01/12/2022
When I planned on going to Jordan, I heard from various people concerned about my safety there. I hope that these videos show how safe a place it is to visit, and maybe when the pandemic ends you'd even consider visiting! That said, I feel the need to mention one thing about today's video because it was a topic that was on my mind at the time, and I think it offers an interesting insight into what it means for a place to be "dangerous," and how danger means different things depending on how we're conditioned to think about it. Kerak Castle is an almost 1000-year-old "Crusader Castle" about 2 hours south of Amman. It's a popular tourist attraction, and unfortunately it was the also the site of a violent incident in December 2016, about 4 months before I visited. The news was reported internationally, and in the days that followed, a certain 4-letter organization claimed responsibility for it. It was scary, and it even made me have second thoughts about visiting Jordan at all. And then, when the opportunity presented itself to go visit the castle itself, I wondered if that was a good idea. In the end, it felt safe to go, and so I did.
I don't know what my point is, really. I lament what happened there in December 2016, as I lament what happened in Orlando a few months prior, as I lament the constantly recurring violence for any reason all over the USA. I guess that's my point: as a US-American, I process violence in my own country differently from how I process violence in a place like Jordan. My brain compartmentalizes the stories when they're about Chicago, knowing that it would have to navigate life in that space no matter what, whereas it's eager to collectivize when it's about a place like Jordan, or any other country. I think that the media profits from this kind of thinking, and so it continues to sensationalize in order to leverage these hard divisions in our minds.
I hope this video serves as an example of one of the absolutely peaceful, joyous moments of discovery that happen 99.999% of the time at Kerak Castle. Thank you Aaron for inviting me to come along, for helping me approach Yasir and Salem, for filming the video, and for helping with the subtitles afterwards!
Check it out: https://tinyurl.com/2627wps6
