Japordan

After the most sedentary six months I’ve spent probably in the last decade, I felt a need to catch up a little on my CO2 emissions, especially with regard to the fact that I spent those six months living on an organic and sustainable farm that actually received CO2 emission credits for its composting process.
The following is a somewhat self-indulgent story of the last month.
[For whatever reason I decided against a clear chronographic order, so… forgive me if it’s confusing]


20th July, 4am. Outside Terminal 2D at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.
A quiet and warm summer’s morning. The earliest clove cigarette I ever smoked.

It would be quite enjoyable, sitting outside here after a long flight, with only the occasional bus and car passing the still sleeping airport, the morning slowly taking its course, if it wasn’t for a whole bus of Japanese tourists that just pulled up right in front of my little quiet corner (I think they’re actually Korean, but Japanese fits better for the coherence of this story), all their baggage being unloaded, a tour guide making hectic announcements and them all shuffling past with their suitcases in tow.

Now they’ve all disappeared into the building and as I’m shaking from the sudden and unusual rush of nicotine to my blood, somehow I’m a bit jealous… for they’re probably flying back to Tokyo, where I just came from (note the coherence!!).


12 hours earlier – Tokyo Narita Airport, Terminal 1.
A comparatively dry night in a similarly empty airport.

The AF277 flight to Paris at 21:55 was the last flight going out of Narita that night. Boarding time 21:25 – so of course at that time I was still sitting next to the last Japanese post box before the security check, frantically writing a few more postcards in a completely empty departures hall with lights already dimmed - until an officer came to ask me if I was flying the following morning. I managed 7 cards in 20 minutes, which brought my total from Japan to 21 postcards, 3 letters and 2 parcels (I hadn’t written hardly anything to anybody for the last 6 months, so being in Japan was a good reason to catch up).
Of course I was the last to go through passport control – all the counters had already been closed and a friendly man in an office on the left side of the hall checked my passport and boarding card and pointed me towards the gates.

I didn’t meet anybody on my way to Gate 17 – the halls and hallways were bare and deserted, the duty free shops had long rolled down their shutters and the place had a ghostly feeling to it… like an ever-pulsing heart of commerce and transportation had come to a halt.
As I got closer to the gate, a few odd passengers appeared further ahead, sitting on benches, waiting. There also were loos, which I was very much in need of.
After the Japanese farewell phrases (which I still didn’t know), the cleaning lady said “byebye” as I vacated the men’s toilet, which she was waiting to clean. I had to smile, because I so rarely heard any English spoken in Japan and this, although widely used, was like a little good-bye gift.
21:45. I handed over my boarding pass, the lady checked my passport once again and I got my last chance to thank someone in Japanese – “Arigato Gozaymas-ta”.
Take-off was delayed, but I was already gone. Byebye Japan.


As much as Japan is a country worth visiting, seeing and exploring, neither was really the purpose of my visit. I came to Japan for two reasons: to spend time with two of my best friends and to have space and distance both from what lies behind and ahead of me. It was a wonderful break between the last six months of intense work and experience in Egypt and the seven months of study in Jordan, which are to start from the day after tomorrow.
It is amazing what mere geographical distance can do. I really enjoyed the feeling of being detached from all that I had left behind in Egypt. I had promised the people at the University to keep on working for at least a few hours a week, although I’d be in Japan, because they hadn’t found anyone to replace me, but after a few days in Japan something changed: I lost all enthusiasm to ever go back there.
I had told my two friends all about my job in Egypt and in return they had shared their thoughts and ideas with me, which made me look back at it all from a much more critial perspective. I realised a few things about that job and the whole organisation, which I hadn’t been able to see while I was still there, and unfortunately they made the whole project look rather laughable. It was sad to look at something I was so very much a part of, something I gave a lot to and for which I carried responsibility, which I represented and ‘sold’ to others… and to have to think, “we really didn’t know what we were doing! And we had the completely wrong approach.”

Be it for good or not -- yay to reflection -– an activity that I spend far too little time on, as I rush from one thing in life to another…

Seeing Chris and Becky in Japan was wonderful. It was amazing to see how they had grown into their lives, how they thought now about things, the past, the future, how well they still knew me (i.e. how little I had grown?) and also how much they were still the same. I only realised then how much I had missed British humour, sarcasm, irony and teasing... and all that works so much better when you know each other in and out. Chris' clear thought, analytical mind and well-articulated speech, aswell as his careful and sometimes hesitant nature; and Becky's ever-overwhelming ability to see the good in everything, even if it's just for the sake of seeing the good in it, her enthusiam and energy, her 'style' of running and her complicity in plotting against Chris... all of that I admire, love and miss.


21st July – 6pm, an hour after takeoff on RJ125, Royal Jordanian Airways flight from Munich to Amman

Jordanians must be very family-orientated people. I’ve never been on a flight with so many children of all ages, screaming, talking, laughing with and shouting to other siblings to express their joy over a new game they’d just discovered on the personal entertainment systems.

As the smell of food spreads through the cabin and the steward begins handing trays of food to the hungry little ones from his trolley, slowly the voices dim a little – only a little, though, because there’s still enough to laugh, shout and fight about.
I think of where I was three hours ago…

“Honestly, Anselm, we have to leave RIGHT NOW, if you still want to catch your flight… it’s three o’clock!” Mum said as she came up the stairs…
“Have you at least finished packing?”
While I was still fighting with my old laptop to release a few more precious files to an external hard drive, my floor and bed were littered with dozens of piles of books, clothes, papers, post-cards, travel documents, as well as a camera, a new laptop, a salad of cables and random bags filled with random objects. In the middle of it all sat my backpack – empty – after having only unpacked the things from Japan the night before. Madness.
Before my mum could express her shock, I said: “Please, mum, get me a few large paper bags. I’ll pack in the car.”
She got the bags and stood there, watching me as I shoved all the mess into the bags. Then she helped me carrying them to the car. As always, I had to run back to the house at least twice to get things that I’d forgotten. Still – and again as always – I forgot my toothbrush.

[We’re just flying over Tel Aviv now. Below me is the Holy Land.]

During the record-breaking, risky and very curvy one-hour-race my mum made to the airport (Thank you!) I sat in the back row, crammed between all my stuff, slowly picking one piece after another and carefully allocating it a specific place in my backpack. I packed so ridiculously efficiently that I not only managed to fit everything in, wich I never thought I could, but also managed a total weight of 27.3 kg. I was proud.
Every once in a while I had to stop and look up, into the distance, so as not to get sick (although my mum’s driving style is really quite irritable, I have always held back from criticising it, because I already criticise her enough as it is). And when I was looking at a farmhouse in the distance, breathing deeply and taking sips of water, I thought to myself: “You’re flying to Jordan. You’re flying to Jordan. You’re going to live in Amman, in Jordan. For seven months!” but nothing happened when I thought those words. I could not associate anything with the name Jordan and realised that I actually know nothing about it at all.
I was surprised at how comfortably I had been living with that ignorance for the last few months since I knew I would be going there.

But as soon as I entered the plane and walked through the Business Class, I got the Middle East feeling – or Middle East buzz, if you like. It’s not a 100% positive feeling, because it comes with the realisation of certain boundaries and limits to your behaviour that do not exist in Europe. I wondered: what is it exactly? Why do I feel it now, just as I walk in here? I couldn’t quite find an answer. Was it how the people looked? How they interacted, especially men and women? Or was it just in my mind? Was I imagining these boundaries, creating them within myself as I adapted to a new surrounding, because I expected them to be expected?
Either way, I felt comfortable within them, because I knew them now. In some way it also meant a return to my (current) home – the Middle East.