) looking for archaeological sites
e) wasting time
f) other .......................................................................

Here is most of the team (unfortunately Nihad's face is mainly blocked, but you know how hard it is to get a group of people with everyone's face showing and no-one's eyes closed - if the picture is too small, click on it and it opens bigger - unless you've blocked pop-ups). Najd is the main person I'm working with.

Religious Tourism in Jordan part 1

Today I spent at Mt Nebo again, this time with Feras Orekat my student, and his three cousins, Bilal, Usama and Shadhi, for the first day of Feras' field work getting tourists to fill in his questionnaire. Unfortunately, the very closed Eid shops thwarted Feras' plans to get completely organised (how Jordanian of us!), so we arrived with about 1/3 of what we needed. But we had 100 questionnaires in Arabic and 100 in English, and the main reason for going there today was to try and catch as many Jordanians as possible, enjoying the last day of their Eid holiday.

And it worked. There were lots of locals, including a bus-full on a day-trip from Irbid (amazing - we none of us had ever met Jordanian day trippers before). Also Indonesians on a break from Saudi Arabia, Aussies, Aussies, Aussies, Poles, Chinese, Spanish, lots more Chinese, Brits and the occasional American. Many ex-pat Jordanians also, back home to visit family.

(Feras in stripey shirt in centre, Usama in green shirt, Shadhi probably sitting on the wall in the shade, and Bilal propably off being useful with tourists).

But we had some equipment failures - Feras bought cheap Jordanian plastic stools and I can testify that they cannot hold the weight of a moderately sized Australian lady - let alone much larger persons. So we converted them to small tables for people to use to fill in the questionnaire. We had been advised by a sociologist at Sydney Uni to provide lollies for the participants, and I can tell you - excellent advice!

On the other hand, it was pleasing for Feras' research that so many people took time to fill in the questionnaire and were clearly trying to answer as truthfully (or maybe not!?) as possible. Except for one guy who answered the first question "What is your nationality" with the answer "For religious tourism". Clearly he was expecting some other question there at no. 1.
So in about 5 hours he got nearly 100 responses - there's another PhD off to a flying start.

And then we got completely lost on the way home - the cousins are from Salt, and Feras turns out to have no sense of direction. Luckily I was in the car and could get us home, though we did go through parts of Amman I never went to before.

Eerie Eid quiet coming to an end

Thursday in Amman was pretty busy, as in Madaba, as the final iftar of Ramadan was that night, and the Eid itself was Friday. I happened to still be up at midnight on Thursday and the University Street down below ACOR was full of traffic - I guess families who had had their iftar, and then packed the suitcases and kids in the car to drive down to Aqaba or the Dead Sea for the holidays. Apparently you couldn't get a room at Aqaba. So Friday in the day was very quiet but we expected things to start moving again for Saturday and Sunday - but no, all Amman was very quiet. Perhaps lots of people had gone away for the holidays, but apart from the bigger supermarkets and some isolated shops, Amman has been really sleepy. Most unusual. It has made taxi trips much cheaper and it is nearly a pleasure driving oneself - no death defying feats needed to negotiate the bigger circles.

ACOR itself has been very empty - the dig teams have gone home and so have the language schools.
So this was my breakfast on Eid Friday, all by myself.

(note the good Aussie Sanitarium - only $7.50 a packet!)

This picture is cheating really - there are a small bunch of nice people here and it is pleasant not to have doors banging all hours as the language school kids enjoy being away from home. A Polish Egyptologist, an Italian/American conservator, a Romanian studying tourism in NZ and even a couple of straightforward American archaeologists.
Rose Espinola, another Aussie on the same fellowship as me, arrived Friday too. She's here to do some Masters research on discriminatory laws regarding women's citizenship, spent a year here 2 years ago learning Arabic, and has some cousins living nearby. So I'm hoping she'll be my intro into non-archaeology Jordan. We've already discussed going to a soccer match, as the league here kicked off last week. On that note, I can't believe the Swans lost by less than a goal!!!