May 13, 2001 — Mudeif Productions

A bilingual worship service in the Christian Missionary Alliance church gave a good start to Sunday morning. It's been a while since we've worshiped in our first language - about two months.

After worship, we took a long (REALLY long) walk across Amman. We later discovered how ridiculously cheap taxis are, but were unaware at the time. (did someone say "learning curve"?). Our task was to find the Ministry of the Interior to give us permission to leave Jordan by the Allenby Bridge and return that way weeks later without having our visas expire. We found the Ministry, and the man in charge of the process, who sent Marthame to window 3 to pick up the forms. He returned to the man, and was then sent to window 5 to fill them out. Then return. Then to window 1 to make copies and buy stamps. Then re...several hours of this brought to mind Soviet-style bureaucracy. We left there with one sheet of paper giving us permission (then later discovered that returning by way of Allenby Bridge is routine - the rationale given is that you are crossing into the West Bank, not into Israel, and so have two weeks on your current visa).

We had the wisdom of taking a taxi to return and then hit an internet cafe (as there is no internet, or at least not publicly, in Iraq) and got our paperwork back for traveling into Iraq. We had attained a second passport, since our main passport bears witness to the fact that we've been in and out of "Dixie" (the codeword used for "Israel" by journalists in the area anxious not to tip-off would-be eavesdroppers), not a popular - or even legal - place to visit according to most Arab states, notable exceptions being Jordan and Egypt. Since we are part of a Conference hosted by the Iraqi Ministry of Religious Affairs, attaining a visa for our blank passports was no difficult task, thankfully.

We capped the day off with a lovely dinner in downtown Amman (we decided to take a taxi there and back).