The first time they wake up it is three in the morning. They couple had strayed into their meandering sleep several hours before. They stumbled upon the hotel just as they had slept that night, without a clear beginning or end. Their assiduous searching and muddled sense of direction lent itself to the suspicion that the search was futile. Yet, an overbearing feeling of fate, preordination, pushed harder as they walked downtown.
The last half an hour had been spent walking down Al-Malek al Hussein St. They tried to avoid the side-street cognates of King Abdullah II’s name that branched aside. The hotel was characteristic of the area. The four-story building was set along the skinny sidewalk. A local travel agent worked next store and a small jewelry repair store was situated on the other side. Downtown Amman is a commuter destination, bringing tourists in for its Roman ruins and locals for shopping. Immigrants have also squeezed in above stores and behind main streets, Palestinians, Iraqis, Checens, Armenians, and Kurds suffused downtown as urban flight took local Jordanians to the eastern suburbs.
The shops were segregated on a block-by-block basis. Travel agencies. Tailors. Electronics. Pastry shops. All were dotted with the intermittent hotel. All were family-owned. All were in stark contrast to the white limestone bricks that built the communities surrounding downtown Amman.
The couple entered the Happyland Hotel as they had done everything since they stepped off the bus, with hesitancy and self-possession. A middle-age gentleman and an adolescent girl sat on the couch and were watching afternoon TV on MBC. Until the following morning, the travel agent was the only connection in English that they had with the hotel. It was with him that the couple went through the routine bargaining on the room’s price. Settling on a price, he finished, “It’s a yanni, one-star-hotel.” In the process Chris went upstairs to look at the room, a meek affair with a lone fluorescent light on the high ceiling, a TV sitting above the closet, two single beds, and a bathroom with the paint peeling from the ceiling. Unfortunately, he was not perceptive of the room’s possible shortcomings, still feeling as if they were, for some reason, fated to stay at the night at Happyland Hotel.
Leaving their passports at reception they climbed the stairs to the second floor. The room was one of four rooms, all much more homely than their room and all filled by the family who ran the hotel. Inside, Julie’s penetrating eye and the hotel’s odors grew by the minute. The meekness of the room was now transformed to a state of shabby disrepair. The high ceilings were not high enough to contain the mustiness of the room. The bathroom’s dilapidated floor was too high to close the door and rid the room of the smells of aged poop. After a failed attempt to switch rooms, they fled for the time being in search of food and to take in the after-work crowds moving home for the night.
After eating a whole days share of hummus, falafel, and pastries they returned to Happyland. The couple quickly got into their respective beds. The beds were nothing more than a welded iron frame, a piece of plywood, and two blankets veiled by a mattress cover. The couple stacked all of their sheets onto one bed, thickening the space between them and the board. They then turned on the TV only to find that it had two channels: Arabic kids programming and whatever the owners were watching in the room next door. Their voyeurism ended when they decided against watching the Jordanian soap operas. The Ipod came out next as they shared his music on her headphones and played music, movies, and TV quiz show games. The game show intensity faded and they soon fell asleep under the fluorescent light with an unhurried draft coming from the single-pane windows.
At three o’clock, they wake up with an intensity and purpose that they failed to bring to falling asleep. This pent up energy is now utilized to keep Julie from falling back asleep. Several hours on the plywood frame stiffens their backs and attitudes. She stands up to stretch her back as she prepares herself for sleeping through the rest of the night.
Half-awake, Chris utteres, “Honey, come back to our board.”
She ignores his drollness, gets back into bed, and rotates two times to find the right spot where her neither her hip bone or elbow don’t press into the mattress. While he falls right back to sleep she wafts in and out of sleep for the next hour and a half. The adan trumpets through their unsealed window, sounding off as if the mosque is right across the street as Julie rustles in Chris’ bag for his cell phone.
“Do you need help?” He mumbles.
“My watch is wrong. I think it’s later than four-thirty.” She responds. “The adan isn’t usually until six or so.”
“Yeah, I think some Muslims pray seven times a day.” Chris quips from his half-sleep. “It’s because we never turned off the light it seems earlier.”
Getting up again, Julie turns off the light. It no longer brutalizes the stark façade and they quickly fall asleep. At 6:45, the morning light peers in through the window. Julie goes to the bathroom only to find that the toilet doesn’t flush. Last night’s smell was not only from the dank moisture that filled room but from the treat that the last guest had left them, ruminating for days in the pipes during Amman’s off-season for travelers. Following what had become the previous night’s routine, Julie is alert, seeming as if she had slept through the whole not but feeling as if she had not rested a bit. She packs the little that was unpacked and coaxes Chris out of his sleep. He reverts to his jocular mood, feeling that he has slept disturbingly well on their board. He arises, dresses, and orders his things before heading downstairs. They wake up the next member of the family who sleeps at the reception desk. They retrieve their passports and are on their way.
