40 Days Later

Monday marked 40 days after the suicide bomb attacks here in Amman. The last day of the traditional mourning period, the 40th day was recognized with remembrance ceremonies across the country.

On Sunday I was at the Lib Girls School in Madaba for a festival recognizing teacher and student achievements. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, the activities included a skit portraying the lives of the wedding couple from their engagement to the bombing itself. The day also included a variety of patriotic songs sung by the entire school while some of students held signs reading:

"Yes to Jordan" "Amman in Our Hearts"

"No to terrorism" "Yes to Peace"

I have some great pictures of all of this that do more justice than I could, hopefully I can put them up at some point.

Two days later (Tues. morning) I was back in Amman at Al-Asriyyah, where the middle school put on a more theatrical performance to remember the tragic events. Dressed in black, with one row of students sitting along the front of the stage, they sang and performed a choreographed dance, both created for this ceremony. Three speeches were also given an at least one of the student dancers broke down into tears on the stage. It was a hard experience, moving and frustrating at the same time because of course I could understand little of the dialogue or the songs. I have the program and will hopefully have one of my friends translate the words of the song written for the ceremony, for which they asked everyone in the audience to stand and participate in, and of course I tried my best.

Beautiful but not as raw as the depiction in Lib, both engaged students in expressing their thoughts and emotions, and both highlighted the country’s anger and sorrow at violence against such innocent, average Jordanians. I also met the wedding couple from the Radisson SAS, they were there for the ceremony and then visited classes in the school. They have been a great symbol of the tragedy, strength, unity and hope in Jordan, speaking out against the use of terrorism and the misinterpretation of religion to justify such acts.

Since the attacks security has been strange and scattered. There are metal detectors at grocery stores, malls, and some restaurants. They go off all the time. I set them off at all three locations and am rarely stopped by anyone. Apparently profiling is still in full use here and I guess I don’t fit the profile? There’s a security guard at the center where I take my Arabic classes, big barriers surrounding the entrances to hotels, embassies and other unidentified buildings, and of course the raging debate over what level of security measures should be implemented by the government.

Maybe before they go passing a bunch of dramatic, knee-jerk legislation, they should take a long, hard look at the U.S. After the terrorist attacks a wide range of responses were passed to address security. A few years on, many of those initiatives are being scaled back as people realize just how ineffective most of those measures have been (not to mention questionable in terms of personal rights and freedoms).

This leads into several other debates entirely about freedom versus security and what it is that constitutes safety and security in the first place, but I reserve that discussion for another time. For now, Jordan, like America, like Iraq, like the U.K. and Spain and Sri Lanka and a growing number of other nations, must struggle with the realization that you can work to be safer but you cannot be safe. Governments struggle with the fact that there is no longer a nation to condemn, but an ideology to struggle against, internally and externally. And with the growing arsenals of small arms, conventional, chem/bio and heaven forbid nuclear, ‘they’ only have to succeed once. Yet through all this, people must learn to live with that reality. And I mean LIVE. Not in fear. Not surrounded by men with guns or holding their breath. Not looking out of the corner of their eyes at their neighbors or those seated next to them on the bus. The power of the world is shifting. Governments are no longer the only decision-makers. People, groups, individuals have more power and it’s growing. Apathy cannot be an option. You have to care.

And I’ve been staring at this last paragraph for like five minutes, which is really long if you think about it, and I’ve deleted it twice on the grounds that it’s too much of a philosophical soapbox rant. But against my better judgment I’m just going to leave it there. Humor me. Email me. Tell me what you think. I like to be positive, I want to be hopeful, but I am not naive. I guess I’d like to call myself an optimistic realist.