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.
