[Jordan - Pt. 4] Adnan: Promised Land for the Forsaken People

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she.
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”

- Excerpt from 'The New Colossus' (1883), by Emma Lazarus (American poet, 1849-1887)

The view from Mount Nebo - where God supposedly showed Moses the Promised Land, but had forbid him to enter. (2018)

As a tourist I was often reminded by my guidebooks about the Christian holy sites in Jordan: there is the river where Jesus was baptised; or the hill where God showed Moses the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’. Jordan itself formed part of the Biblical Promised Land. But in modern times, Jordan seemed more like the place where they banished those forsaken by God. In our own time, we have heard about the plights of the Syrians and Iraqis, who make up for at least 30% of Jordan’s population today.

One of the defining images of the Armenian Genocide (1914-1923), showing an Armenian mother next to a dead child in the fields of Aleppo, Syria. Many died on this 'death march' from the different parts of the Ottoman Empire to the Levant. (By the American Committee for Relief in the Near East)

By the turn of the 20th century it was the Promised Land of yet another people: the Armenians who faced a genocide went on their ‘death march’ to here, and perhaps the least remembered were the North Caucasians who were facing a genocide a thousand miles away. Back then the poor arable land in today’s southern Syria and northern Jordan was the least populated areas within the country, making it an ideal place for the Ottomans to implant the unwanted people who would help to develop this stretch of empire backwater.

Sunset in Zarqa (2018)

I had taken the bus to Zarqa, 15 miles northeast of the capital Amman. The uninspiring industrial town is today slowly becoming part of the sprawling capital. There is not much that catches the eye here. The only local inhabitant who had ever made it to international spotlight was reportedly a quiet but uncompromising young man here. Later in his life, this high school dropout, and later petty criminal would form a militant group called Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. This would gradually evolve into the ISIS as we know it.

But I didn’t come here to follow the story of a world renowned terrorist. I have come to find a people who are now part of Jordan’s fascinating multi-ethnic population, a people whose homeland in the snowy mountains I have visited – but yet I would never thought about meeting again in the semi-desert towns of Jordan.

A photo I took at Lake Ritsa in Abkhazia (2016), the Caucasus. Abkhaz are close ethnic cousins of the Circassians, and some say they are one of the twelve tribes that made up the Circassian people.

If Jordan’s creation was one unexpected in modern history, Amman’s destiny to be a capital seemed to have mirrored that. When Jordan was created in 1921, Amman was merely a tiny semi-desert town. Much of early modern Amman was shaped by a people who were not the local Arabs, but a pale-skinned European looking people from afar. It was so remote then  that they were credited for reintroducing the wheels back to Jordan, and they were involved in the building of the Hejaz Railway, a modern wonder which stretched across 1,300 km of desert landscape between Damascus and Medina. 

Part of the abandoned Hejaz Railway today running through an old Palestinian refugee camp in Zarqa (2018).

Today one of the oldest streets in Downtown Amman still bears their name, ‘Al-Shabsough Street’, the street of the Shapsougs: One of the twelve tribes of the Circassian people.

Al-Shabsogh Street in Downtown Amman, opposite to the Roman theatre, still bears the name of the Circassian Shapsoug tribe (2018)

Between the 1860s and the 1900s, the Circassians were expelled en masse in the Caucasus by the invading Imperial Russian army. Shores on the Black Sea were once littered with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Circassians, either dying or dead from drowning, hunger, disease or exhaustion. It was to be the first modern genocide on European soil. Those lucky enough to be alive were sold as slaves or sold into the harem. Today there are more Circassians living outside of the historical Circassia itself. Adnan is one of them.

Adnan, who had so kindly invited me to his house. Behind him is the iconic 12 stars and 3 arrows Circassian flag. (2018)

Adnan is an amateur archivist and museum curator. He had warmly invited me to his home which he had essentially transformed into a lovely small museum, celebrating the rich culture of the Circassian people.

Adnan holding the old German passports of a Circassian friend (2018)

It is a labour of love: He collects everything from the German passports of a Jordanian-Circassian friend, to the century old kinzhals - the traditional dagger once worn proudly by every Circassian man, and one which both Pushkin and Lermontov had devoted poems to.

Adnan's collection of kinzhals at his home (2018)

​He was once suggested to put his collection into a ‘proper’ museum, which he described would be like ‘having your son being taken away’. But to me the museum's attraction was not in the extensive archive nor the relics: it was Adnan himself.

Adnan in front of his archive and collection. (2018)

Adnan’s interest in everything Circassian started as a little boy: his father, like many other Circassians, served in the Jordanian police force. Their excellent horsemanship and martial abilities made them the perfect candidate for the police and the armed forces.

They were known for their extraordinary loyalty too; you can often see in photos and footages that the Jordanian kings were always accompanied by their strangely dressed personal guards. 

A photo of Adnan's father, an excellent horseman who served in the early Jordanian police force (2018)

A screenshot from the 1966 Pathe footage 'The King of Jordan', showing the late king Hussein's Circassian guards in the palace. Both his father and son have employed Circassians as their personal guards throughout their reigns.

They were the Circassians in their traditional costume: the Chokha, or the Tsiya, a long coat with bullet casing pockets on the front chest. Famously, the Cossacks would adopt their enemies eye-catching Chokha as their own traditional ethnic attire, and it was this that little Adnan’s fascination about his own culture.

In the midst of the Cold War, smuggling materials relating to Circassian culture back home was becoming increasingly difficult. In the 70s, Circassians in Jordan were travelling to their homeland to acquire books relating to Circassia. Adnan described how they would wrapped up Circassian books around their waists and under their clothes in order to smuggle them through the security of the airports. These books were banned in their Circassian homeland, then in the Soviet Union. So the printers had to devise a way to fool the system: the books’ front page would always be decorated with the portrait of Lenin in order to disguise them as communist reading materials.

Adnan showing me one of the books from his collection, a thesis on 'the Circassians in Jordan' from the US Naval Postgraduate School. These books were hard to come by in the times of the Cold War. (2018)

But the trouble only came when the books reached Jordan and being distributed amongst Circassian schools in Amman. Someone soon reported that there had been communist books being circulated in a school, and this worried the Jordanian government which was concerned about the spread of Communism at home.

​With the tip-off from a Circassian serving in the Jordanian police, Adnan and his counterparts smuggled into the school one night, ripping off the portraits of Lenin on every Circassian book and burnt them on site. The next morning, when the secret police visited the school and apparently finding no evidence of any communism materials being circulated left them in peace.

Adnan's own archive at home. They are strictly Circassian only, but also includes materials related to the Chechens and other North Caucasians. (2018)

When the USSR collapsed in the 1990s and a number of Caucasian states declared independence, there was a teeming euphoria in the Caucasus. The same sense of excitement was felt by those abroad but still see the Caucasus as their ancestral homeland. But they must deal with the agony first: brutal wars were breaking out throughout the Caucasus. Some went to fight in the homeland they had never seen.

A photo I took in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya (2016). In the 1990s, the 'Chechen Republic of Ichkeria' was amongst one of the Caucasian states that declared independence.

Other North Caucasians like Adnan were involved in organising humanitarian relief to be sent to Grozny in Chechnya. During the war, the president of the short-lived Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzokhar Dudayev, came to Jordan to thank them.

A photo of Caucasian representatives in Jordan meeting Dzokhar Dudayev, the late president of Chechnya, at the airport in Jordan. (2018)

Adnan talking about Circassians at home - and abroad. (2018)

But he admitted that there are huge differences between the Circassians residing in different parts of the world. He complained that the Circassians back in Circassia drinks too much; and after years of Soviet occupation they knew little about their own history and culture. It doesn’t only end there: the Circassians’ reputation of loyalty and martial ability meant they were often conscripted into the armies of the different countries they now called home. Just as many Circassians in Jordan are now recruited into the Jordanian army, the Israeli Circassians had joined the Israeli armed forces too. Brothers at times found themselves fighting on the opposite side of the trench. Such is perhaps the biggest tragedy befell on an exiled people.

Adnan's 'house museum' (2018)

On the way out, Adnan pointed at the windows and front door of his house, all thoroughly decorated with the colourful Circassian flag. He once joked with the Circassian representatives, ‘Why didn’t we design a simpler flag? It’s a pain to maintain them at my home!’ With twelve stars representing the twelve Circassian tribes and three arrows representing peace, his family has to painstakingly clean each detail of the window frames every time.

The window frames at Adnan's home. (2018)

​I stayed silent, perhaps too ashamed to admit that it was one of my countrymen, a British diplomat named David Uruqart who had a hand in the designing. After all, where do you begin when it comes to historical British wrongdoings in the Middle East?