Ahmed, one of my favorite people from the Internet, was awesome enough to take me a picture of the Salad chips I mentioned in my post about my favorite food from the Gulf. The chips turned out to be called “Salad Snack” rather than “Salad Chips” :)
Here is the picture:
Thanks Ahmed!
If anyone sees this green shiny bag somewhere in this town, please let me know!
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I am a part of the dying breed of glasses people.
I am always so surprised to find out that a friend I see every day, and who I’ve never seen in frames, is a contact person (seriously, how can you people wear contacts all day, every day?) Continuing the story of my personal history as portrayed by my frames, I will start where the end paragraphs end (so you’re reading the end of the “story” first, HA!)
Late 2007, I found a pair of glasses that were a little different than my usual taste. I haven’t worn metal frames since my first glasses, back when I was 11. They’re funky, with the checkerbox red-and-white pattern on the side. Unfortuantely, metal proved to be rather uncomfortable, so I do not wear them often. Or maybe I’m not just comfortable feeling 11 again. I did not enjoy being a child — I always felt the need to be an adult, to learn more, to have more responsibility.
My mother also bought me beige frames with little illustrations on the side that reminded her of the squigly patterns I used to make as a teenager:
I don’t have the patience to do stuff like that anymore. Don’t know how I ever did, honestly.
A year after the two glasses above, I was in Safeway Shmeisani when I somehow spotted a beautiful red pair of glasses smiling at me from across a tiny shop by the entrance. RED GLASSES. My heart started fluttering! I had been hard at work trying to find red frames for 10 years!
Of course, I bought them immediately:
While at the little glasses store, I also fell in love with a dark purple pair with the most gorgeous detailing on the arms. I could not resist the detailing, carefully carved out to form the most intricate patterns from a purple-and-black horn shell. They’re my favorite pair right now, even though I’ve been craving the red ones for a decade. I think they represent my current “character” a little more.
Currently, I’m craving a pair like this:
I found the perfect pair that looks very similar to the one in the picture above in Al-Moghrabi last month. They actually fit my tiny face perfectly, without sticking out at all the wrong corners. Unfortunately, they were retailing for a fricking 500 JDs, which is only 3,000 JDs less than my first car. If anyone sees a similar pair retailing at a logical price, please let me know :)
I kept the glasses in the drawer till I started the 9th grade, until one day I went to school in the morning with the glasses tucked into my shirt, and got back home without them, somehow displacing them during the day (yes, displaced, not intentionally left under the desk at school, and don’t even dream of pictures, cause I honestly don’t have any).
Worried that my eyesight will get worse (and against all my I-don’t-want-to-wear-glasses pleading), my mother immediately took me to Al-Moghrabi, where I left with a pair of glasses that were a hundred times worse than the first pair.
Thanks to one of my “fashionable” whims and fancies, I left the shop with a perfectly round pair of blue plastic glasses, with darkblue-tinted lenses that were really too really too large for my facial frame. Just look at them (below). HIDEOUS!
They naturally spent most of their life in my drawer, until one day a little later in the 8th grade, my friend Nissy convinced me to start wearing them, at least in class (I guess she was tired of having me look over her notes or something, because she actually went far enough with her attempts to convince me that she wore them for a week!)
Then 9th grade came, and man was that year a good one! I don’t know if it was all the Arabic classes spent huffing white-out or the several times I fell smack on my head in some of the crazy parties we used to have, but that year was definitely happily spent discovering the inner freak in me. My hair went pink, I got enough piercings in my ears to (later) end up with a severe infection, and perfected the art of screaming. More “intense” reminders of that crazy year, such as the bright fuchsia wig which I wore as often as I could, lie lovingly in a drawer- and I have most definitely lost the guts to wear them in public (just ask Hal).
With that change of mentality, I most definitely needed a change of frames, and thus came the fantastic idea of buying red-tinted glasses to make the whole world look red. In fact, the idea was such a great success that my whole world was red for quite a while, thanks to what became my favorite EVER pair of glasses, a pair I often miss and a pair that I am still always trying to find another pair similar to them, 8 years on.
The glasses saw their doom when my cousin Basem, with his uncanny love for accidentally sitting on stuff, sat on them several times in the summer of 2001, breaking them into two perfectly symmetrical pieces. They were probably the only material object that I ever cried over in my life. I still have them in the drawer, broken but tucked
carefully beside the pink wig; a reminder of a time when my life revolved around the next party, water spitting contests, and breaking as many things at school as possible.
Ironically enough, I slightly “grew up” around the same time the glasses died. I went back to school after that long summer vacation with a pair of frameless glasses very different from my signature red ones, with my short spikey pink hair replaced with longer (and much duller) streaked blonde, and a much calmer persona. The change was so drastic that the first thing my English teacher told me that first-day of school was “ROBA! What happened? You look so boring!”
Boring. I think I was quite a different person during those last 2 years of highschool from the person I was before and the person I am now, as almost all of my time and energy were poured into trying to graduate with straight A’s, doing well on the SAT’s, Dabkeh, organizing bazaars, and other kinds of more responsible activities. That pair of untinted, clean cut glasses was really the perfect embodiment of the phase I went through, which lasted for about three years, till sometime well into my first year of college here in Jordan.
Sometime then, I decided that I had enough of being boring, and bought a pretty cool pair with a deconstructionist flair that I always got complimented on.
Then I started missing my old red pair tremendously, so when I went to Riyadh that year my main goal was simply- FIND RED FRAMES.
Unfortunately, the closest I got to red frames was the dark maroon “Geek Chic” pair that I wear now, and clear ones with red arms that met their death when I forgot them in my car in the scorching summer sun during the week I spent in Cairo (they melted out of shape). I suppose you could say that I like the maroon frame, as it goes in line with the geeky phase (?) I’m going through these years.
My last pair so far was what has been referred to as the grandmother pair, although I keenly disagree with that description and would rather think that they give off a slightly more geekish flair. I am getting tired of the fact that they are almost the same color as my skin and I’m starting to tremendously crave a bright red pair once more, which brings me to the whole point of this post: does anyone know where I can find a bright red pair of plastic rectangular frames in the smallest big city in the world?
But there you go, a personal history of glasses. I really try to portray my inner feelings with what I choose to wear, and this doesn’t only go for glasses.
I’m craving red. Again.
Whatever that might signify.
Geek Chic, as published in January, 2007.
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Rami from Al-Haddaf gives his two cents on an important issue… Created by the brother of the Moose, M2.
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I can almost never have a “Hey, remember that funny-looking chips we used to eat as kids?” moment in Amman. When people sit and talk about their experiences as kids in this city, I sit back and have a discussion in my head with my own, different experiences. When my friends get excited about finding a certain candy bar they haven’t had since they were children, I just shrug, as this is the first time I’ve ever had it.
These things, however little, mean that I’m constantly missing out on good conversations.
My Christmas tree lit up yesterday when I found that Moose has found Bafak, and he somehow remembered that I once mentioned that that was one of the chips brands I loved growing up with in the Gulf.
The package was much worse, of course, but I was so happy to see it I gulped the entire bag in seconds (so much for my avoid chips diet).
Food production in the Arabian Gulf kicks that of the Levant square in the butt. The quality is much better, the flavour is always so much stronger, and there’s a huge variety. I still often crave Al-Safi’s liquid laban, and Herfey’s bread.
But general food craving aside… This post is dedicated to my favorite food brands as a child, since I’m always getting excited about them in my head. Might as well share!
FeshFash, which we used to buy in packs and finish in hours:
Fishfash came in several varieties including za3tar and peanut flavour. 
And my favorite, which I cannot find a picture of, was called “Salad Chips”. It came in a shiny, super green bag with the illustration of a salad. Not very appetizing, but it tasted amazing.
Many of these images were taken from this Facebook group.
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Writing an urban guide to Amman has always been on the list of things I want to do one day. In the meantime though, I’ve had the opportunity to write about my three favorite areas in Amman for Gulf Life magazine. So as to not bombard you with a gazillion words, I will publish each area separately, starting with Jabal Amman.
1 CITY, 3 NEIGHBOURHOODS
(click to enlarge)
Not the most historic of cities, and often overshadowed by its neighbours Damascus and Cairo, Amman has plenty to offer the visitor. Roba Al-Assi, a native Ammani and vocal city cheerleader, sheds light on the places she loves.
JABAL AMMAN.
It’s the most popular hill in the city, and with good reason: there’s plenty to offer in this Jordanian gem.
In any other Middle Eastern city, Jabal Amman would probably be regarded as the modern quarter. But in Amman, one of the region’s newest capitals, the Jabal is the nearest thing the city has to a historic heart. It boasts none of the colourful souqs or old pasha’s residences of places like Cairo or Damascus, and it’s easier to find an espresso than an Arabic coffee or a rooftop bar than a Mamluk mausoleum, but don’t take that to mean that it’s lacking in character.
A good place to take the pulse of the neighbourhood is along cobblestone-clad Rainbow Street – the road signs used to say Abu Bakr Al-Sideeq Street, until the residents voted to change the official name to match the one everyone calls it by, after the Rainbow Cinema.
On a corner along here is a modest bakery, easy to miss if it wasn’t for the enticing aroma of freshly baked bread that wafts out of the doorway. It’s known as Abu Ghosh (Rainbow St, near First Circle), after the owner, who works his red-brick furnace from early morning until he closes in the late afternoon, taking raw dough from stacks of wood racks and turning it into thick, baguette-like kaak, which is baked to order only. On a battered wooden table are DIY fillings: a plastic bag of thyme, a box of cream-cheese triangles and the bakery’s speciality, grilled eggs. There is no better breakfast in Amman.
A little way down the road, peaceful Viewpoint Park is the ideal location in which to eat your sandwich. The view takes in the downtown chaos in the valley below and the Roman Citadel on the hill opposite. If it’s chilly, you can always warm up with a hot cup of cinnamon caramella from the nearby branch of Cups & Kilos (Rainbow St), which is Amman’s most popular homegrown coffee chain.
While not everybody is interested in buying the organic herbs and hand-crafted jewellery it sells, the Wild Jordan Centre (Othman Bin Affan St, +962 6 463 3542), designed by local star architect Ammar Khammash, is a stunning structure and definitely worth seeing. It has a basement café with terraces that offer more fine views, not to mention one of Jordan’s only organic restaurants.
The centre is the home in Amman of the Royal Society of Conservation for Nature, one of a number of worthy organisations that have headquarters locally. A short walk away, the Film House (5 Mango St, +962 6 464 2266) is home to the Royal Film Commission, which has turned an attractive 1930s villa into a hub for audio-visual arts, with regular movie screenings. The films are shown in an outdoor amphitheatre against a mountainous backdrop.
If there is one element that definitively characterises Jabal Amman, it’s the stairs. A snakes-and-ladders-like profusion of staircases connects the neighbourhood to the lower districts of Amman. There is a beautifully crumbling flight of stairs next to Wild Jordan. Don’t be concerned that it appears to lead to a private home – many do, crossing backyards, passing front doors and descending beneath washing lines, but these are public paths. The Wild Jordan stairway passes Masrah Al-Balad, an old theatre recently renovated and now used for concerts and other cultural events. At the bottom you find yourself in the busy traffic of downtown, to which the only sensible response is to flag down a taxi and ride back up to Rainbow Street again.
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Here’s a PDF with the pictures and stuff:
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كان من الممكن اعتبار جبل عمان منطقة حديثة لو كانت في أي مدينة عربية أخرى. لكن هنا في عمان، وهي عاصمة لم يمض على تأسيسها زمن طويل، فالجبل هو أكثر ما يمثل المركز التاريخي للمدينة فيها. لا يزخر جبل عمان بأسواق صاخبة أو مناطق سكنى لعلية القوم السابقين كما نرى في مدن مثل القاهرة أو دمشق. كما أنه يسهل العثور فيه على مكان ترتشف فيه قهوة الإسبرسو الإيطالية أكثر مما يمكن أن تجد مقهى تتناول فيه القهوة العربية. ويمكن للمرء أن يعثر على مشرب يعتلي أبنية الفنادق أو المنشآت الأخرى أكثر مما يمكن أن يجد ضريحا يعود إلى فترة المماليك. لكن هذا لا ينتقص من طابع المدينة أو شخصيتها. المكان الذي يعبر عن نبض المنطقة على خير وجه هو شارع رينبو المرصوف بالحصى والذي كان يسمى فيما مضى شارع أبو بكر الصديق، إلى أن صوت السكان من أجل تغيير اسمه الرسمي واستبداله بالاسم الجديد الذي يعرفه به الجميع، والذي أخذ من صالة سينما تحمل الاسم ذاته.
في زاوية بالقرب من المكان يوجد مخبز متواضع كان ليمر مرور الكرام ويغفله المارون لولا الروائح الزكية الفواحة التي تنبعث من الخبز الطازج إلى خارج الفرن. اشتهر المخبز باسم أبو غوش هو اسم صاحبه الذي يعمل في فرنه القرميدي الأحمر من الصباح الباكر حتى وقت متأخر بعد الظهيرة. يأخذ أبو غوش عجينة الخبز من كومات مرصوفة فوق رفوف خشبية ويحولها إلى كعكات سميكة تخبز عند الطلب فقط. وعلى طاولة خشبية قديمة متداعية وضعت أطعمة متنوعة تضيفها بنفسك إلى الخبز، مثل الزعتر الموضوع في كيس بلاستيكي، وعلبة من مثلثات جبنة قابلة للدهن، بالإضافة إلى الطبق الخاص الذي يتميز به المخبز وهو البيض المشوي. من المؤكد أن ليس هناك من وجبة إفطار أفضل من هذه في عمان.
على بعد مسافة قصيرة هناك حديقة فيوبوينت بارك وهي المكان المثالي لتناول ما تجلبه معك من سندويتشات. ومن هنا تستطيع متابعة صخب وضوضاء وسط المدينة في الوادي الواقع في الأسفل والقلعة الرومانية على التلة المقابلة. إن كان الجو باردا، بإمكانك أن تتناول كوب دافئا من الكراميل بالقرفة في أحد فروع سلسلة مقاهي كابس آند كيلوز القريب، وهي سلسلة المقاهي المحلية الأكثر شعبية في عمان. قد لا يهتم الجميع بشراء الأعشاب الطبيعية والمجوهرات المشغولة يدويا من مركز وايلد جوردان ، وهو بناء مذهل تجدر زيارته صممه عمار خماش نجم العمارة في الأردن. ولكن المقهى بالطابق الأرضي توفر ساحته المفتوحة مزيدا من المناظر الرائعة، اضافة الى مطعمه الذي لا يقدم سوى الطعام الطبيعي الصحي. والمركز أيضا مقر الجمعية الملكية لحماية
الطبيعة، وعلى بعد خطوات يوجد فيلم هاوس وهو مركز الهيئة الملكية الأردنية للأفلام التي حولت فيلا خلابة تعود إلى ثلاثينيات القرن الماضي إلى مركز للفنون البصرية والسمعية، تقدم فيها عروض سينمائية منتظمة.
ويحتوي المركز على مقهى بديع، وتجري العروض السينمائية في مدرج في الهواء الطلق على خلفية مشهد جبلي. لكن إن كان هناك ما يميز جبل عمان فهو بالتأكيد شبكة الأدراج. » أفاعي وسلالم « فهناك عدد هائل من الأدراج التي تشبه لعبة تصل الحي بمناطق عمان الأكثر انخفاضا. هناك مجموعة من وردان يجدر Á الأدراج القديمة الساحرة بالقرب من مركز وايلد ج استكشافها. لا تهتم إن بدت بأنها تؤدي إلى منزل خاص، فالكثير من الناس ظنوا ذلك لأنها تمر بباحات المنازل وأمام الأبواب وتحت حبال الغسيل. لكن هذه الأدراج هي ممرات عامة. تمر هذه الأدراج أيضا بمسرح البلد وهو مسرح قديم جدد حديثا، وتقام فيه رى. أما في حفلات موسيقية وفعاليات ونشاطات ثقافية أخ الأسفل فستجد نفسك تواجه حركة المرور الصاخبة والمزدحمة لوسط المدينة، وستكون ردة الفعل المثلى أن تركب سيارة أجرة وتقفل راجعا إلى الأعلى من جديد.
Tags: Amman travel guide, Amman urban guide, city guide for Amman, traveling to Amman, Middle East, places in Amman, what to do in Amman, things to do in Amman, traveling to the Middle East, where to go in the Middle East.
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