A Dissonant Harmony

In this culture you have very few moments alone as people are so interconnected and don’t understand why someone would not want to be part of the group. It makes sense traditionally as living in such an arid climate, isolation meant death. Interestingly enough the Arabic word for lonely (وحيدا) is almost the same as the word for private (وحيد) so the guys I have been living with from AdDafyanna have demanded that I continue to live with them in their crowded crash pad rather than making me endure the awful fate of living alone in my own more spacious apartment in Arjan. Living with them at times is almost like summer camp as it is a lot of eating, talking, joking and laughing late into each evening. It has been wonderful to spend time with each of them as they all have such great hearts and have made such an effort to make me feel at home here in Amman. Abu Omar teaching me how to cook and insisting to go with me to get all my visa paperwork taken care of. Thamer, always making sure I have something to snack on and drink when I'm hard at work. Ahmed Naif helping me with my Arabic and cultural understanding. Ahmed always being so upbeat and happy about everything (though I think it is because he is getting married soon). And last but not least Ghalib, giving me a place to stay, spending time talking politics and life and making sure I have everything and anything I could possibly need. Getting to know these men has been a true pleasure and reaffirms what I expressed last year about the overwhelming sense of hospitality I have felt here in Jordan.

Despite this great camaraderie I was relieved to have a little time to myself to sit and think this morning as I had trouble sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb anyone so I went up to the roof where I had a beautiful view of the city below me just starting to wake up. If you wake up early enough here in Jordan you can hear the first idthan or call to prayer of the day, each from a different minaret, starting one after another with the personal touches and distinct tone and style of the mu’athim leading the idthan. It is amazing to hear each idthan begin and although they are all saying the same words, each is so distinctly different. They are not coordinated as each mu’athim is proclaiming his faith and inviting others to join in prayer independently but at the same time they all begin to join together and shift from patterns of slight dissonance to perfect harmony then back. At first it is an almost eerie sound until you let your mind go and stop forcing the harmonies and letting each idthan stand individually but also contribute to this great swelling of beauty. Each is different and does not fit perfectly one with another, but that is part of what makes the experience so beautiful. The message is all the same of proclaiming a faith and devotion in God. As the various idthan slowly faded away after echoing off of the steep hills of Amman into the still dark sky I sat there in silence for a while. My mind couldn’t help but draw the parallel to how we are each individually proclaiming our faith in life. We all are independently proclaiming what is important and what we believe in. We all shift between dissonant and harmonious expressions of our faith even with those we have much in common with (let alone those who may believe very differently than we do). We spend so much time focusing on the dissonance created by our differences that it causes us to ignore what harmonies may exist and we miss the beauty of the experience. Rather than being so consumed with bringing others into harmony with our declarations of faith perhaps there are times where it is better to just sit back and listen?