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.
