Wedding!!!

I went to my first wedding in the Middle East. Once again yet another great experience. I had met a girl named Safa’s while I was in the Wadi Rum desert. There we exchanged numbers and soon after she invited me to her sisters wedding! I thought it was out of the question since she only invited me and my roommate and us traveling by ourselves to Irbid, which is a mile north would be very unsafe. To the contrary Saleh (my director) was real chill about it, and insisted that his brother drop us off at the wedding. So we went to the wedding a few weeks ago not knowing what to expect and only being acquainted with the bride’s sisters, her two aunts, and one of her cousins.
Most of the weddings here are segregated. Many women wear hijab, so when they get to these all female parties they go wild and wear whatever haha. There were mad hijabi’s in scandalous dresses with their hair all did.
Me and Kate got their and could not believe how hospitable these people were. Safa’a barely even knew us and she greeted us at the door and was hanging out with us during the entire wedding. She kept pulling us up closer to the stage and to dance. This is the first person in their family of 6 siblings to get married! Anyways the ceremony was very well rehearsed the bride and groom walked down the aisle and later on cut the cake with a giant sword!! It was pretty sweet. All of Safa’a’s aunt’s were smoking throughout the ceremony, it was hilarious, they are beyond balla material.
So the wedding ended pretty early and we were on our way to the bride’s new house. It’s tradition for all of the family to follow the bride and groom to their new house. Everyone in their cars honks their horns the entire ride wherever they go. You can hear people doing this from my apartment all the time and it’s so annoying, but when you’re in one of these processions, you realize how much fun it is. Safa’a’s brothers were hanging out the windows of the car in front of us and they all had tissue boxes and were throwing tissues into the air as they were driving, it was so funny.
We got to the new house and all the family members started drinking chai together. They drink like 3 sips of it, and everyone drinks out of the same two cups. There were like 35ish people there. Half the family got up and started doing the Debkah, some of the guys were really good. The bride’s dad is probably in his mid 50s and looked like such a pimp when he was doing it haha.
So then all the family started crying because it came time to leave and as we were walking back to the cars, the bride’s mom faints! She was crying so much and was so sad she passed out. So everyone rushed over and she gained consciousness after like a couple minutes. But it was a straight scene out of an Indian movie.
So we get to Safa’a’s aunt’s house where we were going to stay the night. We ate KFC for dinner haha, it was the best KFC I’ve ever had, and she stuffed our faces until we were like, seriously we will throw up if we eat anymore, haha.
After that we went out for ice cream and got a bag of nuts… I guess this nut store is special in Irbid… people really like pumpkin seeds here.
Our next stop was Safa’a’s Uncles house. It’s cool because families here operate the way they do in India… and practically everywhere else in the world. They go to each others place without any forewarning. Safa’a was randomly like, “oh my uncle lives over that way and has a cool house, you want to go see?” We go to her uncles place, it was like 1 in the morning. He had this sweet window room on the top floor of his house that had cushioned seating all around the perimeter of the room and you could see a pretty sweet view of irbid from there. So I chatted it up with her uncle and drank some mint tea (the dankest drink in all of Jordan!). He told us about his son who has been imprisoned by the US government for leading protests in D.C. during Bush’s presidency. He told me how he hasn’t been in contact with his son for like 5 years, and they can’t get him out of prison even though he’s completely innocent aside from speaking out against the government. It was pretty messed up to hear about.
We left from there and headed back to Safa’a’s aunt’s place and drank coffee and smoked argila for the rest of the night. The argila was pretty make shift haha. They were using scissors as tongs and had tape around the hose… but I guess it wasn’t too far off from Bhavik’s hookah haha. We were up with her two baller aunts and, her 3 brothers (8, 14, & 18 years old), her cousin Muhammad, and her 4 year old baby sister till 5am talking about random ish. We were struggling with our Arabic and got laughed at a lot, but we were laughing at them just as much because their English was horrible hah. It was one of my best nights in Jordan. Being there surrounded by her family was the closest thing I have felt to being with my family in India since I had last been there in 2006. Me and Kate had so much caffeine pumped into us that we couldn’t go to sleep. We stayed up for a while in bed talking about how people here are unusually hospitable here. Safa’a treated us like we had known each other since we were kids. Everyone was incredibly caring.
We woke up the next morning and had falafel and hummus with Safa’a’s dad and aunt’s. By 12 we were out of Irbid on the road with Safa’a’s aunt and cousin Muhammad who works in Amman, which meant a free ride back to the university for us. It’s nights like these that make me want to stay here forever :)