Cold Comfort

            I’ve never known cold like that in America. Damp downpour cold, unrelenting, sinking deep down to the bone. When I pass homeless men sleeping on the warm vent grates of a New York City sidewalk, a visceral memory of that cold rises from my marrow.

            Poverty memories. Peace Corps memories. And echoes of despair.

            Heavy rain evokes those memories, too. Steady, soaking winter rain lashing at the windows. I remember Amman winters. I think about huddled refugees, about the cozy refuge of a big family. As the rain pours down, I remember bombs pouring down on the desert.

Faiha’, 2005

            I didn’t expect to find rain in Jordan. I expected sand and dust and unrelenting sun, but downpours are standard for winter there, too. It snows on the mountains and plateaus of Jordan and Israel, and then blooms lush green, yellow, red and purple in the spring.

            I lived in a little white cinderblock box of a house on a hilltop on the edge of the tiny village of Faiha’. Heavy rain pounded down for hours at a time, day after day, throughout the winter. It drummed on the roof, and sheets of icy cold water lashed against the tall windows on the fierce wind that gathered strength on its eastward flight from Palestine across the Jordan Valley. The doors to my porch fit imperfectly into the leeward walls, and sometimes the prevailing wind shifted and whistled where I could see daylight around my iron doorframe. 

            My house was uniquely cold among my neighbors, not because of the drafty door and big windows, but because I lived alone. The cold sank inexorably into my body, nestling down against the bone, my shoulders unbearably knotted from shivering, hunching near my single small propane space heater—my sobat ghaz. Without central heat, that deep, moist chill never really went away until spring.

            Only one thing ever eased that remorseless icy damp. When the cold seeped deeply enough, I would wrap my heavy pashmina around my head, pull on my boiled wool cloak, and trade my house shoes for something that could withstand a soaking.

            At my neighbors’ house, I hung my scarf and cloak in the hall to drip. I might even take off the maroon fleece hat from my mother that had barely left my head for months. The daughters welcomed me into the living room.

            In winter months, it was the only room in the house they used. On cold nights, families abandoned their bedrooms. Reverting to Bedouin roots, they spread wool tick mattresses across the living room floor, whole families sleeping side by side by side under thick comforters stuffed with raw sheep’s wool.

            During the day, the wool ticks were pushed back along the edges of the room for seating. A squat tin heating stove dominated the center—the sobat jiffet, burning hot with the oily jiffet remnants of the olive harvest, filling the room with a distinctive cloying scent. The new baby was swaddled up and napping under a warm blanket in the corner. The kids spread out on the Persian rug with their schoolwork, under the supervision of their mother as she diced vegetables on a large tin tray. There was a sobat ghaz beside her, which she would soon pull through the adjacent door into the kitchen while she cooked dinner.

            With a whole family and two heaters and all the doors to the rest of the house firmly closed, it was cozy. I could pull off my thick wool sweater coat, maybe my pullover wool sweater, too. Down to just one sweater and two or three shirts, I could finally ease the persistent chill that settled against my bones. The shivering knot in my shoulders began to melt. I could relax into the warmth of their sobaat, and their company, too.

Amman, 2008

            The rain poured down on New Year’s Eve outside my apartment. I didn’t know my neighbors, the refugees from Baghdad with three or four tall, slender daughters whose DJ-ed engagement and wedding parties sometimes kept me up at night. I had only met their father once. He told me he had lost his son and his right arm above the elbow to the American occupiers of his hometown. I had nothing to say in reply.

            He reminded me of my college days, before I ever heard of Jordan, the night of March 21, 2003, as my country invaded his. I remembered standing in the lounge of my dorm with a dozen silent, devastated neighbors, watching CNN high on the far wall. It was raining hard beyond the lounge windows in the Baltimore night while the missiles rained down on Baghdad. The lights were off, the other students dark ghosts in the flicker of the television. I was thinking about the Iraqi women, huddling in their darkened living rooms, hugging their children close, trying not to think about death.

            Now, on a rainy New Year’s Eve in Jordan, the violence in Baghdad had subsided to a low simmer, and in Amman, it had been pouring day and night for a week. On two sides of my living room, the walls were entirely windows. Sheets of rain lashed against the glass in mighty gusts of wind. I had only one small sobat ghaz to heat a high-ceilinged, ell-shaped space large enough for three living room sets and a dining room table for six.

            I was cocooned on the couch in three wool blankets and that same fleece hat, watching Emirati satellite television. My roommate was home in Michigan for the holidays. Our third bedroom was between tenants. I was unemployed. The television was supposed to keep me from dwelling too deeply on my misery . . . or the cold.

            The rain poured down, sometimes a steady vertical torrent, sometimes whipped into a tempest by the wind. It pounded against the windows, competing with Oprah for attention, but I wasn’t listening to either. My mind was in the Gaza Strip.

            Missiles had been pounding down there for days, shaking the earth and air stronger than thunder, painting the night brighter than lightning. One Israeli baby had been killed by a Hamas rocket. In her name, all the Palestinian mothers of Gaza were huddled with their children. Hundreds died.

            Like my Bedouin neighbors sleeping close together in the Jordanian cold that night, I imagined the Palestinian mothers pulling frayed wool ticks and worn blankets as far from the windows as they could, clutching their babies in the damp dark that shivered with the thunder of war. It snowed in Gaza that winter. Did their hands tremble with cold, or only with fear?

            My hands trembled with cold and rage, hovering above my laptop, balanced on the edge of my blanket cocoon. My friends in Amman were all refugees—Iraqi, Palestinian—more invested than I in the havoc being wreaked on their Gaza cousins. Many of my American friends were Jewish, decrying a pain I can’t yet imagine, the pain of the mother mourning her child. My Facebook feed was nothing but anguish and anger.

            “It’s time to wipe them into the sea!” they all cried.

            I tried reason. I pled for understanding, for compassion, for moderation.

            They all dismissed me pleas. “You’re not one of us. You can’t understand what it’s like. They don’t deserve to exist!” 

            My tears poured down with the pounding rain, poured down hot like white phosphorous on Gaza. I knew I should close Facebook, but I just kept hitting refresh, refresh, refresh. In the dark, in the cold, in the driving rain, unemployed, my only roommate continents away, it was all the human contact I had. I clicked and I cried and I clicked again.

            A chat box opened. It was Aktham, an Iraqi refugee from my neighborhood, and I smiled to see his name. We had met through Tareef, a cycling club that we attended religiously each Friday, escaping the city and the weekly Gaza solidarity demonstrations that often turned to stone throwing and tear gas.

            “Some of us are meeting for coffee at the Gloria Jean’s past the Dakhliya Circle,” Aktham wrote. “You should come. There’s a candlelight vigil in the city center later.”

            “I don’t know if I can go to a vigil. I can’t talk about this, especially with Palestinians. I have too many friends on both sides.”

            “Don’t worry. We’ll protect you,” he wrote, and I knew he was right. If there were any surcease from my isolation and my anger, it was Tareef—the one place I had in Jordan where, by unspoken accord, politics never, ever intruded. These were the men who had more than once buckled me into a rappelling harness and hoisted me up a waterfall in the cliffs of Wadi Himara, cooked us all lunch, and then lowered me back down again. Dozens of times, they had literally held my life in their hands, and I never doubted their care for me.

            “I don’t know if I’m going to the vigil, either,” Aktham assured me. “Just come have coffee with us. Don’t be alone right now. Come on,” he coaxed. “Just for an hour.”

            Outside, rain was falling so furiously that I couldn’t see anything beyond the wrought iron bars on my windows. The last thing I wanted was to go out in the tempest. Icy cold had seeped into my bones, but at least I was dry. The moment I stepped out that door, I would be drenched.

            I could barely face the thought of the deluge, but the prison of my cold, empty apartment and hot, weeping anger was far more daunting. “Okay. I’m leaving now.”  I slapped down the lid of my laptop. No more.

            When I got to the Dakhliya Gloria Jean’s, at first all I saw were unfamiliar men lined up at the counter. This particular coffee shop was a strange, narrow space, barely wide enough to get past. I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact, hoping it would be enough to shield me from their words, if not their leers. In my fragile state of mind, I wasn’t sure I could take even a small reminder that I was a strange woman in a strange land.

            I got my latte and headed for the back. No familiar faces there, either, and no women. I was leaving when I saw the staircase twisting up near the door.

            Upstairs was spacious, the tables far apart, the customers few. At the biggest table in the center of the room, finally, were familiar faces. The short half-Russian triathlete, soft brown hair curling against shoulders broad from his butterfly stroke. The Circassian brothers, tall and impossibly skinny, who biked 50K on a lazy day. My long-haired Kurdish painter friend Aktham with the Harley Davidson bandanna.

            Many of the Tareef cyclists were neither East Bank Bedouin nor West Bank Palestinian. They might have grown up here, more Jordanian than I would ever be, and yet subtly different. Was this what drew us together, on Fridays and on this night, charged with political energy like lightning about to strike?

            I never asked and they never said. We only spoke of trivial things, nestled together in the warmth of the café on a stormy night.

            Unexpectedly, the rain paused. “Come downtown with us,” the cyclists said.

            I thought about my Jewish friends. I would feel compelled to argue their side, to plead on their behalf. I thought about the Jewish Studies professor who had taught me about Jewish and Palestinian nationalism with equal compassion, for which he was on the hit lists of several Jewish settler groups, even while his son bore arms with the Israeli Defense Forces.

            “It’s too personal,” I said. “I can’t talk about it. I can’t go.”

            Like that, it was decided. No one tried to change my mind. We never spoke of the conflict again.

New York City, 2014

            This time, while bombs rain down on Gaza, it’s a perfect New York summer, not too humid, not too hot. There’s not a cloud in the Gaza sky, either, except for the clouds of smoke. There’s a perfect, clear view from the reporters’ hotel rooms down to the small, shattered bodies on the beach.

            I’ve started receiving emails again from the U.S. Embassy in Amman, warning of Friday demonstrations. They remind me of those cycling trips with Tareef. The Circassians are married now, Aktham resettled and painting in California.

            My Arab friends post daily to Facebook—atrocities, pleas for mercy, and articles about almost daily Jewish protests against the violence. My Jewish friends are silent, their voices conspicuously absent. Is the tide turning or are they, like me, losing clarity, losing hope that there are any rational actors left? 

            I always thought that I could see the strategic advantage to each side. This time it just looks like so much rage and fear and revenge pouring down, the gathered thunder of five generations of trauma.

            Gazans have been warned to flee their homes, but to where? I hear a story on the radio of an extended family, more than thirty men, women and children, sharing a one-bedroom apartment. I listen to the grandmother’s voice and imagine their wool ticks spread across the floor, wall to wall, four generations trying to fall asleep, side by side by side, to the thunder of falling bombs outside.

            It’s hot and sunny in New York, and a cold dread digs down deep into my bones with the memory of pounding rain.

Newark, 2016

            The first frost, and the wind turns suddenly cold. A winter storm rolls through in mid-December, snarling air traffic from JFK to O’Hare.

            I remember my white cinderblock Peace Corps house, perched atop a hill on the edge of a plateau stretching eastward to into Mosul. To the north, the elevation climbs up to the Golan Heights, and higher to Sheikh Mountain, named for its year-round cap of white, and further north and east to Aleppo. The land is lush there, with water and agriculture enough to share with Jordan by summer.

            Or it was.

            I have been to Damascus, but never Aleppo. I regret that now. I don’t know if they knew the luxury of central heat there, or if they warmed themselves with sobat ghaz and sobat jiffet. I doubt there’s much propane in Aleppo now. I doubt the olives bore much fruit this year.

            In Leviticus and the Qur’aan, God forbids the killing of even one fruit-bearing tree in wartime, but the Syrian Army and Russian bombers don’t discriminate. The once-great, twice-massacred city is decimated, flattened. Women and children huddle in basements, if they’re lucky. The hospitals are gone, the orphanage besieged.

            “We only wanted freedom,” Prof. Abdulkafi says into his cell phone camera on YouTube, on Facebook. He speaks of his daughter, the children. Voice trailing away, lips tight, he looks heavenward, holding back tears. He fidgets with the edge of his hoodie, and from deep in my marrow, I feel the damp cold of Levantine winter trickle out once more.

            Central heat pouring from my vents, snug in my bed in Newark, I tremble with more than the memory of cold. I’ve given to the White Helmets and the Red Cross, written my representatives, checked in with my Arab friends, searched for refugee resettlement work near and abroad. What else can I do? I try—and fail—to sleep.

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