"If I have to eat one more fig..."

28 August 2008
“If I have to eat one more fig…”
I kept pacing the SIT classroom while waiting for my homestay family to take me home for the weekend (Friday and Saturday) and reciting the few Arabic phrases I know. A woman in a very Western outfit stepped inside, removed her sunglasses and glanced at me; I half-stood to meet her, convinced this was my homestay mother, but she had come for another student. Then a middle-aged man with a cherubic face entered, well-dressed and grasping his hands around his prominent belly; he found his student. A stream of families came and went, many “Westernized”, some conservative. I began glancing anxiously toward Dema, the homestay coordinator, who was sitting in the opposite corner, clutching a cellphone and staring through the open doorway facing the street. Most of the students had left when a silver Mercedes drove up; a woman dressed in elegant black hijab, intricately embroidered in silver thread and beading and sporting designer sunglasses and handbag emerged from the driver’s seat. By her appearance, she seemed the most conservative and wealthy of the families I had seen, and I watched her approach with a sinking feeling in my stomach – that feeling you get the one day you don’t finish the reading for a class and you just know the professor will call on you. I gulped hard, not because of her apparent wealth or , but because I felt unprepared for this. But I’m an Anthropology student. Khatm took my hand and kissed my cheek. I should be roughing it in a tent somewhere with the natives or refugees, not upper class Jordanians.” “Asalem alaykum,” I faltered. She turned to Dema with a questioning look. Oh I’ve said it wrong, probably with an atrocious accent. I need Arabic classes to start.
Khatm tried to take my 45lb. suitcase from me. “Le, le, I’ll carry it,” I said. We slung it into the trunk with Julia’s (another SIT student) luggage (she’s living in the same district, with my host mother’s daughter), and I seated myself inside the plush vehicle. The husband, Mohammad, greeted me, and I returned the greeting. He asked me my name; I answered. Julia joined me, and she introduced herself. Then he turned to me and starting speaking rapidly. I think I just stared out of shock. I thought Dema had told my host family I didn’t speak Arabic yet. “Ana atakallam engleezi.” He didn’t seemed satisfied with that, so he asked “Tatakallam ‘arabi?” “Le, engleezi faqat.” He then turned to my classmate and asked something like, “Doesn’t she speak Arabic?” “Le, engleezi...” He gave me one last questioning glance and then proceeded to converse with my classmate (who studied in Morocco this summer).
After a maze of streets winding upward through Amman, I noticed we had entered a different sort of district than Abdoun. Affluent, still, but less “Western”. Almost all the women we passed were wearing hijab or niqab (showing only the eyes). Khatm’s home is a flat on a hillside on the outskirts of the district, overlooking some new development in Amman; we pulled into a parking area and entered their third floor flat. Its deep crimsons and metallic accents lent a warmth to the room, like the smell of cardamom. All the rooms are furnished elegantly, and I was quite embarrassed at my unsuppressed gasp upon entering. That little gasp was followed by the breaking of glass a few feet, a harsh whisper, and I noticed a domestic servant, perhaps a Filippino girl around my age wearing hijab and blue jeans, sweeping it up with downcast eyes. On SIT’s homestay information sheet, I’m advised to neither “overwork the maid” nor to “enter-fair” (interfere). Recently the Jordan Times carried an article discussing the thousands of Filippino and Indonesian workers essentially imported to be domestic servants in wealthy homes. While I don’t intend to “enter-fair”, I would be interested in pursuing this issue.
Julia and I were quickly directed to a dining room where a table was set with food and freshly squeezed orange juice. The flat was overflowing with family members, who, we soon learned, were there to celebrate my host mother’s birthday. Curiously enough she had spent the day preparing all the food for her own celebration and soon retreated into her room for the rest of the afternoon while Julia and I had more food pushed on us (out of a spirit of hospitality) than we cared to eat. Eat slowly, eat slowly. Dunia is putting more food on my plate.
The only reference to help my host family understand, geographically, where I’m from was on the television – The Biggest Loser program had a map of the states. Alabama as the home of morbidly obese Americans didn’t convey quite the idea I had in mind. Their daughter, Dunia, speaks English quite well from the eight years the family lived in the U.S., and she was pleased to find out that I’m open to eating anything they wish to prepare. Beginning with our common experience as two only daughters, we conversed much more than I expected during their visit (unlike her parents and aunt, Dunia and her family use English frequently as their four young children learn it in school). But after her family left with Julia in tow, I realized that I am alone in a gated flat in a maze of quickly darkening streets in Amman with three still-strangers who insist on speaking to me in 90% Arabic, 10% broken English. So I’m alternatively looking up phrases in my Arabic dictionary, staring out the window at the desolate countryside, reading Abu –Lughod’s ethnograpy (Veiled Sentiments) about Egyptian Bedouin, and wondering how not to appear like a recluse over the next two days until I can start learning some much needed Arabic. I’ve already picked up some of it by listening, which was part of Mohammad’s confusion earlier; in the car I was obviously following his discussion with Julia about Morocco and he again asked if I had studied Arabic at school. I’m in this weird position of having taught myself to write it, make the sounds, and a few phrases and some vocabulary, but I can’t say I’ve studied it formally, which adds to the confusion. Mohammad just appeared in my doorway, glanced at my computer, and then gesturing toward a small entertainment center in my bedroom, asked if I “like television”; I don’t know whether he finds it odd that as an American, I’m not watching the television, or as a Jordanian, it’s what he expects of everyone. Another relative just asked me about the whereabouts of my host mother. I’m a bit confused about what’s expected of me socially. Perhaps I should rejoin them for more Turkish soap operas on the huge plasma screen television in the living room.

The next two days should be very interesting.