To the families in Shobak who welcomed me, the cab drivers in Amman who made me smile, the elderly neighbors who invited me for tea, the sisters who taught me how to dance, the Gazan mothers who weep for their children, the Syrian women who place flowers at graves, the Iraqis who die protecting their …
Fr. Frans, an icon
I painted his icon of Fr. Frans van der Lugt, in the hopes of promoting awareness about his life and death.
Why I cried in Arabic class
I don’t know what exactly brought tears to my eyes, but the combination of the beautiful culture and its tragic loss; the foreign sound of bombs and the familiar sound of Shami Arabic; and the human goodness that somehow persists in the midst of evil made a lump rise in my throat. I looked over and noticed that my teacher was fighting back tears, too.
Diet Advice from the Caliph
The walls of the priest’s office were lined with black-and-white photographs of his father donning a checkered Jordanian kufiyyeh and his little sister wearing her white First Communion dress. Newer pictures of Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, Roman Catholic bishops of Jordan, and Pope John Paul II, flanked the family shots. But the most striking images …
The $200,000 Conversation
Without my education at Georgetown, I could never have dreamed to have such a meaningful, deep, and heady conversation.
JORDAN DENARI DUFFNER 