My husband,who also grew there not far away from my home,but whose paths chose not to cross mine till much later in life,had a dream of buying an old house there and renovating it.Unfortunately,none of our families still have their houses there,and we never found one to buy.There came a point in time when everyone was leaving,some to abdoon and some to swefieh and newer parts of jabal amman.In the late eighties and onwards ,Jabal lwebdeh was somewhere you never went to if your granparents didn't live there,or maybe your barber still runs his business there.One walk there and you see all these little old ladies in their dark clothes and grey hair,little old men in there flannel robes enjoying the sun in their well kept gardens.
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If I'm not mistaken..kookoo is still there..and yes the shawerma was good and did turn downhill or maybe with exposure to more places taste buds develop..ras el 3abed doesn't taste half as good as it used to..but that's a whole different post.
Hey--that's our old neighborhood, too (although not as old as yours!)
Samer and I were living in the house straight across the street from Terra Sancta school's main entrance (next to the bus parking lot.) It's now being rented by a women's organization, which kind of bums me out because last I saw it, they took all the personality out of the lovely garden we had (ripped it all out, etc.)and made the place typically boring and plain.
Samer and I searched for years to find a buyable house in Weibdeh, and we never made any headway at all, unfortunately. It seems like most of the empty houses are owned by tons of different people from the same family (who have very different ideas on what to do with the house) or the prices are utterly ridiculous (as is the case in most of Amman, I suppose.)
The thing that worries me is that there's no protection for the lovely old homes in old Amman. While we were living in Weibdeh, we saw a large number of beautiful places knocked down to put up parking garages and stuff like that. Very sad. In fact, the guy we were renting from was enamored with the idea of some company coming in and buying the place and tearing it down to build some kind of office building. As if that was likely. So he blew the asking price up about double as a result. . .
exactly the case ,either a million heirs from the same family who can never agree on selling or someone who just knows that one day he could make it big selling his old house,so prices were really blown up,i also agree that the Amman Municpality should try harder at reinforcing the regulations regarding oldish places and not allowing owners to erase a nice period of Amman's architecture.thanks for your comment.
I hope some decision makers in Amman recognize that Amman is a very old city, and some places don't need to be totally ruined in order ti improve services there. It was devastating to see what happened to Salt where the most historical places like the old coffee place and the only movie theater have been turned down.
I live in weibdeh now, and after i read what all of u wrote i begin to love it:) weibdeh is calm place and good option if u want to start a family :) you can come visit weibdeh smtimes
I miss Amman,I've been here in Dubai for six months but I still miss it.I think over 20 years i still didn't have much of my lovely city. Of course abu Mahjoub still tastes good, Try Motta or fairouz for a sweet tooth.
And Sha3teely, your writing is so much like everything we read in Jordanian newspapers, or what UJ teachers used to write when they wanted to write any architectural essay in Arabic!
I'm sorry Dude.
from Greece
said:I consider myself that i've grown up in waibdeh, although we were residing in Jabal al hussian. But i've spent 14 yrs of my life studying in Terra Sancta school which at least couldn't be removed from that place. I miss amman a lot, and i missed it more in my last visit to Jordan when i felt that i'm totally a stranger. Places r losing the spirit and the memories r gone away. I was surprised when i saw dowwar el hawooz has become sahet paris!! Abo mahjoob is still there but with a different taste! Places and also people are different there! Speaking about the city, the whole amman is changing and it's different than the one i loved , the one i've grown up in, and the one i spent my lovely years in. Nowadays i miss it even when i visit it!!!!
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i grew up in weibdeh. our rented house has turned into come company or even a law firm office. i visited jabal weibdeh in my last trip to amman; the barber is still there, but i was surprised by "sahet paris"! and i didn't see akram...i wonder what happened to this man.
unfortunately someone i trust warned me against abu mahjoob; not because it has become bad, but because it is not as good and it may ruin memories for me...
speaking of food, do you remember shawerma al 3am sultan? that was good! then it turned to shawerma sultan and the decline began...the place no longer exists now as far as i know. neither does the khodarji next to it. and the first and original safeway. now that's has disappeared a while back.
yet my favorit place in weibdeh has to be "dawajen kookoo" the name is simply brilliant.