{"id":5354,"date":"2017-03-03T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thediplomaticenvoy.com\/?p=5354"},"modified":"2017-03-03T15:34:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T20:34:18","slug":"amman-mobile-bookstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2017\/03\/03\/amman-mobile-bookstore\/","title":{"rendered":"In Amman, Local Man Promotes Reading With Mobile Bookstore"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gabrielle Hunt<\/strong>
\nStaff Writer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On a pleasant February day, a friend and I were strolling around Dawar Paris\u2014the caf\u00e9 hub of the hip neighborhood known as Jabal al-Webdeih in Amman, Jordan. In search of a spot for productivity and frozen mint lemonades, we stumbled upon a 1974 Mercedes covered from bumper to windshield in books. Enter Gaith Jann, the bearded, beanie-wearing owner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gaith greeted us welcomingly, in line with the Jordanian hospitality for which the country is known. We began looking through the numerous books on the bumper of his car, which ranged from George Orwell\u2019s \u201cAnimal Farm\u201d to Plato\u2019s<\/span> \u201cRepublic\u201d<\/span> to Stephen Hawking\u2019s \u201cBrief History of Time<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span> More impressive than the variety, though, was that Gaith seemed to know something about every title we asked about.<\/span><\/p>\n

For four dinar (a little over five U.S. dollars) each, my friend and I both bought books\u2014and learned a little bit more about Gaith. For starters, this bookselling venture on the back of his vintage car\u2014\u201cBooks on the Road\u201d\u2014was only a small part of his larger mission of reviving the love of reading in Jordanian culture. In addition to selling books in Dawar Paris around every Thursday, he also runs a bookstore in Madaba\u2014a quaintly historical, church-lined town a few miles from Amman\u2014called Kawon, which means \u201cuniverse\u201d in Arabic. For four dinar, one can buy a book and then continually exchange it for another with no additional cost. Most of the books come from donated collections; Gaith\u2019s oldest book is around 120 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the exchange, we were able to engage Gaith a bit more about his background and pick his brain on his personal mission. He used to work in the corporate world as an <\/span>insurance risk analyst<\/span><\/a>, but left it in search of a more ulterior path. At his shop in Madaba\u2014which, though it sells books, also functions as a cultural space for free exchange of ideas\u2014he revealed that he felt like a \u201cmonkey\u201d while working in corporate, which I later pried him on for more explanation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Working in corporate, he said, was like living in a zoo. He felt that his only job was to stare at \u201cpeople staring back at [him],\u201d and that fitting the clean-cut business mold was like being caged. \u201c\u2026bounded by the contract I signed, I felt I [had] no purpose except to accomplish their goals,\u201d he told me. So he left his job and began selling books, fueled by a nostalgic memory of a childhood constantly surrounded by literature, and the goal of doing something that felt fulfilling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fueled entirely by book sales, he\u2019s also been renovating Kawon\u2014the centuries-old, tiny room that is his bookstore in Madaba\u2014to become the cultural space he envisions it to be. He imagines the space to be a center of social activism, but more importantly, a haven of pluralism and acceptance. He emphasized that he named it \u201cKawon\u201d to foster the very universality the word means\u2014when one walks in, social identifiers and troubles alike are left outside. His next step is to expand into the lot next to it, in addition to adding a bathroom, because as of now, \u201cPeople don\u2019t stay very long.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t consider his work now, though, a job\u2014but rather an opportunity to not be bound to the expectations of mainstream Jordanian society and instead can seek opportunities and further develop his ideas. <\/span><\/p>\n

Gaith\u2019s main mission is reviving the love of learning through reading in Jordanian society, something he believes is lost on many people because of both decreasing emphasis on reading as leisure, and life in Jordan growing harder. Though the issues at play are complex and nuanced, Gaith and I both seemed to agree that it seems the \u201cTV culture\u201d (the base of Jordanian home life is focused around sitting in front of a television, and Turkish, Egyptian, and Bollywood series are religiously followed here) of Jordan is what has largely contributed to decreased reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, Gaith explained that life is getting more difficult, as the cost of living has increased and less people are able to afford books, making them luxury goods more than ever. In our interactions, it seemed that this part was especially upsetting to him, because the only way for people to mend these type of social ills is through activism, and reading is the key to understanding social discourse and upheaval\u2014and the tools by which to enact it. The most poignant point that came out of my interactions with him were that without reading, we can\u2019t do anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another interesting point that came from our interactions were Gaith\u2019s allusions to what I termed a \u201cvoyeuristic\u201d culture in Jordan. He briefly told a story of sitting with a female friend visiting from Germany outside his store in Madaba, and being met with uncomfortable stares and subtle backlash. He remarked, similarly to his zoo metaphor, that \u201call people can do is stare.\u201d He went on to say that though the situation is getting better, many people in Jordan still find it hard to participate in interactions\u2014like non-gender-segregated ones as this one\u2014they aren\u2019t used to.<\/span><\/p>\n

I pondered whether this was a result of decreased reading and Gaith seemed to agree\u2014he remarked that reading has the potential to conceptualize expectations of foreign cultures better and cultivate the opportunity for sharing common knowledge\u2014albeit acknowledging there is no simple answer, and that hesitance about \u201coutsiders\u201d is nothing specific to Jordan. Dealing with cross-cultural encounters\u2014whether in the U.S. or in Jordan or anywhere in the world\u2014is especially relevant to our current social discourses on identity and the type of society we wish to live in.<\/span><\/p>\n

On that Thursday we met Gaith, we bid him farewell with books in hand; my friend with an Arabic translation of the \u201cLittle Prince,\u201d and I with \u201cThe Gaze\u201d\u2014a Turkish book by Elif Safak about \u201can obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, [who] are sick of being stared at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gabi Hunt meets Gaith Jann, a man who left his job and began selling books, fueled by a nostalgic memory of a childhood constantly surrounded by literature, and the goal of doing something that felt fulfilling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3448,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[392,993,391],"tags":[1017],"class_list":["post-5354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-sections","category-march-2017","category-abroad","tag-jordan"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Amman, Local Man Promotes Reading With Mobile Bookstore - The Diplomatic Envoy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2017\/03\/03\/amman-mobile-bookstore\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Amman, Local Man Promotes Reading With Mobile Bookstore - 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