Sitting at a restaurant in Jerusalem on Saturday evening. I had to walk and walk to find a place open on the Sabbath. Even the ATM machines seem to be keeping the Sabbath. Just one of many distinctive aspects to this unique city.
My last stop in Jordan before coming here was a visit to King’s Academy, a Round Square school in Madaba. Jordan’s King Abdullah II went to high school in the USA, at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. He wanted to create a similar school in the Middle East. The school is ten years old and I think they have succeeded.
I heard people at King’s describe it as an American school and an AP school. The students, who come from all over the Middle East, have Apple computers and warm connections with their teachers, many of whom are from the USA. The dining hall has many national flags. The two at the center: Jordan and USA. The king goes camping with the senior class each year. Perhaps the most un-American thing about the school is that it was started by a ruling monarch.
They have recreated a New England boarding school all the way down to the grass. King’s Academy probably has more lawn than anywhere in Jordan! When they bring students from other schools to King’s for academic enrichment, the young people just want to roll and play on all that green grass.
I was at King’s for their annual International Night, which is put on by the 11th grade Arabic classes. There were presentations about different countries. I thought the countries presented said a lot: Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, USA, Circassian, Turkey, India, Italy, and Mexico. (Circassians are a mostly Muslim people from Russia, some of whom started Amman when they moved from Russia to the ruins of the Roman city of Philadelphia in the 1880s. Interestingly, Wikipedia reports that Circassians have served as the royal guard for all four Jordanian kings.)
The most notable absence in the list of countries, though unsurprising, is Israel. The only reference to Israel in my three days at Kings was someone referencing Israeli war plans flying over the school and making sonic booms. I described my next stop as ‘Jerusalem and the West Bank’ or ‘Jerusalem and Ramallah.’ They translated that to ‘Palestine.’ My marvelous host, Gertrude, said I should tell the driver from King’s that I was going to the ‘Palestine border’ to make sure I didn’t end up at the airport or Amman.
The highlight of the international night was the debka dancing at the end. 40 students are in the King’s Academy debka group. The debka is an Arabic folk dance. There are apparently many debka-like dances in Israel.
No Foreign Lands 