Deuteronomy 20:5 “Has anyone built a new house and not yet begun to live in it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may begin to live in it.”
It happened one Sunday in April 2023, when I was studying abroad in Amman, Jordan, in the old part of the city, in a cafe that smelled of mint and coffee and tobacco. I was taking on second-hand cigarette smoke like nobody’s business, peering through the haze and refreshing my inbox, when I saw an email from Josh Weiss – he’s a lawyer on the board of an organization called the Abraham Path Initiative (API). Since 2007, API has cultivated hiking trails all over the Middle East, and now the nice people on the board wanted me to walk 250 miles through Jordan and Palestine, documenting the stories of the people I met along the way. “Ok so we are moving forward,” Josh wrote, trusting me with $2000 and a fancy Zoom H2n microphone. “I’m thinking we’ll call the series People of the Path.”
This was it – the craziest, most glorious summer internship of the decade. No doubt my extended family would be impressed when I told them all about “walking where the ancient Israelites walked” next Passover. And what excellent fodder for my autobiography, a couple years down the line. I’d wander the levant, only 20 years old, in the footsteps of Abraham, Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta, and Mark Twain. I’d introduce myself as a journalist, channeling Tintin and Brandon Stanton. I’d interview people about love and land and hope and loss, capturing everything on my brand-new iPhone 14 (photonic engine, quad-pixel sensors, f/1.78 lens or whatever). Then I’d write it all down in my notebook – stories about the things that matter most. I might even tell people about being Jewish, after which we’d say mutually respectful things about each other’s politics and religions and way of life. And maybe, if it went especially well, I’d publish a story or two in National Geographic or on NPR.
Six weeks later – plus a significant investment in Amazon’s overnight delivery service, two missed flights, and a stint in Queen Alia Airport’s lost baggage warehouse – I found myself on a lonely road, in the very north of Jordan, just outside a village called Umm Qais. Behold, in front of me, a wooden sign with ‘The Jordan Trail’ emblazoned on it in white letters. I was brimming with purpose and great expectation. Here I was. The first day. In the beginning. Genesis, exodus, and eventually revelation too.
There’s a moment in the hero’s journey when it doesn’t seem to get any worse: crisis, abyss, failure, death. That is exactly where I found myself, thirty minutes into my first day on the Jordan Trail, at the bottom of a very steep wadi, surrounded by sandstone and knobbly olive trees, bellowing “no no no no no, why me” into the lonely countryside. It was awful sitting there on my gigantic green backpack, looking into a brand-new, bright-red fuel bottle and seeing the metallic bottom. Empty. Completely empty. How on earth had I forgotten to buy gas?! I distinctly remember looking to the horizon and seeing Josh Weiss and the nice people on the API board shaking their heads in disappointment.
I walked back to Umm Qais in shame and asked an old man in a corner store for directions to the nearest gas station, a couple kilometers away. He told me there was a bus that ran along the main road. And there very well might have been too, but I felt like I had something to prove and hailed two men idling in an ancient gray Toyota instead. This ended up being a masterstroke, as these guys were driving past the gas station. Indeed, ten minutes later, I watched from the backseat as we, in fact, drove right past JoPetrol, going 50 miles an hour. This was very bad.
A kilometer rolled by in silence, and a liter of sweat rolled downstream into my waistband before I summoned my resolve and engaged the driver. “Lo smaht, where are we going exactly?” To Irbid – the city I’d bussed from this morning. Something must have gotten lost in translation. Crisis – part two. But only a fool repeats his folly, and when we approached another JoPetrol a couple minutes later, I said, “I’m positive I want to be dropped off at this gas station – yes, even though I do not have a car”. And though they shook their heads in bewilderment, the men wished Allah’s blessing upon me and pulled over. I was elated to wave goodbye to that ancient gray Toyota, rumbling away into the hills.
Ok. Gas, check. But now I was 15 kilometers from the start of the Jordan Trail. I was shocked that such a thing could’ve happend. I walked to the opposite side of the road. Then, I summoned a motorcycle. I mean, immediately, a middle aged man driving a red motorcycle skidded to a stop right in front of me. The motorcycle carried two middle aged men, and, between them, a small boy, carrying groceries. The poor machine was waging a war of attrition against gravity – suspension compressed, engine masticating valorously. “Wein btrooh, do you want a ride?” asked the man in the front, suggesting the impossible.
I perched on the extreme terminus of the vehicle and fought to stay there as the machine jerked into gear, my backpack a giant, green protrusion into empty oblivion. And so we raced, back the way I’d come – up and down brown-green hills, between square, two-story houses with rhubarb sticking out of the roof, past olive groves and pomegranate trees, and then down a sloping side road to a small house on stilts, where we crossed the finish line and dismounted victorious. I had no idea where we were, and cautiously observed the people streaming out of the house. The motorcycle man said “yalla taal, come drink coffee with my family.”
A grandfather ushered me into the shade of a stately olive tree, and a teenager in black skinny jeans produced a white, plastic chair for me to sit on. Several children sat on the grass nearby. A middle-aged man offered me a cigarette, which I declined with grace. A woman in an abaya disappeared into the house and returned bearing a gold-embellished tray complete with silver pot and tiny cups and saucers. We drank viscous, black coffee and listened to the quiet afternoon. The birds sang, the wind rustled the trees, and the motorcycle man told stories about his family – how they were Syrian, from a village outside of Damascus, how they fled to Jordan in 2013 after the war started, and why there was so much to be thankful for because they were all together and safe when so many of their friends were not.
I asked Allah to bless the generous family many times when it was time to go, and my cheeks were wet as the motorcycle man drove me back to Umm Qais. They were tears of joy and bewilderment and awe, and they blew off my face at 50 mph into the windy oblivion beyond. It was in that fashion that I arrived once again at the wooden sign with ‘Jordan Trail’ in white letters. This time though, things were different. I was fueled by a strange and wonderful blend of 87 octane, unleaded gasoline and the kind of feeling you get at the end of a fantastic book or after listening to a song that you loved as a child but haven’t heard in a long time. I was born again, and I began anew.
For three weeks, I followed the Jordan Trail south, from Umm Qais to a town called Ajloun. Along the way, I declined probably a million cigarettes plus a couple marriage proposals, but accepted everything else – invitations to bed and breakfast, to sit shotgun and drink lemonade, to shepherd 200 sheep across the valley, to add everyone on Facebook, to learn how to lay brick, to pick fruit straight off the tree, to drink straight from the well, to convert to Islam, to sit and rest a while, to drink tea late into the night, to stay for a couple days and become friends. But most of all, I sat in white, plastic chairs and talked with people.
I found myself doing as much shortly after reaching Ajloun, at the behest of a tall, middle-aged man named Mohammad Zghoul – one of the guys who sells tea and coffee to tourists as they walked up the road to Ajloun Castle. It was early afternoon and Mohammad was coaxing me to order a cuppa. Mohammad said that his tea stand was world famous. I asked him to prove it, and he showed me a photo in a Czeck guide book that he keeps on hand. Sure enough, there was Mohammad, grinning in front of his gigantic metal tea pots.
I caved. “Yalla, ok I would love some tea.” Mohammad kept pushing, emboldened. “Have you eaten Mansef while you’ve been in Jordan?” he asked. I told him yes, but only in a restaurant, when I was studying in Amman. Mohammad pitied me. “Habibi, that doesn’t count. Have Mansef tonight as a guest at my house.”
Mansef is the national dish of Jordan. It hails from traditional Bedouin culture and involves lamb cooked in a fermented yogurt sauce. And one more thing – it’s not kosher, not even a little bit. There’s a rule prohibiting Jews from eating milk and meat together. This, according to several Jordanians I talked to, was kind of the whole point. Here’s the story they told me: A long time ago, in the Bedouin days, there was a Jewish spy amidst the tribes. To figure out who it was, the Bedouin cooked Mansef and served it to the assembly. Only one person didn’t eat the milk and meat extravaganza – of course, the undercover Jew, now ousted and culpable.
It almost worked too. I just about said no, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. But, in the shadow of Ajloun Castle, I forgot about the Jewish spy. I buried being Jewish and keeping kosher and not eating milk and meat together. I wanted to experience Mansef for real. I wanted to learn more about Mohamad and I wanted to understand his world. So I said, “Thank you very much, yalla I’d love to eat Mansef tonight.” I heard myself saying it, and my voice sounded the way it would on a recording.
Dinner was still a couple hours away, so I sat in my chair and watched Mohammad as he heckled tourists, each in their own language – Arabic, Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese. He taught me how and I practiced bellowing “tea, coffee, come sit in the shade” at nearby pedestrians until the sun approached the horizon and then finally disappeared behind a frenzy of sandstone buildings connected by telephone wires. It was time for Mansef.
We drove to Mohammad’s house, which was a sad-looking building in the middle of town. It was immediately apparent that famous tea does not always beget fortune. I was taken into a room with sofas along the walls. But we sat on the floor instead, and a piece of plastic was put down over the carpet, and then Mohammad’s mother entered bearing an immense tray of rice and lamb and a bowl of fermented yogurt sauce. When the moment came, I remained coolly professional. We ate with our hands, and I enjoyed Mansef in spite of myself, and in spite of the rabbis, and in spite of my Ashkenazi lactose intolerance.
Mohammad told me about studying physiotherapy but not having enough money to finish school. He also told me about not having enough money to afford a girl’s dowry, which is why he never married. Eventually, Mohammad’s mother returned, this time with his sister, who was disabled and could barely walk. For some reason, Mohammad talked at length about her ailment. He showed me a lot of papers, and explained the recommended surgeries, and we all bemoaned the situation. Looking back, I think maybe he wanted me to give them money.
After dinner, Mohammad insisted I get a haircut. I didn’t want one, but he said I looked effeminate with long hair. And so we drove through the darkness to the barber shop, which was open until midnight. An hour later, I emerged looking like Cristiano Ronaldo when he was 12 years old. Naturally, I tried to pay for the transformation myself but Mohammad wouldn’t allow it. After that, Mohammad insisted I stay the night at his house. I didn’t want to do that either. But Mohammad said it would be very rude to decline. So, I caved.
We got back in the car and started driving. We almost ran out of gas, but Mohammad pulled into a JoPetrol just in time. He filled up only two gallons, which was all he could afford. Then we returned to Mohamad’s house. Except, when we arrived, we were somewhere very different. It was a lonely, dark place and a man was waiting for us. Mohammad gave him some money and then turned to me. “Ahlan wsahlan, welcome,” he said. “If you knock on doors in Paris or Berlin, no one will help you. But here in Jordan, anyone will give you food and water and a place to sleep.” And thus we entered the rented apartment.
Unfortunately, Mohammad’s hospitality was somewhat compromised. While I sat on the floor texting my location to my mom and dad and everyone else I knew, my host inquired about sex. “Have you ever slept with anyone?” he asked. I understood perfectly well, but I said that I didn’t. Mohammad tried again. “Are you gay?” I understood this too, but I said something along the lines of wallah, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I thought about whether or not there was a knife in the kitchen. Finally, the poor man took out his phone and typed a paragraph of sexual desire into google translate. That was when I insisted Mohamad drive me to the outskirts of Ajloun, where I knew a very American, very Christian man named James. The son of Zebedee would save me.
We drove wordlessly through the sleeping town, until about halfway there, when I couldn’t take it anymore. “Ok, this is good, here’s the house,” I lied. Mohammad made me pay for the room and then I got out of the car. “Thank you for the Mansef,” I said, before walking up the driveway of the nearest house and hiding in the shadows. I waited until I could hear only the quiet night. Then I sprinted to James’ house, a mile away, to platonic safety.
I had met James the day before, when I walked past a house with a volleyball net in the driveway. There was a man standing on the roof and he was wearing wrap-around sunglasses. I offered an Arabic salutation. “Sorry brother, I don’t speak Arabic,” was the reply, in a southern drawl. Glory be, an American. I almost cried, it’d been so, so long. I asked the man if there were any good places to camp up ahead. “Well I don’t know,” James said. “But if you want, you can stay here, we have an extra room downstairs.”
And that’s how, the morning after my night with Mohammad, I woke up in James’ house. The extra room downstairs was gloriously sunny and the bed was covered in a white bedspread, matching the white curtains, which framed open windows and fluttered in the breeze. There was an iron wood stove near the door, and Bible verses in cursive on the wall, and an antique writing-desk decorated with candles, flowers, and oh… a little box of essential oils. That’s when I cried.
“Good morning, brother!” said James, when I walked upstairs “You want to join me for breakfast? We’re going to eat pancakes and have a Bible study at Tory and Dale’s house.” Tory and Dale used to live in Alabama but moved to Jordan to follow Jesus, just like James did. Now, they live in a white, square, cement house overlooking a green valley, with a volleyball net and a basketball hoop in the driveway. When James and I arrived, a flock of tall, athletic-looking, white kids – Dale and Tory’s offspring – were nailing three pointers and crossing each other up in their crocs and nike crew socks.
I entered paradise that morning, sitting on a white sofa, my feet massaging the fluffy carpet, my lungs full of vaporized tea-tree oil and frankincense instead of tobacco smoke. We ate chocolate chip pancakes and talked about Acts 15, when Jesus’ disciples decide whether or not gentiles should be circumcised. Being the only Jew for miles, I charitably gave a lecture on circumcision. It was glorious. Afterwards, I found an old fiddle in the corner. James tuned a guitar. Tory and Dale’s kids played piano, drums, and ukulele. And that’s how I found myself jamming bluegrass licks over Christian 4-chord bangers, in a white woman’s living room, surrounded by Southern Baptists in the middle of Jordan. Praise God.
I would go on to hike from Ajloun to Amman and then across the Jordan River to Palestine, where I trekked from Jerusalem down to Nablus and then finally to Jenin, in the very north of the West Bank. In Palestine, it was a lot harder to sit in white, plastic chairs and talk with people. It was harder still to listen and to understand. People told me terrible stories about the things the Israeli army and the Jewish settlers did to them – about losing their home, or their business, or about people they loved getting killed. It felt like I did those things and it made me think things I didn’t want to think.
Mohammad Abdalkhay Khalil Attiya invited me to visit his farm and sleep in his spare room a couple days before I flew back to the US. His farm is just a stone’s throw away from the Jordan River and the border separating Jordan from Israel and the West Bank. The sandstone city right across the river? That’s Jericho, which is where I’d be going the next day – the last city on the docket.
When I arrived, it was evening. I found Mohammad on the roof of his house – the cement epicenter of acres and acres of banana trees. He was sitting, facing west, looking out across the border, his gaze fixed on Jericho. Mohammad has spent decades keeping his watchful vigil, but just then he took a hiatus and stood to face me. His beard parted to reveal a smile and to wish peace upon me. “Assalamu alaikum.”
Mohammad offered me a cigarette as he replaced his own fading Winston Blue. I accepted a chair instead, and we sat together watching the sun set over Jericho, where the tan buildings burned yellow and the date trees and lemon orchards filled the Jordan Valley. We sat in silence and listened to the birds sing and to the Aathan – the Islamic call to prayer – reverberate through the valley. Then Mohammad started speaking, slowly, so slowly, about the things he remembers from Palestine.
Mohammad told me that he was born in 1954 to a Palestinian family, in an adobe house, just across the river from where we are now, in Jericho, the oldest city in the world. But in 1967, when he was 13 years old, everything changed. He remembers listening to the radio, the newscaster announcing that war had broken out between Israel and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. He remembers the crowds of people, Palestinians converging on Jericho from all over the West Bank, fleeing to Jordan. He remembers joining them – 11 siblings, mother, several neighbors packed into one vehicle. He remembers hearing the warplanes break the sound barrier, dropping bombs on people as they drove to the border. He remembers crossing the Jordan River. He remembers everyone expecting they’d be back in a week or two. But Mohammad’s family was never allowed to go back and live in the adobe house in Jericho. And that’s why, years later, in the 1980s, Mohammad bought this farm. It’s as close as he can get to home.
Of course, Mohammad had no idea I was Jewish – I hadn’t told him. And so, I sat in my plastic chair feeling more conspicuously Jewish than I’d ever felt in my entire life. It was my people who did all that. Who killed those people and exiled Mohammad’s family. Should I tell him? Mohammad was so vulnerable, shouldn’t I reciprocate? Here I was trying to understand people who were different, yet I couldn’t afford Mohammad the same opportunity.
I almost did. It could have been a moment. Maybe we could have brought peace to the Middle East. But, in the shadow of Mohammad’s house, I buried being Jewish. I buried the way I felt when I listened to HaTikvah. I buried my own longing to cross the border and visit my family in Israel. I didn’t say anything about being Jewish because I was scared Mohammad would be angry if I told him the truth. I wanted to learn more about Mohamad and I wanted to understand his world. That’s what it was all about, right?
I asked Mohammad the only thing I could think to ask. “Can you see your house from here on the porch?” Mohammad touched his white beard and respired deeply through a cigarette butt, his gaze still on the horizon. “Yes, I can see the house,” he says, pointing. “See, there it is, right there.” But I couldn’t see the house, the sandstone horizon blurred.
I said goodbye to Mohammad the next morning and I crossed the border into Palestine, which is easy if you have an American passport. Then I started hiking west, towards Jericho, thinking about adobe houses and Mohammad being 13 years old and about being Jewish and wanting to understand other people and wanting other people to understand me. I thought about Palestine and about never telling anyone that I was Jewish. I thought about wanting to stop understanding. Because the more I understood others, the less I understood about myself.
How stupid of me to think the trip would be a glorious jaunt, a lark. To think that I was going to be unchanged. To think that I would be empowering people by writing stories about them. To think that their stories couldn’t inform mine. To think that my story couldn’t inform their’s.
A couple days later, I went home. I flew back to Raleigh, North Carolina, I finished the fellowship I was doing for the summer, and that was it. My walk was over. But my journey wasn’t.
Three months after I got back to the US, war broke out between Israel and Hamas. On campus – at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – tensions were high. Jews were scared, Palestinians were scared. Naturally, both retreated into their tribes, seeking a sense of comfort and understanding. I wanted to believe that there was hope. I wanted to do something to jettison from the cycle of violence and retaliation and fear. So, I made a phone call.
“Assalamu alaikum,” I said.
“Walaikum assalam,” said Mohammad Abdalkhay Khalil Attiya – the man with the farm across from Jericho.
I asked Mohamad if there was ever a time when he had to go incognito about his identity. He told me about the time he moved to America, when he was 19 years old.
“I had a business that I opened and I called it Jerusalem Imports,” said Mohammad. That’s Jerusalem Imports, riffing off of Pier 1 Imports. “I have photos that were published in a local newspaper with me in my shop, dressed up in an Arabic headdress. No, even in a strange, new place, I never hid who I really was.”
“You know, we both went to far away different places, when we were young,” I said. “You went to America and I went to Jordan. But I did something different. I wasn’t able to tell everything about myself when I was there. Or I chose not to. Do you have a guess for what that is?”
“No,” Mohamad said. He paused. Then he asked, “Are you a Jew?”
“I am a Jew,” I said, anticlimactically.
“I have no problem with that,” Mohamad said. “I have no problem with that whatsoever. God created all of us, in different religions, different races, different birth places. You are Jewish, because you had Jewish parents – you were born to be Jewish. I am Muslim because my parents were Muslim.”
“Alhamdulillah,” I said.
“Alhamdulillah,” said Mohammad.