Crime and Punishment
Last week I had the pleasure to speak to one of my newest co-workers, Aziz. One of the most recent hires at the Embassy, Aziz has a stellar 20-year career behind him on the Police Force in Amman. His job also took him to places he could have only dreamed of as a child, as his impressive resume includes many UN missions in historic trouble spots like East Timor, Liberia or Bosnia. He was sent for supplemental training to places like Washington and Paris and can already boast of a traveling history few of his compatriots can match.
Interesting though his duties may have been with the United Nations, I have to remind myself that I still live in Jordan, hence my particular interest in his history with the local Police Force. What Aziz still can’t imagine is that the United States (or any other nation in the west, for that matter) is not the land of milk and honey, and its citizens are not the seven dwarfs who merrily take off for work and sing and dance and whistle as they do so. Having lived in places like New York, DC and San Diego, I have a fairly good idea of crime in the United States and paint him an unflattering picture in blue, black, white and bloody red. Not the colors of the rainbow by any stretch of the imagination. He has a picture of his own. It’s his turn to talk.
“Crime is not as bad here,” he begins, “but it exists. There is a place outside of Jordan that even the policemen don’t touch… drug trafficking, prostitution, muggings happen every day.”
I ask him about Amman, the capital itself. He shrugs.
“Depends on the neighborhood,” he says. “The poorer the neighborhood, the worse the crime rate. But it’s never anything major. There will be people stealing here and there, maybe a few men beating their wives. It’s like any other place. Poverty breeds crime.”
Imagine that. Even so, the United States, allegedly the richest country in the world, has a crime record that is light years ahead of Jordan. Guns are certainly a factor, I tell Aziz.
“Guns are not easy to get around here,” Aziz says. “And even if you do get them, you’ll need a license. There are not many murders around here.”
I believe it. As I have pointed out in more recent posts, the Arab by nature is not a violent man. They have a gentle disposition that enables them to work out arguments in a very humane fashion. It seems they save all of their violence for animals, but that is another story altogether. Aziz mentions the jails.
“People are divided according to their crimes. The thieves will be in one place. Drug traffickers in another. There is also a separate prison for women, numbering over 1,000 inmates. They are in there for theft or prostitution. And there is also a hierarchy you must respect in the jails, or you will get screwed. You know, gangs.”
What about capital punishment? Do you have a place for that, I wonder.
“I was there for four years,” he tells me. “The place is called Swaga, between Petra and the Dead Sea. That’s where all the prisoners sentenced to die are taken. They are hanged.”
Did he ever witness an execution?
“Four of them,” he nods, “that’s all. You get tired of watching them after a while. I remember when they cut down this one inmate, and at least one foot of his tongue was sticking out of his broken neck. For some people it takes longer to die. You will hear the gurgling noises below. Others die immediately, on impact. They are lucky.”
Do any of them express any remorse?
“Some of them do,” he says, “but the sentence is carried out rather quickly, meaning he doesn’t have time to think about the magnitude of what he’s done. Sure, there will be prisoners clutching the holy Koran on their way to the gallows, but others remain defiant to the end. There was one inmate, I recall, who was visited by a sheikh (the equivalent of a priest, an Islamic scholar, I am told, not to be compared with the elder of a tribe) on the morning of his execution. He was attempting to console him, to pave his way for the next life. The inmate looked at him, sniffed, and said, ‘I want to f*#k your wife, she has a great ass, and I will see her in heaven, then I want to f#@k the wife of the prison director, then the wife of the hangman…’ The sheikh cried for the guards to get him out of there, pronto! But mot people are human. They need to be carried to the gallows because their knees get weak and their nerves fail them. I am glad I am no longer there.”
Now about the Force itself: people abroad hear about police brutality. Any that he was aware of?
“None,” he shakes his head. “You get in trouble for that.”
I still have the feeling he is withholding something, maybe providing a smokescreen for his former comrades. Ask any normal citizen around here, and they will swear up and down that the police will flog people for the sheer pleasure of it. My last question is whether he misses serving on the Force.
“No,” he says. “Twenty years is a lot. I earned a pension. I am happy where I am now.”
Thus a rainbow dissolves over my head like a popping soap bubble. Crime does occur everywhere, even in Jordan. I was certainly aware of it but probably ignored the specifics. I still stand by my assessment that these are not violent people and far more human than we could ever hope to be. It only remains to be seen how they can translate that asset into tangible evidence for the rest of the world.
Interesting though his duties may have been with the United Nations, I have to remind myself that I still live in Jordan, hence my particular interest in his history with the local Police Force. What Aziz still can’t imagine is that the United States (or any other nation in the west, for that matter) is not the land of milk and honey, and its citizens are not the seven dwarfs who merrily take off for work and sing and dance and whistle as they do so. Having lived in places like New York, DC and San Diego, I have a fairly good idea of crime in the United States and paint him an unflattering picture in blue, black, white and bloody red. Not the colors of the rainbow by any stretch of the imagination. He has a picture of his own. It’s his turn to talk.
“Crime is not as bad here,” he begins, “but it exists. There is a place outside of Jordan that even the policemen don’t touch… drug trafficking, prostitution, muggings happen every day.”
I ask him about Amman, the capital itself. He shrugs.
“Depends on the neighborhood,” he says. “The poorer the neighborhood, the worse the crime rate. But it’s never anything major. There will be people stealing here and there, maybe a few men beating their wives. It’s like any other place. Poverty breeds crime.”
Imagine that. Even so, the United States, allegedly the richest country in the world, has a crime record that is light years ahead of Jordan. Guns are certainly a factor, I tell Aziz.
“Guns are not easy to get around here,” Aziz says. “And even if you do get them, you’ll need a license. There are not many murders around here.”
I believe it. As I have pointed out in more recent posts, the Arab by nature is not a violent man. They have a gentle disposition that enables them to work out arguments in a very humane fashion. It seems they save all of their violence for animals, but that is another story altogether. Aziz mentions the jails.
“People are divided according to their crimes. The thieves will be in one place. Drug traffickers in another. There is also a separate prison for women, numbering over 1,000 inmates. They are in there for theft or prostitution. And there is also a hierarchy you must respect in the jails, or you will get screwed. You know, gangs.”
What about capital punishment? Do you have a place for that, I wonder.
“I was there for four years,” he tells me. “The place is called Swaga, between Petra and the Dead Sea. That’s where all the prisoners sentenced to die are taken. They are hanged.”
Did he ever witness an execution?
“Four of them,” he nods, “that’s all. You get tired of watching them after a while. I remember when they cut down this one inmate, and at least one foot of his tongue was sticking out of his broken neck. For some people it takes longer to die. You will hear the gurgling noises below. Others die immediately, on impact. They are lucky.”
Do any of them express any remorse?
“Some of them do,” he says, “but the sentence is carried out rather quickly, meaning he doesn’t have time to think about the magnitude of what he’s done. Sure, there will be prisoners clutching the holy Koran on their way to the gallows, but others remain defiant to the end. There was one inmate, I recall, who was visited by a sheikh (the equivalent of a priest, an Islamic scholar, I am told, not to be compared with the elder of a tribe) on the morning of his execution. He was attempting to console him, to pave his way for the next life. The inmate looked at him, sniffed, and said, ‘I want to f*#k your wife, she has a great ass, and I will see her in heaven, then I want to f#@k the wife of the prison director, then the wife of the hangman…’ The sheikh cried for the guards to get him out of there, pronto! But mot people are human. They need to be carried to the gallows because their knees get weak and their nerves fail them. I am glad I am no longer there.”
Now about the Force itself: people abroad hear about police brutality. Any that he was aware of?
“None,” he shakes his head. “You get in trouble for that.”
I still have the feeling he is withholding something, maybe providing a smokescreen for his former comrades. Ask any normal citizen around here, and they will swear up and down that the police will flog people for the sheer pleasure of it. My last question is whether he misses serving on the Force.
“No,” he says. “Twenty years is a lot. I earned a pension. I am happy where I am now.”
Thus a rainbow dissolves over my head like a popping soap bubble. Crime does occur everywhere, even in Jordan. I was certainly aware of it but probably ignored the specifics. I still stand by my assessment that these are not violent people and far more human than we could ever hope to be. It only remains to be seen how they can translate that asset into tangible evidence for the rest of the world.
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