BREAKING BREAD
“Figs! You must try some Jordanian figs!” says Eisa, slapping his hands on his thighs. “Yalla, yalla!”
His son, Yaman, appears from around the corner with a wicker basket, gesturing for me to follow him. We leave the courtyard of their family home, walking under a cloud of crimson pomegranates hanging above the front gate. In the garden, I’m greeted with a sweeping view of the 2.5-acre estate where figs, pomegranates, olives, plums, apricots and lemons grow against a backdrop of seemingly endless valleys and woodland. All my senses are singing: golden sunlight dapples the ground under the vast canopy; dried leaves crackle beneath our feet with every step; and the heady scent of fig hangs in the air, which rings with the sound of birdsong and the afternoon’s adhan (the Islamic call to prayer). Just then, Eisa begins to climb a tree,
wrestling its unruly branches in a bid to reach a pair of bulbous, deep-purple figs at the very top. He hands me one that’s soft and has burst at the crown. “That’s when you know it’s perfectly ripe,” he explains. I slurp through the first bite; it’s at once sweet, fresh and juicy, and like no fig I’ve ever tried. The orchard in Eisa’s back garden is one
Clockwise from top left: Ajloun Castle; Eisa at a fruit and vegetable market in Orjan; pomegranates for sale at a market in Ajloun; Eman preparing the rice for the meal’s centrepiece, maqluba Previous pages: Eisa’s son Yaman picks fresh figs from their family garden; dinner is served
of many in Ajloun, a mountainous area of northern Jordan that abounds with olive groves and thick forests and is home to the majestic hilltop Ajloun Castle. In the region’s hinterland, between the villages of Orjan and Rasoun, stands the Dweekat family’s house. Here, Eisa — owner of tour operator Hike Jordan and co-founder of long-distance hiking route the Jordan Trail — lives with his wife Eman and their four children, Yaman, Yara, Samer and Tamer. Their house — parts of which operate as a
homestay for tourists — is centred around a covered courtyard, a building style typical across the Middle East. It sits adjacent to a valley so splendid, I can see why locals have dubbed Ajloun the ‘Paradise of Jordan’. This nickname slowly manifested itself as
we made the 90-minute drive north from the capital, Amman, earlier this morning. With
each mile that took us closer, the landscape became progressively greener, the valleys deeper and the juniper and olive trees more abundant. Here, particularly in Eisa’s neighbourhood,
life moves at a gentle pace. It’s the kind of place where old men while away sunny afternoons under the canopy of a pine tree, prayer beads in one hand and a freshly picked orange in the other; a place where carpets are hung to air from balconies and laundry is strung out to dry on vine-webbed terraces; a place where cats seemingly outnumber people. It’s also the sort of village where, should
a local hear you’re a foreigner, they’ll immediately invite you in for coffee and food — invitations I politely decline, as I already have plans for a traditional Jordanian feast with the Dweekat family. But before we get started, we need to swing by the local market to pick up some more ingredients. “The south and east of Jordan are mostly
Bedouin, but here in the north, the majority of people are farmers,” Eisa tells me as we drive further into the centre of Rasoun, the village where he grew up. “It’s changed a lot since my childhood,”
he adds. “Electricity only came here in 1986 or 1987, and shortly after came piped water. Before that, people would have to go and collect water from the spring.” Along the gravel road, we pass small
billboards featuring the Jordanian Royal Family, and people selling fruit and vegetables out of worn-out pick-up trucks. The air, once again, is full of fig, the signature scent in this part of Jordan. All is still and quiet, except for a small group of boys playing football and the distant clinking and clanking of pans from wide-open kitchen windows. “Most mornings at this time of year, you’ll
see more than 100 farm trucks coming to the area to pick figs and pomegranates and take them to the cities to sell,” Eisa tells me, pointing towards the lush valley from the car window.
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