Death seems to have followed me around the past twenty-four hours. Last night on our way back from East Amman, KB got a call that his coworker ran over and killed a young man on the way to Sahaab. This led to an intense discussion on what it would feel like to kill someone unintentionally, especially by running them over. The sight of someone crashing into your windshield, the sound of a lifeless body rolling over the hood of your car, or even worse, that nauseating THUMP you feel at the pit of your stomach when your tires roll over a dead carcass. That’s got to be something you won’t forget anytime soon.

On our way back from field research today, one of the researchers I was with mentioned how she saw another accident on the road to Sweyleh; the man wasn’t killed, but he was bleeding heavily and had to be rushed to the hospital. Less than a minute passed by before we saw an ambulance parked in the middle of the road. As we drove closer we saw a car that was completely smashed in from the front. The force of the accident was so bad that the car had completely uprooted a large palm tree, which was now lying on the side of the road. As per Jordanian tradition, tons of people were crowding around the scene, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dead body under the guise of a fierce debate over the mechanics of the accident. They certainly were not disappointed: as the police ushered the people away from around the car, we could see a small pool of blood on the ground by the driver’s side. Just above that hung a lifeless arm casually dangling from the seat, but we couldn’t see the body it was attached to.

Research today was quite fun. Our team was assigned rural villages in Jerash and Ajloun in Northern Jordan. Today we went to a tiny village called Nabi Hood, located on the mountains of Jerash. My team consisted of five people (myself included) crammed into a fifty-year old Mercedes that had no seatbelts or functioning windows. Other than the head researcher, a Palestinian called Majdi, there was myself, another guy called Nizar, and two women: Rania and Rawan. The teams are gender-balanced because in some rural areas of Jordan men and women are completely segregated, and so I could only talk to the men. Majdi orchestrated the entire thing, and did a great job reversing that piece of shit Mercedes 500 meters up the mountain, and we only almost died twice; once when we decided it would be awesome to drive down the freeway in reverse for fifteen minutes, and another was when he almost reversed off a cliff when the road suddenly ended (also an attempt at driving the entire way up the mountain in reverse).

The three men I interviewed were all different, it was funny how it worked out. The first man I spoke to was a 39 year-old taxi driver who answered the questions relatively well considering he was uneducated. The second man I spoke to was an 18 year-old unemployed high-school graduate. He was quite frustrating, because as much as I tried to tell him I was not Mukhabarat (Jordanian CIA), he would smile and nod and continue to praise the government, government policies, and democratic freedoms in the country.

The final house I walked into was the most interesting, though. The house was run-down; there were pools of dirty water on what I assumed was the front yard, and there was a naked grubby boy standing in one of said pools curiously looking up at me. In the corner there was an old man squatting next to a leaky faucet swatting away flies. I went up to him and said “Assalumu Aleykum, are you the head of the house?” The man smiled and asked me to come inside, but I told him I wouldn’t be long and squatted down in a puddle next to him, effectively ruining my Dolce and Gabbana shoes. I told him what I was there for, and he immediately got defensive; “you want to know what I think of our government? It is shit. I dare you to put me in jail, I don’t care. You guys already put me in jail for slapping my wife, and that bitch had shatabatni khams imwas gabil heyk (roughly translated to: she had sliced me with a razor fives times before I slapped her}. You want good governance? Put me an Islamic government that would force women to come home before the god damn chickens do during sunset. Now that’s a good government, none of this Dr. Adnan Badran democracy shit.” There was nothing I could do but laugh, and that seemed to calm him down somewhat…well, enough to answer the questions I had to ask him.

Afterwards I went over to Majdi’s house to have some Turkish coffee; we both don’t fast and I was curious to talk to a veteran field researcher (or Bahith Meedan, as we call it here). The coffee was delicious: very sweet and very strong, and it was wonderful to be back in a normal place after the very surreal morning I had. He lives in poor East Amman, and so although the water looked and tasted funny, I had to gulp it down out of politeness, so as to not reveal my West Amman nature.

But politeness aside, let me say one thing here: my stomach is feeling goofy right now, so if I end up with Amoebic Dysentery again, I am going motherfucking corporate.

eerie has brought a number of great writers together for the creation of 'Aqoul, a much needed scholarly-ish blog on the Middle East and North Africa. It's just starting up so you guys should continue to watch out for it. I know some of you may be interested in checking it out, and I can think of at least a couple of you guys who can produce some interesting work (accusehistory? sabotabby?). Contact eerie for more information.

I hate the fact that it's become hip to be into development, particularly since most of the people who just jumped on the bandwagon will never be able to properly grasp some of the complex issues that developing countries are facing. If it was up to me, I'd ban everyone in the First World from interacting/ talking about/ studying the developing world, and force every Third World motherfucker into isolation to learn about their country's problems from a global perspective. Oh yeah, and the revolution of course...then I shall bring about the revolution.

Anyway, I was going to write an entire entry bitching and moaning about the Live 8 concert/ Make Poverty History/ Bryan Adams, but then the Boomtown Rats came on and sang 'I Don't Like Mondays' and suddenly I feel much better about the ignorant commercialization of the whole 'Drop the Debt' shit that makes me ashamed to call myself a leftist.

Whatever, that song is fucking sweet.