Me Vs. The Bureaucrats of Amman, Jordan
Or, The Part No One Tells You About Living Abroad
Jordanian bureaucrats are quirky, funny creatures. They all have mustaches, gelled hair, and a cigarette lodged between their lips while they process (and drop ashes onto) your paperwork.
The main requirement for extending a tourist visa¹ at one of the local police stations is that you have to work at it for approximately 10 minutes. They don’t want to make it zero work for you; you cannot simply waltz into the police station and poof: visa extended. At the same time, they don’t want to make it impossible for you, so they don’t quite hold you to the requirements they say they must hold you to.
The bureaucrats somehow manage to be both accommodating and unaccommodating in every interaction.
Let’s say, in the rule book, the visa extension process requires that you bring your passport, copies of two passport pages, your lease, and a copy of your landlord’s photo ID. If you come in to the station with three of these things, they send you away to procure the fourth. If you come in with only one of these things, as I did yesterday, you’re made to procure a few extra things, working at this task for approximately 10 minutes. Then they deem it sufficient and process your extension.
The bureaucrats somehow manage to be both accommodating and unaccommodating in every interaction. They start out being unaccommodating by explaining that the rules are actually that you have to have a lease and a copy of your landlord’s ID in order to extend your visa. That is the procedure and they cannot do anything for you until you bring those in. Come back another day.
Then you deploy the skill you’ve learned through hours of observation and years of visa extensions:
You ask the same question in a different way.
This is a tactic that I noticed Jordanians have perfected and seems to be universally understood by speakers and listeners all over the country. It sounds like this:
You: “Good morning, I need to have X service please.”
Bureaucrat: “Good morning. I’m sorry, that is impossible because you do not have Y paper.”
You: “Oh really? Okay I see. It is just that I hoped to do X service today.”
Bureaucrat: “Yes well, unfortunately, that will not be possible because according to the procedures, you need to have Y paper.”
You: “Huh, okay I did not realize that because last time, I was able to do X service without Y paper. So can I still do X service today?”
Bureaucrat: “No, sorry to say.”
You: “Hm. So you’re saying, just to confirm, there is no way I can have X service done today. Is that right?”
Bureaucrat, with a sigh: “Give me your passport.”
Then, he will begin to process your extension for you. He will explain that due to the rules there would normally be nothing he can do. But he will do it for you, as a favor. He wants to help you out. This is critical. It is important to them that you know that they want to help you out and are breaking the rules just for you.
(That this happened to me over many years with countless bureaucrats in every corner of Amman seems to undermine this point. But white privilege massively contributes to easy visa extensions, and if I looked different than how I look, they would likely give me a much harder time.)
Before I spent a lot of time in Jordan, I would have left disappointed after posing the question the first time. I would have gone home and been annoyed that I needed to have Y paper to do X service. I would have brought Y paper back the following day, only to have the same thing repeated to me about Z paper.
But now I know the secret: you simply keep standing there at the old wooden desk in the police station, politely rephrasing your question in many different ways until you get the service you need.
I used this tactic yesterday, and was made to go copy some passport pages before my visa could be extended. This was because I needed to fulfill the spend-10-minutes-on-this requirement. Can’t be too easy; can’t be too hard.
“Go and make photocopies,” said mustache hair gel man #1 while his companions at the next desk over worked on their Instagram feeds and breakfast sandwiches. I asked if there was a copy shop nearby and he said there was one just outside the police station. Walking back to the door of the station, I asked the officer there where there might be a copy shop.
“OLD MAN!” he bellowed across the street. “OLD MAAAAAN!” A few moments passed. An old man appeared. He beckoned me over. I crossed the street and went into his tiny, ancient copy shop.
I remembered this old man from when I’d had to do the same process in the same copy shop for the same bureaucrats, a few years prior. I remembered he likes to thumb through all the pages of your passport and check out your case before copying the needed pages. He charges 10 cents a copy. He fancies himself something of a passport and visa expert, since he is The Copy Man for everyone coming in and out of that particular police station to extend their visas.
“Ah,” he will say knowingly, nodding his head and flipping through the pages. “Your old passport with the entry stamp expired, I see. That’s why you brought the new one.” He is sweet and harmless, and likes to involve himself in the goings on.
His copy machine looks like it is from 1962, gray and dusty. It seems a miracle that it can still print — that actual pieces of paper can lurch out of it. On the shelf are ten broken-down looking electric kettles. Does he sell those too? Paperclips and straw wrappers and pen caps litter the surfaces of the crowded, tiny shop.
Eventually, satisfied with his check of my passport, he made my two needed copies. I paid my 20 cents, thanked the old man, and brought my copies back across the street to the station. Now, my visa could be extended.
¹ Expats from some nationalities, such as US, UK and EU passport holders, can buy tourist visas upon arriving in Amman for 40 dinars ($56) — no need to apply in advance. With this visa, they can stay in the country for six months as long as they go to the police station every couple months to process an extension. Jordan is relatively lax about (some) expats working in the country while on tourist visas. I worked full time in Jordan for years on tourist visas and most of my expat friends did the same.
Thank you so much for reading!
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Originally published at http://georgienink.com on October 2, 2022.
