The afternoon of the third day we took a break from the workshops and went out to explore Amman. The middle-class Palestinian women wanted to go shopping in Hamra, an upscale commercial district near the royal palace, but we Israelis wanted gritty authenticity. So a couple of the Arabic speakers amongst us stopped a taxi driver and asked him to take us to a real souq, or open market.

The driver asked Gal, our designated Arabic speaker, where he'd learned the language. By then we had been warned enough times against advertising our nationality, so we told him we were from Iceland, and that we were Middle Eastern studies majors.
The driver grinned and said to Gal, "No, you're not from Iceland. You're Lebanese. I can tell."
How can you tell? we asked.
Because Lebanese men are very handsome, answered the driver.
Here's Gal, posing with a few men at a coffee shop in the souq.

Credit: Ido Goren
We wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea, but women were not allowed - so we continued on after the photo op.

A few minutes later, Ido snapped this picture from the waist, so no-one would notice he was (gasp!) photographing a woman.

(click this one to enlarge).