Just a stones throw from the fancy gym (above), coffeeshops and restaurants of Abdoun, where the well-heeled and ostentatiously rich of west Amman come to enjoy their leasure time, lies a very different neigbourhood - a small impoverished community where residents continue to eek out a living breeding chickens and goats. Dead dogs rot away in the street and children run around with no shoes.
Abdoun village, as this neighbourhood was known, was the first community in the area, that up until the 1990s was just farmland. Then came the second Gulf war and the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait and other Gulf sates following the PLOs support for Saddam Hussein. Many of those returning bought up land at cheap prices and built their huge mansions in the area surrounding this small village, in turn attracting the embassies, businesses and other leisure facilities that now dominate this upmarket yet rather souless area of the capital.
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