The trip thus far has already been exciting, with the bag incident in addition to the typical experiences of getting to know a new culture and people. The bag issue has been mostly resolved, and things are pretty much back to normal. The incident did however, have a much deeper effect upon me than the inconvenience of losing my clothes and a few amenities. To give the basic story, I took a van from the airport, and upon arrival at the hotel, left it in the car after paying the driver as I ran up to check if the hotel was open, and he drove away with my bag. When the program began a couple of days later, the police became involved, and mounted quite an effort to get the bag back. Since it was unclear whether it was malicious, and apparently the way in which I was approached and offered a ride was illegal, the driver and an airport worker who helped me with my bag and procured my ride were identified on surveillance, apprehended, and jailed. At that point, things had gone much further than I intended, and after I made it clear that jail was unnecessary, the men were released into the custody of their tribes. Already I was experiencing the Jordanian sense of honor, which dictated seemingly draconian measures for my sake. In the US, the party that is deemed to be the victim is promised justice which will be carried out by the local DA office, that victim does not have the same amount of power that I had here. My words had the power either to mitigate any consequences, or to quite literally cause imprisonment and at the very least the firing of these two men. To be aware of that sort of power and responsibility was a very new experience, and especially humbling afterwards with the knowledge that a misspoken or misinterpreted word from me could have caused a lot of harm. I also emerged from the experience with a deep respect for the tribal methods of justice. Before when in idea of tribal justice was raised, what jumped to mind was honor killings or that movie “Behind the Sun,” in which the two families have been revenge killing each other for so long there is almost no one left. My experience with it in this case, and having learned more about since arriving here has convinced me of the usefulness of tribal law in solving problems in a flexible and subjective way quite different from the methods of modern law. In the end, of course, as the whole thing was almost certainly not malicious, the only option was forgiveness, and the refusal of any of the tribal tradition of compensation offered by the father of the driver. The family of the driver whom I had caused to be jailed, however briefly, was profuse in their invitations and made me promise to visit them during my stay here.

It is hard to articulate the respect I have gained for Jordanian hospitality, customs, and people already through some rather adverse experiences.