Kindness of Strangers

Friday, September 5, 2008

On our first day in Amman, we rested at the house while Jonathan and Kristi went to work. Around lunchtime, we heard a man’s voice blasting over a loudspeaker in Arabic outside the house. “Holy crap,” I thought, “what’s going on?” The saturated voice sounded urgent and stern, as it was delivering some sort of an evacuation message. We peered out the kitchen window to the street below and noticed that the sound was projecting from a navy blue truck, slowly making its way down the street. Was it some sort of a propagandamobile? A few moments later we heard what sounded like an ice cream truck, its tinny song tinkling through the streets. It seemed like an odd place and time to be peddling ice cream, but what did we know?

When Jonathan and Kristi returned home from work, they asked if we had heard the man on the loudspeaker. “He’s the junk man,” they said, “and he’s announcing that he’s buying junk.” We felt totally stupid. “Don’t feel bad,” Kristi said. “When my mom was here last year she heard the same guy and thought we were at war or something.” And the ice cream man? Selling propane.

The next day we needed to take a taxi from the house to the downtown area. Jonathan had briefed us on taxi etiquette. Just as a taxi passes you, the driver will honk his horn to signal that he’s available. You simply flick your palm up to let him know that you’re interested; otherwise, you keep walking.

As we made our way out to the main street, a small, canary car ambled towards us. It wasn’t honking, but we signaled the taxi anyway. The car passed us without stopping, and we peered in window as it drove by. A woman was driving the taxi! Our Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned that Amman had initiated its first woman taxi driver in 1997, and here she was, driving down our street! A few moments later, an identical taxi passed with another woman driver. Unbelievable! What were the odds?

Suddenly, the taxi slowed to a crawl. Then, the driver cautiously backed around the corner. It was then that I noticed the red and white triangle affixed to the roof of the car.

We had been hailing student drivers.