It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.  I say shukran to my teacher and make my way out of the old International Studies building at the University of Jordan.  As I cross the parking lot, the call to prayer,  Athan, begins.  Allahu Akhbar.  God is Greatest.  I walk past chatting students, up the street, and through the north gate of the university.   Allahu Akhbar.  As more mosques take up the call to prayer and the cacophony of Athan grows, the noise of people and cars begins to decay.  Ash-hadu an-la ilaha illa allah.  I acknowledge that there is no god but Allah. I cross the street and the words fade into the background when the glass door of my go-to café closes behind me.  Lubna is sitting in the far corner, cigarette in hand, wearing a pink hijab in contrast to her long navy jilbaab.

Amman is a monochromatic city, the skyline blending together with the sky in tones of gray and dust.  The unremarkable square buildings stack on top of each other like building blocks that don’t fit together quite right, creating a rough but homogeneous texture.  For a city with so much uniformity, there never seems to be any method to the madness.  The roads wind up and around steep hills with no apparent logic.

I order an espresso and walk over to the couch where Lubna is sitting.  I wait patiently as she finishes whatever animated conversation she is in the middle of before getting up to hug me.  Lubna and I are both twenty years old and in our third year of college.  She studies Russian Literature at the University of Jordan.  She greets me with “What’s up, idiot?” before we launch into our standard afternoon backgammon marathon.  She is cheerful, animated, and strong-willed.  As we play, Lubna is always doing two things: smoking and talking.  We don’t discuss our personal lives much, although Lubna tells anyone who will listen about her hot Spanish girlfriend. Sometimes our conversation is about American politics or about the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Whatever the topic, I rarely have strong opinions but Lubna always does.  She regularly catches me off guard, somehow managing to be both in touch and out of touch in the same moment.  One instant she is calling out a Jordanian classmate for using the n-word and in the next she dismisses the United States’ Supreme Court decisions as a hoax.  Lubna juxtaposes a level of socio-cultural awareness many of my American peers lack with a fundamental misunderstanding of governmental legitimacy in the United States.

Amman is a new city in an old place.  The land it sits on has been intermittently settled since 7250 BC.  However, the sprawling city there today is nascent in comparison.  Since the 1930’s, Amman’s population has exploded from 10,000 to 4 million.  The ruins of an ancient citadel sit high on one of Amman’s many hills, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city which has sprung up around it; a testament to the city’s long history and recent growth.

By our fifth game, my espresso is long gone and there are four cigarette butts in the ashtray at Lubna’s elbow.  We reluctantly agree that it is time to go and make our way across the street and through the north gate, following our footsteps from yesterday.  Our conversation continues, this time Lubna offering her thoughts on the United States: “It sucks.” Her opinion stems mainly from disapproval of US support of Israel. Not two sentences later she tells me that she wants to move to America after graduation because it is the best place ever.  Although I am confused, I don’t question Lubna.  Her strong conviction on both matters tells me that she sees no need to reconcile these judgments.

Amman is monotonous and unpredictable, ancient and contemporary.  At first glance, the city itself seems to be a nexus of contradiction. From my point of view, Lubna is no different. Somehow, she manages to occupy both ends of every extreme at once, no matter the topic.  When I first met her I was confounded by how she might reconcile her opinions and ideas.  The longer I knew her, the better I came to understand that these convictions were not contradictions but coexisting pieces of the whole.

We walk through the University as the sun sets.  Allahu Akhbar. The call to prayer rings out.  Allahu Akhbar. We finally fall silent as we listen to the sound of hundreds of mosques, the calls overlapping, out of sync.  Ash-hadu an-la ilaha illa allah. The noise of the street dies down, and it strikes me that this is a sound that brings silence. Lubna and I reach the main gate, say a quiet goodbye, and part ways.