Irbid

    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.

Archaeological Finds at Abila

     The thing about digging (besides the fact that it is hot as hell!), is that unlike teaching, you can actually observe some immediate progress. Plus, while you may not know how far down you're going to dig (I think all supervisors keep this to themselves, or else are figuring it out as they go along, observing what you're actually uncovering), it doesn't matter so much because that's all you've got to do all day anyway! As for how wide and long your square will be, that you pretty much do know in advance, as your supervisor has announced to his crew that "we" will be putting in this many squares in this area during this dig season, looking for such and such because "I expect we should be coming down on that at some point pretty soon." Now this could be anything from mosaic tile floors, to an important wall, to paving stones, to a water channel, or anything else once it becomes more clear what had most likely once been located in that particular area.

      Like I said earlier, Abila was once a very large city, especially during the Roman period. There had once been as many as six churches, shops, roads, a theater, houses, quarries, water tunnels, cisterns, gates, a defensive wall, as well as other structures that have yet to be determined. Located up on Area A, where I was digging, once sat a large Byzantine church (not an overly exciting find for most archaeologists, as remains of these exist all over the Middle East). J wanted to do several probes (meaning, purposeful digging down past several stratigraphic layers) to determine if there had been earlier occupation. The thing with a probe is that eventually one does begin to get the feeling that he's digging all the way to China (and these probes can get very dangerous). Sometimes when the American workers started to get really irritated with the Director (which like I said, didn't take all that long!), lots of good humored plans would often be discussed as to how a person might push him into a probe and make it look like an accident. If nothing else, this just offered everyone a good laugh, helping relieve the collective tensions that were building up due to our very trying living conditions, combined with the realization that each person on the dig (except for a few of us; a fact I kept very quiet about!) had paid almost $2000 to be there!

     Anyway, back to digging. Lots of interesting objects and materials were found at Abila that season, just as had been the case in all the previous seasons. Loads of ceramic pottery has been found, dating from the Islamic period and going as far back as the Early Bronze Period (3300 -1950 BC), even while the occupation of Abila is known to have gone back to the Chalcolithic Period (4250-3300 BC). There may even have been occupation during the Neolithic Period (8000-4250 BC), as potsherds were found during an initial survey of Abila that suggested this possibility! So, as anyone can see, Abila has been a rich site to excavate. Besides all the pottery (including large and small storage vessels, jars, jugglets, dishes, lamps, and other objects), there have been finds of bones (both animal and human), glass vessels, clay figurines, an abundance of tesserae, loom weights, jewelry (both women's rings and signet rings, bracelets, and earrings), shell objects, limestone busts, plaster, chert spear blades, coins, tools, and other metal objects, along with the many columns and capitals belonging to another Byzantine church in Area D that had toppled over during a major earthquake (AD 747), which had destroyed much of the architecture in that region. Besides destruction from earthquakes, several occupation periods had witnessed large scale destruction from fires, which I came down on evidence of while digging in my own square.

     Abila is also rich in painted tombs, descriptions of which the French have also been recording and publishing. Loads of Abila’s objects have been discovered buried in these tombs, but word gets out quickly to all the local villages, and then tomb robbing becomes of great concern, not only to the archaeologists, but to the Jordanian government. J has spent more than one night in a newly discovered tomb, along with one or two other members of the American excavation team, in order to keep "guard" over it until it has been excavated. It's impossible to keep it a secret whenever another tomb has been found, as all the locals quickly spread the news, thinking there might be gold or something else really valuable in it. While the Department of Antiquities hires guards to keep watch over the excavation site during the off seasons (as well as the "on" season--there was a guard's tent up on our area), black marketing of antiquities is a huge business, and guards are easily bribed. Every season, under their “watchful” eyes, tomb robbers comb the hillsides in search of any indentation that might suggest a door or passageway into a tomb, knowing that Abila is famous because of their sheer number, boasting more than any other site in Jordan. Unfortunately, no one ever witnesses any theft! Besides the black marketers, there has been a lot of general looting and destruction of property from the Abila site, a process which has been ongoing and well entrenched in the local villages, even among the more affluent residents, in whose well-landscaped gardens have been found stolen columns, statues, and the like. Fortunately for everyone, a large percentage of the finds have been preserved in the archaeology museum in Amman, though due to lack of space, much of the antiquities of Jordan is in storage.

On Tell Abil

     It doesn't take as long to get the hang of digging as I had originally thought it might. And digging was not as miserable a job as I had originally feared either! Also, I soon learned how lucky those of us who worked up on top of the tell were, being up high enough that we actually got a nice breeze all morning long, while the people down below us working in the other areas weren't so fortunate. The few times that I had occasion to meander down into the valley to any of the other areas to see something, it felt as stifling hot as I imagined Hades might feel if I were to ever end up being sent down there (that is, if I weren't there already)! Over that summer I often liked to reflect on an idea that some people from hot climate areas have had of Hell, that it was a place so cold that you could never get warm! And while I could understand this, sometimes while I was digging I liked picturing myself sitting inside a huge walk-in refrigerator, or in an igloo, or anywhere it might be really cold! Rather than being hellacious, it seemed rather inviting!
     In any case, the one thing we couldn't deceive ourselves about was that we were all of us, regardless of how comfortable we might or might not have felt, still sweating out all our body fluids. J would get so irritated at any of the American workers who insisted that they never felt "all that thirsty." Dehydration is serious business, and J often had to remind us to stop what we were doing and drink some water. As he kept jokingly saying to each of us individually, "You're not a camel!" One result of dehydration, besides getting deathly sick to your stomach, is getting diarrhea, which further dehydrates a person, making them even sicker, a condition that would eventually keep some people bedridden back at camp. This, along with all the general "foreign" bacteria floating around which would find its way into our systems, also caused some people's bowls to react more violently than others'. So you might imagine what that often meant, off and on, during any given part of a day, but especially during the eight hours we were out in the field. Obviously, this had been an ongoing issue for every season of excavation at Abila, and while attempts had been made to construct an outdoor toilet (J had also told me a very funny story about the absolute failure of trying to build one using a variety of materials on hand that would not only stand up against the wind and the constant use, but would assure its user of complete privacy, and how they named it the "Harold" after their esteemed director, instead of the "John"), but nothing had ever worked. And so . . . what each of us one-by-one eventually discovered is that if and when we were absolutely going to have to relieve ourselves, we were going to have to go over the hill on the back side of the tell where no one was digging, squat down behind some of the taller briar bushes, and do it there. As for us girls, while we were appalled by the notion of having to make a public announcement whenever we had to go, we did always ask another female to go with us, more to keep watch than anything, but also to be able to report back if the other girl needed some form of help. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we all were instructed to carry toilet paper with us out to the field, and here's the reason why: to put it quite bluntly, out on that hillside there was nothing, either in vegetable or mineral form, that was going to do the job when it came time to wipe our bottoms! All joking aside, and being from West Virginia I've heard it all, how we use corn cobs, or Sears catalog pages, or whatever, and even though I had used an outhouse at my grandma's when we'd go down to the end of her holler to play by our great uncle's house (who didn't have indoor plumbing for a really long time) and have to use his, and while I've used port-a-potties at different outdoor events, this was something else altogether! Squatting to poop while someone you barely know stands with her back to you, only feet away?! Throwing used toilet paper down on the ground and watching it blow away or else get caught somewhere on some briars (and seeing that some girl on this dig had brought pink!)? Of course, this made those toilets back at camp seem plush. So see? Just when you think things can't get any worse, they really can! I remember one time looking over at the other hillside, seeing a shepherd herding his flock of sheep and goats, and realizing that it could take a long time before he would be ready to move on; and I really had to go! My worst fear was that even if he didn't have 20/20 eyesight, he might own a pair of binoculars! You never could be sure what those Bedouin might have. After all, they weren’t riding around on camels in Jordan anymore, they were driving small Toyota trucks!
     But what I’m saying is, out there, and on this whole trip basically, I had to learn to let go of my vanity, my pride, and everything else, eventually. And I learned a lot about myself in the process. It's amazing what you learn you're capable of doing, and how much you can adapt to new and challenging situations. I had never in my life been an outdoorsy kind of girl, but I was sort of proud of myself every time I made it through another "unusual" experience. My life as I had known it to be up to this point was going to change, and I think I was being changed in the process. Much like the process of going through a refiner's fire! God will not let us keep our original natures, especially if we ask Him to help us grow spiritually. But we'll only go through what we can handle a little at a time, and He'll provide so much fun and excitement along the way that you'll insist it was worth all the discomfort and pain! So while I would have to learn to squat out here on this hillside in Jordan (among a whole host of other embarrassing things I would find myself mixed up in), what I didn’t know was that very soon, actually later in the fall, I would reap an unexpected reward most unusual for a girl who grew up in a small town in West Virginia!

Early Rising

     We really didn't need to set an alarm clock (except in order to avoid what happened next). At exactly 4:00 a.m. I was suddenly awakened by a loud clanging of a bell and Dr. Mare yelling at the top of his lungs, "Rise and shine everybody! Rise and shine! The bus will be leaving in a half an hour! Everybody, get up!" This, accompanied by continuous clanging of a bell would continue for five minutes as he counted down the remaining time we had left! Then he would jump back in his jeep and depart, leaving all of us in the girl's camp groggy and grouchy! OMG! This was how I was going to wake up five days a week for the next eight weeks! This used to be exactly how my mother would wake us kids up on school days when we were growing up. She'd come into our rooms, flip the light on, and say, "Rise and shine!"  Then we'd have a half hour to get dressed, make our beds, eat breakfast, and get out the door. I never dreamed that anything could ever be worse than that bright overhead light shining in my eyes before I had a chance to wake up. But this! This was definitely worse! There was no bright light; it was still dark, but a clanging bell!? He had to be kidding! (J had told me that people on the dig were always plotting how they might "accidentally" bump off Dr. Mare, something I was already beginning to understand, and it was only the first day!) While I absolutely hate getting up so early in the morning, I am a rather disciplined person, and so will do what I have to do, and now, that meant not being late. Mornings were chilly, even in mid-June, in this dry arid desert region, and so as soon as you got out of bed, you wanted to put on the clothes you had laid out the night before (your pants, a short sleeved t-shirt, a light, long sleeved outer shirt, heavy socks, and your boots), and then quickly make a run for the bathroom! All you're really going to do hygienically this early is brush your teeth, and that you do in your room with water from a bottle containing your own personal supply. You just wet your toothbrush and paste, brush your teeth, rinse, and then spit right outside your door! How convenient is that? And hair? If it's long, you pull it back, or you put it up. I had cut mine short for this trip, and so I didn't do much of anything. That pretty much describes the morning routine, not only for that day, but for all the days. Nothing in regards to that ever changed, except for who might deicide she absolutley could not go out to the field that day due to some form of sickness (whether it be emotional, mental, physical, or feminine). And this would definitely begin to happen with much more frequency as the weeks progressed (which would eventually make everybody else really mad!). Also, before we left the camp we had to grab up all the gear we would need to take with us out to the dig site, which would always include several quarts of drinking water (so as to stave off dehydration), sunglasses, sunscreen, a hat, work gloves, your camera, any extra snack food you might want, a roll of toilet paper, and, oh yeah, of course, your own pick and trowel, personal plumb bob, and tape measure, as well as any other sundry items for which the need might change from day to day. This, you would stuff into your back pack, don your jacket (if you were smart enough to bring one because you actually believed the information given you about the flux in desert temps!), and then ever so soon, like clockwork, at exactly 4:30 you'd board the bus that would come around to take everybody back down the road to the main camp for first breakfast, which would already be in progress. Once there we'd have about ten minutes to get any water we'd need (if we hadn't adequately filled up the night before), scarf down some runny goat's milk yogurt (which to me always looked exactly like baby's throw up, having that same color and consistency, and sickening sweet smell. I was never ever able to eat it, though plenty of people loved it, declaring its health value as being unparallel to anything else), eat a cold boiled egg (or several, as these were plentiful!), and then return to the buses, find your favorite seat (by the window was always popular so as to better be able to catch a few more winks on the way out to the field!), store your gear, and not be responsible for keeping the 4:45 a.m. departure from leaving on time!

Missing My Daughter

     When we got back to our rooms, we sat outside for a little while, gazing up at the stars. I thought about my daughter back home, and how my marriage to J had changed both our lives. Now here I was without her for two whole months on the other side of the world. I cried as I looked up at the moon and counted backwards the time difference of seven hours between us, wondering what she was doing on this particular afternoon, and whether she was missing me as much as I was missing her. I truly hoped she wasn't. She was a very happy, loving little girl who off and on desperately wished for a father, keeping on her night stand the only two pictures that I had ever taken of her "real" dad holding her. She especially liked the one where he was laughing. Sometimes she believed that she loved him more than anything, while other times she hated him for not being there to see her, and tuck her into bed and kiss her goodnight. All I could say to her was that I was so sorry, that it was my fault, and that I loved her more than anything.

     I had met her father when I worked as a teller at the Bank of America on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. (The Queen Mary had been built in Scotland in 1937, and had luxuriously carried the rich and famous across the Atlantic, before it carried troops during WWII, and then afterwards ferried war brides and children back across the Atlantic. After 516 trips, she finally came to rest in 1967 in the Long Beach harbor.) Much of my job had been to exchange foreign currency and traveler's checks for the thousands of tourists we got from countries all over the world who had come to California to visit the Queen Mary and the Spruce Goose, as well as other popular places in Southern California like Hollywood and Disneyland. This did much to inspire in me a further determination to one day travel the world myself. But for now, besides exchanging currency, I was cashing payroll checks for all the employees who worked on the ship, many of whom were foreigners. Angel was from a small town outside of Mexico City, and had come to the states to get work and to live. As a legal alien, he had gotten a job as a hotel employee on the Queen Mary, then worked as a bus boy in one of the restaurants, all the while teaching himself English before being able to work his way up into the wait staff, and then into management. Because every employee on that ship pretty much knew every other employee, as we all ran into one another at some time, or eventually served each other in some capacity, so it was that I had met Angel three years earlier. We had been dating steadily all that time when I accidentally got pregnant. Although I was once again terrified of having a baby on my own, I had loved him, I was a little older, and I was determined to have this child. Understanding that we would never be able to get married due to pre-existing circumstances, I decided to move back home to West Virginia when Christie was four months old. Now, as I sat here in Jordan, all that seemed like a lifetime ago, and I thought about how Christie (who was eleven) and J were not getting along so well. Being a father did not come naturally or easily for him, and so tension and jealousy were more often than not creating the atmosphere that existed in our house. I knew that while she might be mad at me for leaving her (though I did not really feel that she was), she would at least get a reprieve from the power struggle that was defining her life at home.
     Tonight though, J and I were sitting here, far away from a world that seemed to barely exist from this long distance. Here, J was happy and in his element. I recalled how he had rescued me from going crazy over  graduate classes, and then from a cold house during that first winter after we had met. Later he rescued me from bill collectors and a surmounting load of debt. He seemed to be at home in messes and tough situations, as his whole life, he often though somewhat reluctantly shared stories about, had been one of survival. And being on this dig, for me, was definitely something I would require his help to survive! After about an hour of sitting mostly in silence (we were both unbelievably tired), we finally wound down enough to be able to sleep. Besides, our alarm was set to go off at 4:00 a.m., and that would be here before we knew it. After we each had made a quick trip out to the toilets, using a flashlight to light the way along the dark path (there were no street lights, only the stars), we then lay down together on our mattresses and very quietly made love. J fell right to sleep, but I lay awake a while longer, remembering one more thing. It was a vision that I had back in 1990.
     I had only been dating J for about three months. As I had gotten into the habit of doing, one afternoon, as I was practicing deep meditation, I saw myself standing in a raging fire. Flames were all around me, though they did not feel hot, nor were they hurting me in any way. After I had been standing there for an indeterminate amount of time, two spirits carried J into the flames. Holding him directly over my head, they released him down into my body, so that we stood there together as one, he inside of me. What was so amazing to me was that I could really feel this. My entire body, from head to toe, shuddered in ecstasy for the duration of this whole part of the vision! We stayed like that for how long, I didn't know (only seconds passed in real time), before those same spirits came back and somehow related to J that it was time for him to go. He told them that he was not ready and didn’t want to leave, and so they allowed him a little more time before they returned, lifted J back out of me, and took him away. Even then he did not want to leave, but I had somehow understood that it was time for us to part, and that everything would be okay as I remained standing alone in the flames. After that vision I knew in my heart that we would be married (it took 3 1/2 more years for this to happen), but that our time together would be short. Why short, I did not understand; however, I immediately related the flames to passion, a word derived from the Latin, passio, which means "to suffer." But since it seemed in the vision to be a fire that did not consume, then maybe it would be a fire that would refine, or purify, changing me into something different than what I was. In any case, nothing I had ever experienced seemed any more real to me than that vision had seemed, and I had been thinking about it ever since. Now 4 1/2 years later, I still thought about it, and what it meant, and why I had received such a vision in the first place. Thinking about this, my marriage, my daughter, and about being here, I eventually drifted off to sleep.

Touring Abila

     For the evening, we had scheduled a walking tour over the site, an area which included two hills, or tells, including Tell Abila, the area where J had been digging over several seasons. Areas A and AA contained the remains of two churches, and several other public buildings, and the remains of the city walls. We continued our walk down into a saddle area that housed the larger ancient city, all of this dating back about 5500 years, from around 4000 BC to AD 1500, including the Islamic, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, Iron, and Bronze ages.  In this area were the remains of several 7th and 8th century churches, paving stones of Roman roads, a cavea of what might have been a Roman theater, a possible Odeon, and several gates, and crossing the saddle were the remains of a bridge which led back up another hill. This entire area was bordered by olive orchards, the Wadi Qualibah, which was the spring and source of water for this once thriving ancient city, and tombs and tomb complexes. Walking back up the hill to area D, where columns with limestone capitals belonging to a 6th century Christian Basilica stood majestically reconstructed, we all took a break and sat down to receive a small devotion delivered by J. Out over in the fields we could see shepherds grazing their sheep. This seemed to set our minds on things more holy, things above us that were invisible, rather than things below that had once been hidden but which had now become visible. As I sat there listening to him, I reflected on the idea that what each of us is searching to find, whether it be lost cities, lost faith in God, or just lost parts of ourselves, lies below the surface of what we can actually see. Below what we allow others to see. The discipline of archaeology has been said to be one of destruction.  One must literally destroy each layer of dirt as it is uncovered in order to dig deeper into the past. As each chronological layer (or archaeological period) is uncovered, someone has to make the decision whether or not to continue digging deeper, or to let that history forever represent what story gets told. Someone has to decide whether or not it's worth going deeper. However, once the decision is made to continue digging, the previous season's excavations can never be repeated. What was uncovered will soon be gone. As I sat there listening to J and observing the stones and rubble and loose dirt that lay over the earth's surface all around me, and the restructuring that had taken place and was yet to take place, I began to catch a glimpse of how a person might learn to love all this. It made me think about our own stories, and what gets told and what stays covered under layers of dirt. It made me wonder about what I might uncover during this long, hot summer, and whether it would be worth what I was going to have to endure to dig it up. And how many seasons of my life would it take? In the closing of his devotion, J prayed, thanking God for this opportunity, and asking Him to bless this season's dig, and to watch over and protect everyone on it over the next eight weeks. I added to his my own prayer: Dear God, give me the courage to walk down whatever road you open up before me. As the sun was setting in the sky, we walked back to the buses, and drove back to camp.

Camp Accommodations

     Not all dig sites and accommodations are created equal, and the Abila dig falls pretty far down on the scale of plushness. When we finally arrived at the location where we would be staying, I knew that the only thing that would get me through this would be J himself and my own determination to survive. After driving through the last vestige of civilization, the city of Irbid, we drove about another 8 miles north/northeast along a lone road to the village (actually, I'd call this something way smaller than a village) of Quawayibah before pulling into a large paved area in front of a school where half of our team would be living. (The dig group picture posted earlier was taken out in front of this school.) It had already been decided by the director that all the single men would be staying here, while further up the road about another 3/4 of a mile another school would house the women and married couples. In Jordan (as in many Muslim countries) boys and girls are separated by gender after primary school, thus the requirement for two post primary schools to serve the local area where we were staying. J and I would be housed in this 2nd school, away from where the main camp activity would be, which would be things like first morning breakfast, dinner, pottery cleaning and reading, lectures, and any basic general socializing (between the guys and girls, or just between anyone who could still manage to get along as the days and weeks slowly went by). This was also where all the sterilized water, food, and general supplies would be kept.

     As it was already past noon, the buses had to be unloaded, and the two camps set up. Our "beds" for these eight weeks would consist of 3-inch foam mattresses, and so J, who had learned that he must always look out for himself, and who would now include me in his care, secured two for each of us. Sheets and pillows, remember, everyone had to bring for themselves from home. J also secured for us a room on the ground floor (both schools were two stories), for two reasons: one, because it would be cooler; and two, he preferred being able to make a quick run for it in case of a bathroom emergency. Each room had individual entrances from the yard on one side and windows on the other, which would help in the way of any cross breezes that might blow through. The floors were concrete (thus the necessity for 2 mattesses, one stacked on the other, which a few people would be upset about later when they discovered what we had done). Each room also had a couple of desks in them, which gave us something to put our stuff on that needed keeping up off the floor, like our snacks. J had also previously warned me about all the critters that we might find in our shoes in the mornings (namely, scorpions), or that might scurry across our faces at night, so we kept as many items in sealed plastic baggies as possible. However, as for ourselves, well, unless we wanted to keep the covers pulled up over our heads all night, we had to be game for whatever! Anyway, while we wouldn't have any place to hang up our shirts and pants, J did string nylon clothesline across the room so that we could hang up our wet laundry. After we arranged our room by setting up our beds, our chairs, the clothesline, the boom box on the ledge of the chalkboard, and then laying out all our food stuffs, we were soon ready for several lectures about all the particular do's and don'ts and how to's concerning the dig and camp life (as well as the cultural nuances we needed to be aware of), including explanations on how to wash our laundry, as well as how to properly use the toilets, flush them, and dispose of the toilet paper (which we also brought ourselves).

     Actually, how to use the toilet would require a short demonstration, which my husband got elected to do. Picture a very large man squatting down, balancing himself  as if he were on skis, explaining how one might best keep one's pants, and anything else that might get in the way, dry! A little comic relief is always good when faced with a potential nightmare! Finally, it was explained to us that two of the toilets (there were only 4) would be converted into showers, which we would also be shown how to use. And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, we were handed out the daily toilet cleaning assignment schedule, from which no one would be exempt! This I drew the line at, begging J to please do mine for me! I just didn't think I could stomach cleaning up other people's diarrhea! And, like a gentleman, he agreed to do me this huge favor, and so had two cleaning days every week instead of one. Poor J; I really did feel bad for him, and I felt bad for all the other girls who didn't have anyone to save them from this horrific ordeal. That is until some of them started not doing their job, and/or otherwise pissing everybody off for one reason or another. But as far as J went, I promised I would try to find something that I could do in return for him!

Understanding Islam

     It struck me that while I had spent many years during my adult life, thus far, reading and trying to understand different world religions, I had left out Islam. I had read quite a bit about Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism and Native American animism, as well as a whole host of other earlier religions), but for some reason had stayed away from reading anything about another one of the world's largest and fastest growing religions. And I started wondering why that was. In truth, I hadn't even given Islam much thought. In preparation for this trip I had read up on a few things about visiting a Muslim country, but more in order to understand our cultural differences. However, it would become much more clear to me as I spent time in Jordan that while we, in the US, tried to keep religion and matters of state separate, here it was not the case. Here, religion defined the culture, from public prayer, to food and diet practices, to how women dressed, and how and why it was that men and women were kept basically separate from each other (and so it would be that on this trip I wouldn't actually meet or speak with even one woman), to rules about touching and speaking to someone of the opposite sex; plus it even affected how the very conservative people from the local villages viewed the majority of Americans!
     J had told me about previous digs when the local workers (mostly younger guys) would practice their English on him, and about some of the things they would say. One particularly funny story involved their idea of how rich we all were. It seemed that many of their ideas about us were derived from what they saw on US television, which for the most part was not good! The popular 80s nighttime soap drama, Dallas, was popular over there, as was Knight Rider. One day this kid kept asking J if he had a kit car (spoken in a very heavy Arabic accent). "Do you drive a car?" Yes. "What kind of car is it? Is it a kit car?" A what? "A kit car." What's a kit car? "You know; a kit car!" No, I don't know what that is. " A kit car- you know- it talks to you." Oh! A KIT car! No, that's not real; it's just a t.v. show. We don't really have those in America. "No?" No. "I thought everyone drove one." Nope. "Oh." Of course, even to have this much conversation meant that this kid's English was very good! But most of the time what they were seeing of US television formed much less of an innocent picture of how Americans lived and how we acted! I would see this acted out later in camp. And, I would come to better understand their religion, but for now, I was being driven around Amman's city center, listening to a short lecture on Jordan's government and history. We made a brief stop at the site of the ancient Roman theater and then drove up to the Citadel before we made the hour and a half trip north to Abila.

Arriving in Jordan

     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.

Love, Food, and the Flight Over

     I had been from the start physically attracted to J, that is, once I got over resisting how large he was, both vertically and horizontally. Sometimes I would be reminded of this more than at other times, and certainly flying made it very evident. Coach seats on airplanes are unbelievably tight, both in regards to the amount of butt and thigh room there is, but also in the amount leg space between the seats and the amount of room between your meal tray, once you let it down, and your waist! I was already feeling irritatingly cramped, yet we still had another seven hours of flight time left before we would land in Jordan. Never mind that J was completely miserable!

    

     J had a very healthy appetite for all sorts of activities, and eating was definitely one of them! I think that might have also played a big part in how I won him over. If "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," then that could be how I clenched getting his (both stomach and heart)! While eating did eventually win out in our marriage over any other activity (read into this sex), from the beginning I was enamored by him enough to turn myself into a combination Julia Child and Betty Crocker. My mother had made cetain that I knew how to replicate everything she knew how to cook, teaching me the art of baking, but mostly frying, a variety of different cuts of beef and chicken, demonstrating how to overcook vegetables, whip up some creamy, buttery mashed potatoes, and make delicious casseroles and baked beans, how to cut, chop, and mix together a mean garden salad, and even how to concoct a variety of beverages (namely, sweet tea!). She also instructed me on how to bake loaves of yeast bread and pans of corn bread, and how to bake a whole array of cakes and cookies and other desserts from scratch! All this I knew fairly well by the age of fifteen when she divorced Dad, leaving me to be the cook for him, my brother, and myself. By then I already owned several heavily soiled cookbooks that I had either inherited from Mom or that my grandmother had given me. I loved to cook, especially when I had someone to cook for who loved to eat!  And so I cooked large, and I cooked fat! Both before and after we were married I would make J huge breakfasts, to be followed up only a few hours later with lunch, which would often be fast food, followed sometime during the evening with an enormous dinner. On top of that, most every night around midnight he would get a craving for something sweet, and I'd oblige him with whatever I could make quickly, often throwing together something like rice crispy treats or brownies or chocolate chip cookies. And so, surprise of all surprises, this did nothing to help him control his weight or me mine. Never mind that we both had hit the age of 30 something when one does not burn off fat like one used to! And now here we were trying to sit comfortably in these stupid airplane seats! Arrrgh!

     I was already glad that we had come prepared to supplement the dig food with our own snacks from America, but I was wondering how closely the food on the plane would resemble what we would have to eat once we were landed in Jordan, and it wouldn't be too much longer before I would find out. Finally, after lunch and another movie, we began our flight over Jordan. Jordan is actually about the size of Indiana, and we would shortly be flying into its capital city of Amman. As I excitedly looked out the window (peering over my seat mate), my heart almost stopped beating. All I could see literally was desert! Brown, sandy, rocky, wind blown desert. I strained to see in every direction even one tree or bush. Nothing! People on the plane started cheering even before we began our descent, happy to be back over their beloved homeland. Me, I started crying! I couldn't help myself; the tears just came, and they wouldn't stop. All I could think about was that I had signed up for eight weeks of this! I get mad if somebody cuts down a tree in the US. Probably because I know what could happen: this! What I was viewing now through the window truly scared me. Suddenly all the stories I'd read in the Bible of people roaming in the desert came flooding (oh, and there was no water in sight either) into my mind. I did not want to roam the desert. I did not want to go on an archaeological dig in the Middle East. Somebody, please, save me! My husband took one look at my face and knew instantly that he was in for one long summer.

Our Packing List

     My passport arrived in the mail by the beginning of February '94. The director needed everyone's passport numbers as early as possible, as he needed to secure visas from Jordan for the whole group. He taught at a seminary in St. Louis, and would be bringing the bulk of the students. There would be a core staff of about ten, traveling from various locations in the US, each bringing with them students from their own universities and colleges. These would include all of the area supervisors, the photographer, surveyor, bone specialist, ceramics specialist, and any other specialist. There would also be various other people, like I said earlier, who would be coming along too for some reason or another, so that there would be around 50 Americans, as well as the Jordanian workers who would be required by the Department of Antiquities to be hired by each dig. Of course, among those would include at least two cooks, two bus drivers, and two Jordanian workers for every "foreigner" on the dig. Most digs are very big productions, requiring quite a bit of money to operate, and so one job of the director is to raise money for each season. Most digs go every other summer, and Abila goes on even years. A lot of the money comes from churches, some from universities and seminaries who join a consortium membership which allows one or two students of their own to go, other money comes from corporate donors, like say, National Geographic (although I don't think Abila had any corporate donors), and still other money comes from rich private donors who are generally interested in archaeology, Biblical or otherwise.  In all, one dig for one summer may cost up to about 1/2 million dollars. Some bigger digs cost more. This is one reason why there is also a dig fee required of anyone wanting to be on one. This money must be paid up front and in full many months before the actual departure date. Also, to ensure that no one will back out, it is non-refundable.
     Anyway, you can't talk about a dig without talking about money, and like I said, J and I didn't have much to spare. There were certain items that had to be taken along, as Dr. Mare was a miser, and unlike directors of other digs, he would not shell out money for all the supplies the area supervisors might need. J had been  supervising Area A for several seasons, and so knew pretty well what he would need and never be able to get from Dr. Mare or in Jordan. So off to Lowe's and Wal Mart we went to check off the essential items on our list. When I think back on how different traveling was before 9/11 it completely amazes me. But then I think about all those trunks the archaeologists from Mallowan's day had to transport overseas by ship and then by camel or donkey to the site. Like I said, it's a major production. One thing that I can definitely brag about is how absolutely little I can get by on in terms of clothes when I travel now! I have it down to an art, causing gasps of wonderment and awe from anyone who witnesses me carrying only my one tiny carry-on bag and purse, even when I'm going to be gone for weeks or even months of traveling! However and unfortunately, on this trip each of us would be carrying two huge suitcases, as well as several carry-on bags, camera bags, food, and pillows. Either J or me or each of us were carrying in our bags the following: one pick and trowel each, one spade each, brushes, plumb bobs, approximately 50 heavy spikes, several rolls of duct tape, colored tape, a knife, clothes line and pins, laundry detergent, several sets of old sheets, sun screen, two folding camp chair, fans, books, notebooks, pens and pencils, rulers, tape measures, a boom box and lots of cassette tapes, handkerchiefs, tissues, hats, several jars of Jiffy peanut butter (there is no such thing in Jordan), bags of hard candy and tootsie rolls (you really start to crave sweets), bags of life savors, beef jerky, all types of cereal bars and nuts, powered drink mixes (to add to our water), several boxes of plastic storage bags (both gallon and sandwich size), rolls of toilet paper, several large bath towels, rolls of string, several flashlights, loads of batteries of all sizes, at least one hundred rolls of film (of course now it's digital photography, and the biggest concern is having enough memory), first aide supplies, medicine for colds, allergies, headaches, upset stomachs, and diarrhea (about 20 boxes of Imodium D), and finally, our passports, our money, and our sunglasses. Oh yeah, clothes! Yikes! I almost forgot, and believe me, J stuffed that in last around everything else, thinking that most clothes items were not essential! His philosophy was to pack everything you thought you needed, then take half of that out, and then take half of that out yet again! He kept reminding me, as well as everybody else going on the trip, that we were not packing for a beauty pageant. So we took something like two pairs of pants each, 4-5 short sleeved t-shirts each (with no indentifiable writing on them), one long sleeved buttoned down shirt each, one skirt for me, a pair of shorts for him, a bathing suit (for me) and trunks (for him), enough underwear and thick socks for maybe eight days, a pair of sandals each (I also threw in a pair of flip-flops), tennis shoes, and heavy soled boots (which we wore on the plane so as to not take up space in our bags)! We also took enough shaving cream, razors, and toothpaste to last for 2 months, while I also had to take enough feminine products to last for two months (eee gads!), and make-up and hair products (although why, I'll never know). You should have seen all 50 of us when we gathered at the international airport terminal in New York! Real archaeologists always laugh at the Indiana Jones character who only travels with his bullwhip, his revolver, and his fedora. They wish! Ha!

Beginnings

     It's common for most girls to think that life will begin when they get married. I spent most of my own girlhood dreaming about who I might marry, where I'd live, and how many kids I might have, along with what I'd name them. My dad, in true fatherly fashion, and also after having me read Letters to Karen (a book of letters by a father to his daughter on the topic of marriage and how to be a good wife),  told me to take secretarial classes in high school just in case I didn't get married. I loved shorthand (it seemed like writing in secret code), hated typing (we still had manual typewriters at our school in the early 70s!), and discovered for certain that I never wanted to be a secretary! I also knew one other thing--I hated babysitting too (one of the few available jobs for young girls in school who wanted to make some legitimate cash). I got paid the going rate of 50 cents per hour, and by the time I was 15, I boldly declared to my mother in true young feminist fashion that if she ever got me another babysitting job I would never, ever have any kids when I grew up! Matter settled; another potential career (one as a stay-at-home mom) that I knew I wasn't suited for, marked off my list. I was still considering whether or not I was too tall to be an airline stewardess, though it was my poor eyesight and glasses that ended that career before it ever had a chance of getting off the ground (pun intended). I thought the whole flying and traveling thing sounded really fun!  Oh well, sigh! I didn't know if any girl could actually make money being a detective (I was a huge Nancy Drew fan), and so marriage seemed like the most viable option, though maybe with only one kid. So this was my plan right up until my parents got divorced.  End all plans!!
     Now, since this story is not about my parents' divorce and how screwed up I became, I'm going to make a long emotional story very short: I swore I would never get married. Okay, I did get married a year after graduating from high school, but that's only because I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was not at all in love with the guy. He wanted to marry me, I had become temporarily homeless, plus I was only 19 (and a little screwed up). That marriage lasted one year. It was after that that I swore off ever getting married again! And I stood my ground until I was 34. (Though I had a baby sans marriage when I was 23; but again, another thing this story is not about.)
     So I became a single mom for eleven years.  But here's the thing: I got motivated! I figured out what I wanted to be, and where I wanted my life to go, at least for the most part. I started school and then kept going. I began reading, not sappy love stories where the women got married and lived happily ever after, keeping house and doing who knows what else; I read the kind of literature that opened my eyes to a past that I had not up to then learned anything about, and to an understanding of the human condition of peoples back in time and around the globe that I might not ever be able to fully appreciate. At the same time I was also studying literary criticism, and while it also definitely expanded and challenged my thinking, I knew that I never wanted to be a critic, nor could I ever be a true academic. But I did want a bigger life! I still wanted adventure and travel, but I also wanted the chance to really experience other cultures and people. I didn't want to "sit out" life. I wanted to dance! And this is when my heart began to open up enough to let a certain young(ish) graduate student working on his PhD in ancient history take hold of my imagination so that I might eventually once again consider marriage.