"All the Americans say that."

9 September 2008
“All the Americans say that.”

“What sort of culture shock have you had?” Noor’s eyes sparkle mischeviously like the flickering lanterns dimly illuminating the back garden of the SIT building. Every sound is quick, sharp and clean in the first cool breeze I’ve felt since I’ve been in Jordan (a sign of better weather to come, insh’allah): the rattling of cups and plates from the iftar we’re enjoying with Jordanian students; the trilled chirps of the parrots in the cage outside the villa next door; the laughter and chatter of students and instructors. I let my head roll back to glance up at the stars in an unusually smog-less sky and breathe in the fresh air (as fresh as it gets despite all the pollution and nearby cigarette smoke. We’ve just broken the fast so several of the SIT students are bumming cigarettes off the Jordanian students). The evening call to prayer seems soft and distant, a gentle ripple through the sea of stars above.
“Culture shock…I don’t know. We’re in Abdoun, Amman…that’s not really Jordan. It could be in any American city.” Noor tilts her head upward and concedes this might be true; I clutch the coffee mug tighter.
“Come on, every SIT student I talk to has culture shock of some kind,” Noor continues. Culture shock…where do I begin? I don’t want to admit to it in the first place. I’m an anthropology student. It’d be like a hypochondriac doctor. Noor waits patiently for my response as I swirl the remaining coffee in my mug. Though my equal in age – a junior at Yarmuk University in Irbid – Noor seems wiser than her years. She’s had more traveling experience than most Jordanian students and an obvious knack and enthusiasm for learning languages – her English is astoundingly close to that of a native speaker though she has lived in Jordan most of her life. I’ve met her through one of my Arabic instructors, Halud, who founded an intercultural and interfaith dialogue group (for exchange between local University students and study abroad students) called Yallah Talk – in English, something like “Let’s go (go with God or Godspeed) talk”.
“Well, the call to prayer before dawn woke me up everyday the first week…there’s this mosque right next to…”
“Oh,” Noor rolls her eyes and smirks. “Every American student I talk to says that. What? How do you all live next to mosques?” Every American. Every Westerner. Funny how I keep encountering this reverse Orientalism…could we call it Occidentalism, that is, the West as everything that the Islamic East is not? Granted, I really do live close to a mosque, and every morning about 4:30, the loudspeaker bursts forth across the empty valley between my house and the mosque in static and sounds of the microphone being adjusted before the prayer begins. But I know where she’s going with this protestation.
“O.k., maybe I don’t live adjoining a mosque. Maybe we all feel that the prayer is so prevalent, that we’re surrounded by it.” Noor smiles knowingly.
“When I was in Dallas two summers ago, I felt so disconnected without the call to prayer. I couldn’t live somewhere without it,” she says.
“Now that I’ve lived with it, I wonder how I will feel about hearing bells back in Sewanee. I enjoy the raw, powerful beauty of the prayer, and the continuity through the day through hearing the call to prayer five times. I treat it as a call to prayer for myself, as a Christian, I mean. I wish more people back home could have this experience, talking with you, being abroad....”. I gesture vaguely upward, not knowing how to express what I’m feeling.
As we discuss the spiritual dimension of Ramadan, attitudes toward religion among Jordanian university students, the education system in Jordan, and cross-cultural experiences in general, I find myself staring at Noor’s hijab. But my gaze is somehow different now; I slowly realize that my attention has been subconsciously directed to it for its aesthetic qualities, not some mystique or discomfort on my part. She’s not hiding anything from me, whether by choice or by force; we’ve uncovered our hearts and minds in conversation. After two weeks in Jordan, I discover that I can be around hijab without that strange sense of otherness (niqab –showing only the eyes - I still find a bit jarring, perhaps because I can’t follow speech as well without seeing some lip-reading). Conversing with Noor has been as refreshing as the early evening air filled with the scent of nectar of fresh fruits and moonlight. Truly, her name could not be better suited; it is Arabic for “light”.