{"id":415,"date":"2013-11-06T14:05:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T19:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diaryofthedesert.com\/?p=415"},"modified":"2013-12-06T13:52:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T18:52:12","slug":"diary-snippet-the-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/?p=415","title":{"rendered":"Diary Snippet: The Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fri, 2 Jun 2000<\/strong><\/p>\n

My current landlord stopped by today to discuss the details of my moving out. He doesn’t seem sorry for any of the financial issues, but he did bring me\u00a0 a bundle of hummus<\/em>, which actually is Arabic for “chickpea,” not the paste made of the chickpea.\u00a0 We eat them green, just like we eat everything green; it is a wonder anything ever ripens here. They can also be thrown, still on the stalk, into a bonfire, and then eaten once they’re charred.<\/p>\n

So I was walking back across the patio with this bundle of chickpeas when I spotted Deanna, Amira’s 4-year-old girl, on their balcony watching me.\u00a0 I invited her over for chickpeas but she said she couldn’t come over because her parents weren’t home. I said she was welcome any time and went inside.<\/p>\n

Two hours later my doorbell rang and I went outside and there was Deanna with her 2 year old brother, totally unaccompanied.\u00a0 They came in and sat down in the living room like this was a normal occurrence.\u00a0 I fed them chickpeas and fruit and asked them if they wanted chips…\u00a0 Deanna declined, Yusuf said yes.\u00a0 I asked them if they wanted tea…\u00a0 Deanna declined,\u00a0Yusuf said yes.\u00a0\u00a0Yusuf has about 3 words in his vocabulary other than “mom” and “dad,” and they are “la,” “ah,” and “bai” (no, yes, and a mispronunciation of “water”).\u00a0\u00a0Deanna asked him, “Where’s mom?”\u00a0 He pointed exactly the wrong way.\u00a0 They played this game about 5 times, and even though\u00a0Deanna showed him his house — complete with several sisters on the balcony spying on us — through the window, he still insisted the house was the other direction.\u00a0 It was like, since my house is north of his when he sees it, it follows logically that his house would be north of mine.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Yusuf demanded water after finishing off his tea and two whole apples.\u00a0 After the water they collected several more bags of chips and left. It was kind of surreal!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fri, 2 Jun 2000 My current landlord stopped by today to discuss the details of my moving out. He doesn’t seem sorry for any of the financial issues, but he did bring me\u00a0 a bundle of hummus, which actually is Arabic for “chickpea,” not the paste made of the chickpea.\u00a0 We eat them green, just … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Diary Snippet: The Visit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,6,9,10],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arabic","tag-jordan","tag-peace-corps","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diaryofthedesert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}