We have been blessed with good rain in Amman this year. Spring is all around us. Amman’s empty plots of land (and there’s many of those) are full of green life. Flowers, grasses, butterflies and bees are creating little heavens where usually you see urban rubbish.

The scene above is what I see everyday as I [...]

We’re SYNTAX. And we create junk.

Celebrating 12 years of junk production. And 10 years of accumulating it in one office.

We’re spring cleaning. Read more in the SYNTAX:CONTEXT blog.

Here’s something that keeps Jordan interesting: there is always someone or some group initiating something. Regional politics might be depressing. Local politics too. The economy is not doing great. There are setbacks, deterioration, and the “I don’t care” attitude all around us. But at the same time, someone is launching [...]

Photo: Dina Haddadin

House 28 on the corner of Rainbow Street is in a state of flux.

The old landlady and her old, bed-ridden husband have passed away. It seems like yesterday she was showing Ahmad Sabbagh and me through the apartment under the main house. That apartment became what I called the “SYNTAX house”. A succession [...]

I really love my fellow Ammani bloggers and tweeps. I really think that they are one of the best things that happened to us in the last ten years. I love that many of them have give a voice to Amman’s urban issues and urban activism. But sometimes they have me shaking my head with [...]

This might sound like the the first line of a joke waiting for a punch line. But this Lebanese man is not the star of a funny joke but the writer Hazem Amin, who one evening found himself as “Amman’s only pedestrian, stumbling over its sidewalks“. That’s the title of his article in Al-Ghad today [...]

Any name that starts with “Abu-something” and ends with a “ni” or “we” sound, might remind us of militants is Afghanistan.. But this Abu is different. Meet Abu Saleem the German-i. He may be no turbaned militant. But he has a bit of a beard. And he’s fighting for a cause: Environmental awareness in Jordan! [...]