"Volunteer Day"

The village was tucked away in the north of Jordan, in the sort of place that tourists would never go to. Not that they wouldn't like it. The village was beautiful in every way, but most who ventured to the region would see the Crusader castle and then turn around, not bothering with the adjacent valley--housing a community largely ignored by both the Jordanian government and the outside world. In my brief conversations with the locals, they too regretted that few tourists had ventured there. "Tell your friends about this place," they said on numerous occasions. "Take pictures, show the world."

The village centers around a river. The river flows from a high mountain, passing by a few homes and then ducking under the only road before it continues to the rest of the town. There are waterfalls along the way, and if it's followed far enough there's a particular rock that allows a view of green hills and valleys below.

The river is polluted though, as is the town. Wrappers and bags--the instruments of modernization--cling to plants like viruses to cells. Black bags hide beneath the dirt so that to passersby they look like soil. Other American students and I cleaned for the day, but I realized that the reason for us going there probably had little to do with garbage.

"Let's talk about interfaith dialog," said Ahmad--a local resident of some power and importance. Although Jordanians are usually quite happy to talk about their religion (and its continuities and discontinuties from others), it was rare to bring it up out of the blue.

"Lets," I said.

Or conversation didn't go very far. We were interrupted on various occasions by food, the comments of an estranged American peace corps volunteer who lived near by, and photographers from the media who had--much to my dismay--come to cover our "volunteer day" cleaning. We both agreed, however, that dialog was important. "Give me your email," Ahmad said, "I'll send you my thoughts."

On the way south to Amman, someone pointed out the window, "That's Palestine." It's impossible to travel through Jordan without bumping up against Palestine from time to time, but the mystique of the country hasn't faded. Towering blue hills hide the secrets of a land divided and ravished. From this particular vantage point, we could see a thin silver line that seemed entirely unaware of its political importance.