CE Writing & Photography

The Balad

We had wandered down to the King Hussein Mosque from our apartment on Jebel Amman, a main hill and neighborhood in Amman, Jordan. The mosque, which blasts its call to prayer louder than any other in the city and wakes me up at dawn and from midday naps, is the oldest of the grand prayer houses in the city and is named after one of the country’s first kings. It sits on the same plot of ground where a previous mosque was built in the first century of Islam. It’s in the Balad, Amman downtown, and while it is probably no more than 200 horizontal yards from our home, it is a ten-minute walk down hundreds of stairs. The whole of the Balad is set in a deep, dry river valley that carved out four of Amman’s seven ancient hills – ours plus Jebel Weibdeh, Jebel Qala’a, and Jebel Al-Ashrafiyel. When the Hussein Mosque flips on its loud speakers and plays those long, cascading exaltations of Allah and exhortations of the faithful, the call bounces off the hills and comes through our windows in echoing waves. We’re awash in the call five times a day. It’s inimitable in the Arab world. You stand on our hill and the sound tells you that you can only be in one place. That ravine and that mosque and its call are the trinity of the city’s soul.

But that’s just some mystical horseshit. I indulge those ideas, which are true but weightless, when I need a break from the reality of this place, which is much grittier and mundane and interesting. The reality is tastier, too.

We were in the Balad, for the first time, standing on the plaza in front of the King Hussein Mosque. Two roads thick with traffic met at the apex of the curved open space, honking and crowding and crawling. The plaza matched it, replacing taxis and trucks with hawkers and buyers, devotees and beggars, police and tourists. In one corner was a Bedouin (or maybe Gypsy) woman, her face hidden behind a stained veil, her tattooed hand cupped for alms. In another, a blind feather-duster salesman mumbled his pitch to the sky. Over there was a wood cart heaped with herbs. And here, in the center of the plaza, was another cart , one with two, long, wheel-barrow handles at waist height, thick bicycle wheels, and a wooden box that held a two-foot wide tin platter filled with something brown and golden and sweet. Actually it wasn’t filled. It had been, minutes earlier, but whatever it was was going fast. We had to get some.

The man selling the sweet was in his early twenties, probably poor, but no more so than anyone else in the Balad. He’d pulled his cart to the mosque to catch the rush of men, and some women, returning to work and shopping after their midday prayer. When we walked up, half-a-dozen people stood around him, holding out small coins and taking palm-sized portions of the sweet. Whatever it was, it was about an inch-and-a-half tall, and made of just two layers: a dark brown one on top and a thin, golden bottom layer that looked like cornmeal. Pistachios were sprinkled on top and the whole thing glistened with honey.

The man served his customers fast, and in less than ten seconds my turn came. I ordered a small piece, more than enough for Krystal and me. He cut it out and handed it to me as I asked the price: fifteen piasters, about twenty cents. I went to hand him the coins and ask what this thing was when a shadow covered me and a hand reached ahead of mine and grabbed at the sweet man’s shirt. With no hesitation or panic, the sweet man lifted his cart, pivoting it. Then he leaned in hard and ran through an impossible crease in the crowd that seemed choreographed for getaways. He didn’t stop at the curb, and ran into the converging traffic. The invisible path held and he seemed to gain speed as he pushed uphill into an alley and out of sight behind the hanging wares of the shops.

I still held out the two coins. I, the knowledgeable old-hand of this couple, turned to Krystal and said, “Um, what happened?” Krystal shook her head. A woman wearing hijab and the long, conservative coat of the identifiably religious told us the sweet man was scared of the police. Why him, I asked. There were other vendors all over the plaza, most selling crappy tourist junk. She shrugged and laughed, pointing to my treat, “Welcome to Jordan. Enjoy your dessert.”

It was drenched, just soaked in honey. Comprising just cornmeal, cooked to caramelized perfection on the bottom, and poppy seeds, brown sugar, and a carton's worth of cinnamon on top, it was simple. It was delicious. I don’t know what it was, besides a conundrum. Sometimes it’s hard to couple the reality of things as delicate and careful as this sweet with the grime and din of the streets it came from. How does something this exquisite exist in a place with blackened curbs, the scent of exhaust, and dusty faces? But that’s more of me mistaking the mundane for the mystical. It’s really no conundrum at all. How could something like this come from anywhere else?

New World Hum Story

WorldHum.com, a wonderful travel writing website, published an essay of mine today. Click here to check WorldHum.com's front page or here to go straight to the article.

The Left-Brain Responds

In a left-brain response to Beau Bailey's statistical analysis of the Top 10 Albums of the Decade lists, Dango (aka Daniel Torres) has made wordles of the lyrics from three of the album lists.

Beau's Lryic Wordle:

Cory's Lryic Wordle:

Dango's Lryic Wordle: