My Contextual Address

When I went to the police station to register and extend my visa I gave them my address. “One block east from the large supermarket in Arjan in the third building on the right on the fourth floor on the right side”. That is my official address… a description of how to get to my apartment from a well known landmark. This is quite different from a typical Utah address which denotes a point in space with two numbers representing a location on a city grid. The idea then is that a point exists regardless of the context and surroundings. Given the address here I can’t find my way without first knowing enough about the area to know where to start from and then I can very easily find my way. This is one of the best examples of a mindset here in Jordan (and I would say the Arab world in general) that you need a contextual understanding of things and can’t easily simplify things to generally applicable concepts. I am constantly asked by people back home about the political environment here, most of them looking for simple yes or no answers to their questions. They are looking for the simple state or "location" of things, but fail to really understand the context and as such don’t understand that a simple answer is impossible in this culture. It’s like someone asking for my address and I give them my “official address” which of course means nothing to them as they have no idea where the large supermarket in Arjan is located. Just as knowing the location of the supermarket is essential to understanding the location of my apartment, knowing the context of the history, culture, and mindset of the various groups here is essential to understanding the political situation. Things here can’t be taken out of context or relegated to simple yes and no answers so I would encourage all of you who want to know what is going on here to take some time to understand the history and culture of the region as without that understanding you’re sure to get lost.