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Middle East, or so they were told several times. On the long sweep from one end of town to the other they passed a store, the Philadelphia Electric Company, “Look Adam, someone must have lived in Philadelphia, strange to see the name up there, it’s as if we’ve left home to come home.” It was that in fact, not just metaphorically: when Adam discovered a brand of cigarettes also called Philadelphia, he asked why and learned Philadelphia was the ancient name for Amman. He took it as confirmation, this was the right place, there was a connection between this place and their lives. As they heard the call to prayer sounding not quite simultaneously from different directions, enveloping them in its supreme invitation, bright in the clean, pure air, they heard the desert rhapsody again, the open space of another mode sprung from the city’s isolation, its solitude, the city carved like a fortress on rock above seven clear springs which gave Amman its more recent name. 109 |