Reflections Ten Years Later,
Part II
This is still a rough draft of my reflections, but given the anniversary, I wanted to share my thoughts.
I went to school with her as usual that day. On our way, Abu Selsabeel asked about Abu Hashem. “He was in Amman all week,” she said, “and he was on his way home last night when they called him back to his office.”
Like many villagers, Abu Hashem was in the military, an officer in the Air Force. Since Black September 1970, when Palestinian factions in the Jordanian military attempted to assassinate King Hussein from the back of a motorcycle, Palestinians had been barred from serving in the military, and motorcycles banned for all civilian use. Since then, Jordanians of Palestinian descent have built some of the biggest commercial enterprises in the country. So-called “East Bank” or “real” Jordanians, especially from villages and rural areas, feel that they have the best chance of employment with good wages and benefits in the military, police and civil service. Abu Hashem and his brother had both done very well for themselves and their families in the public sector.
It was about that time that I began to hear rumors about Abu Hashem. Maybe he and Sid Muna were a little too well off for civil servants, even a headmistress and an officer of his rank. “You know,” people would say to me, “he’s got to be in the mukhabbaraat — the intelligence services. Haven’t you noticed that whenever there’s a terrorist threat, he gets called to Amman?” Of course, military personnel of all kinds were on high alert across the country at a time like this, so that was hardly a determining factor.
On the other hand, I was well aware that Jordan is a police state on the scale of Stasi East Germany. There’s very little crime in Jordan, because anyone could be mukhabbaraat and you’re sure to be caught, which in most ways makes it the safest place I’ve ever lived in the world.
