A Love Letter to my Second Home

To My Second Home:

I’ve found myself in the same situation recently. I tell my story, of how and of why I came to live here, and every time, regardless of how long I’ve known the person or by what fortuitous occasion we chanced to meet, I’m asked the same question: “Why?”

Despite how frequently I’m requested to explain my love for this country, I’ve never been verbose about it, and that’s because I’ve never known how to put it into words. It’s ineffable, an attraction I simultaneously feel and yet do not understand. My usual eloquence is paused by one simple question.

It was fate that brought me here for a fleeting glimpse of this life and culture- unintended, yet pivotal. On the precipice of the rest of my life, I happened upon a place that brought a whisper of change for my future. Enticed and intrigued by my encounters here, I sought a return, and for months laboriously fought my way back to this place. Five months, new friends, different places, memorable laughs, painful cries, blissful experiences, and I still can’t put my finger on it.

It was not until my third return, when the lights of the distant city began to appear, and the butterflies in my stomach commenced a tarantella, that I began to unravel a fitting answer to everyone’s question. It’s not a simple task, nor can it be explained in a few sentences. The answer is a mosaic of uniquely mysterious magnetisms, each contrasted and complex in origin, yet intertwined in the precise conclusion that I am where I am meant to be for right now.

See, my love affair is an evolutionary phenomenon that began a long time ago. Really, I remember the moment, and it began at night, driving through the desert under the inky blackness glittering with far away stars. I found a peaceful energy emanating from the vast expanse of dancing lights, illuminating distant shadows lurking in the quiet stretches of sand, creating a poetic calmness that was at once solitary and entirely too vast to describe. Yet the gentle tranquility of the desert soon fades, replaced with bright lights, zooming cars, and the bustle of people. I still love driving at night here, when the dark hills are punctuated by house lights, and the crisp air is cooler, smelling almost like rain.

As the night gives way to the clarity of day, the blemishes of a country still building, caught between tradition and modernism, are revealed; it is troubled, but content. Jagged sidewalks and half finished buildings of pale stone stand etched against a piercingly brilliant blue sky, brightly colored signs in Arabic script plaster storefronts, and people leisurely walk by roadside coffee stands and fruit vendors on their way to work or school. Glinting golden sand floats like smoky gossamer across the roads, and the rays of the summer sun heat the pavement and burn the skin. You can feel the heat in your lungs, in the air, draining your energy and tiring your limbs. On rare occasions a tempestuous rain will temporarily flood the roads, and all movement ceases until it comes to pass. It rains so hard you can’t see, battering the old stone and giving hope to fading greenery, but as quickly as it comes, clear skies return and the sun burns through any remaining damp.

The desert is rather mercurial.

There is also nothing quite like the peculiar beauty of the desert. It is at once both harsh and unforgiving, yet imbued with beauty. To the north, withered trees grow into the deep cuts of valleys and the roads wind through the hillsides, stretching into Syria. The east of the country is sparsely populated, barren lands of harsh rocky plains, but to the west the Jordan River cuts through the great valley, nourishing the majority of Jordan’s arable land. Still further to the west, the land sinks into the brackish depths of the Dead Sea. The air here hangs low and heavy over the swirling surface as salt collections edge the jagged rocks of the earth, with water so saline it stings the skin.

In the vast expanses of sandy flats in the south, the yellowed ochre earth contrasts the vivid blue sky, and thirsting shrubs pepper the rocky ground. Though there are many beautiful valleys in the lands stretched between Amman and the Red Sea, the most tremendous is the famous Wadi Rum, with its vibrant orange and gold glow. As the sun rises over the peaks and into the valley, the earth melts into heaven, and there is an evanescent moment of infiniteness. There’s something wistfully romantic about walking through lands where history was made, religions born, and great civilizations were raised and felled and raised again, but with each footstep across the sand, your trail disappears from the changing earth just as the footsteps have of those before you.

Never before have I experienced a place that held such reserves of strength in its bones, its origins. The eternal cycle of sunrise and sunset, the assured dawn after dusk, retains its magic in every place one loves, and the ability to breathe freely does not quite come as easily as a place that is not home. Serendipitously, I am able to call this place home. From the people I have met here, I’ve learned the history and culture, the language and the traditions, that form the foundations of life here. From my experiences, I have gathered an appreciation for beauty in a raw, unforced form. And from my friends, I have come to understand the hospitality and eagerness of those determined to share their culture and history with others, and why this is so important to us; it would make the world a much fairer place if more people had the opportunity to experience what I have in this country. The dinners at family homes, the visits to local mosques and churches, the sensations of walking through a souq- all these equate to a greater tolerance for the different, and an appreciation for why those dissimilar places have a great significance to my life, and the world as a whole. In order to truly understand why I choose this place, after all the picturesque cities I have seen, one has to appreciate the rough juxtaposition of imperfection and the beautiful tradition.

I am proud every time I come home to Kentucky, with its rolling hills of horse farms and white picket fences, the kind people, and, of course, Kentucky basketball. I feel the same pride when I return to the second place I call home, with wide deserts, open skies, and lively cities, in Jordan. Thank you for all you have taught me, and I hope to continue learning from your beautiful mélange of old and new, of religion and tradition, and of language and art. You have forever changed my perspective, and my goals, through your insight.

Here’s to the years ahead.

Love,

Leah