My 9/11 story

The attacks set me off to become an unofficial ambassador
Tuesday, September 06, 2011 (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

By Benjamin Orbach


Ten years ago, I walked up the steps to my Arabic class as Nadav, a short guy from Brooklyn, bounded from the building, yelling "Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center!" We were both graduate students at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

I joined Nadav and a handful of students around the TV in the building's lounge. When the second tower fell, I stood up and walked home. It was such a beautiful, clear day, yet it seemed as though the world was ending.

The previous semester, I had written my masters' thesis on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Still, I had questions. In particular, what had led individuals to do this and how did people in the Arab world feel about these attacks? Within a year, I moved to Jordan to learn more Arabic and to search for answers.

Not knowing anyone in Amman, I wandered the city and spoke to anyone who would speak back about 9/11 and U.S. foreign policy, but also about everyday life and our hopes for the future. Over the course of a year, I backpacked through Syria and Morocco, then moved to Cairo at the start of the Iraq war.

Along the way, I continued to speak and listen -- to the Egyptian falafel cook making $5 a day, to my Jordanian barber who wanted to move to Detroit, to a young Syrian woman working in an art gallery in Hama, to so many others. I became intimately familiar with the problems of securing a life of dignity in the Arab world -- whether that's affording marriage, finding a job after graduation or carving out personal space in authoritarian states.

On a fall day in 2002, I had an epiphany about how private American citizens might help our Arab counterparts with these problems while improving our own security. As I taught Sundos, a headscarf-covered 18-year-old University of Jordan student, to use a computer, I realized that no matter what befell Jordan as a result of the war in Iraq, there would remain a role for Americans to play in building partnerships.

For Sundos, the Internet wasn't just entertainment but a tool of professional and personal empowerment. She was grateful for my help in opening a world of possibilities and was happy to be my friend.

Like people I met throughout that year in the Middle East, she differentiated between the American people and the U.S. government, seeing the American people as our country's greatest asset and U.S. foreign policy as our greatest liability. For her and many others, Americans created Hollywood and Harvard, while the U.S. government backed dictators and launched wars.

When I returned home in late 2003, I went to work at the State Department managing programs that support democratic reforms and women's empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa. I saw success in projects that paired American experts with Arab activists and leaders.

Whether it was legislative assistants from Colorado and Vermont training Algerian parliamentary staffers to draft bills or a documentary maker from Mississippi teaching activists in Bahrain to make short videos, I witnessed the American people serving as unofficial ambassadors. They supported local leaders seeking to address the educational, economic, human rights and other development challenges within their communities. In the process, they represented the diversity and strength of America.

I decided that I, too, wanted to become an unofficial ambassador and play a direct role in creating opportunities. I returned to the ranks of the American people and worked for an international development company in the Palestinian territories from 2007 to 2009. I designed and implemented a small grant program that built educational facilities, installed computer labs and provided recreational equipment to women's centers and youth clubs in isolated villages and woebegone refugee camps.

We completed projects in more than 75 communities that benefited more than 10,000 people striving to improve their lives. Along the way, I continued to represent America while learning about the daily problems that manifest themselves in global issues.

This past year, we launched the America's Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning, a Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit organization. Our goal is to increase the number of American volunteers in the Muslim worldm, and we are building a community to offer them guidance and support. By the end of 2012, we hope to have encouraged 1,000 Americans to commit to volunteering for one week to one year.

In March, we released the AUA Directory, the premiere resource for researching short-term volunteer opportunities in Muslim-majority countries. You don't have to be a professional development worker to teach English in Indonesia, to build a house in Jordan, to promote public health in Senegal or to help build peace.

Frequently, I think about my walk home on that terrible, clear day 10 years ago when everything changed. I'm grateful to have found a path to making a difference and to have met so many other unofficial ambassadors who are doing the same.


Benjamin Orbach, a Pittsburgh native and author of "Live from Jordan," directs the America's Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning.

Pittsburgh Book Talk this Saturday

New York - I'll be in Pittsburgh this Saturday for a Live from Jordan book talk at the Waterworks Barnes and Noble. The talk is in support of the Lauri Ann West Memorial Library. Barnes and Noble is donating a portion of all sales proceeds that day to support the library. Just tell them that you want them to make the donation at the cash register when you make your purchases.

The benefit for the library begins at 1 PM with Rob Rogers, the famous Post-Gazette cartoonist, doing an author talk. My Live from Jordan talk will be at 3PM. For directions, click here.

Squirrel Hill Native Recognized for Work in Middle East

Tel Aviv - The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a nice article about Live from Jordan and the Linowitz award that I received in September. Given that the Post Gazette is the homepage on my computer and its sports page is the first thing I read in the morning, I'm humbled. Thank you -

Here is the article:

Squirrel Hill native recognized for work in Middle East
Thursday, October 02, 2008

By Dev Meyers
Fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, Benjamin Orbach has traveled around the Middle East. But he admits he often finds himself "talking incessantly" about the Steelers.

A self-appointed, unofficial ambassador, Mr. Orbach is committed to presenting the Arab world with a wholesome and caring picture of Americans.

In September, his accomplishments were recognized in Washington, D.C., when the National Security Education Program presented Mr. Orbach with its 2008 Sol Linowitz Award.

Mr. Linowitz was a diplomat and major supporter of international education and NSEP.

NSEP is a major federal initiative within the Department of Defense and is designed to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills.

The goal is to strengthen national security and competitiveness by forming a partnership with the U.S. education community through language and cultural initiatives.

Mr. Orbach, 33, who grew up in Squirrel Hill, studied Arabic in Jordan as a Boren Fellow. His experiences as a Boren Fellow formed the basis for a book, "Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East" (Amacom Books, 2007).

Each year, NSEP honors one Boren Scholar alumnus and one Boren Fellow alumnus for their outstanding federal service and academic achievement.

Boren Scholarships provide funding for U.S. undergraduate students to study in areas of the world that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad. Boren Fellowships provide funding for U.S. graduate students to study and conduct research in these same areas of the world.

Mr. Orbach worked for three years for the State Department in the Office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative and for a year as the MEPI coordinator at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. He is currently Creative Associates International's resident country director for the West Bank and Gaza.

Mr. Orbach, a 1993 graduate of Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, earned a bachelor of arts degree at the University of Michigan and a master's in international relations at Johns Hopkins University.

"In all of my travels to the Middle East, when I was a student and when I was a U.S. government official, I kept in mind that I was from Pittsburgh and representing the people of Pittsburgh," he said.

"I'm very proud of where I'm from and the values that I grew up with, and I've certainly confused more than a handful of people with my incessant talk [in Arabic] about our mighty football team."

Mr. Orbach has traveled to 12 countries.

"I've represented the priorities and programs of the United States to hundreds of people in the region as an Arabic-speaking American who cares about their needs, aspirations and the relationship between our respective countries and people," he said.

"The official awards are excellent achievements, but I am most proud of the positive impression that I've left -- through words and deeds -- with these great people who are the future of the region and whose attitudes and opinions matter greatly to the national security of America."

His mother, Linda, of Squirrel Hill, is "thrilled" that her son has been recognized for his work.

"He has many gifts and has received many opportunities," she said. "But what really matters is he is making the most of them -- and for the greater good."

"Live from Jordan" explores key issues in the Middle East, such as anti-Americanism, the absence of peace, Islamist terrorism and the causes of 9/11.

At the same time, the book puts words to the beauty and color of everyday life in Egypt, Jordan and Syria -- the camel markets, deserts, nightclubs, coffee shops and people.

"While I was living in Jordan and Egypt, and especially after I returned in the late summer of 2003, I was appalled by how the administration took advantage of our country's knowledge gap rather than took the opportunity to educate the public on the issues and engage Americans on solving our problems," he said.

Mr. Orbach encourages Americans to get involved and become unofficial ambassadors.

"People in [the Middle East] make a distinction between U.S. foreign policy -- which they are adamantly against not just for idealistic reasons, but because it has an impact on their everyday lives -- and the American people.

"Mariah Carey, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King, Michael Jordan, our democratic processes, minimum wage, our rags-to-riches stories -- these are all icons and things that provide hope and are the picture of American people.

"When Americans come and bring our processes, education systems and entertainment icons in the form of the Peace Corps, Doctors Without Borders, other development work, cultural and educational exchanges and other international volunteer efforts, it not only humanizes America, but empowers our friends to improve their communities and lives."

Mr. Orbach's father, Alexander, a teacher in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Religious Studies, is impressed by "Live From Jordan."

"[It] is not only informative, it is eloquent in its careful and considerate depiction of a world that we too often stereotype in extremely negative and frightening ways," the elder Mr. Orbach said.

"The book also reflects the maturation of an engaging young man who, through the course of these experiences, evolves from a naive observer into a confident commentator on a culture and on communities that, while seemingly distant from his own, still share many similar human aspirations."

For more information about NSEP, go to www.nsep.gov/initiatives/index.html.

For more information about Mr. Orbach, go to www.benjaminorbach.com or www.benjaminorbach.blogspot.com.

Dev Meyers is a freelance writer who can be reached at suburbanliving@post-gazette.com.
First published on October 2, 2008 at 6:13 am

Bilerico Project Review of Live from Jordan

Tel Aviv - The Bilerico Project reviewed Live from Jordan earlier today. You can read the full review, "An American in the Middle East," here.

Benjamin Orbach Wins NSEP’s 2008 Sol Linowitz Award

Benjamin Orbach Wins NSEP’s 2008 Sol Linowitz Award
Award Ceremony Honors Author of Live from Jordan

Washington, DC – September 19, 2008 – Benjamin Orbach, the author of the acclaimed Live from Jordan, will receive the 2008 Sol Linowitz award from The National Security Education Program (NSEP) at a ceremony on September 22, 2008 in Washington D.C.

Each year NSEP honors a Boren fellow alumnus and/or alumna for outstanding service and achievement through the Sol Linowitz Award. NSEP is a U.S. government-funded program to strengthen national security through initiatives that improve critical foreign language proficiency and cultural expertise. Since 1992, NSEP has awarded David L. Boren Fellowships to support graduate students studying language and culture and conducting research in countries critical to US interests. The Boren Fellowship builds a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international competence.

Benjamin Orbach, a 2002 Boren Fellow, studied Arabic in Jordan and then Egypt after evacuating from Amman with the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Over a 13-month period, Orbach took his study of Arabic from the classrooms of universities and language institutes to the coffee shops, markets, deserts, and night clubs of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East. Along the way, he discovered everyday people with problems that he could relate to and a world more complicated and more beautiful than many Americans imagine. Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East (AMACOM, 2007) is the incredible story, told via his eloquent, thoughtful, and irreverent letters home, of Orbach’s 13-month journey through the Middle East.

Former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross called Live from Jordan “an extraordinary picture of attitudes in the Arab world.” Ross said, “Orbach is a wonderful observer.... and in reading his book—and absorbing his letters—it is possible to gain a better appreciation of our problems and possibilities in the Middle East."

Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc. called Live from Jordan, “humane, well-informed, and charming.”

Library Journal reviewed that Live from Jordan “is an optimistic work, one that informs Americans about the everyday problems experienced by Arabs and . . . that promotes the idea of real dialogue in and with the Middle East.”

Orbach, currently the Resident Country Director for Creative Associates International in the Palestinian Territories, said, “I’m honored to receive the Sol Linowitz award. The year I spent living, traveling, and studying in the Middle East was one of the formative experiences of my life. It led me to write a book, to serve in government, and to work in the field of development – all different paths that with the same dedicated goal of helping others on behalf of my country.”

NSEP will present the Sol Linowitz award to Orbach at a ceremony to be held on September 22 beginning at 6:00 pm at the Liaison Capitol Hill hotel located at 415 New Jersey Ave., NW, Washington, DC.

Media wishing to attend should contact Laura Porter, NSEP Communications Strategist at porterL2@ndu.edu or 703-696-9598.

Benjamin Orbach is available for interviews through The Rudy Agency. Contact Maryann at mak@rudyagency.com or 970.577.8500.

Words to Mouth

Jerusalem - Check out this recent interview with Words To Mouth, an Internet talk show and companion blog. The highlights: Live from Jordan, Big Hair, and surprise Polish-American art shows in your apartment.

Pittsburgh Today Live

Pittsburgh - The Book Tour II has finished, and I'm home in Pittsburgh for a couple of days before returning to Jerusalem. I have a little bit of a turkey or maybe book tour hangover, but I was still able to get out of bed this morning for an interview on Pittsburgh Today Live.

To watch the interview, click on this link. Here, on the right, is a picture of me speaking with the nice hostess of the show, Kristine Sorensen. I think I was explaining to her how I make some of my favorite shadow puppets or I could have been telling her about my last bad haircut.

The best part about the interview was when Kristine asked me to explain to the hometown crowd about the Heinz Ketchup Eaters. If you haven't read Live from Jordan, the Heinz Ketchup eaters are the elites of the developing world who cruise around town in their Lexus Jeeps, wearing designer jeans and eating burgers covered in Heinz Ketchup. I'm now waiting by the phone for either John Kerry's wife (Theresa Heinz) or the CEO of Heinz to call.

The Book Tour II – Adventures at Jewish Community Centers Across America

Richmond - “Who are you here for?” I asked the driver of the stretch limo outside my Miami hotel.

“Orbach.” The 40-something driver replied, as he gave me the once over – New Balance sneakers, worn jeans, and a button down shirt with a wingy collar.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Orbach. Is that you?”

“Yes it is,” I said with a big smile as I handed him my bag and stepped up to the glory.

My Miami-Fort Lauderdale limo ride might have been the highlight of my Jewish Community Center book tour. It’s too bad I fell asleep during the ride; that shining moment could have lasted longer. Or I guess the moment would have lasted the same amount of time, but I would have been awake for more of it.

Whatever. I’m exhausted.

Last night wrapped up my Jewish Book Council tour. I visited five cities in five days and shared with mostly Jewish audiences my experience of living the American-Arab relationship 24-hours-a-day for a year following the 9/11 attacks.

When people hear that you are on a book tour, they think of limo rides and top-shelf hotels -- like the Jefferson in Richmond, the beautiful 5-star hotel where my very kind hosts put me up last night. But there are a lot of airport security, frozen Lender’s bagels, and dirty-sock-detection moments, too. There is also the “expectations of a grand performance” aspect. I guess you eventually adjust to it, but there were a couple of nights that had me wishing I could juggle or tap dance.

It probably isn’t the same for all authors on the Jewish Book Council tour, but my topic is a little different, especially given the audience. For example, in Richmond the night before I arrived, EllyAnne Geisel presented “The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort.” In Deal, NJ, I was part 2 of a doubleheader with the very funny AJ Jacobs, author of “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.” That was a tough act to follow.

I speak about the diversity that I found traveling to different places in the Arab World, the conversations I had with young men about their future, the daily struggles that “bus riders,” i.e. the common man faces in Egypt, Jordan and other places, and – most important to me – the popular opinions that people hold of America and Americans. From Cherry Hill to Miami, I received some excellent questions about the difference between the opinions of young people and older generations; the status of women in each Arab country; and popular views on terrorism in general, and the 9/11 attacks in particular. In a couple of places, I stayed 30 or 45 minutes after the talk ended to answer the bubbling questions of curious readers. So, I found that there was definitely some interest in what I had to say, but there was also some hostility.

For some vocal book-talk goers, my message and experience missed their desired mark. My shades of gray in explaining the anti-Semitism that I found, and the differences I sketched between places with a history of Jewish life and places where Jew = the Israeli army (in the minds of locals) were more exacerbating than satisfying. In almost every setting, there was a request for me to explain what I mean by the word “Palestine.” I was also asked in almost every stop about Arab countries’ education curricula, popularly viewed (here) as dehumanizing Jews and demonizing Israel.

I took away two main things from these book discussions with American Jewish communities. First, from the post-talk comments and the follow-on emails that I’ve received, there is an interest and a skeptical hope for better interactions with the people of the Arab World. Second, the everyday people in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria have a long way to go in creating a more positive impression of their communities among Jewish communities in the United States.

Just as Mark Twain, Mariah Carey, and the Matrix make it to the Middle East, the information flows this way too. Egyptian newspaper cartoons, various countries’ textbooks, and stories of honor crimes are common knowledge on suburban Jewish Main Street. I’ve written a lot about the role unofficial American ambassadors should play in the Middle East. It is clear that there is a role for unofficial Arab ambassadors to be playing here, too.

-------

For those wondering, my limo riding etiquette is terrible. When the driver sneezed, I said, “Bless you.” He didn’t hear me, so I yelled it, not wanting him to think that I was too good for such niceties. Except, when I yelled it, he just looked at me funny, like I was some kind of religious freak doling out the goods. Worse, perhaps, when we pulled up to the hotel in Lauderdale, I didn’t wait for him to open the door. I just hopped out, like a jack-in-the-box. The hotel doorman, from the look on his face, thought I was going to attack him.

Jewish Book Month

Jerusalem – After six mini-altoids, my tongue was encased in a minty fresh numbness. The room was hot and I was glad to be wearing a sports coat. It covered the pools of nervousness spreading through my shirt. There was an audience of about 120 Jewish Community representatives and 35 authors packed into the Hebrew Union college sanctuary last June at the Jewish Book Council audition in New York.

The Jewish Book Council is an organization that is devoted to the promotion of Jewish-interest literature. In advance of Jewish Book month (which occurs the month before Hanukkah), the JBC invites a hundred or so authors to a gathering where each writer has two minutes to convince an audience of representatives of Jewish communities from across the country that he or she is worth taking home, for a book talk to the community.

I happened to arrive late to the audition. I actually fell asleep on the subway, going the wrong way no less. So after rushing in late, I sat stuffed between a couple of fellow authors whose last names were somewhere in that meaty part of the alphabet, between “Michaels” and “Rosen,” and waited my turn. A short female MC with glasses and a no-nonsense demeanor introduced each author, announced who was "on deck," and then relinquished the floor for exactly two minutes. As each author pitched, the MC held up signs indicating that one minute was left, then 30 seconds, then 10 seconds, and finally that time was up. Once time was up, she stood and walked towards the podium, quite effectively signaling to the gasping author of the moment that his or her time was up.

It was nerve wracking to watch. What made it worse was that all the other writers' topic were so different and so much more connected to Jewish things than mine – there were books about teaching the bible, combating anti-Semitism, preparing a spiritual Friday night dinner, and telling the history of Jewish sweatshop workers in America. Further, the other authors seemed so accomplished. This one had won Jewish book of the year three times, that one had a public television show, and something like five of them had radio shows. And here I was, psyched to have hit the top 7000 books on Amazon the week before, that is after I’d bought 20 books myself. As my neighbor’s shaking legs made me seasick, I couldn’t help but get nervous about how my “human face of the Middle East” shtick was going to go over with an exclusively Jewish crowd and whether I would be able to get it to go over in less than two minutes.

I had prepared a two-minute speech according to what I guessed people wanted to hear. But when it was mercifully my turn, I stood up, popped in another mini-altoid, and winged it. I apologized for being late, I made fun of my ability to fall asleep on public transportation in any country, I referenced my Safta in Queens and her homemade Matzah ball soup, and I simply said that Live from Jordan was about the questions we all had on 9/11 and my pursuit of answers to those questions.

Somehow, it worked out. There was a lot of interest in me and in Live from Jordan.

Maybe it was because I was different than the other presenters; I like to think that I said something funny. Or maybe it was just that I seemed young and unattached and some nice people wanted to bring me home to meet their neighbor or niece. After the event, there was a buffet dinner and a chance to meet the representatives of different communities. I was speaking to a young woman in her 30s from the Atlanta Jewish Community Center and somehow it came up that I had just gotten engaged the week before. Her face literally fell and she said, “Oh.”

After a pause, she added, “I had the perfect girl for you. Mazel Tov.” She then walked away.

I wasn’t invited to give a book talk in Atlanta. But I was invited to NJ, South Florida, Richmond, NY, and Philly (sort of), and I’m looking forward to a trip home in about a week. If you are in the area, please stop by. Here’s the schedule:

• November 11, 2:30 PM, Betty & Milton Katz JCC, 1301 Springdale Rd. Cherry Hill, NJ

• November 12, 7PM, Ruth Hyman Jewish Community Center of Greater Monmouth County, 100 Grant Ave., Deal Park, NJ


• November 13, 8PM, Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center 11155 SW 112th Ave., Kendall, FL


• November 14, 7:30 PM, David Posnack Jewish Community Center, 5850 S. Pine Island Rd., Davie, FL


• November 15, 7PM, Weinstein Jewish Community Center, 5403 Monument Avenue, Richmond, VA


• November 19, 7PM, Bay Terrace Jewish Center, 1300 209th Street, Bayside, NY


• November 20, 7:30 PM, Shir Ami Bucks County Jewish Congregation, 101 Richboro Road, Newton, PA


The Holiday Season III – Jerusalem’s Ramadan Nights

Damascus Gate – Amid the parade of Jewish holidays – it is now Sukkoth – Ramadan is still going strong. It really is the holiday season here.

Israel is celebrating Sukkoth this week, a 7-day holiday that centers around building outdoor, booth-like structures in which Jews eat, hang out, and in some cases sleep. Sukkoth’s roots trace to the exodus from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering in the desert. Sukkoth is a pilgrimage holiday, and in the days of the Temple, Jews traveled to Jerusalem to make religious offerings. Today, Jews from all over Israel (and actually the world) still travel to Jerusalem. While they don’t make sacrifices, they sure cause a lot of traffic jams.

I took some visiting Pittsburghers to the Old City yesterday and the Jewish Quarter resembled the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, except without the beads, floats, or debauchery. Okay, it wasn’t Fat Tuesday, but there was a band and I’ve never seen the Jewish Quarter so crowded. Israel’s chief Ashkenazi and Sephardic rabbis were at the Western Wall yesterday, too. A mob of stroller-pushing well-wishers swarmed them and security had to push back the crowds. It was a scene more reminiscent of a concert than a holy place.

Jewish pilgrims aren’t the only people in town these days, though. Jerusalem is the third holiest place in the world for Muslims, and tens of thousands of Muslims have come here for Friday prayers, break-fasts, and celebrations.

When I lived in Jordan, where more than 95 percent of the population is Muslim, everyone fasted or at least appeared to fast during Ramadan. The holiday was in full effect everywhere. Besides the closed restaurants and lack of food in public, afternoon crankiness and lethargy (which accompany fasting) hung in the air.

Here, things are different. Similar to Jordan, the work schedule has changed, there is a conspicuous lack of public snacking in East Jerusalem, and break-fasts have become regular events on my social calendar. Still, the impact of overlapping Jewish holidays on Ramadan in the Jewish state creates an interesting co-existence and some surreal scenes.

Walking home Monday night, I came across one of those scenes, a lively post-break-fast celebration in the Damascus Gate area. Since the start of Ramadan, Damascus Gate has been adorned with lights and half moon decorations. At about 8PM, though, there was more going on than the usual outdoor market. Vendors sold ground meat and chicken kababs from smoking hibachis. Young men hawked boiled corn, calling out “dooriya!” At impromptu coffee shops on the landings of the Gate’s entrance, men with gelled spiky hair and others with less hair drank tea, coffee, and sahlab, a milky and nut-filled drink. Some of them smoked water pipes as huka attendants stood nearby, twirling iron hot coal baskets and keeping the flavored tobacco fires burning.

The bee-bop of popular Arabic music filled the night, and a clown on stilts wearing a blue balloon hat danced through the crowd. Little kids ran back and forth, some attracted to the clown, others repulsed. Women in colorful red or white hijabs milled through the crowd, shopping for Ramadan deals, but hanging out too.

A normal Ramadan scene, no?

Well, at the top of landing’s steps, Israeli soldiers and policemen looked on. For the hour that I sat on the steps, a young ultra orthodox boy no more than 12-years-old stood at the top of the steps, a few feet away from the soldiers. His fedora was pushed back on his forehead, and he stared with wonder at the action below, transfixed and catching flies. Words couldn’t capture what he was seeing or feeling.

Just a few feet away from the clown on stilts, older Yeshiva boys had emerged from the Old City. They wore black suits and hats and as they walked up the steps, people began to clear away. It wasn’t for them though. A very small boy, wearing a denim jacket and blue jeans was motioning for people to move off of one of the landings. As the crowd, including the teenage Yeshiva boys, looked on expectantly, the denim boy took a running start and somersaulted his way fearlessly across the stone landing, ending in a full body flip to the cheers of the crowd. Another young boy break-danced in his wake and then walked on his hands. The Yeshiva boys, like everyone else watching, smiled in disbelief and admiration.

An hour earlier, 500 yards away, up Jaffa Road, a crowd of a few hundred orthodox Jewish families were watching Sukkoth fireworks in the municipality’s square – home to the Sukkariah, a giant Sukkah made of candy. Ultra orthodox men with curly paot, their wives clad in shapeless dresses, and the many young children with no school in the morning spilled out of the courtyard and into the street. When I walked past them on the way to Damascus Gate, they were rendering the city’s traffic laws meaningless. The road rage of Sukkoth and Ramadan car horns filled the air.

500 yards -- that’s only a thumb or so on Google Earth. In a Jerusalem filled with sukkot fireworks and Ramadan clowns on stilts, however, it is a world away.

The Lowest Point on Earth

Biankini Beach, the Dead Sea –

Salty, burning, knotted, mineral mud-laden big hair.

That is what I had after two days, three mud sessions, five floats in the Dead Sea, and no shampoo. This week’s post was going to be “Barbers without English.” Instead of confronting my barbershop fears, though, I took my mop-head to the Dead Sea for the weekend and offer observations from the lowest point on earth.

The Dead Sea is like no place on earth, and not just because it is lower than everywhere else. Lonely Planet says that the Dead Sea contains 20 percent more bromine (that’s the stuff of pickle jars, I think), 15 percent more magnesium, and 10 percent more iodine than your typical seawater.

Practically, this adds up to three things. First, all of these chemicals are supposed to soothe you. Second, the Dead Sea is in effect 33 percent solid substance, so it is almost impossible not to bob or float on top of the silty salty water. Third, Dead Sea water burns something awful if it gets into your eyes. Think about iodine in an open wound and multiply by 24. There is no better feeling in the world than the warm splash of the beach side shower’s fresh water flowing into your stinging eyes and washing out the Dead Sea after you’ve lurched from the water like a blinded sea creature, clenching your eyelids in pain. The purpose of the eye-washing station in Mr. Blough’s chemistry lab makes perfect sense to me now. We used to use it as a drinking fountain in 10th grade.

Besides people covering themselves in green mud and doing their best to look like the Hulk or Kermit depending upon their body type, the thing that makes the Dead Sea special is the collection of people that it attracts. On Friday evening, I sat on the dock and watched dusk settle with a group of older Sephardic, Hebrew-speaking women; an Arab family that included a muhajiba wife; several Nordic tourists; a Black Palestinian life guard; and several Russian speaking Israeli families – one with a very whiny adolescent named Alex who wouldn’t get out of the water and was determined to take Dead Sea mud home with him in the abused pockets of his red bathing suit. The next afternoon, the dock was crowded as well; mostly with Russian speaking Israelis but with other representatives of the Dead Sea mosaic too. Most of them were getting wasted in the sun. The number of empty Vodka, Bacardi, and Carlsberg bottles strewn about early Sunday morning rivaled the scene at a frat house.

On Friday evening, though, I looked across the Dead Sea and saw the lights of Jordan’s resorts. When I lived in Jordan and visited the Dead Sea, I looked across the way and wondered what people were doing on the other side. There seemed to be so many lights compared to where I was standing. It was close geographically, but far away in almost every other way, at least for me, at that time. So it was strange to sit on the Israeli side and to feel the reverse, trying to picture what was going on in Jordan. To think of my Jordanian friends, but also to wonder whether anyone there could imagine the details of here. I was again struck by how close very different things are here, but how separate they remain at the same time.

Which brings me to the best part of the weekend, the four Palestinian-Israelis, all in their mid-20s, who I befriended. Palestinian-Israelis, also known in Arabic as Palestinians from 1948, are about a 20 percent minority in Israel. They are Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) who are Israeli citizens and whose families lived in parts of mandatory Palestine, like the Galilee or Haifa, that had Arab populations but that became parts of Israel in 1948.

Alaa, Jarious, Wisam, and Hadi grew up in neighboring villages in the Galilee and are friends from college. A pharmacist, two law students, and a medical student home from Italy for the summer, they came to the Dead Sea for the weekend. Their cabin was next door to mine and they insisted that I join them for food and drinks each night, as they grilled out on a little hibachi, drank beer and vodka, and sang classical Arab music. It turned out that Alaa studied at a university in Jordan at the same time as I was there.

On Friday night, as we sat on their front porch and they sang Um Kalthoum songs, Shadi, a 22-year old from nearby Jericho who works at Biankini stopped by to drop off towels. The group urged him to sit, drink, and join the fun. They made introductions over the lamb and pork that they were grilling, and offered Shadi dinner, warning him off the pork that three of them were eating. Shadi asked them their religion and Jarious explained that three of them were Christian and one was Muslim. Shadi nodded, took a drag on his cigarette, and said, “Kol al nes, h’yar baraka,” or for all the people a good blessing.

Jericho sounds great in the bible, but it is a poor place. I was briefly there for the first time a few weeks ago and was struck by how much it felt like an Egyptian desert village. On the outskirts of town sits the towering Intercontinental Hotel, with its shiny wooden lobby fixtures, lingering staff, and its adjacent Oasis Casino. But Jericho itself seemed full of mostly dirt streets and squat buildings, few taller than three or four stories. The summer heat and dustiness recalled a pre-air conditioned time and the few people who I met mentioned a lack of opportunities beyond the dormant service industry.

Sitting there with Shadi from Jericho and the four upwardly mobile guys a couple of years older than him from the Galilee, I was again struck by closeness and farness of it all. All five are young Palestinian men living within a few hours of each other, but in such a different state and considered in such a different way. Jarious, Alaa, and the others sang the words of their favorite Um Kalthoum, Fairuz, and Abdel Halim songs – the icons of classical Arabic music – with such passion, joy, and ownership, but in Arab countries they would be considered sellouts by many on the basis of their Israeli citizenship. In Israel, on the other hand, the allegiances of Israeli-Palestinians are generally questioned, and some undetermined number of Israeli Jews regard them to be Palestinians, no different than Shadi.

Shadi, meanwhile, is considered a Palestinian by everyone. From the conversation both nights, though, it seemed as if his main concern was trying to figure out from Wisam (a future lawyer) how he could get an Israeli ID for his mother, who was married to a Palestinian with an Israeli ID. Wisam told him it would cost $4,000, an incredible sum for Shadi, but something that any of the other four sitting there would be able to afford with some saving.

There is a lot of stove piping here. Very different lives – whether it is Palestinians and Israeli Palestinians, the Russian Israelis and Sephardic Israelis at the beach, or Israelis and Jordanians even – occur in close proximity to each other, but do not necessarily intersect. In my case, this past weekend, there was a nice intersection. All five of these guys welcomed me for who I am, without bias against my religion and nationality. And there were more jokes about how good pork tastes (directed at me, Shadi, and Wisam) than I’ve heard in my life.

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PS, I want to plug Biankini Beach, a nice, relaxing, and clean place with great breakfast and a nice staff. If you go, tell them I sent you.

Samer and Zion

French Hill, Jerusalem – “Erev Tov,” I said hesitantly, my hand on the open windowsill of the white cab. “I’m going to the Germany Colony.”
“Ok,” replied the cab driver in Hebrew, as he waved me into the car. He was in his late 20s with receding black hair. Parenthesis-like smile lines framed his face.
“How are you?” I asked, searching the rearview mirror, dashboard, and ashtray for ornaments that would signal his religion or language preference.
“Good,” he smiled, bobbing his head to the side, and shifted gears.
“Good, I’m going to Rahel Emeynu Street.”
“Ok,” he smiled and nodded his head again, tilting it toward his right shoulder. We lapsed into silence, cruising through the Jerusalem evening, past the Old City’s walls, a view of the Dome of the Rock jutting out over the Muslim Quarter, past the New Gate and to a stop at the Jaffa Road streetlight. The cabbie pulled a tin of candies from his front pocket, ate one, made to return the tin to his pocket, but then asked (in Hebrew), “Would you like one?”
I smiled. I usually don’t accept candy from strangers unless they ask three times, but took one and replied, “thank you.”
I looked at the driver again, trying to find some confirmation beyond the stereotypical generosity, but there wasn’t anything there to help me. So I just asked him Arabic, “Do you speak Arabic?”
“Yes,” he replied in Arabic, smiling, skeptically.
“Can I ask you a question?” I continued. He seemed like an affable guy, and I thought it might be my big chance to crack the code.
“Please” he said in Arabic.
“I’m having a problem. When I enter a cab, I don’t know whether to say “Boker Tov’ or ‘Sabah al HHear.’ Is there a way I can know whether to speak in Arabic or Hebrew?”
He laughed and pointed to a little white sticker with blue Hebrew writing above his safety belt. “Look for the driver’s name, it is written here.”
“Ahh, usually I look for a David’s star or a hamza,” pointing to the mirror. “Or I’ll listen to what music is playing, but it is hard to know.”
“Listen, 80 percent of the cab drivers are Arab. Unless you’re in Rehavia or the German Colony or a place where there are only Jews, most of the time he’s an Arab. Sometimes, drivers wear a kipah,” he explained as he patted his head. “They’re scared and they don’t want people to know; maybe they won’t want to get in.”
He shrugged and I smiled and shook my head. “What a strange place.” A moment later I called out “Allah ya’tik al afya,” and he pulled over.
We shook hands, “What’s your name?”
“Samer.”
“My name is Ben.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nicer to meet you. See you, in’sha’allah.”
“Ma Salaama.”

So, this morning, running late, I hopped into a cab and blindly launched into Arabic with the driver, a middle-aged, tan guy with black and silver hair. As I said, “Good morning, I’m going to Agron Street,” I noticed that he had a black kipah resting on top of his head.
“Ok, come on,” he replied in Arabic, not missing a beat.
“Let’s use the meter,” I continued.
“Ah, why don’t we say 20 Shekel?”
That is five shekels less than what the meter would cost (four Shekels is a dollar); I enthusiastically agreed. Something was strange, though. We were speaking Arabic, but he was wearing a kipah and wearing shorts.
“Where on Agron Street?” he asked in Hebrew, enunciating each syllable.
Tired and ambivalent about taking a principled Arabic language stand, I told him where, in Hebrew. We chitchatted a little more; he asked me where I was from and what I was doing here, and I explained, all in Hebrew.
“But you speak some Arabic, no?” He continued. “You spoke to me in Arabic.”
“Yeah, I speak Arabic. Where are you from?” I asked, trying to determine if this was a well-disguised cabbie or what.
“I’m from Iraq, we’re Iraqi Jews.”
“And where were you born?
“Here, in Jerusalem,” he stated emphatically. “I was born here, we all lived here, all the Jews from Iraq. I live in Pisgat Zeev now. I grew up here on that street” as he pointed out my window.
“And you speak Arabic?”
“Of course!” He exclaimed. “We grew up speaking Arabic, with our family. Look, we used to be friends,” his voice rising. “We would go to each other’s houses and weddings and we would visit one another,” he lamented. “All the time, we would go to Nablus and Ramallah. We would just drive there. We would shop there.”
“What about now?”
“No, we don’t see each other anymore,” he shrugged. “Sometimes we ask or hear about this one or that one, but everything changed. It is a mess.”
“What changed?”
“From 1988, the generations – not just them, but us too – they’re filled with hatred. Hatred. We were friends, but not this generation,” he said as he shook his head.
“Have you visited Iraq?”
“No, my parents lived there, a long time ago. The Americans, you don’t like the Iraqis.”
“How do you mean? Because we went to war or because we want to leave?”
“You don’t deal with them well. You kill them.”
I’m much better speaking about Iraq in Arabic than Hebrew. As I considered a response, he asked, “Where are you from in America?”
“Pittsburgh, it is in Pennsyl – ”
“Pittsburgh! I know Pittsburgh, I was there.”
“Really? When were you there?”
“I took a Greyhound trip from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles in 1990. Three days we were on the bus! We stopped in Pittsburgh, for an hour. We had a rest. I went outside of the station and walked around and looked around.”
“It’s pretty, no? The rivers downtown and the hills.”
“Yes, I took pictures. I remember there was a [cable car], like at Masada, that goes up the hill. I just showed the pictures to my son a couple of weeks ago,” he said with a big, nostalgic smile.
“That’s great! Wow, three days on a bus. That’s a long trip.”
Laughing, “Yeah, it was long. We started at 2AM on one day and didn’t finish until 6AM three days later. And then we had to come home early because of the war. They told us all to come home because of the war.”
We pulled up to work, “this is good, here, thank you. What’s your name?”
“Zion.”
“My name is Ben. Nice to meet you, Shabbat Shalom,” and we shook hands.
Smiling, thinking about the incline in Pittsburgh, perhaps, Zion said, “Yes, Yes, Shabbat Shalom, see you.”

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A few more pictures from the Old City:

Living on A Seam

East Jerusalem – A week ago, on my first evening here, I walked to a nearby coffee shop at the Hebrew University. It was 6:30 PM, and I wanted to drink tea outside and stay awake a couple more hours. With Shabbat fast approaching, the campus was almost entirely deserted. A dark haired student in a tight black shirt waited for a ride in front of the (closed) Aroma Café. It seemed like she’d been forgotten, sadly waiting to be picked up for Shabbat dinner with her family. A shorter dark haired student came around the corner and called out in Arabic, “What are you doing? How long are you going to sit there waiting?” They laughed and began a rapid conversation.

The next day, I went to the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. Descending into the Old City through Damascus Gate, I passed toy, vegetable, and shoe vendors who had lined the staircases with goods; child touts hollered prices.

At the Central Café, a spot along the way to the Al Aqsa Mosque, I drank a Turkish coffee. Like at any café in Egypt, men sat inside smoking hookahs and playing cards. Outside, however, Hasidic Jews with curled sidelocks and black hats passed Muslim fundamentalists coming from the al-Aqsa compound. The Fundys wore flaming beards, similar to their Jewish counterparts, but instead of black coats, they wore gray thobes that just brushed their ankles. Short thobes are a sign of modesty before God; men would have to stoop for their thobes’ edges to touch the ground, not show their ankles, and avoid looking silly. These men walked with regal posture, though, seemingly showing off their black socks and lace tied shoes. Between the Hasidim and the Fundys, tourists streamed by my perch. They wore shorts, fanny packs and sunglasses, and spoke Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Russian, or English.

At the café and throughout the Old City, I tried to speak with locals in Arabic. To my frustration, they mostly replied in Hebrew, mistaking me for an Israeli. I’ve practiced my poker face in return, pretending not to understand. The language issue is interesting. With the same assuredness that Americans approach the world in English, Israelis walk around the Old City speaking Hebrew. On Saturday, I listened to an Israeli tourist ask a shopkeeper how much a ceramic bowl cost, and the shopkeeper responded in Hebrew. The tourist moved on and the shopkeeper sat down on a stool and continued his conversation, in Arabic, with his friend in the stall next door. The other night, I took a taxi home from work (downtown and in West Jerusalem) and negotiated the price, in advance, in Hebrew with the driver. On the ride home, the young, dark driver spoke on his phone, in Arabic, to a friend. Like the girls outside of the University, I had no idea that his native language wasn’t Hebrew until he started speaking Arabic.

Despite the overlay of Hebrew and other things Jewish (like the Hasidim), East Jerusalem and the Muslim Quarter feel like an Arab place. Just a few blocks away from Jaffa Gate, though, in West Jerusalem, there is a different world. Last night, walking home from work, I jaywalked across Jaffa Road. Immediately, a policeman, who looked like Moshe Dayan but without the eyepatch, approached me and demanded, in Hebrew, to see my ID. I showed him my passport, and he said, in English, “You crossed the street when the light was red.”

“Yes, I did. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t believe that this was an issue and was wondering why I was being hassled.

“Why did you do that?” he replied, his “th” sounding like a “z.”

“Well I looked both ways and didn’t see anything coming, so I crossed.” I said with a smile, amazed that this was really about jaywalking and not a “random” security check.

“You crossed and the light was red,” he said again, with a frown, not amused. He thumbed through my passport, stopping on the page with a UAE stamp.

“I didn’t look at the light, I’m sorry,” I said, wanting the interview to end.

“Don’t do that again.” He ordered me, handing back my passport and searing me with his pale blue eyes.

Except for the speeding between green traffic lights, West Jerusalem is orderly. They have the rule of law here, meaning there are laws and people follow them, whether it is out of a sense conviction or a fear of consequences. There are cameras at intersections, and they send you a ticket, I understand, if you speed through a red light. So, ironically, in a city known for its tension and pressure, people come to a stop in their cars when they see a flashing green or yellow light. Or if they are walking, they wait patiently for the little green man to appear before crossing the street. A few blocks away, in front of Damascus Gate, you can cross the street whenever you want - it is just at your own risk.


A block away from my interview with the traffic police, security guards and metal fences surrounded a big square. Inside the fences, nine or ten 3-3 basketball courts with portable backboards had been set up. It was “Streetball, 2007,” and roughly a hundred kids, ages 8-18, in different colored jerseys battled it out, Hoop-It-Up style.

I joined fans and family after passing through security and answering the guard in Hebrew that I didn’t have a weapon. With tip-off, the speakers blared “Eye of the Tiger” and Israeli streetballers of all shapes and sizes -- wearing kipot and tzi-tzit, sporting dreadlocks, and wearing Michael Jordan armbands and baggy shorts – pounded on each other, in Hebrew, under the watchful eyes of referees who seemed to be playing hard to get. It was hockey meets basketball, and the phrase “no blood, no foul” was never more appropriate. It looked like fun, though, and I missed playing ball for the first time in two years.

After watching a couple of games, I continued home, past a crafts store filled with orthodox Jewish women and through an arched gateway that framed Jerusalem’s walls and Mt. Zion. I walked down the hill and a black man in a habit, perhaps a Coptic priest, stepped out of the New Gate on my right. I proceeded through the gate and then made a left into the heart of the Christian quarter. Above me, an old couple sat on a balcony drinking tea. I wondered for how many years, or perhaps how many generations their family had lived in the Old City. Winding my way through the Christian Quarter, I passed ceramics and wood sculpture shops that were still open, but not expecting business. There was still another hour of light, and maybe there would be one last sale for the day, but it seemed more like a time for an evening sit with neighbors.

I’m going to my cousin’s up north for Shabbat tomorrow and I wanted to bring him some pastries. As I wrote about in Live from Jordan, I faced a similar task four years earlier – searching for Kosher pastries in the Muslim Quarter. Having crossed into the Muslim section of the Old City, I first stopped at a bakery where a middle-aged man with a warm face asked if he could help. I said to him in Arabic, “With all respect, I’m looking for Kosher sweets, I’m going to a Kosher home tomorrow. Do you have any?”

He gently shook his head, and welcomed me to come back another time. I stopped at a second place several stalls down and asked the same question to another baker. Surrounded by homemade baklava, he told me in Arabic that everything he made was hand made, and that his boxes did not say “Kosher.”

As I wondered whether I should buy some nuts instead, I felt a measure of satisfaction with my failure. Not only was I being answered in Arabic, but strangers were respecting my cousin’s religious redlines and not trying to sell me a false bill of goods. I came upon a third store, and it might have been the same store where I bought the pastries four years earlier. A young friendly man in glasses proudly showed me a box of chocolate ruggelach that had come from Tel Aviv and that was marked Kosher. I bought a kilo of Kosher pastries from him, and we traded small talk in Arabic about our favorite spots in Amman.

This roughly stitched seam that I cross everyday, which is filled with tourists, pilgrims, believers, and everyday people doing their thing, is fascinating. You can literally see and hear where two worlds separate, or perhaps come together. As I hail a cab in my neighborhood, study the car’s dangling windshield ornaments, and try to guess whether I should say “Merhaba” or “Shalom,” I’ll keep you posted.

"What if you were a woman?"

A train, somewhere in Delaware – “What if you were a woman, would you have been able to have the same experiences?”

I’ve been asked that question at book talks, repeatedly. Sometimes the questioner is a concerned mother. Other times it is a woman my age who read Live from Jordan and asked herself at the anti-American protest in Aleppo or in the moonlight of the Western Desert in Egypt, “what if that was me?”

Reading Lolita in Tehranis a bestseller and I can’t go anywhere without seeing Khalid Husseini’s new book. The lives of women and the treatment of foreign women in the Middle East are subjects of popular interest. On both of these issues, I’ve found that American women have negative impressions. In a Miami bookstore, a reader told me that we had to liberate the women of the Middle East; their status was the equivalent of slavery in the United States. At a book club in Washington, we discussed whether certain rights are universal and whether Betty Friedan and the women’s movement in America should have an impact beyond our borders, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

If Saudi women had the right to drive, though, how many would want to get into their cars by themselves and zip over to Starbucks for a latte?

I don’t know.

There is a “women’s only world” in the Middle East that I know little about.

My life in the Middle East was spent mostly in the company of men. As a man, I was able to do certain things like camp in the desert by myself or stay in dodgy hotels without worrying about the underlying sexual connotation or the personal safety that a female traveler has to consider.

I was also able to be a fly on the wall in a way that I don’t think is possible for a female foreigner. I’d talk with other men late into the night in coffee shops. If a foreign woman was there, she was the center of attention and the topic of conversation, for everyone there. In a male only setting, though, conversations ranged from politics and work to sex. Frequently, after the usual topics were covered, my otherworldliness would recede and other conversations that didn’t include me would sprout up. It gave me the chance to listen.

If I were a woman, I don’t think men would have spoken about sex with me. More importantly, I don’t think they would have spoken to a female in such an unguarded way, in such a public venue. People would take care with their words and topics of conversation. There would be a question of personal boundaries and whether something more – in either a sexual or fairy tale kind of way – was on tap.

Along these lines, I got to know young men and their problems. In one-on-one conversations, I gained an understanding for the issues my peers faced, whether it was affording marriage or getting a decent job. It is possible that these same young men would have been as open about their vulnerabilities with women, but more likely that they would have hid them out of insecurity, or not felt comfortable talking with a foreign woman at all. As a man, while I had access to a segment of society and enjoyed a kind of carelessness, I also missed out on an entire world that remains a mystery to me.

In my first week in Amman, I was walking up a set of uneven steps in a poor neighborhood downtown. I was lost and sweating through my shirt when a couple of young women in their early 20s popped out of an alley and passed me. They were wearing hijabs and jilbabs (overshirts that reach the ground), chatting, and were oblivious to my clumsy presence. As they descended, I turned and snuck a peak, catching a glimpse at a jean-clad leg and stylish black boot emerging from the bottom slit of one of the ladies’ jilbabs.

“Gadzouks!” I yelled to myself. “They’re wearing jeans under there!”

In the time that I lived in Jordan, I learned that there was much more than meets the eye, on all subjects, but the story of that peek at a jean-clad leg is a symbolic for how I felt about the world of women. I had female friends and I asked questions and had conversations with women about their lives and what they wanted, but the “women’s only world” remained a secret world to me, a foreign man. My Mom entered it when she visited and told me--to my dismay and envy--that the couple of hours she spent in the University library speaking with female students were the most comfortable and safest she felt in Jordan. Rggh.

So, I’ve asked several women I know, Americans who have traveled throughout the Middle East, and women from Arab countries to offer comments on their experiences as either foreigners or residents in that secret world. We should have comments rolling in this week. I’d welcome other, unsolicited comments, too. Thanks-

Book Clubs and "the Other"

Adams Morgan (still waiting to leave) – It was the first book club that I’ve visited, a group of six women with thoughtful questions. Before that evening, I’d only appeared on radio shows and at bookstores where people were interested in Live from Jordan’s substance but they wanted a taste of the milk -- i.e. some anecdotes and analyses -- before buying the cow.

Some people aren’t milk buyers, though. They sip in the supermarket (Borders) aisles and stop off at their neighbor’s or friend’s for a glug glug. Well-meaning people have told me that they thought my experience sounded “so interesting,” and that they were going to “borrow” Live from Jordan from the library or a friend. Don’t get me wrong, I have a message, and I’d like to spread it like cream cheese on a Sunday morning garlic bagel. But come on -- I’m 31, this is my first book, and I need to sell some copies. If you like the arts, support the artists. And yes, I’m using the term “artist” loosely.

I’m fascinated by the concept of book clubs, though. They are women’s answer to poker night. Groups of women choose a book to read, actually read the book, and then discuss it in detail over drinks and finger foods. I suspected something else might be going on (secret NASCAR watching, perhaps) but at both of the book clubs I’ve visited, there was thought provoking conversation and no mention of Jeff Gordon.

The best thing about the book club conversations is that everyone has read the book and there are challenging questions about the Middle East and my experience. You can really get in depth on some of the nuances.

At this book club visit, Jeanette, an African-American lawyer, asked me whether my experience living as “the other” in Jordan had given me insight into the experience of blacks in America. I’ve thought about this subject a lot, but had yet to speak about it in public.

When I was living in the Arab World in 2002 and 2003, I hid my Jewish identity for both security and for professional reasons. In Jordan especially, because of the absence of Jewish history (compared to Egypt or Syria), there is little distinction made between Jews as members of a faith and the Israeli army, a reviled institution. On the professional front, I went to Jordan to learn about daily life and people’s viewpoints on political issues, not to be the center of a traveling Talmudic road show, debating details of doctrine – that isn’t my bag. So, out there on my own without official protection, I had to choose how to identify myself to the people I didn’t know and trust. The assassination of Laurence Foley deeply disturbed me; before he was killed, and certainly after, I lied.

When you’re hiding something, as I was, you avoid certain situations. When coffee shop discussions came around to the tenets of Christianity, I redirected questions back to the questioner and Islam. I had many of the same conversations and became adept at the two-step. With the arrival of holidays, I traveled or stayed home, sick.

If you’re black, you can’t hide your skin color, however. So while I thought about being the “other” a lot and transposed it to different contexts, I told Jeanette that I didn’t understand racial discrimination much better. Instead, I think I gained more of an insight into what it is like to be secretly gay in America.

I haven’t read any literature on life in the closet, so this is a complete (and hopefully respectful) stab. I think there are similarities, however, of avoiding certain conversation topics (like relationships), feeling alone when you aren’t participating in events that are the norm for the community, and resenting “forced” participation in these events in order to fit in and not raise suspicions (the prom, college date parties, work events).

There are more difficult situations, too. What happens when people you’ve become friends with say hateful things about gays or Jews? These are your friends, you know that they are generous or kind, but it turns out that they are also ignorant and perhaps hateful.

Worse, what happens when you become good friends with someone and haven’t been honest about who you are? Is there a full disclosure obligation? Such a forced clarification is insulting to everyone. It’s like, “I know we’re friends, but you’re entitled to know that I’m really _____ and you now have the opportunity to excuse yourself from this friendship because being _____ is so terrible that I’m obligated to explain it to everyone I meet and make sure that they have full information before continuing our friendship.” That’s awful, for the friend, too. You’re projecting on to them a desire for a prejudicial escape hatch.

So, I think I gained some insight into living a secret world, but I’m not sure. What are others’ thoughts about the “secret Jew in Jordan” vs. “gay in an American closet” comparison? Also interesting, how does being “the other” openly compare to being “the other” in secret?

Comments welcome, thanks-

Unofficial Ambassadors

Pittsburgh -- About a week and a half ago, Metro published an interview on one of my favorite Live from Jordan topics – the role of Unofficial Ambassadors. “Unofficial Ambassadors” is my own term for American citizens who improve America’s relations with the rest of the world, and the Middle East specifically, by traveling, working, volunteering, and studying abroad.

It was a nice piece; Jason Notte, the Metro writer, wrote a summary of my book and pulled a few questions and answers from our lunch in a Cuban restaurant near Broadway and 51st in Manhattan. The restaurant had terrific espresso, and the food wasn’t bad either, except that Jason ordered a mini-hamburger and it was the size of a carmex lip balm container. He put some ketchup on the burger, and it disappeared. I felt bad for him; he must have eaten an early dinner that night.

For those of you who don’t live in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, Metro is the free newspaper that is handed out at subway stations in the morning. We have one in Washington D.C. too, called the Express – it is like Headline News meets the Washington Post, Sudoku, and a classified section on steroids. It is especially nice for the people who don’t have cell phone reception on the train or who forgot their ipods at home.

Back to the unofficial ambassador interview though, my contention is that we do much better as a country if everyday Americans are the face of America to the Middle East rather than someone official, like Donald Rumsfeld. Not to take away from the efforts put forward by our military and diplomatic corps, but they represent and implement U.S. foreign policy first. Only afterwards are they able to represent the “American people.”

Whoa, how can I make a distinction between the U.S. government and Americans you might be asking? Well, it is true – Americans elect the President and Congress. But, in the Middle East, people separate the American people from the U.S. government. The American people gave the world Martin Luther King, the Matrix, and the minimum wage (I think – we at least get a lot of credit for it). The U.S. government brought you Iraq. In sum, people love Mariah Carey but hate George Bush. If we want to decrease anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, we should play to our strengths – the American people – rather than making everything a discussion of our (perceived) weaknesses, U.S. policy.

So, playing to our strengths, unofficial American ambassadors make us safer in the world for two reasons. First, they demonstrate our humanity. Despite the carnage you see on the nightly news, the killing of innocents is abhorred in the Middle East. When the issue of whether it is okay for al-Qaida to target American civilians is debated in salons and coffee shops across the Middle East, we want people to think of the Americans they know, like, and who have made the world better a better place. We don’t want them to think of our leaders who smirk at them and say in so many words, “we’re strong, you’re weak, and we’ll do what we think is best.”

Second, unofficial ambassadors can play a positive role in helping people in the developing world address the unmet human needs of their communities. Doctors without Borders, Peace Corps Volunteers, scholars, practitioners, and study-abroad students have a lot to offer in their fields of expertise or through their attributes of openness and curiosity. They’re able to travel around, unhampered, and people are willing and eager to accept advice and assistance, especially if there aren’t strings attached. While there isn’t much that American citizens can expect to accomplish on major policy questions in the Middle East, they should get involved in “people’s issues” like education, health, and IT training. One well meaning and knowledgeable person can have a multiplying impact. Just don’t wear shorts, behave like a jerk, or hit on someone’s wife or daughter.

The nice thing about having a platform, even if it is a small one like mine, is that you can say and write things and interested people of all stripes contact you and want to know more. I’ve recently met (in person or over email) high school students, college professors, and other potential unofficial ambassadors of varying interests and proficiencies who want to make connections with their Middle Eastern counterparts but who aren’t sure of where to begin.

Figuring out how to form those linkages in the most productive way seems like a good next step. I’ve been facilitating different connections over the last week and a half, and would be happy to continue. Send emails about what you can offer or what you’re looking for, and I’ll try to point you in a reasonable direction.

Welcome

Pittsburgh – Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East has been out since the start of May. I’ve been receiving a lot of interest and feedback at the “grassroots level” by way of emails, bookstore talks, book clubs, and talk radio/local NPR call-in questions. In a way, it is like the response to the original letters that I sent home from Jordan and Egypt. The New York Times editors may not care less about what I have to say (I still can’t place an oped with them), but people in Wisconsin, South Florida, Utah, and Ohio seem genuinely intrigued.

One of the surprises of this grassroots response is the number of people who have contacted me with questions about traveling or living in Jordan or other parts of the Middle East. Most are in college or just out of college. That’s great news, for everyone involved. There have been a lot of emails, though, and I haven’t been able to keep up as well as I would have liked. So, true to my book, I thought this blog would be a place where I could:

- Answer questions and continue discussions that have arisen from my book
- Continue to write about the intersection of our interests with everyday people and colorful places (in the Middle East, but also in other venues too)
- Respond to travel and living abroad questions and share others' stories too
- Daydream about the upcoming Steelers season, huevos rancheros, and other issues of paramount importance to me

Thanks for stopping by-

Ben

www.benjaminorbach.com
www.myspace.com/benjaminorbach