As Alfauori conveyed these facts to me with the enthusiasm only professional guides possess, she turned somber. “For most of last year, I had two or three daily tours around the city,” she said, adding: “You are only my third tour since the beginning of this year.”
I’ve been traveling to Jordan several times a year for nearly a decade. After October 7th I wanted to see for myself how local communities are coping since the Israeli military campaign on Gaza began. This February, I visited Amman to catch up with Yasar Malhas, a Jordanian tour operator who runs Pan East Tours. “We have zero work,” she said, “but we are hanging on.”
Back in As-Salt, the rain eventually stopped, revealing a lush green tapestry of landscapes like olive groves and Mediterranean forests, a calling card of northern Jordan. From the historic city, I moved further north to Jerash, one of the Roman Empire’s most important outposts at the dawn of the first millennium. In Jerash, I tried my hand at baking zalabia, a fluffy bread made with sesame seeds, yogurt, and olive oil. This experience is one of many provided by Dar Ne’meh, a community tourism project employing women, orphaned girls, and refugees in five hubs across Jordan.
Dar Ne’meh has helped nearly 3,000 women create a sustaining income for themselves and their families in the last five years, according to the Princess Taghrid Institute, which oversees the project. “When you support one woman, you’re supporting five to six people in the community,” said PTI’s general director Dr. Aghadeer Jweihan while we shared a meal of chaa’cheel, a local specialty in which dumplings stuffed with a native wild plant called loof (Arum Palaestinum) are slowly cooked in jameed, a fermented dry yogurt.
Traveling across Jordan from north to south takes just eight hours. Yet, in this small area, people of different faiths–Muslims, Druze, Christians of Catholic, Orthodox Greek, Syrian, and Coptic denominations–have coexisted for centuries. Heading south from Jerash, I soon arrived in Madaba, an Arab Christian town dating back to the times of the Crusaders where the world’s oldest map of the Holy Land, a mosaic treasure, lies for all to see on the floor of a Byzantine church.
