Friday night: Shebbebing around Town
After our delicious Friday night meal, Alex and I returned to the apartment to regroup and wait for the evening festivities to begin. We’d planned to go out to a Western-style (not country-western, mind you) club for a little dancing. Despite being a Muslim country there are always places you can go to find a drink, but dancing places are harder to come by. They also require reservations, which we had fortunately been circumspect enough to make. Alex, Abdullah and his cousin Bisher, a very quiet friend of theirs, and I all set out in Bisher’s BMW. After battling the local lawless traffic to get across town we attempted to get into the club with our reservations but were turned away! It actually was not too surprising: 4 guys and one girl, three of the guys locals-they told us it was “couples’ night” and sent us on our way. Besides the fact that it’s silly to allow reservations for an odd number of people and then tell them it’s couples’ night, Jordanians also tend to discriminate against their own people in situations like this. It is generally assumed that shebbeb (young Jordanian guys) can only be up to no good and business would far rather welcome foreigners into their establishments. We’d been cajoling Artemis, a female friend of Alex’s for days to go out with us, but she was exhausted after a long week and had not desire to go clubbing. Another female in the partly would have greatly increased our bargaining power with local clubs.
After this rejection we set off on a wacky tour of the city, trying to find a place with dancing that would let us in. The entire night we were motivated by our desperate attempt to avoid ending up at Starbucks. Since it is the hip new thing and anyone can go in, it’s become the default destination for shebbeb. No one can stand it, though, and paying 4 bucks for a cup of coffee pisses everyone off. Bisher seems to know every place in town and we were hopping in and out of the car, checking out some of the seediest and poorly located clubs you can imagine. We had a brief stop for kinneffa at a freezing outdoor restaurant and eventually found ourselves stopped in the middle of a traffic circle deciding what our next move would be. I didn’t know you could just stop in a traffic circle but no one seemed to think it was remotely strange. *shrug*
Eventually we made our way to a traditional Jordanian café and it was great! It was cozy and warm with all kinds of tasty coffee, tea, and juice beverages. We sat and relaxed and smoked sweet, flavored tobacco (shisha) from an argillah (aka hooka) and watched people dancing to traditional Arab music. Fortunately I was not the only woman in the place (though definitely the only Western one) since this is a somewhat family-oriented activity. People are wild about music here, which has in many ways supplanted the ancient tradition of Arabic poetry. The male singer and his back-up synth player were actually quite good and what I think is the greatest part of the culture here is that EVERYONE knows ALL of the songs. People sing along all the time and Arabi dancing is very popular-all people share this common interest and experience. Dancing is usually of two varieties: dabka and belly-dancing. Dabka (I think) is done in a group, often with arms linked, with both sexes. Belly dancing is generally done just by women, though late in the night a guy started dancing, which gained the amazed attention of everyone in the place. While belly dancing has many similarities with salsa/latin (in fact it is probably what led to it via the Arab influence on music and culture in Spain and then Latin America), it is in many ways more provocative but in a far subtler way. It is so beautiful and I can’t wait to start my belly dancing lessons on Tuesday (in sha’allah).
At any rate it was a great night filled with fun conversation and relaxation and a great introduction to Jordanian culture. I was starting to wonder if this place was just totally crazy-it still may be crazy but now I have seen one of the most enjoyable and sweet parts of the local culture.
After this rejection we set off on a wacky tour of the city, trying to find a place with dancing that would let us in. The entire night we were motivated by our desperate attempt to avoid ending up at Starbucks. Since it is the hip new thing and anyone can go in, it’s become the default destination for shebbeb. No one can stand it, though, and paying 4 bucks for a cup of coffee pisses everyone off. Bisher seems to know every place in town and we were hopping in and out of the car, checking out some of the seediest and poorly located clubs you can imagine. We had a brief stop for kinneffa at a freezing outdoor restaurant and eventually found ourselves stopped in the middle of a traffic circle deciding what our next move would be. I didn’t know you could just stop in a traffic circle but no one seemed to think it was remotely strange. *shrug*
Eventually we made our way to a traditional Jordanian café and it was great! It was cozy and warm with all kinds of tasty coffee, tea, and juice beverages. We sat and relaxed and smoked sweet, flavored tobacco (shisha) from an argillah (aka hooka) and watched people dancing to traditional Arab music. Fortunately I was not the only woman in the place (though definitely the only Western one) since this is a somewhat family-oriented activity. People are wild about music here, which has in many ways supplanted the ancient tradition of Arabic poetry. The male singer and his back-up synth player were actually quite good and what I think is the greatest part of the culture here is that EVERYONE knows ALL of the songs. People sing along all the time and Arabi dancing is very popular-all people share this common interest and experience. Dancing is usually of two varieties: dabka and belly-dancing. Dabka (I think) is done in a group, often with arms linked, with both sexes. Belly dancing is generally done just by women, though late in the night a guy started dancing, which gained the amazed attention of everyone in the place. While belly dancing has many similarities with salsa/latin (in fact it is probably what led to it via the Arab influence on music and culture in Spain and then Latin America), it is in many ways more provocative but in a far subtler way. It is so beautiful and I can’t wait to start my belly dancing lessons on Tuesday (in sha’allah).
At any rate it was a great night filled with fun conversation and relaxation and a great introduction to Jordanian culture. I was starting to wonder if this place was just totally crazy-it still may be crazy but now I have seen one of the most enjoyable and sweet parts of the local culture.