37: Burnout

Ramadan was upon us. On July 1, 2013, I spent what amounted to nearly my entire last month’s salary on a rental car for our last 45 days in the country. I wasn’t going allow Lindsay to endure another Ramadan at the behest of the taxi drivers who hadn’t eaten, smoked, or had coffee all day; nor was I prepared to endure. I’d had enough of the Jordanian Taxi Driver and his incessant harassment, conniving, and obsequious questions. We were officially counting down the days before our departure.

Meanwhile, around us the crisis posed by the Syrian civil war was ramping up. Aid works, military personnel, journalists, spooks, and students from the West were flooding into Amman, all here to glimpse the mounting problems facing the region from the relative safety of Jordan.

Around 6:00 am one morning, Taboush and I went for our daily poop on the streets of Amman. On our walk, I ran into our neighbors outside the apartment building — a married couple from Northern Europe. The husband had a heavy tripod slung over his shoulder and a camera bag on his back, so I asked:

“You guys heading up to the camp today?”

“Yeah, it’s World Refugee Day.” The husband said.

“Is my girl, Angelina going to be there?” I said, in a sarcastic tone.

“Yep, that’s why we’re leaving early.” The wife said.

“Oh, um, alright. Well, have a good day — see you guys later.” I said, recovering from what could have been an unnecessary and snarky remark.

Angelina Jolie was going to be in Za’atari Camp, so all the aid workers got an early rise that morning because it was a good photo opportunity: strife-stricken Syrian children, holding out their hands next to resort-fed, per-diem sponsored expatriates who’d flown in from the far flung countries of, wherever, to alleviate their plight. And now, in these final weeks, I couldn’t see past the cynicism that the previous two years had engendered. I didn’t see educated, thoughtful people seeking to help; I saw opportunists, glory seekers, and escapists, all without a hint of irony.

One night, we had dinner on the rooftop terrace of John’s apartment building.

A couple of Australians were sitting on the roof, guests of another resident. We introduced ourselves and one of the Australians asked me, “Are you here for the humanitarian response?”

“The what?” I said.

“The humanitarian response mission – for the Syrians?” he said.

“Hah, no. We’ve been here for two years, my man. We’re on our way out.”

That was the end of our conversation. Lindsay and I had been in Jordan longer than the Syrian camps. Mark my words, those camps will become cities. Just as the Jordanians call the Palestinian ghettos, “camps,” without fully giving the Palestinians full citizenship rights, so too will Za’atari become a Syrian ghetto of Jordan.

During the summer, Lindsay and I attended a farewell party for a fellow expat. One of the attendees was an American college student who told Lindsay “I’ve just always been fascinated by civil unrest.” He spoke of the civil war in Syria as though it were a noble event that should be revered for its gallant uprising. There was nothing noble about the conflict which had led to the perpetration of war crimes of unspeakable barbarity by its warring factions. That same month, a 20 year old American student on a year abroad was stabbed to death while photographing a riot between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian state security forces in the port city of Alexandria. He wanted the world to see what he saw. He was, like I was, and all other internationalist glory seekers are, fascinated by civil unrest, human strife, and displaced peoples. Today that young man is survived by the people who actually cared about him.

John and I made a point to get dinner together at least twice a week throughout the summer. One evening we went out his new flatmate, Shawn, a Master’s degree student who was in Jordan for an internship writing human interest stories about the Syrian refugees. We took Shawn to Zorba, a restaurant in the old downtown of Amman, which overlooks the main intersection and bustling street three stories below. As the food servers piled hummus and salads and flatbread around us, Shawn became increasingly animated in his passion for defending the interests and rights of people he’d only read about in newspapers and books a few weeks prior. Shawn lamented the brutal treatment of the Arabs and Persians by the oppressive American and European regimes throughout the 20^th century.

“What do you want to accomplish by being out here?” I asked.

“I want to help people self-determine.” He said, bursting with frustration.

“What does that mean, Shawn? How much influence do you actually think you can have over whether or not another individual, let alone a country of people, self determines?”

“I’ll find a way.” He said, almost frothing at the mouth.

John, sitting next to me, hadn’t been paid in weeks for albums and gigs he’d already mixed — for some jobs it had been months since completion. The clients who owed him money answered his calls on their iPhones (a high luxury in Jordan circa 2013), driving in their SUVs to luxury apartments, and told John that they too were broke. During the winter months that year, John lost a noticeable amount of weight from a lack of nutrition when work was slowest. I then relayed a story about the KAS accountant, Mohammad, who had been taking a commission out of my monthly paycheck. I learned this when I cleared my  savings out of the Social Security Corporation, and the government had no record of the “taxes” being paid out of my income. In fact, they had no record of my being employed at all, so Mohammad was pocketing 7% of every paycheck I received, including my first few hand-to-mouth payments of 250JD.

My blood boiled at the retelling of this story, so I sharply pointed around the room “Look around you. This is what self determination looks like.”

A week or so after our dinner with Shawn, John and I hosted a barbecue on the roof of their apartment building. The wine flowed and the night went long, and John and the ten or so Jordanians and expats gathered in a circle, laughing together. As the night was winding down, John told a heartfelt story about how years prior, he and a few of his friends in Liverpool gathered the five remaining World War I veterans from their town at a local pub. The group organized to have a local TV production team record the reunion, so as to preserve the memory of this moment for the city’s records. John recanted how he and his friends watched as these lifeless vessels shuffled into the bar, only to become vibrant and animated with excitement over seeing one another — two of the veterans thought the other had died in battle nearly a century before. The story was demonstrative of the commitment John and his friends had to preserving a local history that was relevant to their hometown.

“That’s just like what I’m doing in Za’atari!” Shawn ejaculated. I wanted to jam a crusty sock in his mouth. Shawn had no stake in the future of the Syrian people. Their civil war was his unabashed resume builder.

Put aside the grand notions of saving the world for a moment. Shawn neither did his dishes nor pitched in around the apartment he shared with John and a third flatmate. John once left a full sink’s worth of dirty pots and pans outside Shawn’s bedroom door in a brazen reminder for him to keep up his responsibilities. When Shawn walked out of his room, overstepping the mess, John confronted him, telling him he needed to start pulling his weight around the apartment.

“I’m working on a report that needs to be done tonight.” Shawn screeched.

“Shawn, you’re well outta’ order, mate. You want to save the world and the flat is a mess. Clean it up.” John said. Shawn did so begrudgingly and held it against John the rest of the time he lived in the apartment.

Shawn would wrap up his tour of the Middle East, sure only to praise its hospitable and warm people upon his return home. He could say “Things aren’t like you think! I was there!” But I would argue that people like Shawn have never had to collect a paycheck from a Jordanian employer or negotiate a contract with bad-faith actors. In three to six months of voyeurism, it’s impossible to grasp the nuance of a culture. I’d been here for two years, and I only knew about 20% of anything that had to do with Jordan.

In the end, Shawn left Jordan without paying his final month’s rent and utility bills, and he took his copy of the key to the apartment home. He left John and his other flatmate with the tab and never responded to their emails requesting payment. I suppose it was his way of helping them self determine.

Unable to maintain the veneer of graciousness which had contributed to my success in the early days, in the coming weeks I would come to some very cynical conclusions about life in the region.