Dancing Among the Ruins

Interpreting Evidence and O. J. Simpson

2010-07-12T15:31:00.016-04:00

From about 5:00 a.m. until almost 1:00 Monday through Friday I could be found digging up on Area A, part of an ancient city famous as one of the Decapolis cities mentioned in the New Testament. As I mentioned earlier, we were digging down through layers and layers of history and time. We were trying to ascertain what life had been like in this city over the thousands of years of its existence, studying the layers of dirt which offered up clues of major disasters like earthquakes, fires, and floods. In several of my squares I could literally see the black layers of dirt and ashes from long ago fires; and then from early writers such as Josephus, we knew of two major earthquakes that had occurred in the region. Several times the city of Abila had been destroyed in places, knocked on its ass, so to speak (note that this is not an archaeological term, of course). So I'm filling up goofas full of dirt all day, sifting through rubble, finding potsherds and what not from different archaeological occupational periods, wiping sweat from my brow and trying not to think. By now I am majorly missing my daughter (I talk to her once every weekend, as phone calls to the U.S. from Jordan at this time are expensive and difficult to make from the local pay phones), plus I'm counting down the weeks and days we have left before we can call it quits for this dig season! I'm not completely miserable. I mean, I am having some fun, but it is taking a toll on me.

Unfortunately, this summer will go down in infamy for a lot of Americans. We have just recently heard that O. J. Simpson has been accused of allegedly killing his ex-wife (the mother of his 2 children), Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. How embarrassing it is to be an American right now. That blasted TV is killing our reputation! In surreal fashion I got to watch on Jordanian T.V. (in Irbid of all places!) a low-speed 50 mile police chase of Simpson in his white Ford Bronco traveling along the Los Angeles freeways for hours on end until he finally stopped in Brentwood where he lived at the time. This once famous American iconic football star was making world news headlines, not only in the US, but in all the foreign presses as well, and what could any of us say? Stop it; you're embarassing me! Of course this case will drag on for months and months, and what will eventually be even more embarrassing is that O. J. will get off; he'll walk away scot free from a double murder. Even with all the DNA evidence, the bloody socks, the 15 inch German-made knife, the size 12 Bruno Magli shoes, the carpet fibers, the hair strands, the 9-1-1 calls from Nicole, and all the testimonies concerning spousal abuse and her deadly fear of O. J., he will be acquitted. Which just goes to prove that digging through layers of shit to get to the truth does not always get the results you might expect. I guess it depends on how you read the evidence, how you talk it up and present it, which was a lot like what Bill Dever was arguing about in terms of biblical archaeology when he said that bible thumping archaeologists were embarrassing him and other "real" academics with all their so-called "proof" that the Bible must be true! They just saw what they wanted to see and made their interpretations fit!

This same theory could apply to anything or anyone, though, really. We each of us just see what we want to see, believe what we want to believe. Even with all the evidence shouting something completely to the contrary. We come upon something potentially interesting, and like archaeologists (or criminal investigators) we do an initial "surface survey." This is the outward, topmost layer of what we're investigating, what we're looking at, what's easily visible to the naked eye. But when we start digging, we start to unearth artifacts that belong to earlier times, layers that may eventually show evidence of violence, of destruction. Evidence that life may have been turned upside down, smacked on its ass. Evidence of something so majorly catastrophic, that without having dug through the layers would have never even been discovered. Wow! And then there's the stuff we find. What do we do with it? Do we keep it or throw it out? What if it's been tainted? Do we cover it back up? How do we interpret it? What if we're wrong? What if we find out something we don't want to know? What if it suggests something contrary to what we initially believed? What then? Sometimes, and maybe just sometimes, we shouldn't go digging. And then maybe sometimes digging is what's absolutely necessary, and truth, well, it is what it is! Nobody said we had to like it.

Troubles With Some Local Boys Back at Camp

2010-06-28T14:12:00.005-04:00

I can't say I was all that happy to get back to camp, but we had made some friends over the weeks and it was good to see them. We were still complaining up at Area A about all sorts of things, but we were having fun too! Second breakfast seemed to be getting worse. While we looked forward to the 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 break, our boiled eggs and bread were getting old in more ways than one. Jordanian flat bread is delicious when it's fresh and soft, but miserly Dr. Mare would buy it old to start with, and then we'd have to eat it until it was gone. Some days we just couldn't, and on those days we'd take to "Frisbee" throwing the hardened round pieces off the Tell to see how far they'd fly. At least the bread made for some cheap entertainment! J and I regularly bought a brand of Austrian sandwich cookies that we'd have every day out on the Tell, and they'd be our little bit of sweet chocolate that we were missing so very much on this trip. We did eat a lot of fresh tomatoes, but like I said earlier, our "dig" salt was useless, though J did manage to find us our own supply and bring it out to the Tell for 2nd breakfast. We just wanted some decent salt on our tomatoes and cold hard boiled eggs. Still, the daily grind of getting up early, working until 1:00 when it was too hot to even breathe, and then returning to camp and more bad food, awful toilets and showers, and several more hours of camp work before finally getting an hour or two at night of quiet time before flopping down on our foam mattress beds to pass out for maybe 5 hours of sleep before starting it all over again was getting tiresome beyond belief. I felt like I was growing more and more selfish as the days slowly passed. I was beginning to hoard and hide (and read: Not SHARE) salt, cookies, peanut butter, cold water, or anything else that I perceived to be a luxury. If I had been back at home I wouldn't have even cared, but here it was different. Life was hard. These things were MINE, and if anyone else wanted what I had they could go into Irbid and get it themselves! But oh my god! I was acting like a two year old! Or better yet, an amoeba! I thought I was a person who was perfectly easy to get along with, that everyone could like, no problem; but honestly, looking back, I'm thinking in retrospect that I'm probably not the kind of person you'd want to be with in a really bad situation. I can turn really ugly! I might not say anything, or even do anything, but I'd have a big black ugly spot right in the center of my heart! And heck, who knows? If those eight weeks had turned into eight months, I might have taken to actually committing acts of violence! I mean, how well do any of us really know ourselves? Try it. Just put yourself into a really hard situation for a given length of time and see what happens!

Thankfully, there were a couple of people that I felt kindly towards, and they made camp life (and life on the Tell) a little more bearable. However, there were a few people I was growing to hate. For example, there were these two teenage sisters (I think they were around 15 and 17 years old) at the camp whose mom supervised Area AA. She was busy that summer (and from what I gathered, for several summers) having an affair with the Director of Antiquities. While I know that he had two wives, I think he was allowed four, and so pursuing a woman while he was married was not breaking any laws for him (except for the small fact that she was not Muslim!). Several evenings each week he would come and pick her up at the camp in his oversized SUV (which made a statement all its own to the local "peons" that he was very wealthy and important). Who knows what all they'd do, but many a night he would bring her back late, or else he'd hang out himself for several hours before heading back home. And I'm pretty certain that he picked her up on many weekends too. She lived at our camp with all the women and married couples, so I got to witness their comings and goings first hand. Of course, she always looked very happy. He was from a very important, prestigious tribe, and so was "big" in many ways! Unfortunately, (because of this?) her two daughters seemed to think they could do anything they wanted, and so broke every camp rule we had concerning going off alone, and being "friends" with the local boys. It was dig camp policy to not in any way "encourage" the boys' attention, as they would eventually cause disruption of all sorts, which they did. Since these girls were such flirts, and since word spread pretty rapidly that they were "easy," about 20 guys at any given time came from all over the area to our camp to "play soccer" and ogle these American babes. This they would do during our afternoon nap time, which meant that while we needed to keep as much air as possible flowing through our rooms, and thus needed to keep our doors open, there was no way we were going to get any sleep. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. Unfortunately for us, our room on the first floor overlooked the school yard, which became their playing field. And, to top it all off, they were thieves. Personal belongings and money began disappearing while we were away during the day. Warnings went out, precautions were taken, and those two girls were reminded of the rules of acceptable behavior, while their mother was informed of their misbehavior. All, seemingly, to no avail. Apparently, the three of them thrived on male attention!

And if this weren't enough, these same two girls would again, without regards to the culture they were in, walk up and down the road between camps all by themselves without any chaperones. Then they'd get all upset when truckloads of boys would drive by and yell obscenities and throw rotten tomatoes at them! What did they expect? In that culture, especially where we were so far out in the country, teenage girls would NEVER be allowed to walk around without being escorted by an older woman or a male relative. Thus, the assumption was that these girls were "bad." Otherwise, someone would have been taking care to watch over them, and since no one obviously was, there could only be one explanation. Plus they weren't covered! Those shameless little hussies would walk around in short sleeved t-shirts, with no scarves on their heads, sometimes in shorts. In Arab culture they were as good as whores, and so they were being treated as such! The only reason they weren't raped is because they were part of the American group digging at Abila, and as such, under government protection. Just like the story of the guy on leave from the Army who attacked one of the American women several years back, these boys would have been tried, convicted, and sentenced immediately if they would have laid even one finger on those girls, and it was that alone that saved their little butts. Personally, I wanted to wring their necks! Their own mother couldn't keep them under control. Of course, nuts don't fall far from the tree, if you know what I mean! Trouble followed them out to the dig, and while I don't remember exactly what area they were working in (it wasn't ours or their mother's), I do recall complaints being made that boys incessantly hung out too much where they didn't belong because of them. It's sometimes easy to fall back into the archaic thinking that if girls act or dress in a certain way then they are just asking for "it," and thus deserve whatever they get. That's the way it is in most Arab cultures. Males are not held accountable for their deviant behavior. They can't help themselves, after all. I knew that those two girls weren't asking for anything more than some attention, and that they might have wanted that more from their mother (or father). Who knows? But I was sick and tired of their self-centeredness. Their lack of regard for the larger group. And Dr. Mare didn't care because he didn't have to deal with it. So it was just one more thing that became J's problem, and mine. Sometimes I thought this whole dig thing majorly sucked, and that J must surely be insane! Why else would he keep coming back?

A Farewell to Israel

2010-06-21T15:35:00.002-04:00

The next day we had to head back across the border into Jordan, and I was glad. I was ready to leave. This was not my promised land, and I knew that it would take awhile for me to digest all that I had seen and felt, and thought about this place. It's hard to even write about it, to try to capture it, to do it justice when so many people have visited there, many on their own pilgrimages. Millions of visitors to Israel have been spiritually moved by their experiences, so for me to say that I had mixed emotions about it seems almost heretical. But I don't want to lie. I don't even want to exaggerate. Not this. It's too important. This land is a part of my Judeo-Christian heritage, and so it does mean something. It just didn't feel right is all I'm saying. It didn't seem as holy as I expected it to be, or as I wanted it to be. It seemed sick. Like it had been cut off from something living. Its past and its glory were being remembered; it was being excavated, dissected, researched, and written about. It was being cried over, argued over, fought over. But no one can bring that past back! You can dig it up, put it in a museum. You can preach sermons about it. You can teach history lessons about it. But you can't go back. History keeps being made. And now, Israel needs weapons and money to survive. Now, its climate is more political than it is religious. And I guess that's what I felt. And I was ready to go crawl back into my hole at Abila, the one I was digging that dated further back in time to before Moses was called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the "Promised Land;" to before the temple was ever even built; to before Jerusalem was burnt to the ground; to before, before . . what? How far back does one have to dig to find even one civilization that existed before mankind started being so arrogant, so selfish, so greedy, so quarrelsome?

Well, I was headed back across Israel's border again, a border defended by scattered land mines, razor wire fences, and automatic machine guns. What was I even doing here? Learning something useful? Seeing things for myself so that I might become more interested in history, in the Bible, in politics? So that I could go back home, back to my church and say that I had been to the Holy Land? And share what message? Tell people what? In the end, I didn't have to worry because J would take care of all that. Me? I just needed to be still.

Touring More of Israel

2010-06-18T16:26:00.011-04:00

Friday was spent getting to Israel, crossing the border, checking into our room at ASOR, and then walking around the predominantly Arab area of East Jerusalem, close to where we were staying. Saturday was our visit inside the walls of the Old City, and to the Mount of Olives, as well as to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I particularly liked visiting Bethlehem, as it was less crowded. And while it was still hard to imagine Jesus being born in a manger where what is now an underground "basement" area of the church, I knew it had to have happened close by, even if not in that exact spot. And the same with his crucifixion and burial in Jerusalem. As most people are aware, Catholics and Protestants in general disagree as to whether Jesus was crucified at the top of the hill which is now encased inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or a little ways away at the Garden Tomb, which at least looks more likely, whether it is or not.

Now for some reason almost no one was at the Church of the Nativity when we were there, and so we had a much better experience. We didn't have to wait in a single line, which made it easier to get our minds around what had taken place here some 2000 years ago. Of course Bethlehem itself is no longer a small remote village (Bethlehem was not then a Palestinian Territory), and as can be expected, one street close to the church had a row of shops that sold to tourists, and to that end I couldn't help but buy a few souvenirs. In a shop right across the street from the church I ended up buying a bunch of olive wood nativity Christmas ornaments (which I have given out over the years as presents), plus I bought myself one really cool souvenir, something I have worn everyday for the last 16 years since I purchased it -- a thick silver and black band ring with silver flowers adorning it. I call it my Bethlehem ring, and it's a constant reminder to me that Jesus was born into this world in the flesh to save me and all the rest of mankind until the end of time. I especially appreciate it on days when I feel a whole lot like I could use rescuing! When I'm lonely, broken and tired, short of money and short of hope, when I've run out of answers, when I feel no peace! When I need the living waters of grace and love to flow over and through my weary, dried up soul. I need a living God! I need communion with the Divine. I need to let Him do His thing. Get out of His way. Let Him be God. Remember my place in the universe. Remember that my only job is to love Him and love my neighbor. And I need that reminder here, in this strange, holy land. That somewhere in all the mess over here in this part of the world, Christ was born, he lived, he preached, he loved, he laughed, he listened, he got angry, he pitied, he healed, and he wept. Then he was crucified and buried (and it's not important exactly where). But then, he rose. He's not here in this place. He was raised from the dead, and if I can't feel him in all this mess, well, then maybe at night under the stars at Abila, or in the desert, or back at home, or in my car driving along the highway, or at a friend's house, or in the woods, or in a sunset, or on a mountaintop, or at the ocean, or at school . . . Or on my knees. And Christians everywhere are arguing about the details. And the Jews are still waiting for a Deliverer, and the Muslims say that there is only one God and Muhammed is his prophet. And they fight and they hate, and there is no peace.

On Friday, the Muslims go to the Mosque to pray, and it's their holy day; and on Saturday, the Jews go to Synagogue, and it's their holy day; and on Sunday, the Christians go to church, and it's their holy day. And so for three days in a row God gets special recognition from these His children who do not get along with each other. But today is Sunday, and we can easily rent a car and travel, as there is less reverence for this day and everything's open for business. So we get a small car with yellow license plates, meaning our car has been registered in Israel (as opposed to the Palestinians who have white plates) and therefore we can more easily travel throughout Israel, Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements, though we will stand out like a sore thumb in the Palestinian Territories. For the most part, while we will be close to the Gaza Strip when we're at Ashkelon, we will stay away from there, though we pretty much have to drive through Jericho Sunday night after dark, as that's about the only way to get back to Jerusalem. There's no way we can make it back earlier, as we need the entire day to go everywhere we have planned. One of the Catholic priests who was at Abila with us also came to Jerusalem this same weekend (also staying at ASOR, THE place for archaeologists to hobnob), and he spent Saturday with us inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was super cool because he knew all the nooks and crannies of the place, and took us into areas that most tourists do not get to see. (Plus he knew where there was a portrait painting of God the Father, and I had always wondered what he might look like! Well, you know, there are tons of pictures of His son, but none of Him. And not surprisingly, he was depicted as being white, elderly, Anglo-Saxon.) So we invited Father L along with us on our Sunday sightseeing trip, which made me feel a little safer, maybe because he was a priest, or maybe because there was more safety in numbers (and because he was a priest)! Besides, this trip was still not feeling like that much of a honeymoon, so who cared if a priest tagged along!

Now, when I think about all the places we went, I don't see for the life of me how we did all this in one day, so it's possible that I'm a little confused here. I am relying rather heavily on photographs that I took from that year to remind me of everything we did, or otherwise I might get that trip mixed up with others I've taken since. But in any case, I know I'm not wrong about where we went that particular summer. It's just that we might have taken two days to do what I'm about to tell you, instead of one, though in all honesty, J could squeeze more sightseeing into one day than anybody else would ever dream of trying to do! So, if you're not a stickler for an exact itinerary, then we're good. Here goes.

At some point we headed south towards the Dead Sea, though we didn't stop. We drove through groves and groves of date palms, which I thought were quite beautiful; and we drove to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and where I, in typical tourist fashion, took a camel ride (you might say I was suckered into making a fool of myself, which J caught on camera!); then, pointed in some direction or other, we drove through the Judean Desert, where there is absolutely nothing for miles and miles as far as the eye can see (though its magnificence was astounding!); then we turned north, making one quick stop (much to my husband's chagrin) to walk around and peer in the gate at Beit She'an (only one of the finest archaeological sites in the country!) and then continued on towards the Sea of Galilee (or, Lake Kinneret) and Tiberias, where we visited the Church of the Bread and Fishes and the Church of the Primacy of St. Peter, places where Jesus fed 5000 pilgrims with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish, and the spot where Jesus made Peter the "Shepherd of his People." Of course we ate lunch overlooking the sea, each of us ordering the famous St. Peter's fish, which comes on your plate complete with head and bulging eyes looking straight at you; never mind that you have to skin and fillet the darn thing before you can begin eating it. WAY too much work! Oh, and I almost forgot -- you do get fries with that! (I want to comment here that, really, everyone should try it at least once just so they can say they've had the same fish from the Sea of Galilee that Peter and the other disciples caught, and that which Jesus multiplied, even though in my opinion it's much too salty besides its being generally overall disgusting! Sitting across the water on that steep bank listening to Jesus speak, I would have probably asked if I could just have more bread, please! Sorry. But I doubt if I'm the first person who has not liked it!)

Okay, after our delightful lunch we took a boat ride on the sea, but because we couldn't wait around for more tourists to show up, or afford our own private tour, we ended up on a boat full of Arabs having some sort of party celebration -- music, dancing, and the works! I have to say that all this gaiety detracted quite a bit from my ability to just sit in awe and reflect on the significance and profundity of where I was! Aargh! We did, however, experience a very nice breeze and lots of waves, which aided me in better understanding how rough the sea could get, and thus how scary it might be if a person or persons were on a small boat like the ones used for fishing during Jesus' time. From our boat, once we crossed the water, we could see the Mount of Beatitudes (where Jesus delivered his sermon on the mount) and Capernaum (where Peter lived and where Jesus might have preached in the synagogue). During our little venture I tried hard several times to picture Jesus walking on the water, or sleeping in a rocky boat as Peter and the gang became terrified out of their wits by a storm that had very quickly brewed up on the sea; but, alas, Arab music and everybody's loud talk and laughter kept disturbing my imaginings. This is what happens when you're poor and trying to save money but still see and do as much as possible. But all in all, it was way better than not going. Once we were happily deposited back on land, we drove around to the other side of the lake where we could see the Golan Heights up over our heads, as we made our way to a Kibbutz where Father L knew some "Kubbitzniks" (people who live and work on a Kibbutz). From there I think we must have driven back to Jerusalem by way of Jericho (which I do recall, as it was close to midnight, the roads were desolate, and I was sleepy and scared!).

But this is why I think we might have spent two days touring: at some point we drove with Father L along the Jordan River. I know this for certain because we stopped at a nice quiet spot and Father L blessed my new Jerusalem cross, the one that I had just purchased. I figured, why not, as the water from the Jordan is supposed to be holy, and people use it to bless all sorts of things, and while I wasn't Catholic (though I was once for a very short time back when I was 18), I figured that it wouldn't hurt to ask the priest I had right there with me to do me the honors, which he graciously did! And now, while I remember the sun setting on us at the Kibbutz, I also remember J and I driving to Ashkelon and watching the sun go down there over the Mediterranean Sea as we ate dinner.

I realize that I am rather confused by our long weekend getaway, but let's not forget that I was a tad worn down, both physically and emotionally, and squeezing so much activity into my every waking moment made my days seem to more or less run together. But I do recall how perfectly that sunset dinner inspired feelings of romance, though I have no recollections of anything happening once we got back to our room. Now HOW could I have forgotten THAT?

Jerusalem, The Holy City

2010-06-15T18:38:00.006-04:00

So there I was in Jerusalem! I suppose most people would love to go there at some point in their lives, and I too was happy to be there, and to have such an experience before I had even turned 40 (I was still in my mid thirties, which now seems like a baby!), but I was starting to get really pooped out! I was on the adventure of my life and here I was, completely exhausted! But, as my beloved J would often say, "You can rest when you're dead." Or maybe that was "rest when you get back home" and "sleep all you want when you're dead." Whatever. So, once we were dropped off at ASOR, we went in, said our hellos to the staff, and found our room. I might have sat down for one minute (probably on the toilet, which is sometimes a good place to just sit and rest, and because I could seeing how these were western toilets!). But alas, there was only so much time, and lots to see, so off we went!

ASOR is situated in the Muslim section of Jerusalem, which having just arrived from Jordan, made me feel right at home as we ventured out into the streets. Not too much new too quickly. But for those of you waiting for me to begin a diatribe about how holy and godly the whole place was, here's the thing -- I know that many tourists (millions maybe?) go to Jerusalem every year because it's supposed to be one of THE most holy cities in the world. For Christians, for Muslims, and for Jews. And I'm certain that it once was and still is, I guess, but in all honesty (and it scares me to be this honest, and has even caused me a bit of writer's block), I never felt its "holiness." Not once. I felt, instead, its lack (or loss) of holiness. Maybe this was because I was tired. Maybe I was in some sort of culture shock and my system was on sensory overload. Maybe it was because I was a new convert and didn't have the right attitude. I don't know. I WAS fascinated, though, if that counts. We walked all around the area we were staying in that first evening before heading back to our room. We even "toured" the ASOR complex, which was exciting as well, as some very famous 20th century archaeologists have stayed there. Let me just drop some names right here, as I was feeling closer to them than to God (at least for the time being): William Foxworth Albright, Nelson Glueck, Cab Calloway, Hershel Shanks, Bill Dever, Al Hoerth, Larry Stager, John Pinkerton, Eric and Carol Myers. I'm leaving out lots of people, both dead and living, I know, but, like I said, I'm no archaeologist, so I'm impressed with myself that I know the names of even these (plus, I'm using the term "famous" loosely, as you may or may not be guessing). But most of these esteemed men and women have passed through these same doors and have eaten and slept in this same place. And here I was! I even had the most delightful chat with Bill Dever's ex-wife one morning out in the courtyard. She had much to say about her ex, and though I see she's currently typing up his manuscripts and papers for him again, at that time she had very little nice to say about him! (You know, all the other women and all. Typical egomaniacal male prowess.) And besides, Bill Dever's an ex-Church of Christ guy (his dad was a preacher) who became so disillusioned with Christianity that he almost single-handedly dispelled the notion of "Biblical Archaeology," though he had to retract a little of what he said since both interest in archaeology and funding by church people began drying up. Jerk! Okay, enough of that! All of that was my own interpretation anyway (I'm thinking I need to say that for legal protection. I don't know.) What I'm really doing here is putting off the inevitable explanation as to why I didn't like Jerusalem all that much once I got there. And yes, I was a little mad that I couldn't feel all that impressed by it!

Here's what I saw: I saw lots and lots of people, everywhere. Up and down the streets, Arabs, Israelis, European Jews, New York City Jews, tourists, "pilgrims." And I saw an ancient city built on top of an even more ancient city, now quartered off by different religious sects. In the Christian Quarter I heard voices whispering that under this glass lay a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on, while a piece of the stone that sealed his tomb lay under another; In the Jewish Quarter I saw men and women, who were separated by gender, placing their prayers on folded paper into the cracks and crevices of a wall, tears streaming down their faces as they cried for a Deliverer, mourning the destruction of the Temple Mount, or who knows what, some with phylacteries wrapped around their arms and foreheads, reminding them to stay close to the law; I stepped over vendors' wares as they were lined up and down the Damascus Gate, selling everything from food to underwear to hats to jewelry to cheap souvenirs; J and I bartered with a shopkeeper for an olive wood nativity set and a silver Jerusalem cross as we walked along the Via Dolorosa where we were followed by young Arab boys who wanted to "give" us tours. (One kid over at the Mount of Olives even wanted me to pay him for an olive leaf he had handed me, but I flung it back at him, telling him he could just keep it!)

Back inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre my nose and lungs were filled with the smells of body odor, mixed with the smoke of lighted candles and incense that hung thick in the air, as people stood in long lines, shoving and yelling, or else whispering and praying their rosaries quietly, crying as they knelt beside erected shrines made of gilded saints. In the Muslim Quarter, the Dome of the Rock was closed off due to recent Israeli and Arab conflicts, so that no one was allowed to visit, as there had been "trouble" of some sort earlier. We could see the renovated cupola of the Mosque of Omar, gleaming gold with the pride of King Hussein, Protector of the Holy Shrines, the place where Mohammad ascended into heaven, and the hill where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed. While outside the Damascus Gate I saw soldiers lined up, cocking their guns in preparation for a trip to Gaza. Everywhere outside the walls of the Old City I saw guns. I have experienced so much more holiness in so many other places I have been, and while I wanted to experience it here, and so many people seemed to be able to, I just couldn't! All I could think of were the words of Jesus (Mathew 23:37 and Luke 19:41-44) who wept as he looked out over the city, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How I have longed to gather you up like chicks to a hen, but you were not willing. If you in your turn had only understood on this day the message of peace! But, alas, it is hidden from your eyes!" And that was what I felt. Separation, sorrow, and discord.

Crossing the Border into Israel

2010-06-13T19:48:00.005-04:00

During the dig Dr. Mare gave the volunteer workers one long weekend off, so J and I took advantage of it to make a quick trip to Israel. While we were in Amman the weekend before, we had gotten our visas (at the consulate over by the multi-storied mall complex), as we would not be entering from the US, and so were set to go the following weekend. I cannot begin to say how excited I was to make this journey, though I was a little scared as well. We were going to cross the Jordanian/Israeli border at the Allenby Bridge (though why we did not cross further north at Beit She'an, or the Peace Bridge, is beyond me), and there was trouble brewing in Israel, as there so often is. I had heard stories about how the Israelis often pulled individuals aside and questioned them as to where exactly they were going in Israel and what they planned on doing, and why. I had heard of people getting stuck at the border for days while their passports and luggage were both taken from them. I also knew that we were not allowed to take any pictures at the border. I felt unbelievably queezy about leaving Jordan, where I had begun to feel somewhat safe and comfortable. But still, bible studies had taught me to think of Israel as the promised land, the land of milk and honey, the land God had promised the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Deuteronomy 34:1-6) when he chose Moses to lead them out of Egypt, though God never allowed Moses to go in because of his arrogance and disobedience. Fortunately, God did allow Moses to see it from Mt. Nebo in Jordan, where years later I also would catch a glimpse of the panoramic view of the Promised Land. But now here I was, fearful that I, too, might not be allowed in! What is your destination? Jerusalem. Where will you be staying? At the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR), in the Old City. For how long? Three days. For what reason are you visiting Israel? We're tourists. What were you doing in Jordan? We're on an archaeology dig. We got some time off. Do you want your passport stamped? No, thank you; we will be returning to Jordan. Had we had them stamped, we would not have been allowed to reenter Jordan, nor would we have ever been allowed into Syria (who still refuses to recognize Israel as a nation, and while we weren't certain our travels would ever lead us there, we were hopeful, and one never knows anyway what the future holds in store), and so, instead, we opted to have a single piece of paper stamped and slipped in between the pages of our passports. This, I felt regret over, as mine eventually got lost, and to this day, after many trips to Israel, I still have no actual "proof" that I have ever been there except for pictures I have taken and souvenirs I have purchased. (I have never entered from there, but have always crossed over into Israel from Jordan, and have always left by way of Jordan or Eilat, Egypt.)

Surprisingly (at least to some), was that the Israeli and Palestinian flags were both flying high at the border crossing, which indicated that some headway was being made in regards to their peace treaties, though much remained unsettled (as it still does today!). Peace talks had begun in 1991 in Oslo, and in 1993 Israel and the PLO had announced their agreement to negotiate Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and the Jericho area, as well as the Gaza Strip, though still by 1994 Israel had yet to fully pull out of all of these territories. Because of all the changes and unrest (there were still plenty of uprisings and terrorist attacks), crossing at the Allenby Bridge into Palestinian territory was a little more "adventurous." Of course we had to leave our Jordanian transportation, cross the border on a shuttle bus, and then make new arrangements to continue on the Israeli trek of our journey. All of our luggage, as well as our persons, had to be inspected by armed customs officers, and then, of course, both transit and bank fees had to be paid. (This is the hardest, most expensive, and scariest country I have ever entered or exited.) Thankfully, a sherut (shared) taxi was sitting there waiting for visitors who hadn't made prior transportation arrangements, though the driver would not make the trip with only the two of us, so we had to wait until there were at least three more people needing a taxi. Before we departed we all had to be clear on and agree to the fare, then wait as the luggage was loaded up, after which we each climbed in, and off we went, a couple of hours later. Finally, we were on our way to Jerusalem, where unbeknownst to me, troops were preparing to storm Gaza. But at that point, I was just glad to be away from where I was!

60s and 70s News Events

2010-04-10T15:33:00.016-04:00

When I entered college at age 25 as a single mom, I wasn't sure about what kind of future I would have; I just knew that I wasn't crazy about the path I was on. Having grown up in the 60s and early 70s in a small town in Appalachia meant that I had never seen the women around me, the mothers of my friends, work at careers. The majority of women had jobs at home as wives and mothers, so consequently I never heard the women around me talk much about anything other than their children, their husbands, housecleaning, cooking, gardening, sewing, shopping, decorating, or what was going on in the community or at church. Of course because of the political times we were living in, conversations at home every now and then would be dotted with comments about what was happening around the world as it had been seen on the local or national news. It was the time of the British invasion, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; and it was also the time of Golda Meir, the 4th Prime Minister of Israel, and the first woman I had ever heard of who had any substantial voice on the political world stage (besides Queen Elizabeth II who acted more as a figure head). Golda Meir entered the living rooms of almost every American on a nightly basis, as she was of great interest to the United States, endeavoring to cement relations with our country and obtain economic aid for Israel. I was young, but I knew that a lot of people in the United States were pro-Israeli, and thus were watching and waiting to see what might happen with this fairly new country that had been formed out of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian territories. The Kingdom of Jordan had been created in 1947, after Britain gave up its mandate to rule Palestine after WWII, while Israel was created in 1948, after large numbers of Jews had fled from Europe to Palestine in order to escape the Nazis, eventually creating a conflict that resulted in the first Arab-Israeli war that began as soon as the last British troops pulled out (though they didn't leave Jordan until 1957). A decade and a half later, and with trouble and fighting continuing, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its more militant cousin, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (or, the Al-Fatah) both formed in 1964. In 1967 Jordan experienced devastation after the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab armies, during which time thousands of Palestinian refugees flocked into Jordan, accepting King Hussein's offer of Jordanian citizenship. In 1969 Yasser Arafat got elected PLO chairman, and in 1974, after terrorist attacks on Israel by the PLO, and after King Hussein clamped down on their growing power, King Hussein finally recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

Besides Vietnam, this region of the world took front and center on the evening news when I was in my formative years. Grownups I knew seemed to be much more compassionate towards the plight of the new Israelis, while they loathed Yasser Arafat, and felt thankful for King Hussein's peaceful inclinations. Something I wasn't aware of, but would learn about much later, was that during this time Jordanian women hadn't as yet been given the right to vote, while Golda Meir, an Israeli woman, was speaking for an entire nation, carrying on discussions with these strong male world leaders in a political climate that seemed as tempestuous and scary to my young mind as did the Vietnam War. Ironically, during this same time there was another woman on the political scene, Gloria Steinem (of German and Jewish descent), who talked about a Women's Liberation Movement. After graduating college with a degree in government, she established herself as a freelance writer, not wanting to follow the long established path of women--that of marriage and motherhood--and then joined other feminists speaking out about issues far too radical and close to home for comfort to most conservative,Christian, middle class Americans, and so who, unlike Golda Meir, was not supported in my parents' house, or by most people I knew. I overheard something about women burning their bras, and that was it. Thus it was that I remained fairly ignorant of the ever expanding choices becoming available to women in America, as the voice of Golda Meir quietly died out in 1974 when she was forced to step down from office to be replaced by a man.
At home in WV, I was transitioning from my freshman year in high school to my sophomore year, and I cared more about dating boys and growing into larger sized bras than what was happening on any political front, whether it was at home or abroad. I was collecting teen idol magazines, dreaming about who I might marry someday, and reading fewer and fewer adventure stories. In fact, my reading eventually turned into more of an addiction to the Romance novel, preferring "adventures" where the female "heroine" finds herself (usually due to a flaw in her own character) overpowered by some strong, ravishingly handsome male abductor who steals her away from her normal yet "boring" life. Over time she begins to fall in love with him until she's finally willing to accept her fate and live alongside him a much less traditional life, if not in a less traditional role. The stories always ended with the heroine in the arms of her lover, and one had only to assume that they lived together "happily ever after" until they died. Oh, how so very much I wanted that to happen to me! During the years I was hooked on reading these novels I hardly watched any television, let alone any world news, though I did set my alarm to get up early enough so that I could witness Diana marry Prince Charles in England. Thank goodness, by the time I was twenty-five (and after several broken hearts, a failed marriage, and one child), I got the opportunity to go to college, where I began a process of education (mostly under the tutelage of female professors) that would open my eyes to the history and plight of women in the United States, all the while discovering that women had indeed been participants on the world stage, actively defying convention both publically and privately! I also began seeing how they had been challenging the status quo all around the world using their voices and their pens! Now, in 1994, here I was walking the streets and countrysides of Jordan, learning to care about a place in the world that had seemed barren at best, and problematic and troublesome at worst, and I suddenly wanted to understand this nation's political history. I wanted to hear the Arab side of the story. Both the men's and the women's. Unfortunately, on this trip I would not hear from any women, although a seed had been planted in me that would, in another decade, find its way into the light.

Weekends in Amman

2010-03-07T21:28:00.013-05:00

The wild, adventurous female side of me, the one who didn't really give a hoot about what she looked like, but who wanted more than anything to go exploring over the whole of the big, wide world, loved these weekend outings! I had read so many adventure stories growing up, and then when I was in college and my reading turned more towards cannonized male authors, I began to dream of living like Ernest Hemmingway, or Jack Kerouac, or Mark Twain, or Henry Miller, being free to travel and come and go as I pleased. To be an observer of and a participant in the world! To be like Amelia Earhart, who flew around the globe before she got lost at sea, or even like Agatha Christie. Of course, I didn't want a lover on every continent, or even one who stayed at home and waited for my return so much as I wanted a lover by my side. One who either showed me the world, or who saw it with me.

And so these weekends in Amman brought out the more spirited side of me as I donned one or the other of the only two clean outfits I had brought with me to change into when I wasn't digging. With my husband I would go walking the streets of this foreign capital city that had evidence of a rich occupational history that went back as far as almost 9,000 years (the city was known as Philadelphia, the southernmost city of the Decapolis, during Roman times), and which was now home to both Arabs and Palestinians alike since 1967. Hailing taxis that would take us exploring around the diverse areas located off of its eight city circles (or major roundabouts), we would visit its many restaurants and cafes and bakeries, its various shopping districts, making a special trip to the suq in the downtown district where interested travelers could buy gold and silver by weight, or to shops where we could purchase in-laid mother-of-pearl boxes or hand-crafted baskets or rugs, or to its more modern area with its multi-storied mall, or to its many museums and galleries, its archaeological sites, or even its grocery stores where we could buy, less expensively, Jordanian teas and spices (especially saffron, which is much cheaper over there than in the US) to take home with us. One afternoon we even went to a local movie theater where Robin Hood: Men in Tights was playing. After we purchased our tickets, we went inside where we were ushered to our assigned seats (which meant we didn't get to sit as close to the screen as we would have preferred). The voices, of course, had been dubbed in Arabic, using English subtitles which we read like with any other foreign film (except that the actors' lips really were moving to English words, so it was a little weird). Halfway through the movie there was an intermission (I think because most Jordanians smoke and needed the break!); again, something Americans are not used to, unless, of course, it is an extremely long Kevin Costner film! Anyway, the movie was hilarious, not only to us, but to the Jordanian movie patrons as well. As I sat there laughing at not only the slapstick humor, but also at some of the more subtle verbal humor, I wondered at how much of it could have possibly been accurately translated into the Arabic language! Even the fact that such a film as this was being shown in a Muslim country demonstrated how much less religiously restricted everyone was in the city (although I have to say, it didn't appear that many men brought dates to that film). But in Jordan everything was different! Everything was exotic! From the storefronts (in the cities and in the villages) displaying outside whatever was being sold inside, from animal carcasses, to tires or mufflers, to kitchenware, to children's clothing, or shoes; from all of the street signs and billboards and menus being written in Arabic (a script I have yet to learn to read, except for the word ALLAH); from the way people dressed, with all the men in their traditional red and white checkered headresses (keffiyehs), while some wore long robes (gumbazs) and sandals, and the women wore their long, sometimes more ornately embroidered robes (thobs), while still other men and women in Amman dressed more like westerners in suits, or slacks and dresses, or jeans (though every woman wore a scarf); from the way taxi drivers honked persistently as they drove, just barely missing hitting each other, screaming out words I didn't understand, and then always saying in English to us how much they wished they could get a visa to go to America. A fiercely masculine culture (and anti-homosexual culture) where young men often held hands as they walked down the street together, and where all men kissed each other on the cheeks when they greeted each other, and where women smoked hooka pipes after dinner along with their husbands and friends. Where restaurants had special seating for men dining alone, keeping them separated from the areas where families dined together, and where women never publicly touched any man, even their own husbands. A culture where there were no copyright laws, and where you could buy any music or movie you wanted if you just waited a minute while the store clerk made a copy for you if it weren't already on the shelf. A culture where you could walk into any drugstore and buy any drug over the counter. No prescriptions were ever needed. A culture where you could never buy alcohol except in fancy hotel restaurants. A culture where weddings lasted a week, where dogs were never kept as pets, and where showing someone the bottom of your foot was a sign of disrespect. All of this I took in and tried to remember and understand. The sights, the sounds, the foods, the smells; the religion, the language, the dress, the culture. It wasn't America, and it wasn't Europe. It was the Middle East, a place I had found myself in (for better or for worse) for eight weeks! And I was falling in love.

ACOR

2010-02-28T17:56:00.015-05:00

As soon as we got into Amman's downtown bus station we would take a taxi to ACOR where we would promptly check into our rooms (usually located down on the basement level), strip off all our clothes and add them to the rest of our dirty laundry which we would send to the laundress for washing (and while there was a small fee for this service, it was well worth it! Whoever did the laundry at ACOR did a marvelous job, as everything came back within hours smelling and looking clean and bleached, softly machine dried, AND neatly folded. Needless to say, I saw this as a reason to never do laundry at camp!). Within minutes of dispensing of both clothes and laundry J would jump in the shower for about 10 mintes, at which time I would follow, an order we agreed to since I usually took longer. And Oooooh, how unbelievably GOOD that hot, steamy water felt as it powerfully sprayed down over my head and body! I could have stood there forever, lathering up, rinsing off, over and over. Plus I could finally shave my legs decently, and generally pamper myself like I could never do at Abila! The showers here were so clean, and there were no spiders or lizards running over the walls. I would have been in no hurry to get out EVER if it hadn't been for the fact that J and I were both usually starving half to death, and here there was the promise of some real food. On Fridays we always skipped lunch at the dig in order to make our early getaway, so after having taken care of one very essential luxury we embarked on another. Upstairs, the main floor housed a large industrial kitchen used to cook all the meals and desserts which would feed weekend visitors a full lunch (the cost of which was included in the price of the stay), and which fed the archaeology teams who were digging nearby, but who lived at ACOR, three meals a day. I couldn't help but feel jealous about how much nicer these dig crews had it than we did at Abila. The difference between their accommodations and ours was like night and day! Oh well. I at least got to experience a reprieve on weekends, something most of our team members were not so fortunate to get, and I clung to this very selfishly, as there were only a limited number of rooms left on any given weekend, and we three had standing reservations!

Fridays at ACOR the standard dinner fare was spaghetti, and we had permission to help ourselves to the leftovers! J would heat up a big pot of spaghetti, while my assignment would be to make a pitcher of freshly brewed tea (shay, in Arabic), which, let me tell you, was a real luxury, poured over tall glasses of an unlimited supply of ice! All week long at the camp I would drink plain water, sometimes refrigerated, but usually not, and even on our treks into Irbid I could barely satisfy my craving for ice, so this became one of my biggest challenges on our outings, especially since I am a huge ice fanatic, something I didn't fully realize about myself until I left the familiarity of my own country. In American restaurants it's no problem to get all the ice you want, so at the Pizza Hut in Irbid, when I saw pictures on their paper place mats of tall glasses of Coke filled with ice cubes, I felt encouraged to try to communicate my desire to have that which I so desperately lusted after in the illustrations. I would point to the picture and use the Arabic word for ice, talj, and then point to myself, all the while shaking my head yes, and saying "I want, please" (biddi, min fadlak) in Arabic. When the waiter would finally understand what I was requesting, there would be great joy, accompanied by lots of smiling and laughing, followed by my eager anticipation of a glass soon to be filled full with ice cubes. But alas, every single time the waiter would return holding up a bag of about 12 individually wrapped frozen cubes, smiling, offering me very graciously, ONE (wahid)? Oh! You would like TWO (itnen)? Ha! This was very funny! Oh, but could I possibly have THREE (talateh)? Asking this always made me feel like a greedy American who wanted everything in excess. But in America ice was not only abundant, it was free! It was just frozen water! Unfortunately, a commodity that was NOT that abundant in other parts of the world, and especially not in the deserts of the Middle East. And while the waiter at Pizza Hut wasn't going to charge me for that ice, and while I'm also certain that he was indeed very happy to serve it to me, I'm also certain that he never understood why on earth I would ever want such a thing in my drink in the first place. How very odd! Apparently, those packages of ice were something the franchise shipped to them, along with those Coke advertisement placemats that were lying out on all the tables, as was the chrome salad bar that just sat in the middle of the floor with a big bowl on it for serving iceberg lettuce salad, something also not available in the Middle East. Either because lettuce didn't ship that well, or because Jordanians don't use lettuce in their salads, or both, that bowl just sat there empty, as did the rest of the salad bar in most areas. A very visible reminder of a piece of American food culture that was out of place here. So I didn't push it. Most of the time I lived with two cubes and felt happy for what I got, always profusely thanking the waiters, repeating over and over in Arabic, shukran, shukran! But at ACOR, why, I had all the ice I wanted! And so J, Tim, and I almost embarrassingly, yet happily, scarfed down our amazingly delicious early evening meal, and then washed the dishes and wiped off the stove and countertops, making certain that we didn't wear out the good graces of the kitchen staff, before heading back to our rooms for a restful nap, setting the alarm clocks for about 8:00 p.m., so as to leave ourselves a reasonable amount of time for an early night on the town.

Living for Weekends

2010-02-10T14:18:00.003-05:00

So it was that I lived for the weekends! Every Friday afternoon as soon as we finished working in the field J, Tim S. (a close friend of ours, and the dig photographer), and I would head out for Amman. It was a rather long trip so J always wanted to get going as soon as possible. What he wanted (and so what we did) was to be first off the dig bus, run into our rooms, grab the small bags that we had already packed the night before, and then quickly head back out to the road in order to catch the next local bus that would soon be passing by on its way into Irbid, timing this just right so as not to miss it. Translated into girl language, this meant no shower, no clean clothes, no makeup, and no way that I could ever look any worse ever in my life if I tried! In guy language this meant, "We can clean up when we get there. We'll have nice bathrooms and showers, real beds, someone to do our laundry; we'll get some real food. So come on, let's hurry up!" Ugh! Guy language is so much more logical! How I felt about how I looked was inconsequential to him, though not to me. Never mind that I had to ride on the local bus looking filthy dirty in my dig clothes and boots, with my hair all messed up, and a dirty face and neck that helped clinch the total look I had going of being a homeless wayfarer, but from Irbid I had to ride (and under different conditions I might have otherwise said got to ride, as these were air conditioned!) on one of Jordan's big hijazi coach buses all the way into the metropolis city of Amman, where people were far more aware of good hygiene and fashion. One thing I learned about Jordanians is that staring is not considered rude behavior. Nor is pointing and giggling. On the hijazi women POINTED at me! How humiliating! Thankfully, I was under the "protection" of a man, but I could imagine them all wondering how any man could possibly want a woman like me. Many of them had only Hollywood picture versions of what American women looked like, so what could explain me? Maybe I should have worn a Canadian flag or something! I felt like I was miserably representing my American sisters, and I was so sorry! But my husband wasn't noticing me either. I seemed to be turning into "one of the guys" on this trip, and while J hadn't forgotten I was his wife, taking excellent care of me, he wasn't exactly thinking about me in the way I wanted him to. All the stress and angst, the poor living conditions and long hard hours (never mind the foam mattresses on concrete floors), combined with the fact that keeping romance alive anyway on a day to day basis with someone you see 24/7, all added up to there being more nights when rolling over and saying "goodnight" was the easiest thing to do. So I was a little touchy! But I was hoping that letting go of my vanity might be a good thing, so I held my head up even higher than I did on the local Irbid buses, and stayed focused on how happy I was to be headed towards the more creature comforts that awaited us when we got to ACOR (the American Center of Oriental Research), a home away from home for American archaeologists.

Irbid

2010-02-07T17:06:00.008-05:00

Whenever we'd go into Irbid I would love it! It was like going on a date. At least it was the closest thing to going on a date as anything had been yet on this trip! This was my honeymoon after all, but my "honey" was more often than not feeling very tired, and very mad at the director most of the time. He hated the separate living arrangements, feeling that those of us at the second school were too isolated from the main dig camp, and he hated Dr. Mare's miserliness. As far as he was concerned, running out of water in the showers was unforgiveable! And in general, he not only felt neglected by Dr. Mare, he also felt like he was basically being treated once again like a flunkie grad student rather than a real assistant. This was his sixth dig season with Dr. Mare, and while he was happy to have been given the title of "Assistant," it was also starting to piss him off, which meant that he was more and more willing to perform a disappearing act on any given afternoon, something I was all too happy to encourage! So at least once every week, either on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the two of us, along with anybody else who just wanted to get away and was game to join us, caught a local bus and rode into Irbid. I loved the freedom of it all, but I would have been terrified to ride into the city on my own. Riding on the local buses was quite an experience in itself. We were coming from a very small village, one of the many that dotted the road going into Irbid. You can only imagine what an odd sight we were to the local men and women riding on the bus, as this rather large American "gringo" and his wife boarded, and then traveled anything but inconspicuously the miles into town. While I always made certain my arms were covered, I did not wear a scarf or anything over my short hair, I barely wore any makeup at all, and I often donned my pants (a clean pair) rather than a skirt, as I had only packed one of those. Lacking a certain amount of feminine appeal, I was much more of an enigma to the women than J. One very obvious aspect that I couldn't help but notice about even the oldest woman whose face was mostly hidden by a veil was her heavily charcoal lined eyes! On these rides into Irbid I would often feel those eyes boring into me, only to be followed by whispers and giggles behind sets of hands, particularly if the women were traveling together rather than with their husbands. (No woman ever traveled alone.) But I would hold my head up high and try to retain as much dignity as I could, as I was, unbeknownst to them, stepping out on the town! Ladies, I was on my honeymoon! (These poor women would have never guessed it!) And to this end, I never felt so happy to "belong" to a man as I felt in Jordan!

Once we arrived at the bus station in Irbid I could escape all the stares and giggles, and walk about more freely, feeling much more like a tourist in the city, and therefore less noticeable. Well, really there weren't hardly any tourists in Irbid, but it was a university town, and there were lots of young people and thus much more hustling and bustling about. J, who loved the adventure of it all, had his own favorite destinations, and one of those was far enough away from the bus station that we had to take a taxi (which in Jordan were mostly older, stripped down, big four door Mercedes, painted yellow). Since food was always J's primary concern, he knew where a lot of good inexpensive local restaurants were located, and depending on how our supply of Jordanian Dinars was holding up, we sometimes first had to make a quick stop at a currency exchange shop. (The rate of exchange at that time was about 70 to 100, which meant that our dollars went a little further there than they did in the U.S., thankfully!) A few doors down from the exchange shop where J liked to go was a restaurant that served the absolute best kababs. For anyone trying out Jordanian food for the first time, and who might not be that adventurous, these are an excellent choice. Jordanians eat meat at nearly every meal, with chicken and lamb being the most popular, and beef coming in third. (Pork is absolutely forbidden.) Shish (which means grilled) were my favorite kababs, and I had no preference over which meat I ordered, as they were all delicious. A shish kabab was made up of chunks of lamb, chicken, or beef with vegetables (sliced onions and yellow, green, and red peppers) threaded onto skewers and grilled. These would be served with a side of yellow rice (given its yellow color by the dye, Tumeric), or with French fries, and pita bread. Most locals would also add to their order taboola, a common salad of diced tomatoes, onions, and parsley. Of course appetizers ( or, mazzat) are very popular in Jordan, with hummous (served with pita bread for dipping) being the singular most popular dish, made up of pureed chick peas blended with tania (sesame seed oil), lemon, and garlic, topped with olive oil and a sprig of parsley. (Our friend, Adnan, who would later come to visit us in Kentucky, taught me how to make hummous during an all evening event that temporarily transformed my home kitchen into a Jordanian culinary school! Something I considered a blessing, being a small town girl from WV). Desserts in Jordan most often tended to be fresh fruit, with watermelon being served more often in restaurants, and on the dig, than any other fruit. Restaurants and bakeries also served amazingly wonderful sticky sweets like baklava, or a popular angel hair pastry, or cookies stuffed with pistachios or dates, but we rarely had room left over for such rich treats. Along with dessert, Jordanian meals ended with either coffee (often flavored with cardamom), served very strong in small cups, or else hot tea, which was also served very strong and heavily sweetened. All around the city of Irbid, on these outings, we would go in search of what would become our favorite dishes, but our most singularly favorite meal, considered more of a "fast food" in Jordan, sold by vendors along the streets (all around the Middle East, actually), and extremely cheap to pick up was either shawarma or falafel. J preferred the former, and I the latter, though we were happy to share with one another. Shawarma is very much like an Arab version of a Greek gyro. It's a rolled piece of flat bread filled with strips of lamb or chicken, smothered in yogurt, while falafel is pita bread (khubiz) stuffed with a mixture of deep fried chick peas, yogurt, spices, and parsley. Some of my other favorite local dishes were mansaf, a traditional Beduoin chicken and rice dish made in a rich yogurt broth, served without utensils, usually in huge amounts from a big communal platter (and though you eat this with your hands, Arabs never use their left hand to eat, as it is considered to be unclean), kabsa, another chicken and yellow rice dish, oozi, basmati (a yellow rice) with roasted chicken, usually served with roasted potatoes, or green peppers and onions, or both, and kibbeh, palm-sized deep fried balls made of a mixture of finely ground lean beef or lamb, cracked wheat, some spices, onions, toasted pine nuts, and olive oil. While we would have variations on these dishes for lunch back at camp, as well as other typical Jordanian fare like mahshi (baked stuffed eggplant), and baba ghanoush (a smashed, smoky, runny eggplant dish in a molasses based sweet and sour sauce), the food never tasted all that good because of the conditions under which our hired professional cooks had to work, and because of the cheaper quality of groceries that Dr. Mare purchased. All of this was quite unfortunate, as I think it hindered a true appreciation of Jordanian cuisine.

In any case, I was in heaven when I was in Irbid, visiting restaurants (and yes, sometimes we'd go to the only American joint in Irbid, Pizza Hut, which tasted so much better to me when I was over there than at home) and grocery stores, shopping for snack foods we could take back to camp to get us through another few days until we could make it to Amman, where we spent almost every weekend.

Middle Eastern Foods

2010-02-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

Besides the unearthing of Artemis, which was a huge boon for everyone (especially for all of us up on Area A), I'd have to say that discovering the many delicious Middle Eastern foods was my next biggest surprise! I'm guessing, though it's probably safe to assume, that by the first time I ever traveled to Jordan everyone else who lived in any large U.S. city, and had any curiosity about foreign cuisine, had probably already been tipped off about the amazing dishes offered by local Middle Eastern restaurants, many of which are tucked away in some quaint corner of their favorite neighborhood. And while I was quick to learn where I might locate such restaurants once I returned home, up to this point food was just another aspect of Middle Eastern culture for which I had no clue! Remember, I grew up eating mostly southern cooking, a lot of fried meat and potatoes, as well as all the other typical American foods. (I will state for the record, however, that when I moved to California I learned to love both Mexican and Chinese cuisine, something we did not have in West Virginia at the time, at least not to my knowledge. I also tried Hungarian, German, and Vietnamese foods, thanks to my mother's boyfriends and husband). Still, experimenting with what I considered "exotic" foods when not in the company of a person encouraging me to do so was out of my range of experience. On the dig, the cooks who kept us fed tried their hardest to make anything American they knew how to make. I can't imagine that our Director encouraged them in this, as I'm not sure he cared about anything other than saving money, but somehow, out of their strong belief in being as hospitable to their "guests" as possible, combined, maybe, with their sense that not doing so could have led to a total revolt on the part of many of the college students who were away from home for the first time, and who were already trying to cope with so many other new experiences and hardships, we ended up eating a lot of cold French fries, served alongside our daily fare of chicken and rice! To any Jordanian who worked in the food industry, the idea was that the majority of young and middle age Americans lived mostly on hamburgers and French fries (don't know where on earth they could have gotten this notion from), but since beef was extremely expensive, having a juicy hamburger just wasn't going to happen (and while I'm not that big a fan of the burger, most afternoons I would have died for one!). In any case, our cooks were so happy to serve us French fries, that in their eagerness to make us all as content as possible, they made up a bunch almost every other day. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume they had to cook, by the time they ended up on the table for our consumption, they were always hard and cold. The salt purchased for the dig was so old that it had no taste, and the ketchup, if you could call it that, was some Jordanian brand, so nobody got that excited, especially since they were sorely missing their much coveted Heinz or Hunt's, whichever was the case! So, each one of us just had to make due with that runny, semi-pastey red liquid they served, or else go without, and afterwards, if we could muster up any graciousness, thank the cooks profusely! At least they tried. I always felt sorry for them because, while they did have experience cooking in large volume, they had to cook for us from a very tiny school kitchen that had only one stove and one refrigerator, and had been constructed to feed only a small number of middle school children. One of the cooks did bring (from her own home) her own hot plate. (Thank god for an extra burner, right?) Another considerate thing they did was that whenever anybody had a birthday, they would try to bake an American cake, topped with icing (which I think someone actually brought one can of from the states). Our American deserts were also very foreign concepts to them, and so these cakes were never as good as we dreamed they might be (especially since most every American was suffering from chocolate withdrawals, another food staple not readily available in the whole region of the Middle East!), and while they were often barely even edible, we still thanked them for their efforts. You never wanted to be on the bad side of the cooks! J had told me how back in 1986 he and his buddy had taken the cook at ACOR (The American Center of Oriental Research, a center that housed visiting American archaeologists, located in Amman) bags of chocolate chips and brown sugar, neither of which were available in the grocery stores, even in Amman. The two of them were on a 90 day trip, part of which would include Syria and Israel, where they would use local bus transportation, before heading off to Abila for the dig. Needing to leave their dig luggage (and remember what that consisted of) at ACOR so that they would not have to haul it all around with them, and needing permission to leave it, they tried gaining favor with the cook. I'm sure J was hoping to get some chocolate chip cookies for himself out it as well. He had already worked on "friending" the cook two years earlier, and so basically had free reign of the kitchen (something I would be grateful for on this trip), and the cook knew how much J loved to eat (something all cooks appreciate), so the deal was sealed! For anybody traveling in a foreign land, let alone living under such conditions as we were at Abila, what you get to eat becomes of supreme importance! And while our cooks tried their hardest, and did manage to put on the table some excellent local dishes, they didn't compare to what we could get if we ventured out beyond the perimeters of our camp. It was to this end that J made certain that he took me into Irbid, the closest city to Abila (less than 10 miles away), at least once every Tuesday or Wednesday evening for dinner.

Finding Artemis

2010-01-31T16:07:00.006-05:00

The most exciting find of this particular dig season was a life size statue of Artemis, found up on Area A. She had been lying just under the surface of the dirt, and was actually discovered by a couple of local workers who had been taking a break over where she was found. One of the younger guys who was sitting on some big rocks over in an area where no one was digging (they were all chatting and drinking their noonday glasses of hot tea), noticed a lump in the dirt. Jumping down off the rock to take a closer look, he brushed some of the dirt away to find this gleaming white marble statue. Excitedly he started calling out to everybody, "Come look! Come look!" Of course J was estatic! We all were! There had been evidence on the coins minted at Abila that there had once stood a Roman temple at this site, but no one had as yet any evidence of where that temple might have stood, or to whom it might have been dedicated. Now it seemed certain that Area A, which was the highest point of Abila, and thus an obvious choice for a temple, was most likely the site of the temple depicted on the the back side of many of the coins, and that Artemis was the city's honored deity. Of course, the images of Athena (probably to pay homage to Athens) and Tyche (the goddess of fortune, who appears more often on Decapolis coins than any other deity) both appear on coins minted at Abila, with Herakles being the male god depicted most often. It appeared that he was the chief god of Abila, as well as of many other Decapolis cities, especially Philadelphia (or modern day Amman), where a temple to Herakles had been excavated and partially restored up on the city's citadel. But to find that there might have been a chief goddess worshipped at the temple of Abila was unbelievably exciting!

The Greek god Herakles was known to the Romans as Hercules, probably the most famous hero of Greek mythology, idealized for his courage, his strength, and his skill in the face of adversity. He was called "the defender of the earth," receiving very little help from the gods, nor seeking the glory, fame, power, or eventual immortality that he acquired. He did what he did for one reason only, not because he wanted to (at first he refuses his labors), but because it is a divine command! He was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Out of his great love for Herakles (Hera + Kleos: glory), Zeus promises to make him immortal, but in order to please his wife, Hera, he agrees that his son will have to perform 12 labors for King Eyrystheus of Tiryns, doing whatever he commands. For eight years he labors, until his 11th request from the King finds him taking on the task of holding up the world for Atlas, who has asked him to do so temporarily, but then leaves him with the awesome burden. His 12th and final labor takes him into the Underworld, a kingdom ruled by Hades. For this task he is given help by Hermes, the wayfinder, who leads the shades of the dead down into the Underworld, and thus must lead Herakles. Of course, Hades will only let Herakles pass through if he does him a favor, which he does in order to complete his 12th and final labor for the King. Eventually, Herakles goes on to live his life and have many more adventures. Unfortunately, many years later, when Herakles' wife gives him a tunic laced in a poison that is supposed to make him love only her (so Herakles' enemies have treacherously led her to believe), the heat from his body activates the poison, causing the tunic to stick to his skin and burn it. In agony he tears off the tunic, tearing his skin off as well. He is in such excruciating pain that only death will relieve him, and so he builds a funeral pyre, lays down on it, and waits until someone happens by who agrees to light the pyre for him. However, just as the torch touches the wood, a bolt of lightening flashes in the sky. A cloud immediately descends into the roaring heap of flames, envelopes Herakles, and carries him up to Mt. Olympus. Zeus has kept his promise, and Herakles is made immortal.
What's intersting about this story is that it contains elements that can be found in both the Old and New Testament stories. (And of course most readers of the Bible know that Paul addressed a crowd in Athens, explaining to them the meaning behind their own statue to an unnamed god, a god that, once explained to them as representing Jesus Christ, many pagans were poised to accept. Their own mythologies, stories that reflected their spiritual foundations, had prepared their hearts and their minds to believe that such a God as Christ could indeed come in the flesh in order to save mankind, and that he could be born of a mortal woman!) What's interesting about the story of Heracles/Hercules is that most likely he existed in a matriarchal culture. The Hebrew Bible is written to address a very patriarchal culture, and by the time of the New Testament, matriarchal cultures had all but been demoted or swallowed up. And while both Jewish and Christian theologians point out that God is formless, neither male or female (and even God says, "I am that I am"), in truth, we have never been able to speak about God without using symbols and images. We have no other way of relating to the Divine, and while knowing that every image we do use to describe the Divine is transcended by the Divine, we have mostly created male forms, used male language, and male metaphors. Thus we have embedded into our belief system that God is really male, leaving us with no Divine Feminine imagery.

Enter Artemis, the archer goddess (known as Diana to the Romans), an immortal child of Zeus. She was the twin of Apollo, the god of prophecy, medicine, archery, and music, and later the god of the sun. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, and later became goddess of the moon. It is known that she was worshipped in Western Asia Minor (the temple to Artemis in Ephesus, Turkey was one of the Seven Wonders of the World), as a goddess of fertility, and in Minoan Crete as Mother Earth. Homer called her "the Mistress of Wild Animals," and in one of his Hymns he says she loved the woods and the wild chase over the mountains. During the Hellenistic period her character was altered so that she became known as the goddess of hunting and nature, and also the protectress of youth. She was a maiden goddess to whom young girls on their wedding day often offered a lock of their hair or beloved toys. As she was the goddess of nature her sanctuaries were in plains, on mountains, near springs and rivers, and even near coasts and capes. Her most beloved domestic animals were the dog, the goat, the hare, and especially the deer, while among the wild animals she especially loved the bear, the boar, the lion, and the wolf. It is said that in one of the parks dedicated to Artemis that the wild and domestic animals lived together in perfect peace. She herself was carefree and wild.
While myths are the essence of religion, Carl Jung (and later, Joseph Campbell) said that they were part of a universal collective unconscious. I had studied this idea all throughout graduate school, writing several papers on it, as I personally tested the various mythological systems I had been taught were wrong. I had become extremely interested in the idea of the Divine Feminine, and once I converted to Christianity I wondered how the feminine in such a dominant patriarchal theological system could possibly still be manifest. Creation, according to the Greeks, moved from a mother-dominated society, in which the most important divinities were female, to a father-dominated society, in which the most important divinities were male. Gaea, who is Mother Earth, was the first Great Goddess. The people who were living in Greece when the Bronze Age tribes invaded the land, worshipped the Great Goddess because they were farmers, and the fertility of the earth, as well as their ability to have enough children to assure the continuity of their clan, was of prime importance to them. Gaea's daughter, Rhea (or Cybele) was also known as Mother Earth, but by the third generation of gods, Zeus, a male god, becomes the dominate deity (with Hera, Demeter, and Hestia still looked to as beloved goddesses). Artemis, who is fourth generation, is still venerated as Mother Earth in some areas, but Apollo, who is her twin and originally her equal, wins out over her in most places, becoming god of the sun. She later becomes goddess of the moon, or of deep intuition. And this is what was getting to me. To the Greeks, logic and reasoning become elevated, associated with education and male "thinking," while intuition, connected to the feminine aspect, gets demoted in importance (feelings cannot be trusted), and thus another important separation occurs within the Divine, and within mankind.

Muslims (who strongly believe that God is male, and who operate within a very strict patriarchal society), refuse to allow any images of God or of man, thus when we found Artemis, it was without her head. During the Islamic Period, not only had statues been decapitated, but lots of other artwork had also been destroyed in order to maintain a strict adherence to their religious law concerning graven images. But Christians had already replaced her, and the Trinity was all male. However, the Greeks did ultimately preserve one feminine aspect of the Divine which has lasted in our texts, if nowhere else, and that was Sophia, or Wisdom. Unfortunately, the wise woman has become a crone in a society that worships youth. One book that has been published since my last visit to Jordan, Turkey or Greece, is a Christian work of fiction that has dared to put the feminine (and the non-white, non westerner) back into God. William Paul Young's The Shack not only portrays God (the Father) as a woman, but she's a big jocular black woman! And Jesus, who has never been portrayed as being overly masculine (as a child I took issue with his Renaissance portrait as being far too effeminate for a carpenter, but who has always been much more nurturing and forgiving than His Father--two aspects of the same God), is portrayed as a Jewish/Arab hippy type guy who is very easy to hang with and talk to, while Young's portrayal of the Holy Spirit is something more ethereal (and somewhat Oriental), something more celestial, a spirit being who lives in wonder, and fun, and creativity, who lives in a state of childlikeness. And together they make up three aspects of God, the masculine, the feminine, and the genderless child, touching the hearts of millions of readers who, like me, have been searching for this lost aspect of the Divine. This was what Artemis meant to me. Losing that wild, carefree, feminine, childlike aspect of the Divine meant losing a part of God. But she wasn't lost. She had been lying there just under the dirt, barely visible, but there just the same. I'm not sure that anyone else, including J, felt as deeply about her reappearance as I did, but Artemis, as a symbol for the divine goddess, would follow me for years to come.

Archaeological Finds

2010-01-29T20:07:00.007-05:00

Everyone you talk to who knows you dig always asks the inevitable question: "Have you ever found anything really exciting?" For most archaeologists the answer to this perpetual question usually goes something like this: Well, it depends on what you mean by exciting!" Of course the archaeologist can bet that the questioner most often has no idea what he or she means, but is hoping that the archaeologist will launch into a diatribe about some really fascinating find that will feed the imagination of the entire audience (whether it be an audience of one or one hundred). But let me tell you, this rarely happens! And when those really exciting finds are unearthed, it usually makes news headlines, and if you have any serious interest in archaeology, you will have already read about it (or will be seeing it soon on the History Channel!). Most Near East archaeologists are digging up ancient towns and cities, or fortresses and outposts, and while they are hoping to uncover some extremely important ancient text, or proof of some prominent ancient figure's existence, the day-to-day finds, while fascinating in every respect to the archaeologist, are often rather mundane and uninteresting to the average untrained individual. However, what the archaeologist learns to do most expertly (often in order to keep popular interest and therefore funding), is to tell stories of the ancient past that will bring those mundane objects to life! After all, it is the archaeologist's own vivid imagination, combined with his love of the past that keeps him returning to the field every season (either that, or he wants to escape the doldrums of academia, or both, more likely!).

J was one of those professors who could make history pop off the page and literally walk across the room and breathe down your neck! With each power point presentation (which eventually replaced his thousands of slides, though unbelievably it still hasn't as yet for those archaeology dinosaurs!), he could mesmerize you with stories of horrific battles that left thousands lying slaughtered across fields, bloodying up the ground as their spears or hatchets, or swords and horses lay nearby; or of insane rulers who had rebellious or maybe even unsuspecting citizens beheaded, and with their heads still recognizable by their fearful eyes bulging out from their faces and with their hair all askew, had them mounted on tall spikes and displayed on city gates and walls, or lined up along roads into their cities; or of subjects being publicly burned, screaming as the flames engulfed them, scorching the flesh from their feet and legs before moving up the rest of their bodies; or of other powerful, yet brutal men pushing their personal attendants off of high cliffs, watching and listening as their bodies smashed on the rocks below, sometimes for no other reason than the pure sadistic pleasure of it; or stories of stronger men who were used as sport in the arena against wild beasts who would claw them to death and then shred them to pieces before cheering crowds of spectators. But then he could just as equally mesmerize you with stories of gods and saints, and elders and holy men who lived humbly and righteously, who sometimes gave up their lives, believing in something so strongly that nothing of this earthly existence mattered. He could bring to life all the ancient settings of the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, or the later civilizations of Greece and Rome, where the beginnings of western culture grew in splendor and magnificence.

I wanted to catch some of that fever! I was digging up potsherds from the Bronze Age like they were candy. I was finding rims and handles, along with other pieces of pottery, all parts of cups and plates and bowls and storage jars, kitchen items I pictured women from the time of Moses using in their small houses to feed their families. I was trying desperately to imagine a time I had read about as a kid studying my bible correspondence lessons, a time in northern Jordan before Abila became a great Roman city, when life was more agrarian, more pastoral, much more like it was in the present day. A time when the God of the Old Testament was revealing Himself to individuals, to men who were eventually given the Ten Commandments and who entered into a covenant with Him that required so much duty and strict attention to detail that they would certainly fall short. Men so carnal in nature that they had to be told not to have sex with the beasts in their fields! Men who were firing pottery in kilns so that their wives could serve them meat and wine before lying down with them for comfort and warmth, and maybe even for love if they were lucky! I was falling in love with the Bronze Age in my imagination. And when I visited the museum of history in Amman I took more pictures of Bronze Age pottery than of anything else. While my home back in the states already housed a collection of potsherds that I had until now cared little about, I was beginning to connect to people of the ancient past because I personally had uncovered and then touched a piece of something well over a thousand years old! And I, too, became excited!

Nights at Abila

2010-01-24T20:51:00.004-05:00

Nights were my favorite times at Abila, nights during the work week. It was at that time when the whole business of the day had ended, when I felt like I had made it through yet again, that I could finally relax! While most of the time I ended up collapsing from pure exhaustion into the fold up chair I had brought with me from the states, it was still a good feeling sometimes, which really surprised me. There would be about an hour from around 9:00 when the sun had started to set, until around 10:00 before going to bed that I could just sit and stare up at the stars. Since there were no street lights or outside lights of any kind, it would get dark enough to see the most amazing display of God's handiwork. It was then in the quiet that I would think about how enormous the universe is, and how insignificant we all would be in it if we didn't have some purpose, some reason, some design. It is especially easy to think about God when you are in a strange land far away from home. Every single night, without fail, I would hear the muezzin's call to prayer made from the mosque a few miles away in the nearest village of Hartha. It would be the last call to prayer before dawn, when I would hear it again as I got up, and I knew that every Muslim was kneeling down before God, being mindful of what He had done for them, and how He had provided for them. Hearing the calls five times a day not only kept the Muslims mindful of God (or Allah, as they call Him), but it kept me mindful of Him too. A devout Muslim must plan his life around prayer, being careful not to be caught out somewhere and not able to stop what he is doing and make ablutions and pray. Five times a day-- at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and at nightfall, a Muslim knows that prayer must take priority over non-obligatory matters. They begin with the prayer, "God is most great." In Arabic it is Alla lu Akbar, and then saying Ashadu anna la ilaha illa Allah, meaning "I bear witness there is no god but God." The ritual prayer continues, and its melodic rhythm becomes enchanting to hear, especially from a distance. From where I sat at night, it seemed like God Himself was calling me to prayer! "Come to prayer!" "Come to well being." "Prayer is better than sleep." More of the ritual prayer, only it was being spoken in Arabic.
I felt like I had been searching out God my whole life. When I was around two years old, my parents joined a Sabbatarian church, a church that put more emphasis on works than on grace. When I was school age I often told people that I was Jewish, as it was easier than explaining what I knew they would never understand. It was a religious view that taught me a strict meaning of the observance of the Sabbath, and of a cycle of Holy days that not only called to mind a people's past, but signified a greater future when God would return to establish His Kingdom. It taught me that Christmas and Easter, seeped in pagan traditions, were as heretical to observe as going to church on Sunday. It taught me that I must obey strict Old Testament dietary laws against eating unclean meats (which helped to better appreciate the Muslim edict against eating pork), and laws about tithing would teach me how to go without, trusting more in God (another Muslim requirement is that they give alms to the poor). These teachings I took very much to heart, all the while believing that everyone else was wrong. At age eighteen, I quit. What I decided to do then was, if not totally disregard, then at least call into question everything I had been taught. Thus began a long spiritual journey of discovery, one in which I truly believe God led me along. As a child I had learned to pray, and as a family we often prayed together on Friday nights, after the Sabbath had begun. And like most families did during the 1960s, we made it a point to pray before every meal, thanking God for what he had provided. And so I grew up praying. I kept it up off and on in my teens and twenties, but eventually I got to where I calIed on God only when I was in distress, and even then I often forgot. I guess it was when I became a practicing pagan, more or less, that I started talking to God again, and then really trying to listen back. I began meditating, until eventually I began to hear and actually feel God's presence. And then talking with God became something I virtually did all day long. That is until I converted to Christianity, joined a conservative church, and found myself back in a box, or so I felt. So many of my prayers became prayers of desperation once again, only this time I was begging God not to let go of me, all the while fearing that I would struggle to get free of Him, if this in fact was Him, a notion I often regretted. I had begged God to show me who He was, not who other people thought He was, or professed Him to be. Did that have anything to do with how I ended up here? In Jordan? With J? Without my daughter? But honestly, how does one learn to see the true face of God? Does God Himself not show you all of His faces until it is you that you see more honestly? Will He not take you behind every nook and cranny of yourself until you must stand absolutely naked in front of Him with no illusions of anything. Islam was another face of God. Islam, with its 99 names for God (or rather for His attributes); Islam, with its religious divisions (Sunni, Shi' ite, and Sufi); and Islam, with all its strict regulations rolled into its more appealing aspects. I was yet again seeing God, only in a different light. And so for that night, and every night while I sat under the stars of the Jordanian skies, I would often hear God's voice saying to me, "Where ever you are, there I also shall be." God was everywhere, and He was still calling all of His children to come pray, come into well being. Don't sleep; seek Me. The lesson I was learning was that I would find God even in the most barren of places. And so it was that I would indeed need this lesson of the dessert later on when I was back at home, back where I was comfortable. Back where I would not so clearly hear the call to prayer.

Camp Life

2010-01-23T20:04:00.010-05:00

Most days on the dig would not differ in any way from every other day, as I would quickly learn. We would begin digging at 5:00 a.m., work until 9:00, then take a half hour for 2nd breakfast, and then work until 1:00, at which time we would pack up our stuff, get back on the buses, and head back to camp. This we would do Monday through Friday, with Friday being short work days, since it is the Muslim "Sabbath," or noon day congregational prayer time, which lasts several hours, as in most mosques the congregational prayer is followed by a sermon (given by the imam). While Friday attendance at the mosque is a requirement for men, it is not for women, though women may attend. All observers of this prayer time go to the nearest local mosque to pray, but men and women both enter and pray separately. Prayer is required of Muslims five times a day, and while the use of a prayer rug is optional, both the body and place of prayer must be clean. This prayer consists of several cycles of standing, bowing, prostrating one's self, and sitting, all the while reciting very specific prayers during each position. Prayers are always made in the direction of Mecca, and mosques are architecturally designed to insure that everyone is praying in that direction. Fridays are not to be strictly observed as days of rest or of refraining from activity, and devout Muslims may work before this prayer time, and may return to work following it. However, to be respectful, digs in the Middle East usually work shorter hours on Fridays (sometimes requiring only the westerners to show up, giving the Muslim workers the entire day off), letting everyone dismiss early, as it is also the beginning of the Sabbath for Jews and Sabbatarian Christians (for example, the Seventh Day Adventists). It also marks the beginning of the (ever so looked forward to) weekend for all westerners. In any case, every last one of us was always happy to quit work early!

So except for Fridays, after we returned to camp we would take quick showers, go to the main camp for lunch, retire to our rooms for rest until 3:00, at which time we were required to show up for pottery readings and work in the registry until dinner at 5:00. Bed time was at 9:00. This would be our basic schedule for eight weeks, and with this being the case, everyone's focus and concern over FOOD and WATER seemed to grow inproportionately to other activities, eventually becoming a major point of contention among dig participants in regards to how much money had been paid in dig fees versus how much money appeared to be being spent on said food and water (never mind the lodging). Needless to say, people began calculating costs versus expenditures in their heads, which eventually gave rise to varying degrees of both suppressed and expressed anger, depending on each individual's personality. For example, take showering. When we would arrive back at camp, most of us would literally be covered head to toe in dirt. It would be in our hair, in our mouths, in our noses, and in our ears; it would be on our necks, on our hands, in our fingernails (even with the use of gloves), and in our boots. Many a day would be when I'd arrive back in camp looking like I had put on a black face. This meant that we ALL desperately wanted to shower. Keep in mind that at the girl's camp where J and I were staying two of the four bathrooms had been converted into showers, and while this was 50%, it was still only two! On the first day we arrived in camp, J, with the help of a another guy, ran hoses from the water spigots that were located near the floor of each toilet (these were so that the user could fill a small container with water in order to "flush" the toilet, a method that often failed to adequately get rid of the object needing flushed). These hoses were run up the walls and connected to shower heads. Placed over the toilet would be a hand constructed cover made of wooden slats, separated so that the water from the "shower" would be able to drain down the toilet. The water, which was stored in large drums located on the roof of each building, would be heated from the sun (a system used all over the Middle East). This would usually ensure that by 1:00 we could all expect to take warm showers. However, not only would our Director often fail to schedule the water trucks so that they would come and fill the tanks early in the day, but sometimes he would fail to pay them to deliver the water at all! While everyone undoubtedly preferred a cold shower over having no shower (which happened only in our camp, not the Director's), this became one of those points of contention that gave rise to anger, including J's. Never mind that when we took showers, we took them with one or two spiders hovering above in the corners (something that always upset me, as I have a particularly strong dislike of all arachnids!). As for our clean change of clothes, those would be draped over the door, along with our towel and robe. J would often shower with his clothes on, something he thought would better help him do his laundry, soaping up both himself and his clothes before rinsing off. Sometimes I thought that had to be better than standing naked in this makeshift shower, but I never quite got the hang of undressing from wet clothes without knocking everything off the door, or dropping it all on the wet floor, so I usually just opted to do my laundry from a bucket by hand, though it was hard to get all the dirt stains out either way. Fortunately, J had a plan of escape from all this, but we would have to wait until Fridays to make our getaway, something I personally thanked God for every time.

Archaeological Finds at Abila

2010-01-18T13:16:00.014-05:00

The thing about digging (besides the fact that it is hot as hell!), is that unlike teaching, you can actually observe some immediate progress. Plus, while you may not know how far down you're going to dig (I think all supervisors keep this to themselves, or else are figuring it out as they go along, observing what you're actually uncovering), it doesn't matter so much because that's all you've got to do all day anyway! As for how wide and long your square will be, that you pretty much do know in advance, as your supervisor has announced to his crew that "we" will be putting in this many squares in this area during this dig season, looking for such and such because "I expect we should be coming down on that at some point pretty soon." Now this could be anything from mosaic tile floors, to an important wall, to paving stones, to a water channel, or anything else once it becomes more clear what had most likely once been located in that particular area.

Like I said earlier, Abila was once a very large city, especially during the Roman period. There had once been as many as six churches, shops, roads, a theater, houses, quarries, water tunnels, cisterns, gates, a defensive wall, as well as other structures that have yet to be determined. Located up on Area A, where I was digging, once sat a large Byzantine church (not an overly exciting find for most archaeologists, as remains of these exist all over the Middle East). J wanted to do several probes (meaning, purposeful digging down past several stratigraphic layers) to determine if there had been earlier occupation. The thing with a probe is that eventually one does begin to get the feeling that he's digging all the way to China (and these probes can get very dangerous). Sometimes when the American workers started to get really irritated with the Director (which like I said, didn't take all that long!), lots of good humored plans would often be discussed as to how a person might push him into a probe and make it look like an accident. If nothing else, this just offered everyone a good laugh, helping relieve the collective tensions that were building up due to our very trying living conditions, combined with the realization that each person on the dig (except for a few of us; a fact I kept very quiet about!) had paid almost $2000 to be there!

Anyway, back to digging. Lots of interesting objects and materials were found at Abila that season, just as had been the case in all the previous seasons. Loads of ceramic pottery has been found, dating from the Islamic period and going as far back as the Early Bronze Period (3300 -1950 BC), even while the occupation of Abila is known to have gone back to the Chalcolithic Period (4250-3300 BC). There may even have been occupation during the Neolithic Period (8000-4250 BC), as potsherds were found during an initial survey of Abila that suggested this possibility! So, as anyone can see, Abila has been a rich site to excavate. Besides all the pottery (including large and small storage vessels, jars, jugglets, dishes, lamps, and other objects), there have been finds of bones (both animal and human), glass vessels, clay figurines, an abundance of tesserae, loom weights, jewelry (both women's rings and signet rings, bracelets, and earrings), shell objects, limestone busts, plaster, chert spear blades, coins, tools, and other metal objects, along with the many columns and capitals belonging to another Byzantine church in Area D that had toppled over during a major earthquake (AD 747), which had destroyed much of the architecture in that region. Besides destruction from earthquakes, several occupation periods had witnessed large scale destruction from fires, which I came down on evidence of while digging in my own square.

Abila is also rich in painted tombs, descriptions of which the French have also been recording and publishing. Loads of Abila’s objects have been discovered buried in these tombs, but word gets out quickly to all the local villages, and then tomb robbing becomes of great concern, not only to the archaeologists, but to the Jordanian government. J has spent more than one night in a newly discovered tomb, along with one or two other members of the American excavation team, in order to keep "guard" over it until it has been excavated. It's impossible to keep it a secret whenever another tomb has been found, as all the locals quickly spread the news, thinking there might be gold or something else really valuable in it. While the Department of Antiquities hires guards to keep watch over the excavation site during the off seasons (as well as the "on" season--there was a guard's tent up on our area), black marketing of antiquities is a huge business, and guards are easily bribed. Every season, under their “watchful” eyes, tomb robbers comb the hillsides in search of any indentation that might suggest a door or passageway into a tomb, knowing that Abila is famous because of their sheer number, boasting more than any other site in Jordan. Unfortunately, no one ever witnesses any theft! Besides the black marketers, there has been a lot of general looting and destruction of property from the Abila site, a process which has been ongoing and well entrenched in the local villages, even among the more affluent residents, in whose well-landscaped gardens have been found stolen columns, statues, and the like. Fortunately for everyone, a large percentage of the finds have been preserved in the archaeology museum in Amman, though due to lack of space, much of the antiquities of Jordan is in storage.

On Tell Abil

2010-01-16T14:33:00.019-05:00

     It doesn't take as long to get the hang of digging as I had originally thought it might. And digging was not as miserable a job as I had originally feared either! Also, I soon learned how lucky those of us who worked up on top of the tell were, being up high enough that we actually got a nice breeze all morning long, while the people down below us working in the other areas weren't so fortunate. The few times that I had occasion to meander down into the valley to any of the other areas to see something, it felt as stifling hot as I imagined Hades might feel if I were to ever end up being sent down there (that is, if I weren't there already)! Over that summer I often liked to reflect on an idea that some people from hot climate areas have had of Hell, that it was a place so cold that you could never get warm! And while I could understand this, sometimes while I was digging I liked picturing myself sitting inside a huge walk-in refrigerator, or in an igloo, or anywhere it might be really cold! Rather than being hellacious, it seemed rather inviting!
     In any case, the one thing we couldn't deceive ourselves about was that we were all of us, regardless of how comfortable we might or might not have felt, still sweating out all our body fluids. J would get so irritated at any of the American workers who insisted that they never felt "all that thirsty." Dehydration is serious business, and J often had to remind us to stop what we were doing and drink some water. As he kept jokingly saying to each of us individually, "You're not a camel!" One result of dehydration, besides getting deathly sick to your stomach, is getting diarrhea, which further dehydrates a person, making them even sicker, a condition that would eventually keep some people bedridden back at camp. This, along with all the general "foreign" bacteria floating around which would find its way into our systems, also caused some people's bowls to react more violently than others'. So you might imagine what that often meant, off and on, during any given part of a day, but especially during the eight hours we were out in the field. Obviously, this had been an ongoing issue for every season of excavation at Abila, and while attempts had been made to construct an outdoor toilet (J had also told me a very funny story about the absolute failure of trying to build one using a variety of materials on hand that would not only stand up against the wind and the constant use, but would assure its user of complete privacy, and how they named it the "Harold" after their esteemed director, instead of the "John"), but nothing had ever worked. And so . . . what each of us one-by-one eventually discovered is that if and when we were absolutely going to have to relieve ourselves, we were going to have to go over the hill on the back side of the tell where no one was digging, squat down behind some of the taller briar bushes, and do it there. As for us girls, while we were appalled by the notion of having to make a public announcement whenever we had to go, we did always ask another female to go with us, more to keep watch than anything, but also to be able to report back if the other girl needed some form of help. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we all were instructed to carry toilet paper with us out to the field, and here's the reason why: to put it quite bluntly, out on that hillside there was nothing, either in vegetable or mineral form, that was going to do the job when it came time to wipe our bottoms! All joking aside, and being from West Virginia I've heard it all, how we use corn cobs, or Sears catalog pages, or whatever, and even though I had used an outhouse at my grandma's when we'd go down to the end of her holler to play by our great uncle's house (who didn't have indoor plumbing for a really long time) and have to use his, and while I've used port-a-potties at different outdoor events, this was something else altogether! Squatting to poop while someone you barely know stands with her back to you, only feet away?! Throwing used toilet paper down on the ground and watching it blow away or else get caught somewhere on some briars (and seeing that some girl on this dig had brought pink!)? Of course, this made those toilets back at camp seem plush. So see? Just when you think things can't get any worse, they really can! I remember one time looking over at the other hillside, seeing a shepherd herding his flock of sheep and goats, and realizing that it could take a long time before he would be ready to move on; and I really had to go! My worst fear was that even if he didn't have 20/20 eyesight, he might own a pair of binoculars! You never could be sure what those Bedouin might have. After all, they weren’t riding around on camels in Jordan anymore, they were driving small Toyota trucks!
     But what I’m saying is, out there, and on this whole trip basically, I had to learn to let go of my vanity, my pride, and everything else, eventually. And I learned a lot about myself in the process. It's amazing what you learn you're capable of doing, and how much you can adapt to new and challenging situations. I had never in my life been an outdoorsy kind of girl, but I was sort of proud of myself every time I made it through another "unusual" experience. My life as I had known it to be up to this point was going to change, and I think I was being changed in the process. Much like the process of going through a refiner's fire! God will not let us keep our original natures, especially if we ask Him to help us grow spiritually. But we'll only go through what we can handle a little at a time, and He'll provide so much fun and excitement along the way that you'll insist it was worth all the discomfort and pain! So while I would have to learn to squat out here on this hillside in Jordan (among a whole host of other embarrassing things I would find myself mixed up in), what I didn’t know was that very soon, actually later in the fall, I would reap an unexpected reward most unusual for a girl who grew up in a small town in West Virginia!

Dig Assignments

2010-01-12T21:18:00.014-05:00

The bus trip out to the site took about 15 minutes, but not a minute of it was to be wasted! The director absolutely did not want anyone being late, not on that first day, or any other day. Because every director wants to get in a full eight hours of work each day, every dig in the Middle East (to the best of my knowledge) gets started by 5:00 a.m. This is due to the fact that the temperature will climb so high as the day progresses, that working out in the scorching hot sun will become unbearable, if not downright dangerous. At Abila, we quit work at 1:00, and believe me, by then you're drenching wet with sweat, covered in dirt, and completely exhausted! But this I had yet to experience first hand, as I was for all intents and purposes still an archaeology virgin (my term!). Dr. Mare had made all the work assignments for everyone, from who would be working in the registry in camp, to who would be digging in the field, and had originally assigned me to work for another area supervisor out in the field quite a distance from Area A where J worked; but being a new bride and all, I really wanted to work more closely with my husband, and so after giving J a pleading look that said, "Are you really going to let this happen, and basically just desert me out here with some stranger," he spoke with the other supervisor and they made a switch, which made me feel very happy that I would still get to see J for most of the day, every day! And J wanted me to be happy. He was already worried about all the outbursts of tears he had witnessed thus far in so short a period of time.
While I'm pretty sure that eventually I would have shed some tears over my dig assignment, right now I was satisfied, and all I had to worry about was learning how to dig a proper square. Unfortunately I am not, nor have I ever been a digger of any kind. This particular skill does not appear on my resume. I played in a sandbox when I was young, but I didn't really dig. I was too afraid of getting worms under my fingernails (which I could accidentally ingest, and which could then screw up my entire digestive system until at which time I might eventually poop them out --something my mother obviously must have warned me about, no doubt). I am not a gardener of flowers or of vegetables, and I swear that even having to dig in my purse for an object that has found its way to the bottom upsets me beyond belief! But J assured me that I would have plenty of help, and so not to worry as I would get the hang of it. In defense of real archaeology, I want to go on record as saying that several wonderful archaeological field manuals have been written on the subject of digging in the Middle East. J even assigns to his own students either Bill Dever's, A Manual of Field Excavation, or Martha Joukowski's, A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology whenever he teaches a course in introductory archaeology, and both of those books, along with Larry Herr and Randall Yonker's book, Excavation Manual: Madaba Plains Project are recommended reading before going on the Abila dig. However, to be clear, I did, after all, study English, not archaeology, and so like I said earlier, I prepped by reading Agatha Christie, though in my defense, I read up on her life during the time she was married to her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan (which I found very inspiring!), and not her fiction (give me a break). Anyway, J gave us all a demonstration on how one should properly go about the business of digging a square, removing tiny little scoops of dirt, as we carefully picked our way down through the stratigraphic layers, all the while maintaining a straight line. (This is my version, not the official version!) The straight line would be maintained by using the plumb bob. But I do jump ahead of myself here, because really, first we had to clear all the sheep dung out of the previous seasons' squares (they obviously had made for excellent pens), burning that, along with all the briars that had grown up all over the area since the last season as well. Finally, we were all ready to be assigned our spots where J wanted either new squares put in, or old squares dug deeper or dug wider. I was put over in what we affectionately termed the Kathleen Kenyon hole. (Kathleen Kenyon is perhaps the most famous female archaeologist, having once dug in Jericho and in Jerusalem, among other places. During the 1930s, in Samaria, which was the British mandated territory of Palestine, she actually dug a trench across the summit of a mound and down the northern and southern slopes, exposing the Iron II, 900-721 BC, to the Roman period stratigraphic sequence of the site.) Not to out do her by any means, but I would be digging earlier than the Iron age, as I would eventually dig down as far as the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC), but like her, I would be digging down the slope of a hill. Help! Where was my help? Ah, local guys. Men from the local villages would be helping me do all this digging. They would carry out and empty the goofas (rubber baskets made out of old tires, made especially for archaeologists), and they would dig wherever I told them to dig. Man. We were all in trouble. Oh, but J would be standing over me, watching, dispensing advice, that is when he was not overseeing someone else's digging in another square. While I dug, he supervised. I kept reminding myself that he had earned that position, and good for him! Me? I didn't have any real purpose for being here, other than the fact that all I had ever really wanted was to travel, and I had said that I would do anything to get to. I guess this was my anything!

Early Rising

2010-01-09T18:43:00.014-05:00

We really didn't need to set an alarm clock (except in order to avoid what happened next). At exactly 4:00 a.m. I was suddenly awakened by a loud clanging of a bell and Dr. Mare yelling at the top of his lungs, "Rise and shine everybody! Rise and shine! The bus will be leaving in a half an hour! Everybody, get up!" This, accompanied by continuous clanging of a bell would continue for five minutes as he counted down the remaining time we had left! Then he would jump back in his jeep and depart, leaving all of us in the girl's camp groggy and grouchy! OMG! This was how I was going to wake up five days a week for the next eight weeks! This used to be exactly how my mother would wake us kids up on school days when we were growing up. She'd come into our rooms, flip the light on, and say, "Rise and shine!" Then we'd have a half hour to get dressed, make our beds, eat breakfast, and get out the door. I never dreamed that anything could ever be worse than that bright overhead light shining in my eyes before I had a chance to wake up. But this! This was definitely worse! There was no bright light; it was still dark, but a clanging bell!? He had to be kidding! (J had told me that people on the dig were always plotting how they might "accidentally" bump off Dr. Mare, something I was already beginning to understand, and it was only the first day!) While I absolutely hate getting up so early in the morning, I am a rather disciplined person, and so will do what I have to do, and now, that meant not being late. Mornings were chilly, even in mid-June, in this dry arid desert region, and so as soon as you got out of bed, you wanted to put on the clothes you had laid out the night before (your pants, a short sleeved t-shirt, a light, long sleeved outer shirt, heavy socks, and your boots), and then quickly make a run for the bathroom! All you're really going to do hygienically this early is brush your teeth, and that you do in your room with water from a bottle containing your own personal supply. You just wet your toothbrush and paste, brush your teeth, rinse, and then spit right outside your door! How convenient is that? And hair? If it's long, you pull it back, or you put it up. I had cut mine short for this trip, and so I didn't do much of anything. That pretty much describes the morning routine, not only for that day, but for all the days. Nothing in regards to that ever changed, except for who might deicide she absolutley could not go out to the field that day due to some form of sickness (whether it be emotional, mental, physical, or feminine). And this would definitely begin to happen with much more frequency as the weeks progressed (which would eventually make everybody else really mad!). Also, before we left the camp we had to grab up all the gear we would need to take with us out to the dig site, which would always include several quarts of drinking water (so as to stave off dehydration), sunglasses, sunscreen, a hat, work gloves, your camera, any extra snack food you might want, a roll of toilet paper, and, oh yeah, of course, your own pick and trowel, personal plumb bob, and tape measure, as well as any other sundry items for which the need might change from day to day. This, you would stuff into your back pack, don your jacket (if you were smart enough to bring one because you actually believed the information given you about the flux in desert temps!), and then ever so soon, like clockwork, at exactly 4:30 you'd board the bus that would come around to take everybody back down the road to the main camp for first breakfast, which would already be in progress. Once there we'd have about ten minutes to get any water we'd need (if we hadn't adequately filled up the night before), scarf down some runny goat's milk yogurt (which to me always looked exactly like baby's throw up, having that same color and consistency, and sickening sweet smell. I was never ever able to eat it, though plenty of people loved it, declaring its health value as being unparallel to anything else), eat a cold boiled egg (or several, as these were plentiful!), and then return to the buses, find your favorite seat (by the window was always popular so as to better be able to catch a few more winks on the way out to the field!), store your gear, and not be responsible for keeping the 4:45 a.m. departure from leaving on time!

Missing My Daughter

2010-01-07T15:51:00.014-05:00

When we got back to our rooms, we sat outside for a little while, gazing up at the stars. I thought about my daughter back home, and how my marriage to J had changed both our lives. Now here I was without her for two whole months on the other side of the world. I cried as I looked up at the moon and counted backwards the time difference of seven hours between us, wondering what she was doing on this particular afternoon, and whether she was missing me as much as I was missing her. I truly hoped she wasn't. She was a very happy, loving little girl who off and on desperately wished for a father, keeping on her night stand the only two pictures that I had ever taken of her "real" dad holding her. She especially liked the one where he was laughing. Sometimes she believed that she loved him more than anything, while other times she hated him for not being there to see her, and tuck her into bed and kiss her goodnight. All I could say to her was that I was so sorry, that it was my fault, and that I loved her more than anything.

     I had met her father when I worked as a teller at the Bank of America on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. (The Queen Mary had been built in Scotland in 1937, and had luxuriously carried the rich and famous across the Atlantic, before it carried troops during WWII, and then afterwards ferried war brides and children back across the Atlantic. After 516 trips, she finally came to rest in 1967 in the Long Beach harbor.) Much of my job had been to exchange foreign currency and traveler's checks for the thousands of tourists we got from countries all over the world who had come to California to visit the Queen Mary and the Spruce Goose, as well as other popular places in Southern California like Hollywood and Disneyland. This did much to inspire in me a further determination to one day travel the world myself. But for now, besides exchanging currency, I was cashing payroll checks for all the employees who worked on the ship, many of whom were foreigners. Angel was from a small town outside of Mexico City, and had come to the states to get work and to live. As a legal alien, he had gotten a job as a hotel employee on the Queen Mary, then worked as a bus boy in one of the restaurants, all the while teaching himself English before being able to work his way up into the wait staff, and then into management. Because every employee on that ship pretty much knew every other employee, as we all ran into one another at some time, or eventually served each other in some capacity, so it was that I had met Angel three years earlier. We had been dating steadily all that time when I accidentally got pregnant. Although I was once again terrified of having a baby on my own, I had loved him, I was a little older, and I was determined to have this child. Understanding that we would never be able to get married due to pre-existing circumstances, I decided to move back home to West Virginia when Christie was four months old. Now, as I sat here in Jordan, all that seemed like a lifetime ago, and I thought about how Christie (who was eleven) and J were not getting along so well. Being a father did not come naturally or easily for him, and so tension and jealousy were more often than not creating the atmosphere that existed in our house. I knew that while she might be mad at me for leaving her (though I did not really feel that she was), she would at least get a reprieve from the power struggle that was defining her life at home.
     Tonight though, J and I were sitting here, far away from a world that seemed to barely exist from this long distance. Here, J was happy and in his element. I recalled how he had rescued me from going crazy over graduate classes, and then from a cold house during that first winter after we had met. Later he rescued me from bill collectors and a surmounting load of debt. He seemed to be at home in messes and tough situations, as his whole life, he often though somewhat reluctantly shared stories about, had been one of survival. And being on this dig, for me, was definitely something I would require his help to survive! After about an hour of sitting mostly in silence (we were both unbelievably tired), we finally wound down enough to be able to sleep. Besides, our alarm was set to go off at 4:00 a.m., and that would be here before we knew it. After we each had made a quick trip out to the toilets, using a flashlight to light the way along the dark path (there were no street lights, only the stars), we then lay down together on our mattresses and very quietly made love. J fell right to sleep, but I lay awake a while longer, remembering one more thing. It was a vision that I had back in 1990.
     I had only been dating J for about three months. As I had gotten into the habit of doing, one afternoon, as I was practicing deep meditation, I saw myself standing in a raging fire. Flames were all around me, though they did not feel hot, nor were they hurting me in any way. After I had been standing there for an indeterminate amount of time, two spirits carried J into the flames. Holding him directly over my head, they released him down into my body, so that we stood there together as one, he inside of me. What was so amazing to me was that I could really feel this. My entire body, from head to toe, shuddered in ecstasy for the duration of this whole part of the vision! We stayed like that for how long, I didn't know (only seconds passed in real time), before those same spirits came back and somehow related to J that it was time for him to go. He told them that he was not ready and didn’t want to leave, and so they allowed him a little more time before they returned, lifted J back out of me, and took him away. Even then he did not want to leave, but I had somehow understood that it was time for us to part, and that everything would be okay as I remained standing alone in the flames. After that vision I knew in my heart that we would be married (it took 3 1/2 more years for this to happen), but that our time together would be short. Why short, I did not understand; however, I immediately related the flames to passion, a word derived from the Latin, passio, which means "to suffer." But since it seemed in the vision to be a fire that did not consume, then maybe it would be a fire that would refine, or purify, changing me into something different than what I was. In any case, nothing I had ever experienced seemed any more real to me than that vision had seemed, and I had been thinking about it ever since. Now 4 1/2 years later, I still thought about it, and what it meant, and why I had received such a vision in the first place. Thinking about this, my marriage, my daughter, and about being here, I eventually drifted off to sleep.

Touring Abila

2010-01-02T15:26:00.010-05:00

For the evening, we had scheduled a walking tour over the site, an area which included two hills, or tells, including Tell Abila, the area where J had been digging over several seasons. Areas A and AA contained the remains of two churches, and several other public buildings, and the remains of the city walls. We continued our walk down into a saddle area that housed the larger ancient city, all of this dating back about 5500 years, from around 4000 BC to AD 1500, including the Islamic, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, Iron, and Bronze ages. In this area were the remains of several 7th and 8th century churches, paving stones of Roman roads, a cavea of what might have been a Roman theater, a possible Odeon, and several gates, and crossing the saddle were the remains of a bridge which led back up another hill. This entire area was bordered by olive orchards, the Wadi Qualibah, which was the spring and source of water for this once thriving ancient city, and tombs and tomb complexes. Walking back up the hill to area D, where columns with limestone capitals belonging to a 6th century Christian Basilica stood majestically reconstructed, we all took a break and sat down to receive a small devotion delivered by J. Out over in the fields we could see shepherds grazing their sheep. This seemed to set our minds on things more holy, things above us that were invisible, rather than things below that had once been hidden but which had now become visible. As I sat there listening to him, I reflected on the idea that what each of us is searching to find, whether it be lost cities, lost faith in God, or just lost parts of ourselves, lies below the surface of what we can actually see. Below what we allow others to see. The discipline of archaeology has been said to be one of destruction. One must literally destroy each layer of dirt as it is uncovered in order to dig deeper into the past. As each chronological layer (or archaeological period) is uncovered, someone has to make the decision whether or not to continue digging deeper, or to let that history forever represent what story gets told. Someone has to decide whether or not it's worth going deeper. However, once the decision is made to continue digging, the previous season's excavations can never be repeated. What was uncovered will soon be gone. As I sat there listening to J and observing the stones and rubble and loose dirt that lay over the earth's surface all around me, and the restructuring that had taken place and was yet to take place, I began to catch a glimpse of how a person might learn to love all this. It made me think about our own stories, and what gets told and what stays covered under layers of dirt. It made me wonder about what I might uncover during this long, hot summer, and whether it would be worth what I was going to have to endure to dig it up. And how many seasons of my life would it take? In the closing of his devotion, J prayed, thanking God for this opportunity, and asking Him to bless this season's dig, and to watch over and protect everyone on it over the next eight weeks. I added to his my own prayer: Dear God, give me the courage to walk down whatever road you open up before me. As the sun was setting in the sky, we walked back to the buses, and drove back to camp.

Camp Accommodations

2009-12-31T13:51:00.006-05:00

Not all dig sites and accommodations are created equal, and the Abila dig falls pretty far down on the scale of plushness. When we finally arrived at the location where we would be staying, I knew that the only thing that would get me through this would be J himself and my own determination to survive. After driving through the last vestige of civilization, the city of Irbid, we drove about another 8 miles north/northeast along a lone road to the village (actually, I'd call this something way smaller than a village) of Quawayibah before pulling into a large paved area in front of a school where half of our team would be living. (The dig group picture posted earlier was taken out in front of this school.) It had already been decided by the director that all the single men would be staying here, while further up the road about another 3/4 of a mile another school would house the women and married couples. In Jordan (as in many Muslim countries) boys and girls are separated by gender after primary school, thus the requirement for two post primary schools to serve the local area where we were staying. J and I would be housed in this 2nd school, away from where the main camp activity would be, which would be things like first morning breakfast, dinner, pottery cleaning and reading, lectures, and any basic general socializing (between the guys and girls, or just between anyone who could still manage to get along as the days and weeks slowly went by). This was also where all the sterilized water, food, and general supplies would be kept.

As it was already past noon, the buses had to be unloaded, and the two camps set up. Our "beds" for these eight weeks would consist of 3-inch foam mattresses, and so J, who had learned that he must always look out for himself, and who would now include me in his care, secured two for each of us. Sheets and pillows, remember, everyone had to bring for themselves from home. J also secured for us a room on the ground floor (both schools were two stories), for two reasons: one, because it would be cooler; and two, he preferred being able to make a quick run for it in case of a bathroom emergency. Each room had individual entrances from the yard on one side and windows on the other, which would help in the way of any cross breezes that might blow through. The floors were concrete (thus the necessity for 2 mattesses, one stacked on the other, which a few people would be upset about later when they discovered what we had done). Each room also had a couple of desks in them, which gave us something to put our stuff on that needed keeping up off the floor, like our snacks. J had also previously warned me about all the critters that we might find in our shoes in the mornings (namely, scorpions), or that might scurry across our faces at night, so we kept as many items in sealed plastic baggies as possible. However, as for ourselves, well, unless we wanted to keep the covers pulled up over our heads all night, we had to be game for whatever! Anyway, while we wouldn't have any place to hang up our shirts and pants, J did string nylon clothesline across the room so that we could hang up our wet laundry. After we arranged our room by setting up our beds, our chairs, the clothesline, the boom box on the ledge of the chalkboard, and then laying out all our food stuffs, we were soon ready for several lectures about all the particular do's and don'ts and how to's concerning the dig and camp life (as well as the cultural nuances we needed to be aware of), including explanations on how to wash our laundry, as well as how to properly use the toilets, flush them, and dispose of the toilet paper (which we also brought ourselves).

Actually, how to use the toilet would require a short demonstration, which my husband got elected to do. Picture a very large man squatting down, balancing himself as if he were on skis, explaining how one might best keep one's pants, and anything else that might get in the way, dry! A little comic relief is always good when faced with a potential nightmare! Finally, it was explained to us that two of the toilets (there were only 4) would be converted into showers, which we would also be shown how to use. And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, we were handed out the daily toilet cleaning assignment schedule, from which no one would be exempt! This I drew the line at, begging J to please do mine for me! I just didn't think I could stomach cleaning up other people's diarrhea! And, like a gentleman, he agreed to do me this huge favor, and so had two cleaning days every week instead of one. Poor J; I really did feel bad for him, and I felt bad for all the other girls who didn't have anyone to save them from this horrific ordeal. That is until some of them started not doing their job, and/or otherwise pissing everybody off for one reason or another. But as far as J went, I promised I would try to find something that I could do in return for him!

Understanding Islam

2009-12-28T09:54:00.011-05:00

It struck me that while I had spent many years during my adult life, thus far, reading and trying to understand different world religions, I had left out Islam. I had read quite a bit about Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism and Native American animism, as well as a whole host of other earlier religions), but for some reason had stayed away from reading anything about another one of the world's largest and fastest growing religions. And I started wondering why that was. In truth, I hadn't even given Islam much thought. In preparation for this trip I had read up on a few things about visiting a Muslim country, but more in order to understand our cultural differences. However, it would become much more clear to me as I spent time in Jordan that while we, in the US, tried to keep religion and matters of state separate, here it was not the case. Here, religion defined the culture, from public prayer, to food and diet practices, to how women dressed, and how and why it was that men and women were kept basically separate from each other (and so it would be that on this trip I wouldn't actually meet or speak with even one woman), to rules about touching and speaking to someone of the opposite sex; plus it even affected how the very conservative people from the local villages viewed the majority of Americans!
J had told me about previous digs when the local workers (mostly younger guys) would practice their English on him, and about some of the things they would say. One particularly funny story involved their idea of how rich we all were. It seemed that many of their ideas about us were derived from what they saw on US television, which for the most part was not good! The popular 80s nighttime soap drama, Dallas, was popular over there, as was Knight Rider. One day this kid kept asking J if he had a kit car (spoken in a very heavy Arabic accent). "Do you drive a car?" Yes. "What kind of car is it? Is it a kit car?" A what? "A kit car." What's a kit car? "You know; a kit car!" No, I don't know what that is. " A kit car- you know- it talks to you." Oh! A KIT car! No, that's not real; it's just a t.v. show. We don't really have those in America. "No?" No. "I thought everyone drove one." Nope. "Oh." Of course, even to have this much conversation meant that this kid's English was very good! But most of the time what they were seeing of US television formed much less of an innocent picture of how Americans lived and how we acted! I would see this acted out later in camp. And, I would come to better understand their religion, but for now, I was being driven around Amman's city center, listening to a short lecture on Jordan's government and history. We made a brief stop at the site of the ancient Roman theater and then drove up to the Citadel before we made the hour and a half trip north to Abila.

Arriving in Jordan

2009-12-26T21:17:00.006-05:00

This would be my first meeting with the man who would eventually become a rather significant person in my life. Adnan Shaweesh met our group at the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan at around 9:00 p.m. We had all waited together as he secured our group visa, and then motioned for us to move through immigration where he greeted us with a very warm Jordanian welcome. After we passed through the last check point, where we got our passports stamped, indicating where and when we had entered the country and with what type of visa, we finally were able to pick up our luggage and take it outside to be loaded onto the buses that were waiting to take us into Amman to the hotel where we would spend our first night. What a long journey it had been! We were all exhausted and more than ready to stretch out onto real beds, but instead we were all expected to make an appearance in the dining room of the hotel where dinner had been prepared for their esteemed American guests. I don't think anyone felt much like eating, but upon seeing the smiling, welcoming faces of an impressive wait staff offering us their best hospitality, we had to at least go through the motions. Honestly, that first dinner made almost no impression on me, as I was like the walking dead. I had been up literally 24 hours, at least, with almost no sleep, and while I feel certain that I got a plate full of food, I could not give anyone even the slightest description of what I actually ate! Finally, after thanking everyone profusely over and over, we made our way up to our room where we found our luggage waiting. I remember basically getting undressed and falling into bed. There were two, so I took one and J took the other. All we wanted to do was stretch out as much as we could. No touching! It was probably close to midnight by that point, and I had no trouble falling right to sleep. I was in an unbelievably deep sleep when around 4:00 a.m. a sound so loud, like a siren going off straight into our room, woke me up. I jumped out of bed, scared to death at what it might be, and with my heart almost beating out of my chest and my voice shaking, I called out to J, "WHAT WAS THAT?!" J just rolled over and very calmly said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. There's a mosque right across the street from our hotel and that was a call to prayer." OH! You forgot to tell me! Our bedroom window was open to the night air, as was usual for summertime in Jordan since so many hotels don't have air conditioning (except for the expensive, fancy American ones). The loud speaker on the minaret from which the muezzin's recorded call was being "broadcast" was pointed directly at our room, no kidding! Lasting about 15 minutes, the melodic, yet very loud, Arabic prayer finally ended and I fell back into my deep sleep, only to be awakened again at 6:00 a.m. for breakfast and to get ready to hit the road to Abila. J thought it made a funny breakfast story, telling everyone that I had been so scared by the call to prayer earlier that morning, and that he had forgotten to say anything to me about it. To me, it was my initiation into a strange new world.