Whenever we'd go into Irbid I would love it! It was like going on a date. At least it was the closest thing to going on a date as anything had been yet on this trip! This was my honeymoon after all, but my "honey" was more often than not feeling very tired, and very mad at the director most of the time. He hated the separate living arrangements, feeling that those of us at the second school were too isolated from the main dig camp, and he hated Dr. Mare's miserliness. As far as he was concerned, running out of water in the showers was unforgiveable! And in general, he not only felt neglected by Dr. Mare, he also felt like he was basically being treated once again like a flunkie grad student rather than a real assistant. This was his sixth dig season with Dr. Mare, and while he was happy to have been given the title of "Assistant," it was also starting to piss him off, which meant that he was more and more willing to perform a disappearing act on any given afternoon, something I was all too happy to encourage! So at least once every week, either on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the two of us, along with anybody else who just wanted to get away and was game to join us, caught a local bus and rode into Irbid. I loved the freedom of it all, but I would have been terrified to ride into the city on my own. Riding on the local buses was quite an experience in itself. We were coming from a very small village, one of the many that dotted the road going into Irbid. You can only imagine what an odd sight we were to the local men and women riding on the bus, as this rather large American "gringo" and his wife boarded, and then traveled anything but inconspicuously the miles into town. While I always made certain my arms were covered, I did not wear a scarf or anything over my short hair, I barely wore any makeup at all, and I often donned my pants (a clean pair) rather than a skirt, as I had only packed one of those. Lacking a certain amount of feminine appeal, I was much more of an enigma to the women than J. One very obvious aspect that I couldn't help but notice about even the oldest woman whose face was mostly hidden by a veil was her heavily charcoal lined eyes! On these rides into Irbid I would often feel those eyes boring into me, only to be followed by whispers and giggles behind sets of hands, particularly if the women were traveling together rather than with their husbands. (No woman ever traveled alone.) But I would hold my head up high and try to retain as much dignity as I could, as I was, unbeknownst to them, stepping out on the town! Ladies, I was on my honeymoon! (These poor women would have never guessed it!) And to this end, I never felt so happy to "belong" to a man as I felt in Jordan!
Once we arrived at the bus station in Irbid I could escape all the stares and giggles, and walk about more freely, feeling much more like a tourist in the city, and therefore less noticeable. Well, really there weren't hardly any tourists in Irbid, but it was a university town, and there were lots of young people and thus much more hustling and bustling about. J, who loved the adventure of it all, had his own favorite destinations, and one of those was far enough away from the bus station that we had to take a taxi (which in Jordan were mostly older, stripped down, big four door Mercedes, painted yellow). Since food was always J's primary concern, he knew where a lot of good inexpensive local restaurants were located, and depending on how our supply of Jordanian Dinars was holding up, we sometimes first had to make a quick stop at a currency exchange shop. (The rate of exchange at that time was about 70 to 100, which meant that our dollars went a little further there than they did in the U.S., thankfully!) A few doors down from the exchange shop where J liked to go was a restaurant that served the absolute best kababs. For anyone trying out Jordanian food for the first time, and who might not be that adventurous, these are an excellent choice. Jordanians eat meat at nearly every meal, with chicken and lamb being the most popular, and beef coming in third. (Pork is absolutely forbidden.) Shish (which means grilled) were my favorite kababs, and I had no preference over which meat I ordered, as they were all delicious. A shish kabab was made up of chunks of lamb, chicken, or beef with vegetables (sliced onions and yellow, green, and red peppers) threaded onto skewers and grilled. These would be served with a side of yellow rice (given its yellow color by the dye, Tumeric), or with French fries, and pita bread. Most locals would also add to their order taboola, a common salad of diced tomatoes, onions, and parsley. Of course appetizers ( or, mazzat) are very popular in Jordan, with hummous (served with pita bread for dipping) being the singular most popular dish, made up of pureed chick peas blended with tania (sesame seed oil), lemon, and garlic, topped with olive oil and a sprig of parsley. (Our friend, Adnan, who would later come to visit us in Kentucky, taught me how to make hummous during an all evening event that temporarily transformed my home kitchen into a Jordanian culinary school! Something I considered a blessing, being a small town girl from WV). Desserts in Jordan most often tended to be fresh fruit, with watermelon being served more often in restaurants, and on the dig, than any other fruit. Restaurants and bakeries also served amazingly wonderful sticky sweets like baklava, or a popular angel hair pastry, or cookies stuffed with pistachios or dates, but we rarely had room left over for such rich treats. Along with dessert, Jordanian meals ended with either coffee (often flavored with cardamom), served very strong in small cups, or else hot tea, which was also served very strong and heavily sweetened. All around the city of Irbid, on these outings, we would go in search of what would become our favorite dishes, but our most singularly favorite meal, considered more of a "fast food" in Jordan, sold by vendors along the streets (all around the Middle East, actually), and extremely cheap to pick up was either shawarma or falafel. J preferred the former, and I the latter, though we were happy to share with one another. Shawarma is very much like an Arab version of a Greek gyro. It's a rolled piece of flat bread filled with strips of lamb or chicken, smothered in yogurt, while falafel is pita bread (khubiz) stuffed with a mixture of deep fried chick peas, yogurt, spices, and parsley. Some of my other favorite local dishes were mansaf, a traditional Beduoin chicken and rice dish made in a rich yogurt broth, served without utensils, usually in huge amounts from a big communal platter (and though you eat this with your hands, Arabs never use their left hand to eat, as it is considered to be unclean), kabsa, another chicken and yellow rice dish, oozi, basmati (a yellow rice) with roasted chicken, usually served with roasted potatoes, or green peppers and onions, or both, and kibbeh, palm-sized deep fried balls made of a mixture of finely ground lean beef or lamb, cracked wheat, some spices, onions, toasted pine nuts, and olive oil. While we would have variations on these dishes for lunch back at camp, as well as other typical Jordanian fare like mahshi (baked stuffed eggplant), and baba ghanoush (a smashed, smoky, runny eggplant dish in a molasses based sweet and sour sauce), the food never tasted all that good because of the conditions under which our hired professional cooks had to work, and because of the cheaper quality of groceries that Dr. Mare purchased. All of this was quite unfortunate, as I think it hindered a true appreciation of Jordanian cuisine.
In any case, I was in heaven when I was in Irbid, visiting restaurants (and yes, sometimes we'd go to the only American joint in Irbid, Pizza Hut, which tasted so much better to me when I was over there than at home) and grocery stores, shopping for snack foods we could take back to camp to get us through another few days until we could make it to Amman, where we spent almost every weekend.
