Waste of Time Is Worse Than Death

Abstract This article examines how experiences of time and waiting are shaped by theological imaginations among Syrian Sunni Muslims living as asylum seekers in Jordan. While anthropological studies on time and waiting in contexts of displacement most often place human agency at the center of analysis, attending to people's understandings of waste of time (daya‘ al-waqt) in relation to divine power allows for moving beyond secular, materialistic understandings of time. Placing God at the center of analysis, the article explores how temporal inequalities created in and through the humanitarian protracted context in Jordan are conceptualized along notions of life and death, and it explores the role of God in such conceptualizations. This article takes an ethnographic approach to address the relationship between human sa‘y (strive) and divine granting of faraj (ease) to explore how God's agency materializes into something tangible when addressed through human mobilization. Suggesting that sa‘y is not only a virtue on its own, but a fundamental part of sabr, the article adds to theological understandings of the virtue of endurance as opposed to emotional surge and unrest, and it provides an analytical space to rethink waiting in contexts of displacement beyond bare “migranthood.”