Day 16

My First Jordanian Love Affair

It’s official, I have fallen in love. I am completely enraptured, obsessed, smitten. Everywhere I go that is all I can think about. I feel it on the street corners; I am reminded on every building, sign and object that I see. It’s a puzzle, you keep learning new pieces to put together, it’s a game, everything is exciting. I realize that I am in the honeymoon phase. I realize that eventually people have only two choices, they enjoy a lifelong relationship with trials and tribulations expected, or they break up.

When you are in this phase, all you can possibly think about is how breaking up is never an option, about how no matter what you do, you must find room in your life for the rest of eternity, you must make room. People keep warning me that it will hit, eventually everything I found exciting will simply get on my nerves, all those interesting new puzzle pieces will just seem so insignificant and annoying that there is nothing I will want to do more than just call it quits.
People have told me. And I believe them. Ironically the people who have told me are still in long term relationships. They have made it work, not without some serious deliberations of course.

The incredible thing is that no matter how much at that point you will want to give up, you will have invested so much of yourself into the process that trying to separate yourself entirely from it will be impossible. It will always have you, it always keeps a part of you and you will always have a part of it. Your relationship is also unique to everyone else’s. Sure, we often have similar disputes and find solace in the knowledge that other people have struggled with the same points, that you are not the first and you will not be the last. But often, it does not feel like everyone in your physical context is going through this with you. It is just too personal. You are the one making it happen, or you are the one in over your head.

Right now, everything is beautiful about this love. It lingers in the air long after it’s gone, it is so pure you can feel that it comes from another world, you know that nothing about it can you hurt you, it guards you, it’s quiet and humble, it’s loud and animated, it has the most beautiful physical form. When it speaks it grabs you and lures you with the mysticism you are warned about as a westerner. It has roots yet is not stagnant; it is modest yet proud and witty. When you are finally able to make sense of what you are seeing, it comes together like a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild and nose.

Sorry Mom and Dad, it looks like there is going to be a wedding on the horizon. I don’t think I will ever let go of the affair with the Arabic language.