14: Shifting Sands
When I first arrived in Amman, every person I met was "Mr." and "Ms." or “Ma’am” and “Sir” or “Your Excellency” and “M’ Lord.” I knew little about the country and even less about propriety in the Middle East. Six months later, I found myself hosting a table at an official dinner for a German political foundation I’d spent the previous four months working as a report writer. Sitting at my table were diplomats, directors of foreign aid agencies, and sycophants—all present in their official capacities to advance the interests of the organizations they represented.
On my left was a diplomat from the Embassy of Switzerland. The diplomat represented a country with no political allegiances and a foreign and economic policy which has historically consisted of maintaining neutrality during times of moral crises, laundering money for corrupt despots, and the exportation of cuckoo clocks. Over the course of the meal, I listened to the diplomat’s candid observations on the political climate of the Arab world and why the United States should change its regional policies in reaction to the Arab Spring. She went on to suggest there were just a few simple things America could do to change the direction of its relations in the Arab world. At the time of this dinner, the United States had just completed its final draw-down of troops from Iraq, officially ending the eight-year Iraq War. The Swiss diplomat suggested that the U.S. leave Iraq while providing more financial aid to assist the country in rebuilding its infrastructure, while at the same time, reevaluate its political relationships throughout the region. It was just so simple. She had it all figured out. After a few minutes of this enlightening lesson in global politics and watching others at the table nod with feigned interest, I turned in my chair to face her, saying, "Please, tell me more about the endlessly dynamic and complex structure of your foreign policy, as there is so much to learn from the Swiss.” Aghast, the rest of the dinner guests at the table looked at me, then her, then each other, before stifling laughter.
As the dinner continued, the director of a Jordanian civil society organization, who aspired to partner with the foundation I worked for, noted a group of affluent and high-profile Omanis who were sitting at another table. The director spoke in a tone of pride about how well the people of Oman, an oil-rich sheikdom in the Persian Gulf, have preserved their culture despite their oil wealth—noting their proclivity for traditional clothing, appreciation for traditional food, and safeguarding of traditional political structures. I leaned to the person on my right, saying, "Yes, how remarkable it is that they've preserved the Ferrari as their traditional mode of transportation. We should all aspire to such traditions."
***
It was March. My income was no longer sustainable and I started to worry more about money. Dr. Marvin did offer me a full-time job. He had applied for additional project funding from the European Union, and budgeted my contract as a rider in the proposal. Despite this, I was still living hand-to-mouth by middle class American standards. It wasn’t in any way Dr. Marvin’s fault, but I felt like I was being strung along. Every two weeks or so, I’d ask for an update on the contract. Dr. Marvin had good relationship with Hans, the KAS Director in Berlin. But Marvin’s relationship with the Hans’s right hand man, Fritz, was terrible. I always knew when Dr. Marvin was on the phone with the KAS headquarters, because he would have to go through this sniveling bureaucrat.
The only time I saw Dr. Marvin lose his cool was while he was arguing with Fritz at headquarters. To say the conversation was aggressive is a gross understatement. Maybe it’s just that German sounds even more aggressive when you’re pissed, but I looked around the office for an escape route, just in case. I heard Marvin slam the phone on the receiver in his office. Moments later, he walked over to my desk and said “I just got off the phone with headquarters about the funding for your contract. Hans’s inferior said that he would not, quote, ‘blackmail the foreign ministry.’ Whatever that is supposed to mean.
I laughed audibly when he said this. “Inferior,” I repeated. I was going to start using that.
“When I argued with him,” Marvin continued, “ he used this very German phrase: zie vie gan sikh?’ Which translates like: Do you decline?’. But, it is such a—“ he paused, searching for the words in English, “formal and patriarchal statement, like something said by the old regime. You would never use this phrase in modern Germany.”
I ate more pureed beans and flatbread. I spent an hour a day learning Arabic from Hisham, received more blown kisses from Hussein at the gym, and gave the rest and best of my free time to Lindsay. But I still showed up to the office every day.
Up to the first half-dozen conferences I attended for KAS, I was in some way convinced that what political foundations and civil society organization do is helpful: the governance workshops, the roundtable meetings, the conferences of thought leaders, etc. I believed that they promoted a culture of meritocracy and integrity; maybe not directly, but certainly by proxy. By the second half-dozen, I became doubtful of their efficacy, and began seeing the cracks in the system.
In March 2012, we hosted a workshop in the office entitled “Media and Combating Corruption.” We had a few high profile media executives and journalists in attendance. The Jordanian Minister of Information also attended — at least in body. After showing up an hour late to the workshop, it was clear that His Excellency was drunk of His Ass. While discussing corruption, he spoke with blasé indifference, frequently trailing off with incoherent speech. The translator tried vainly to cover for him, the obvious gaps in coherence crackling in my earpiece. I took it out, and listened to someone I trusted who translated on the fly in whispered tones as we sat next to each other.
In the middle of Dr. Marvin’s welcoming speech, His Ass pawed at the microphone and slurred some words under his breath. When it cam time for the Q&A session, the participating audience (mostly journalism students) grilled him as best their sense of propriety would allow. But they never overstepped that boundary, never stated the obvious: the man should have been a the bottom of a 12-Step staircase to recovery, not the top of the Ministry of Information.
On the one hand, it was embarrassing to have to call this joker “His Excellency.” On the other hand, it’s indicative of the flawed system Jordanians deal with daily — one where no person dared to openly challenge an authority when that authority abuses his or her position. In the end, you have to wash both hands of the sopping irony: That the Minister of Information would attend a governance workshop with renown journalists to discuss corruption in the government, only to drunkenly stumble away to a standing ovation.
By mid-March, I had become entrenched in my cynicism toward the grandstanding of good governance advocates. An excerpt from my notes on one of the presenters from a workshop we did with Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs: “Rhetoric on corruption, sweeping words, general recommendations, bland dialogue, mediocre analysis, contemptuous observations, irrelevant musings.”
I was rarely abashed of my thoughts, and hoped that my colleagues and superiors would appreciate my arrogance. I met Americans and other Western expatriates whom had just arrived — here to help, they were! There were a lot of people in Jordan working on water management projects (58 projects, led by some 20 domestic and foreign organizations, and counting). One woman I met had come to Amman after completing an internship in Washington DC to help make more water in Jordan. Her words. More water, you say? I’m glad you asked. I too was intrigued to know how my fellow BA in Political Science was going to generate water in the desert. I had to know more. It soon became evident that she had not invented a weather control device, or an efficient method of desalinization that could be built in the southern port city of Aqaba to supply the country with water. I offered the humble suggestion of gathering a large group of people and perform a rain dance. My solution to the water crises of the desert — a literal adjective and noun — was not well received. Pardon my naivety, I’ll return to my good governance efforts.
Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction. Here’s an update from my 2014 to my suggestion in 2012.
Headline: Jordanians to pray for rain
[1/30/2014 2:55:43 PM]
AMMONNEWS - Jordan's Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, called on citizens throughout the kingdom to head to the designated places in their governorates to perform Salat Al-Istisqa', a special prayer for rain.
Terms like “raising awareness,” “fruitful discussions,” and “best practices” began to make me shudder. I dreamt about being crushed under an ambiguous wave of awareness. I dreamt of fruitful discussions that were catered by the mercenaries hired by Chiquita Fruits to intimidate Colombian farmers. I dreamt that best practices were, well, I don’t have a metaphor for that. But they were bad practices. Real bad.
I attended dinners where State Department Foreign Service Offices would get sidelined by every buffoon wearing a clip-on-tie, begging for money. And the State Department representatives were polite to each one: “Oh, it’s so nice to be here! Thank you so much! No really, thank you! Oh, WOW, really? How interesting!”
These were State Department Political Officers, some of the brightest people our country has to offer and yet they were forced to pander to every awareness-raising sycophant. I don’t see how false impressions and patronizing flattery are good for diplomacy or building relations — such behavior only widens the gap of distrust because everyone engaged in the bullshit, knows it’s bullshit. They go back to their respective organizations to discuss how full of shit the other group was. The aggregate of shit being slung at these dinners could fertilize all the arable land on the planet.
After six months in Jordan, I had a hard time pretending to be interested in shaking hands with any of these mild-mannered officials, with their empty, placid smiles. Instead I would find my niche in a group or table with familiar faces, mixed in with new faces, and work that angle. Besides, the people who are actually going to accomplish any networking stay long after the sweeping speeches are made and the cameras stop flashing. Guess who was invited to go out with a European delegation, including a key participant in the 1993 Peace Oslo Accords, for happy hour the evening following my jibes at the Swiss diplomat?
By the end of the month, I had seen all I needed to solidify my cynicism. We organized a workshop in Aqaba with the Ministry of Social Development. It was our second event with the Ministry — having hosted one at our office in February. I was put up at the Intercontinental Hotel for two nights, at a cost of 200% of the average Jordanian’s monthly salary. KAS paid our trainers’ and partners’ hotel rooms, as well as a welcoming dinner. So what did one of our good governance trainers do in light of this generosity? She brought five members of her family: two sisters, two aunts, and one mother, obliging the German taxpayer to pay for their meals (the equivalent of 75% of the average Jordanian monthly salary). This was precisely the kind of behavior we were supposed to be working against: nepotism, financial abuse, unnecessary expenditures. Apparently the trainer had not looked at her presentation notes for the next day.
The conference went as expected. Participants from NGOs based in the South complained they were being neglected by the Ministry of Social Development; not enough was being done to develop the civil society sector; more money was needed’ the ever-present Zionist conspiracy was working to destroy them, etc. A few voices of reason were given a chance to explain the financial situation of the country and how there should be focus on grassroots efforts — that Jordanians needed to be self-reliant in a way. But if they suddenly became self-reliant, who would pay for lunch?
Lunch that day is the microcosm of all that is wrong with good governance focused NGO work in Jordan. KAS catered the meal. The wife of one of our staff members owned a catering company, thus naturally she was awarded the multi-thousand Euro contract. People lined up in order of social hierarchy: government employees, tribal officials, directors of smaller organizations. Finally, women. No matter social rank or economic class, the women ate last.
For the sake of accuracy, I will avoid hyperbole in this description. Those who were first in line shoveled mounds of food onto their plates like they were an hour away form the executioners chamber: three or four giant serving-spoons of rice, a few scoops of cucumber salad, a piece of chicken, a piece of fish, and a piece of lamb. As the quantity of food rapidly dwindled, people became more mindful of what was left. They didn’t want to appear greedy so they took a piece of fish and maybe a piece of chicken. There was still a decent amount of rice, so they took a healthy serving. Soon, all that was left was rice. By the time the women reached the food platters, mere scraps remained. The conference staff (including us and our partners) weren’t even able to make even a light snack of the remnants. Not to despair, we would enjoy a 5-Star meal later that night, paid for by the Western donor organization.
On leaving the conference hall, there sat tens of pounds of untouched lamb, fish, chicken, and rice — all of which would be thrown out. So much waste was left, that we could have fed the several beggars outside the hall.
If you want to know how aid works in this region, that’s it. Mine is not a unique perspective. It exists at every level of the political and development fields. Philosophical justice be damned. Throw out your theoretical framework textbooks. I may be a cynic, and I may not be suggesting a superior alternative or the way things should be. I’m sharing my experience as a witness to what is.
To be sure, not everything I saw was negative, and not every person I met was a foreign aid abusing, tit-suckling sycophant. And there was at least one positive outcome of our workshop in Aqaba that has stuck with me.
I was sitting in the back row of the conference hall, taking notes for my report. One of the attendees, sitting directly in front of me, turned around and asked if I worked for KAS. I nodded. The man was late middle aged, with sun warped skin and hooded eyes. He wore traditional robes and a keffiyeh, and hailed from a village that was the butt of many Jordanian jokes. He then held up a printed copy of Dr. Marvin’s speech, translated into Arabic by one of our partners. He said what Dr. Marvin had said was extremely important. He extended further gratitude to KAS for holding the workshop and then turned back around to listen to the rest of the speeches.
I looked over his shoulder and saw that he had underlined the last two lines of his translated copy of Dr. Martin’s introductory statements:
“To be a person of integrity is to be reliable and accountable, even when no one is watching. It is to hold ourselves to a higher standard — one that we perpetually seek to achieve.”