"You eat it. Good for man-to-man."

We’re in the Badia now: a vast, empty scrubland and desert north-northeast of Amman. From our hosts’ home in Ad-Dafyanan, we can see Syrian hilltop villages. We are less than ten miles from the killing in Dara’a, but Jordanians pride themselves on being aloof from the chaos and tyranny of their neighbors. Our contact in the region is Shlash Al-Oun, and in demeanor he reminds me of no one so much as my father’s redneck vinyl-siding salesmen, albeit better-dressed and better-educated. His father wears the traditional Bedouin robes and Jordanian checkered keffiyeh, but Shlash wears neatly-ironed slacks and collared shirts, polishes his shoes and gels his hair.

Shlash is the oldest of 18, and his family has all their holdings in common in a single, massive account. The men all go to university, and when they turn 30 they marry and are provided with a car, and a house in the village. It’s an artful mix of tribalism and capitalism—their communal finances create a much larger investment pool, which is one factor in their family’s wealth. As foreign as the arrangement is to me, as we toured his rural demesne I could not help being impressed with the results.

The Al-Oun family has built four deep water wells that feed villages and farms throughout their tribal region, and they’re worth about $1.3 million each. I drank directly from the intake, and it was the clearest, sweetest water I’ve ever tasted. It is a strange thing to splash your face with rainwater that fell 65 million years ago, and hasn’t seen daylight since.

The Al-Ouns grow olives, stonefruit, grapes, malt, melons, and wheat on land that they rotate every seven years; and they keep horses, camels, donkeys, sheep, and goats in their stables. When we walked in, Shlash told us to stand back, made a clipped, guttural call, and two massive Arabian horses burst out of their pens and charged across the yard to their trough. They were the horses of a woman’s weird Freudian fantasies; glossy and panting and muscular. With one more shout from Shlash, they jumped from the trough and stormed back into their pens faster than I’ve ever seen an animal move.

The camels were hilarious and ungainly—especially the week-old calf that Shlash delivered, who hadn’t quite figured out his legs yet—but far more interesting was the dog. Arabs don’t keep dogs; they see them as scavengers and pests, something like they way we think of raccoons or coyotes, and the whole time we were in the stables, this filthy yellow dog skulked in wide circles around us, head down, always watching for some morsel to catch, jumping back at any sudden movement. Strange how even a dog will be exactly what it is expected to be.

Driving along rows of olive trees and grapevines draped on aluminum trellises, we drove past Abu Shlash (Shlash’s father) in his pickup truck. His face was dark and weatherbeaten, almost callused, and he spoke to Shlash out of a tracheotomy tube about the need to harvest the malt before the drought kills it, and to put us with “someone respectable” because we are “from Loren’s side”.

Dinner at Shlash’s home was a gauntlet of cultural obstacles. First, my wife was ushered into the women’s area, and I was briefly introduced to Shlash’s wife and daughter. Loren says this is an honor, and was only possible because I am married—Loren, being single, did not meet Shlash’s wife until several months after the wedding.

Without thinking, I immediately moved in to shake his daughter’s hand. She, apparently trying to be polite, hesitantly reached for mine, before I realized that I was making an ass of myself and quickly withdrew and pressed my hand to my chest. I later mentioned the killing of Osama Bin Laden at dinner, which also went over like a fart in church. Better to get these errors out of the way among understanding people, I suppose.

Dinner was a single silver platter of yellow rice and boiled chicken with a yoghurt broth poured over the top, called menzef, the eating of which is apparently an essential Bedouin experience. It can be eaten with utensils, but I’m told you’re not cool until you’ve eaten menzef by hand. They said they would teach me how to eat it, and I said, “It’s eating with your hands; how hard could it be?” but I quickly discovered that there is definitely a wrong way. There is a rather elaborate ritual of tearing the chicken, playing with the rice in the platter, scooping it into your hand, balling it, and then flicking it into your mouth with your thumb; and for now it appears to be beyond my capacity. I made a tremendous mess.

We ate with the shabaab (the boys), and Loren said it best: “It’s like hanging out with five-year-olds, with no girls to impress and no manners to keep.” They didn’t say much while we ate, which I am told is customary, except to tell me, “hand to mouth, not mouth to hand.” After a long silence, Shlash’s brother (cousin? nephew?) pointed to a plate of long, jagged leaves and said, leering, “You eat it. Good for man-to-man.” Then everyone giggled awkwardly, and Loren said (in Arabic) “Enough, enough. He’s learned enough for one day.”

Now, the reader will understand that I was already pretty uncomfortable. They didn’t have a lot of English, and I didn’t have a lot of Arabic, and there’s nothing more unsettling than being in a strange place, alone, while a bunch of middle-aged dudes talk about you in a language you barely understand; but I’m a man of the world. I can handle it. I was even getting used to the way these repressed, macho cowboys cuddled when they were alone together; but nobody had touched the leaves before me, and I wasn't about to 'learn by doing' as far as "man-to-man" was concerned.

When I refused to let it drop, Loren finally told me that man-to-man refers to “performance”. Ostensibly with women. So, hoping against hope that that was the whole truth, I hesitantly took a bite of one of the leaves; and I am happy to report, dear readers, that I have not suffered from erectile dysfunction even once since then; and, as far as I know, I was not drugged and raped by the Bedouin.

Truthfully, apart from the enjoyment they clearly derived from watching me squirm, everyone we've met has been perfectly hospitable and kind. The language and the culture take constant mental effort to navigate, but we're surrounded by patient people, and they seem to enjoy helping us learn. More on our work and our host family in the next post.

Kevin