For several years, a trip to Zarqa was an obligatory part of the circuit for reporters covering the Iraq beat. The attraction was to understand the motivations of the town's most infamous export, Musab al-Zarqawi - the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in 2006 - as well as gain a window into the world of Islamic extremism in Jordan, a country known for its urbane face and pro-Western stance. I first went to Zarqa in 2004, half expecting to find the grinding poverty and failed government of Afghanistan. The truth was somewhat blander. Zarqa is a town of 250,000 people, 18 miles to the northeast of Amman, Jordan's capital, but couldn't be more different. Instead of the ritzy five star hotels and restaurants of Amman, Zarqa had crumbling concrete apartment blocks and military barracks. Additionally, the city boasted a 30 percent unemployment rate and a burgeoning young population that survives on state handouts. Zarqa, in short, is quite typical of a host of towns and cities across the Middle East - neither too desperate, nor offering much hope - and seeming to trap its residents in the limbo world of unrealized aspirations. All of this serves as a long introduction to the first ever documentary film about Zarqa called "Recycle," a beautiful evocation of that limbo world, set in the three years of Zarqawi's rise and fall. The film follows the efforts of ex-mujahideen fighter, Abu Ammar, as he tries to reconcile his faith with reality - an ill-paying job collecting cardboard boxes for recycling, and the demands of eight children. In the evenings Abu Ammar, an amateur Islamic scholar, writes books about theology. It's a world of lowered expectations, in which the Koran is the only outlet for idealism and hope, as well as the frustrations of daily life - despite having been a mujahideen during the Afghan war, Abu Ammar gives off an air of resignation that suggests his younger jihadi passions have long since faded. "I wanted to capture the world of small disappointment people of Zarqa live in," director Mahmoud al-Massad, told me last week. Massad, whose film was shown at this year's Sundance film festival, was born in Zarqa, but moved to Holland 12 years ago. "This is the authentic backdrop to Zarqawi's extremism, not the angry Jihadi message on television, and I wanted to show how people live in that environment," said al-Massad. In my estimation he more than succeeds, but check out his film at his Web site. In an effort to follow-up on my 2004 reporting from Zarqa, I recently went back to the city, which, save for Massad's film, has largely dropped off the journalist radar since Zarqawi's death. I was surprised to find a vast new building project underway, which, when it's finally complete sometime in 2020, will have cost some $4 billion, and cover an area of former military land similar in size to that of lower Manhattan. The government has clearly decided to take on the city's malcontents through this wave of new development east of the current Zarqa. Some of the new houses have been promised to Zarqa residents, although the exact number has not been agreed upon. For the time being, it seems, Zarqa's congested streets will continue to pulse with the same frustrations and disappointments.