"Shwee, shwee"

29 August 2008
“Shwee, shwee”
At some point while blogging last night, the family went out, leaving me and Aunt Muna alone for several hours. Muna is the only one willing to speak English with me, so we got along pretty well. Without her brother in law around, she removed her hijab and we chatted as much as we could in some Arab-glish (like Spanglish) over tea. Completely exhausted from jet-lag and the usual insomnia, I went to bed around nine. Around eleven, I awakened and trudged down the hall to discover the family had returned; Muna had been unable to explain meal times or what times the family sleeps. Dazed, I sat down and started munching on the unsolicited, massive falafel sandwich handed me; we watched about an hour of Noor, a Turkish soap opera which makes American soap operas seem about as dramatic as The News Hour with Jim Leher on PBS. After an hour, I couldn’t take any more Arabic weeping and shouting over Noor’s husband dying in the hospital, so I excused myself and went back to sleep, only to be awakened an hour before dawn by the muezzin in the minaret across the hill. If only the call to prayer were syndicated and synchronized across the city; I could hear the calls all across the valley below echoing for quite a while. As all the windows in the house were open, the pressure changes kept making my creaky door open and close, occasionally slamming shut and scaring me to death; it didn’t help that the family silently walked past, covered, and proceeded to chant the pre-dawn prayer. Something like culture-shock tempted me to put the pillow over my head and drown out the noise with my ipod (which I brought because I have several hours of Arabic lessons on it); instead, I lay on my back just listening until the last allahu akbar drifted off. Unbeknownst to me, the family returned to bed after prayer, and when Muna found me in the living room at eight, she was astounded I was awake so early. She gestured toward the clock: “Fi amreeka…tis’ah (nine)?” “Le, sittah.” She gaped at me. “Sittah!!” (Six a.m.?!?). I didn’t know how to say any like “I’m an insomniac,” or “I don’t get up for pre-dawn prayers”, so I just shrugged, “Shwee, shwee” (akin to “more or less”).
All the reading I completed over the summer has certainly helped, but how ridiculous some of it now seems: advice on how to dress, hide my left-handedness, what to say, etc., has been irrelevant in most cases. Across the 22 countries in the Arab world and all the different regions therein, the culture varies so much that I’d discovered the folly of dependence on any kind of standardized advice and guidebooks. With such a language barrier, I have been able to communicate very little with my family about how much of the culture I understand. They have been excited several times, saying “Oh, you know Islam!” Shwee, shwee. They seem to think I have studied Arabic in school but, the idiot that I am, cannot speak it, and insist in speaking to me only in Arabic. Mohammad’s contribution thus far has been to confirm that I do not speak Arabic (despite his suspicions), to drill me in the numbers, alphabet, phrases and vocabulary of a four year old, and to shout at me when I supplement my very limited Arabic with English, frowning and waving his hand dismissively toward me, “Le, le, le engleezi! ‘Arabi!!” Considering that he studied for eight years in the United States and knows some English (how much is hard for me to discern since he is unwilling to use it), this has been a bit frustrating. When speaking with Julia (who is living with Khatm’s daughter) and occasionally with the family, I can follow what they are saying; if they sense it, they stop and ask me if I can understand. I guess this has happened enough times that they are convinced that speaking to me only in Arabic is the way to go. Maybe so, but my head is throbbing from all this straining to understand.
The point-and-ask method has worked pretty well. “Hadha?” (“That?”). I watched about four hours of Arab television with Muna and Khatr this morning – first (some of you will find this humorous) a desert epic about the life of “Omar al’Kitab”, the fourth caliph. When I asked about Omar, Muna explained to me the sequence of caliphs and made me recite them. Insha’allah, she won’t ask me to recite them again, as I’ve already forgotten them. Then we watched about two hours of fatafeta, the food channel of the Arab world and reviewed a hodge podge of food words I know. They vociferously commented on the Chinese foods one chef prepared, laughing, frowning and turning to me saying “Le, qwayes (not good)”. I wish I knew how to say, “I’ve eaten that in China!” All the while, they were filling me with tea, coffee, and figs. I really need to learn how to politely decline. As today is Friday, we finished off the television watching with an imam (in orange tinted sunglasses and goatee, much to my amusement) from Dubai preaching about Ramadan, which, according to the phases of the moon, may come tonight or tomorrow night. As we have established that I am a Christian, I don’t know how receptive they will be to me observing the fast.
This afternoon we will lunch with Dunia’s (Khatm’s daughter) family; thankfully Julia will be there to help me out. What was I thinking coming to Jordan with only a four-year old’s spattering of Arabic?