In the early 1960s, heavy rains led to flooding, landslides, and other such things that damaged crops. For whatever reason, the village of Beit Fajjar (outside of Bethlehem) had a landslide that damaged almost everyone's land. It took a few years for the Jordanian government to do the valuation and actually deliver compensation, and the lists below are the names of each person that was to be compensated, how much they were to be paid, and their signatures that indicated, presumably, that they got what they were owed.
What struck me about this list was how varied the signatures are. There are the class markers, from the people who are illiterate, to those whose handwriting is practiced, to those who can write but whose jerky script betrays a discomfort with the pen. And then there are those who chose, or had to, sign in English. There is even one signature that looks like some sort of Cyrillic script. I think my favorite is the second English signature on the third page. It starts off so well, traveling straight along the line, and then halfway through the last name it just kind of veers off and crashes into a row and column where it doesn't belong.
