I leave the phone in the room next to the bedroom, so I actually get up.
There’s an anti-mosquito alarm machine from Cosmo supermarket in the corner. A reading lamp doubles up for a room light, because I can’t be bothered to get the light in the ceiling fixed.
In terms of Arabic and the amount of bartering over price required to get this and other jobs fixed, like the bathroom sink, it’s just not worth it. Not right now.
So I brush my teeth in the Kitchen sink. Before getting in a taxi to Oasis500: the Middle East’s largest Tech incubator.
The drive in the taxi is silent.
After four years in Jordan, I’ve stopped talking to Taxi drivers. I’ve had every single conversation with a taxi driver that is possible, and anyways I’m in a reflective mood — contrasting my crappy ass flat with the way things were, thinking about a project that has consumed my life for two years, in a part of the world I thought I was just visiting.
The taxi takes the Wadi Saqra route, instead of taking the Abdoun Bridge which is more scenic, and faster at this time in the morning. But it’s cool. No rush today.
I could be living a normal life.
I’ve never been a rational person. But giving up everything to start a publishing company in the Middle East — one of the world’s most restrictive environments for publishing — seems a little extreme. Even by my standards. Definitely by everyone else’s.
But the office is beautiful; a simulacrum-mirage with big ambitions.
Quotations in Arabic and English line the walls. They bode well; the mixture of ancient proverbs and technology is appealing. Well chosen, in every way.
It’s still not quite comfortable until the team arrive: Maisa, and a couple of hours later, Mike.
I founded project pen. Whatever that means. I was animated by the idea that made project pen happen. But Mike and Maisa and dozens of other people brought it to life.
There is something special about being a creator. Those few times when you look on something you did from a distance and think…. Wow, I can’t believe we did that.
Maisa set’s up her desk. We try and find things to complain about, because frankly we’d don’t want to get our hopes up about this stuff. Adhi. Let’s see what happens. Whatever.
Mike comes in, always wearing a new T-shirt, for which he has won unwanted if popular acclaim. He has a half hour cooling off period during which he swears or generally makes grizzly bear sounds until settling in. If I’m bored or annoyed I tweak the guy, and the cooling off period becomes an hour. It’s got to be done.
So here we are. One hundred days incubation at Oasis500, to create a new digital creative publishing entity, and brand.
To all those people who helped us just because we were creative; who sat with me during a cold winter thinking, who advised on the creative aspect, on the technology, on how to articulate creative ideas within a business context, or who drove with me to graffiti tag a certain building, thank you.
I can’t repay you guys. For what’s it worth, you stopped me leaving.
I feel like Amman — the city itself, which has a character — got us here, almost as much as our own efforts did.
And that really messes with my head on those taxi rides.
By John Lillywhite @projectpen
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