A note on comments:
First of all, thanks for all the comments from readers. Most comments I’ve published, and I try to answer them as often and as best I can. So keep up the good work, faithful readers!
Here is one comment on my last post which I wanted to address for everyone:
“It's funny, sometimes reading this I almost forget your host family is Muslim. And then I read this discussion and remember that England/America/Christendom is one side and they are on the other. And again, I'm impressed at your being in a place so foreign and coping with it.”
I find it revealing that the quote links countries (England and America) often associated predominately with terms like "the West" and with "Christendom". Certainly, American religion has become so entangled with American culture (for further reading I recommend Alan Wolfe’s The Transformation of American Religion) with concepts of Christendom in the earthly sense, that we often, at least in our thinking, use America and Christendom interchangeably and pit this category against "the East", "Arabs" or "Muslims". We had better be careful about forming "us versus them" mentalities. I'm seeing more and more that when we Americans create this sort of dichotomy, even quite innocently, Muslims take the cue and assume that the two categories (America and Christendom) are inherently linked, not just as historically constructed, linked categories, but connected at the deepest level, and hence adopt the same sort "clash of civilizations" thinking of which we are guilty and which fuels Islamic fundamentalism. While many ideas and practices in American culture may be very different from those in Muslim societies, it has been and continues to be American foreign policy which contributes most to the perceived "clash". Let's not confuse cultural values with more tangible political policies in our understanding of "us and them".
The last thing I want to do in my blog entries is to "other" my host family, that is to make them seem inherently different from myself and my readers. I’m glad to hear that some readers “forget” that my host family is Muslim while reading about them, at least in the sense that I’m not creating “an other”. But I never forget that they are Muslim – I’m confronted with it everyday; the only way “to cope” is to seek to understand. That doesn’t mean that I’ll embrace everything about my host culture and “go native”, but that I’ll observe, analyze, and interpret what I encounter as best as I can as a novice anthropologist. And as I conduct my field work over the next five weeks, as a Christian (and not just a cultural Christian), I’ll always be aware of the moral dimension in my work.
Please feel free to continue to comment and question – this sort of interaction is really helpful to us all. I’d like to think that my blog, at times more thoughtful than others, is one small way of not just sharing my experiences with general readers, but of helping to improve intercultural dialogue between “East and West”.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Of Koffiyas and Chick-fil-A
29 October 2008
Of Koffiyas and Chick-fil-A
I was somewhere in Nigeria, commiserating with anthropologist Laura Bohannan when I quite unexpectedly heard a familiar accent – familiar in the most literal sense of the word. I jerked my head up from Return to Laughter to study the group of laughing, chatttering Americans coming up the café steps toward me; the middle-aged man in front, presumably their leader as he thereafter presided over their informal meeting in the upper room of Bless café in Abdoun, spoke with a warm Southern twang which I hadn’t heard since I left Alabama; he sounded, in fact, just like my family. And he said “ya’ll”; I was thrilled beyond words.
For some time I sat with pg. 27 open before me, mechanically scanning the words without reading them, listening intently to the conversation of the 15 or so Americans. They used a churchy jargon with which I was familiar; if one were to seek out such a group in Jordan, Bless café would be the place to find them. They spoke of shared experiences in the field, but in a very different sort of field than the one in which the anthropologist works; they mentioned a name which I’d heard before, an American missionary imprisoned who shared her story with me in person, whose story had been a spark to the kindling of my interest in the region, though of a very different sort of interest. Now things had come full circle.
The leader stood up and moved past me; I could no longer resist. “Excuse me, sir,” I spun around to face him as he passed. “Would you mind telling me where ya’ll are from.”
His serious eyes brightened at my use of “ya’ll”. “We’re mostly from the States,” he began. “I live in Atlanta….” “I knew you were a Southerner!” I exclaimed. Then I checked my excitement. “I’m sorry, I was so curious when I heard the accent. It sounded so familiar.”
“But,” he continued, “I was born and raised in Birmingham.”
“I’m from Birmingham!” I nearly shouted. I never realized I’d ever claim that city, or the South much less, but I was so glad to hear their Southern speech, I couldn’t suppress my enthusiasm. The leader inquired about my study abroad, my University back home, and then he excused himself, only to return a moment later.
“Being from Birmingham, I guess you know Chick-fil-A…” he said dryly as he handed me a free chicken sandwich card. I stared at it, mouth agape. Chick-fil-A, that moral bastion of fast-food chains revered by my family and every other patriotic, religious Southerner. I remembered from early childhood all those Sundays when we passed the restaurant after church services, my father solemnly and approvingly pointing to it and commenting on it being closed “to respect the Sabbath”.
So Chick-fil-A, bastion of morally-inclined business, has come to Jordan – to lead a seminar about women in business, no less. I smiled half-heartedly at the group as they passed by my table, feeling somehow estranged from them as much as I identified with the accent. Again I stared at the card in my hand. I put it away and thoughtfully fingered the fringe on my koffiyah (the traditional Arab head-scarf for men, now donned by hipsters as a trendy scarf). The young people chattering and sipping coffee around me had draped koffiyahs about their necks and shoulders various ways and in some ways I felt closer to them than the Americans I had just encountered. Already I feel caught between the two cultures; already I’m apprehensive about re-entry and readjustment. But I think that free chicken sandwich might facilitate readjustment.
Of Koffiyas and Chick-fil-A
I was somewhere in Nigeria, commiserating with anthropologist Laura Bohannan when I quite unexpectedly heard a familiar accent – familiar in the most literal sense of the word. I jerked my head up from Return to Laughter to study the group of laughing, chatttering Americans coming up the café steps toward me; the middle-aged man in front, presumably their leader as he thereafter presided over their informal meeting in the upper room of Bless café in Abdoun, spoke with a warm Southern twang which I hadn’t heard since I left Alabama; he sounded, in fact, just like my family. And he said “ya’ll”; I was thrilled beyond words.
For some time I sat with pg. 27 open before me, mechanically scanning the words without reading them, listening intently to the conversation of the 15 or so Americans. They used a churchy jargon with which I was familiar; if one were to seek out such a group in Jordan, Bless café would be the place to find them. They spoke of shared experiences in the field, but in a very different sort of field than the one in which the anthropologist works; they mentioned a name which I’d heard before, an American missionary imprisoned who shared her story with me in person, whose story had been a spark to the kindling of my interest in the region, though of a very different sort of interest. Now things had come full circle.
The leader stood up and moved past me; I could no longer resist. “Excuse me, sir,” I spun around to face him as he passed. “Would you mind telling me where ya’ll are from.”
His serious eyes brightened at my use of “ya’ll”. “We’re mostly from the States,” he began. “I live in Atlanta….” “I knew you were a Southerner!” I exclaimed. Then I checked my excitement. “I’m sorry, I was so curious when I heard the accent. It sounded so familiar.”
“But,” he continued, “I was born and raised in Birmingham.”
“I’m from Birmingham!” I nearly shouted. I never realized I’d ever claim that city, or the South much less, but I was so glad to hear their Southern speech, I couldn’t suppress my enthusiasm. The leader inquired about my study abroad, my University back home, and then he excused himself, only to return a moment later.
“Being from Birmingham, I guess you know Chick-fil-A…” he said dryly as he handed me a free chicken sandwich card. I stared at it, mouth agape. Chick-fil-A, that moral bastion of fast-food chains revered by my family and every other patriotic, religious Southerner. I remembered from early childhood all those Sundays when we passed the restaurant after church services, my father solemnly and approvingly pointing to it and commenting on it being closed “to respect the Sabbath”.
So Chick-fil-A, bastion of morally-inclined business, has come to Jordan – to lead a seminar about women in business, no less. I smiled half-heartedly at the group as they passed by my table, feeling somehow estranged from them as much as I identified with the accent. Again I stared at the card in my hand. I put it away and thoughtfully fingered the fringe on my koffiyah (the traditional Arab head-scarf for men, now donned by hipsters as a trendy scarf). The young people chattering and sipping coffee around me had draped koffiyahs about their necks and shoulders various ways and in some ways I felt closer to them than the Americans I had just encountered. Already I feel caught between the two cultures; already I’m apprehensive about re-entry and readjustment. But I think that free chicken sandwich might facilitate readjustment.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Of Olives and Dates (the historical variety)
28 October 2008
Of Olives and Dates (the historical variety)
On the table were two, large plastic tubs brimming with dirty green and purplish-green olives and beside them, a cold, orange plate of spaghetti; as hungry as I was, I was much more interested in what was happening to the olives. “Hadol zaytun min Filistine (These are olives from Palestine),” said Umm Dunia (Khatm, my host mother), as she pounded the olives individually with some sort of mallet. Realizing I was fairly gawking at her – one for having some sort of dinner available for me and secondly, for the strange olive processing - I carried my backpack to my room and returned. Umm Dunia looked up at the clock pointedly, as if to quietly rebuke me for just missing dinner, the most inconsistent of mealtimes in our family.
The metal chair scraped noisily as I pulled it away from the table to sit and stare at the process. After mechanically eating half the plate of spaghetti, I clanked my fork (I couldn’t remember the last time I had used a fork in place of the all-purpose spoon) on the plate and pushed it aside. “Mumkin (Can I)…?” I asked shoving my hand into the cool, grainy tub of olives, rolling them about in my fingers. Umm Dunia left the room, returning with a rock; she demonstrated how I should beat the olive to make the flesh split open to facilitate the soaking/seasoning process. Abu Dunia (Mohammed, my host father) joined us. Khatm gave him her mallet and procured a large-handled knife with which to beat the olives.
It had been a while since I had been included in any sort of family activity; my parents have been busy preparing another apartment (which they rent out) and helping their daughter’s family move into a new condominium; I was overjoyed to be included.
“Ah…min Filistine, sah?”
Khatm continued pounding and didn’t look up to answer, “Sah.” She thought I meant the olives.
“Aihwa, bas entoum (gesturing to her and Mohammed)…min Filistine, sah?” They looked at each other in askance.
“La,” Mohammed shook his finger at me. “Min Salt.” Salt. A city just outside Amman, maybe half an hour away. But surely they were from Palestine, as often as they commented on it in my presence: about the news we sometimes watched, about the origins of fruits and vegetables, etc. All this time I had assumed they were from Palestine, for they identified with it so often.
“Oh,” I said. “Bas, abuho (But your father)…?” I pressed on.
“La, min Salt.”
“Oh. And your grandfather?”
“Min Salt.”
At this point Khatm interjected. “Kul ei3leh min Salt (The whole family is from Salt). Jordanian. All Jordanian.”
“Oh.” We three pounded our olives in silence. I felt slightly embarrassed for having assumed they were Palestinian for so long. I don’t suppose they were insulted; they merely stressed their Jordanian heritage and then were silent.
“Bas,” Mohammed began, placing his mallet down purposefully, “Filistine balad ‘arab (Palestine is an Arab country)…” I nodded.
“Ou Israeli khod min homeh...,” he began as he launched into a rapid lecture about the conflict.
“Aihwa,” I interjected, “fi 1948.” This pleased them.
“Ta3raf ean hadha (You know about this?).
“Na’am, fi jame3ahti badros tareekh (Yes, in my university I study History)…”.
“Qweyes, Qweyes (Good, good),” Mohammed nodded vigorously, picking the mallet up again, only to shake it at me in the next sentence. “Bas, Britainiyya khod al balad min Filistine…(But Britian took the country from the Palestinians, followed by a lot of words I couldn’t quite understand)…Ball-foor…”
“Shu yaeni Ball-foor?” What kind of new Arabic word was this? I had no idea.
“Ball-foor ism (is a name)” Mohammed insisted as if I should know this. A long pause. Then I realized:
“Oh! Balfour, the Balfour Declaration!” They both nodded then clicked their tongues, saying “Ya haram (how shameful, what a shame). And I was really glad in that moment that I was not British and thus “to blame” for the mess next-door – not that being American is much better (reputation-wise). After that followed our limited discussion of the conflict – I cited historical dates as I knew them – and a brief discussion about the American political situation.
“King Obama,” Umm Dunia said. I had to suppress a laugh, because she was quite serious.
“Uh, fi amreeka, eindna ‘president’ moush malik (In America, we have a president, not a king)…” I began.
“Aihwa, bas (the Congress picks him).”
“Aihwa, bas…,” I began again. How do I explain the presidential election, especially that strange animal, the Electoral College?
“King Abdullah, Congress, fi Urdun (picks him).” Mohammed interjected. O.k. a referendum to affirm a monarch is not a democracy.
“King Clinton, qweyes, qweyes…King Bush, moush qweyes (not good),” Khatm clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
‘Bithebbi Obama (Do you like Obama)?” I asked carefully.
“Ma baeraf,” Khatm said, shaking her head and shrugging. “Mumkin Obama, mumkin McCain.” I remember one of our lecturers a few weeks ago commented on how popular Bush had been when he was elected, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his silence on other Middle East issues, namely the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, were major disappointments for Jordanians. “We never know,” Khatm concluded.
Yeah, we don’t. And I felt sad for my country.
Of Olives and Dates (the historical variety)
On the table were two, large plastic tubs brimming with dirty green and purplish-green olives and beside them, a cold, orange plate of spaghetti; as hungry as I was, I was much more interested in what was happening to the olives. “Hadol zaytun min Filistine (These are olives from Palestine),” said Umm Dunia (Khatm, my host mother), as she pounded the olives individually with some sort of mallet. Realizing I was fairly gawking at her – one for having some sort of dinner available for me and secondly, for the strange olive processing - I carried my backpack to my room and returned. Umm Dunia looked up at the clock pointedly, as if to quietly rebuke me for just missing dinner, the most inconsistent of mealtimes in our family.
The metal chair scraped noisily as I pulled it away from the table to sit and stare at the process. After mechanically eating half the plate of spaghetti, I clanked my fork (I couldn’t remember the last time I had used a fork in place of the all-purpose spoon) on the plate and pushed it aside. “Mumkin (Can I)…?” I asked shoving my hand into the cool, grainy tub of olives, rolling them about in my fingers. Umm Dunia left the room, returning with a rock; she demonstrated how I should beat the olive to make the flesh split open to facilitate the soaking/seasoning process. Abu Dunia (Mohammed, my host father) joined us. Khatm gave him her mallet and procured a large-handled knife with which to beat the olives.
It had been a while since I had been included in any sort of family activity; my parents have been busy preparing another apartment (which they rent out) and helping their daughter’s family move into a new condominium; I was overjoyed to be included.
“Ah…min Filistine, sah?”
Khatm continued pounding and didn’t look up to answer, “Sah.” She thought I meant the olives.
“Aihwa, bas entoum (gesturing to her and Mohammed)…min Filistine, sah?” They looked at each other in askance.
“La,” Mohammed shook his finger at me. “Min Salt.” Salt. A city just outside Amman, maybe half an hour away. But surely they were from Palestine, as often as they commented on it in my presence: about the news we sometimes watched, about the origins of fruits and vegetables, etc. All this time I had assumed they were from Palestine, for they identified with it so often.
“Oh,” I said. “Bas, abuho (But your father)…?” I pressed on.
“La, min Salt.”
“Oh. And your grandfather?”
“Min Salt.”
At this point Khatm interjected. “Kul ei3leh min Salt (The whole family is from Salt). Jordanian. All Jordanian.”
“Oh.” We three pounded our olives in silence. I felt slightly embarrassed for having assumed they were Palestinian for so long. I don’t suppose they were insulted; they merely stressed their Jordanian heritage and then were silent.
“Bas,” Mohammed began, placing his mallet down purposefully, “Filistine balad ‘arab (Palestine is an Arab country)…” I nodded.
“Ou Israeli khod min homeh...,” he began as he launched into a rapid lecture about the conflict.
“Aihwa,” I interjected, “fi 1948.” This pleased them.
“Ta3raf ean hadha (You know about this?).
“Na’am, fi jame3ahti badros tareekh (Yes, in my university I study History)…”.
“Qweyes, Qweyes (Good, good),” Mohammed nodded vigorously, picking the mallet up again, only to shake it at me in the next sentence. “Bas, Britainiyya khod al balad min Filistine…(But Britian took the country from the Palestinians, followed by a lot of words I couldn’t quite understand)…Ball-foor…”
“Shu yaeni Ball-foor?” What kind of new Arabic word was this? I had no idea.
“Ball-foor ism (is a name)” Mohammed insisted as if I should know this. A long pause. Then I realized:
“Oh! Balfour, the Balfour Declaration!” They both nodded then clicked their tongues, saying “Ya haram (how shameful, what a shame). And I was really glad in that moment that I was not British and thus “to blame” for the mess next-door – not that being American is much better (reputation-wise). After that followed our limited discussion of the conflict – I cited historical dates as I knew them – and a brief discussion about the American political situation.
“King Obama,” Umm Dunia said. I had to suppress a laugh, because she was quite serious.
“Uh, fi amreeka, eindna ‘president’ moush malik (In America, we have a president, not a king)…” I began.
“Aihwa, bas (the Congress picks him).”
“Aihwa, bas…,” I began again. How do I explain the presidential election, especially that strange animal, the Electoral College?
“King Abdullah, Congress, fi Urdun (picks him).” Mohammed interjected. O.k. a referendum to affirm a monarch is not a democracy.
“King Clinton, qweyes, qweyes…King Bush, moush qweyes (not good),” Khatm clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
‘Bithebbi Obama (Do you like Obama)?” I asked carefully.
“Ma baeraf,” Khatm said, shaking her head and shrugging. “Mumkin Obama, mumkin McCain.” I remember one of our lecturers a few weeks ago commented on how popular Bush had been when he was elected, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his silence on other Middle East issues, namely the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, were major disappointments for Jordanians. “We never know,” Khatm concluded.
Yeah, we don’t. And I felt sad for my country.
Friday, October 24, 2008
"View --> "
24 October 2008
And boy, was it a view.
You won’t find Petra in this photo. It’s far behind me, far below, somewhere back there with Indiana Jones. Here I looked not to a travel book or a tour guide, but to these barren, perilous cliffs and their ancient sacrificial high places - to the wilderness before me to read there about the history behind me. If you want the kind of history you can read about in a textbook, then look up Wikipedia’s entry (or some other encyclopedic source). History is not set in stone, not even in Petra: we can clamber over it, breathe it in, examine it – experience the environment from which it comes – for ourselves.
“View –>”
It’s hard to avoid being told when and where to look and what to photograph when you’re a tourist. Why I should photograph the Roman columns of Jerash soaring above me at the most extreme angle (achieved by lying on one’s back beneath them and pointing the camera upward) or why I should “walk like an Egyptian” in front of the Great Pyramid is beyond me. Why we all take those silly photos of each other holding up or smashing between our fingers various buildings or places of historical interest, or simply standing in front of them, possessing them proudly, donning our fanny packs and floppy sun hats like conquerors – I’ll never fully understand. Sure, there were plenty of those shots in Petra, the “rose-red city half as old as time” in Southern Jordan, and inevitably they are now living in my camera. I can search “Petra” on Google images and find every single one of them.
Perhaps the most superfluous of photographic suggestions came after trekking a couple hours through the city, up approximately 800 stone “steps” to the Monastery and beyond to the mountaintops above it was this one:
It’s hard to avoid being told when and where to look and what to photograph when you’re a tourist. Why I should photograph the Roman columns of Jerash soaring above me at the most extreme angle (achieved by lying on one’s back beneath them and pointing the camera upward) or why I should “walk like an Egyptian” in front of the Great Pyramid is beyond me. Why we all take those silly photos of each other holding up or smashing between our fingers various buildings or places of historical interest, or simply standing in front of them, possessing them proudly, donning our fanny packs and floppy sun hats like conquerors – I’ll never fully understand. Sure, there were plenty of those shots in Petra, the “rose-red city half as old as time” in Southern Jordan, and inevitably they are now living in my camera. I can search “Petra” on Google images and find every single one of them.
Perhaps the most superfluous of photographic suggestions came after trekking a couple hours through the city, up approximately 800 stone “steps” to the Monastery and beyond to the mountaintops above it was this one:
And boy, was it a view.
You won’t find Petra in this photo. It’s far behind me, far below, somewhere back there with Indiana Jones. Here I looked not to a travel book or a tour guide, but to these barren, perilous cliffs and their ancient sacrificial high places - to the wilderness before me to read there about the history behind me. If you want the kind of history you can read about in a textbook, then look up Wikipedia’s entry (or some other encyclopedic source). History is not set in stone, not even in Petra: we can clamber over it, breathe it in, examine it – experience the environment from which it comes – for ourselves.
"He has set a tent for the sun."
24 October 2008
“He has set a tent for the sun.”
It’s 5:25 A.M. Why am I awake? A high pitched, tingling buzz tickles my ear. I swat madly in the dark and then jerk the sheet over my head. Namous (mosquitoes)…curse them! In the next room, Mohammad’s crackling prayer breaks the pre-dawn silence, as per usual. Moan and roll over, roll over, roll over. My hair smells of last night at the Blue Fig – cigarette smoke and spirits. Smells like Abdoun, that wealthy Western district of Amman, home to my study abroad school and to embassies; Abdoun - territory of expats and the most “unlocal of locals”. It smells like defeat – that feeling of shock when I returned yesterday from the one of the most refreshing times of peace and growth in my life to Amman, to a household of inquisitive kids, disgruntled family members, maltreated domestic helpers, cigarette smoke, greasy foods, traffic jams. Defeat – that an hour later as the sun begins to invade the gap in the curtains and my puffy eyelids, I curse the sun. How can the sunrise be so beautiful in the desert and so dull, a nuisance even, back in Amman? A vacuum cleaner rolls and bumps down the hardwood floor hallway, choking as it is turned on. I groan and jerk the blanket over the sheets. I can’t escape my impending research study, even in my own “home” – there are thousands of maids all over Amman. Now one of them is outside my bedroom door scrubbing the rug; undoubtedly she’ll work until late this evening. I punch my pillow and get up, giving up. Standing uncertainly in my pajamas, I stare blankly out the window and to the horizon where the northern outskirts of Amman meet the desert. Somehow I have to reconcile this. Nowhere to go but back to sleep/ But I am reconciled – I’m gonna be up for a while…
*****
“I haven’t had this much (American) coffee in…a long time,” I say as I swirl the cup in my oversized (maybe 20 ounces) mug. “I feel…normal. Alive, actually.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Katia says, looking up from her laptop and frowning. Well, things have reached a new low - Books@Cafe: the yuppiest of cafes in Rainbow Street - a welcome retreat from another episode of being secluded in my room, once again excluded deliberately from a host-family gathering. But this time instead of meekly agreeing, I excuse myself abruptly and catch a taxi to this haunt of study abroad students, expats, and tourists – and the “unlocal locals”. And I feel guilty about it.
“I just don’t get it,” I begin. “Just this morning I watched an hour of home-videos with them and asked questions in my limited Arabic…don’t they see I want to be integrated into the family?”
“I think you’re being treated like a source of income,” says Elaine, smugly, as this “confirms” her suspicions. Maybe we’ve all been a bit touchy since The Jordan Times (the English daily) ran an article about “Jordanian families graciously opening up their homes to foreign students.” In it we discovered how much our families are paid (out of the money we students/parents paid our study abroad program), and that some families complain we students are “unhygienic”. Granted, I can understand that the concept of toilet paper is pretty disgusting as opposed to rinsing; I can understand showering less to conserve water in a water-poor country; I have yet to appreciate the moldy pita episode and many other culturally acceptable practices (see earlier entry “Give us this day our daily bread.”)
“I don’t know, they’ve been so nice in general,” I begin in my host-family’s defense, as the waitress places an incredibly thick burger on the table in front of me. If I didn’t feel guilty before, I certainly do now. It’s a familiar, delicious smell I haven’t smelled (or tasted) since I’ve been in Jordan, two months to the day. But it also smells like defeat.
But the home videos were lovely…a wedding for one of my home-stay cousins. The bride’s face reflected the radiant joy beaming from her groom’s face…
*****
The sun is setting, the clouds streaked pink across the golden sky, as I take a taxi back home, leaving yuppy Books@Cafe behind, alhamdulillah. It’s beautiful again, this sunset. Somewhere many miles south in the Dana Nature Reserve is a boulder on a hilltop where I sat two sunsets previous, listening to the raw power of a call to prayer echoing through the jagged mountains and in the valley as far as I can see; it resonates in my soul.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” Psalm 19: 1 – 6.
“He has set a tent for the sun.”
It’s 5:25 A.M. Why am I awake? A high pitched, tingling buzz tickles my ear. I swat madly in the dark and then jerk the sheet over my head. Namous (mosquitoes)…curse them! In the next room, Mohammad’s crackling prayer breaks the pre-dawn silence, as per usual. Moan and roll over, roll over, roll over. My hair smells of last night at the Blue Fig – cigarette smoke and spirits. Smells like Abdoun, that wealthy Western district of Amman, home to my study abroad school and to embassies; Abdoun - territory of expats and the most “unlocal of locals”. It smells like defeat – that feeling of shock when I returned yesterday from the one of the most refreshing times of peace and growth in my life to Amman, to a household of inquisitive kids, disgruntled family members, maltreated domestic helpers, cigarette smoke, greasy foods, traffic jams. Defeat – that an hour later as the sun begins to invade the gap in the curtains and my puffy eyelids, I curse the sun. How can the sunrise be so beautiful in the desert and so dull, a nuisance even, back in Amman? A vacuum cleaner rolls and bumps down the hardwood floor hallway, choking as it is turned on. I groan and jerk the blanket over the sheets. I can’t escape my impending research study, even in my own “home” – there are thousands of maids all over Amman. Now one of them is outside my bedroom door scrubbing the rug; undoubtedly she’ll work until late this evening. I punch my pillow and get up, giving up. Standing uncertainly in my pajamas, I stare blankly out the window and to the horizon where the northern outskirts of Amman meet the desert. Somehow I have to reconcile this. Nowhere to go but back to sleep/ But I am reconciled – I’m gonna be up for a while…
*****
“I haven’t had this much (American) coffee in…a long time,” I say as I swirl the cup in my oversized (maybe 20 ounces) mug. “I feel…normal. Alive, actually.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Katia says, looking up from her laptop and frowning. Well, things have reached a new low - Books@Cafe: the yuppiest of cafes in Rainbow Street - a welcome retreat from another episode of being secluded in my room, once again excluded deliberately from a host-family gathering. But this time instead of meekly agreeing, I excuse myself abruptly and catch a taxi to this haunt of study abroad students, expats, and tourists – and the “unlocal locals”. And I feel guilty about it.
“I just don’t get it,” I begin. “Just this morning I watched an hour of home-videos with them and asked questions in my limited Arabic…don’t they see I want to be integrated into the family?”
“I think you’re being treated like a source of income,” says Elaine, smugly, as this “confirms” her suspicions. Maybe we’ve all been a bit touchy since The Jordan Times (the English daily) ran an article about “Jordanian families graciously opening up their homes to foreign students.” In it we discovered how much our families are paid (out of the money we students/parents paid our study abroad program), and that some families complain we students are “unhygienic”. Granted, I can understand that the concept of toilet paper is pretty disgusting as opposed to rinsing; I can understand showering less to conserve water in a water-poor country; I have yet to appreciate the moldy pita episode and many other culturally acceptable practices (see earlier entry “Give us this day our daily bread.”)
“I don’t know, they’ve been so nice in general,” I begin in my host-family’s defense, as the waitress places an incredibly thick burger on the table in front of me. If I didn’t feel guilty before, I certainly do now. It’s a familiar, delicious smell I haven’t smelled (or tasted) since I’ve been in Jordan, two months to the day. But it also smells like defeat.
But the home videos were lovely…a wedding for one of my home-stay cousins. The bride’s face reflected the radiant joy beaming from her groom’s face…
*****
The sun is setting, the clouds streaked pink across the golden sky, as I take a taxi back home, leaving yuppy Books@Cafe behind, alhamdulillah. It’s beautiful again, this sunset. Somewhere many miles south in the Dana Nature Reserve is a boulder on a hilltop where I sat two sunsets previous, listening to the raw power of a call to prayer echoing through the jagged mountains and in the valley as far as I can see; it resonates in my soul.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” Psalm 19: 1 – 6.
Friday, October 17, 2008
"Now we're talking."
I just had a fifteen minute conversation with my host mother – in Arabic. Funny how when you stop struggling with the language and just let it happen, you find yourself saying words without thinking about what they mean in your native tongue. Something clicked today when conducting bilingual interviews, and when I returned home exhausted and anticipating an all-nighter for my case study, I found myself chatting and laughing over a late dinner with Khatm. I'm still far far far from fluent, of course, but I am feeling more hopeful about communication with my family. She seemed pleased, and I was truly glad. We cleared up some misunderstandings, I think, and I’m looking forward to the next several weeks. I feel like I’ve been restored to them and to the culture, somewhat, a refreshing development after the complaints in the previous entry about “coconuts”.
"Jordanians are like coconuts."
16 October 2008
“Jordanians are like coconuts.”
“I call Jordanians coconuts. They look very rough on the outside, but they are very pleasant on the inside,” said the Jordanian lecturer. We all laughed, delighted at this metaphor and this lucid, engaging talk by a middle-aged economist with a great affinity for all things American, especially American film. “And when I was in prison (for being in Palestine illegally), I asked the guard what the difference was between me and him…like Burt Lancaster in The Birdman of Alcatraz.” And a few minutes later I was musing over what practical wisdom Jordanians like this lecturer (and previous speakers) could find in American movies. “Or like in The Godfather…,” he was saying as I was scanning the faces of my classmates; they were pleased. Not only was his English strong, his personality cheerful, his intelligence and wit sharp, and his love for American culture endearing, but hearing your country and people discussed so aptly by an outsider is such an eye-opening experience, perhaps one of the most valuable parts of studying abroad. You begin to see how the rest of the world sees your country and appreciate that perspective, even when you don’t agree with it.
“...Because we believe the United States to still be the most influential country,” the lecturer was saying, “we choose American hegemony.” I couldn’t recall anyone ever using that phrase, “choose hegemony”. Isn’t the concept of hegemony that an individual would believe in a certain set of cultural values and practice them accordingly, part of that belief and practice being a certainty (belief) that this system was the natural and best system? “…And I watch three to fours hours of American, you know, domestic, programming everyday…CNN, NBC, CBS, and I read the NY Times, etc.” Our eyes widened; I fiddled with my pen and paper, feeling shamed that I couldn’t even manage to read the Jordan Times everyday, much less keep up with international or U.S. news. He proceeded to give us his impressions of the candidates and issues, obviously more informed about the American political system than many Americans. And when asked what he felt were the greatest challenges facing Jordan right now, he suggested that foremost was the lack of resources, especially water (Jordan is the fourth water poorest county), and secondly, the upcoming U.S. elections. Perhaps Jordan should have some votes in the electoral college…
*****
“Yaeraf suaq al-salaam?” I’m trying to explain the location of a quickly approaching interview to this taxi driver; I suspect he wants me to get into the taxi without being certain of the destination (he’ll still get a fare). After we exhaust my Arabic, we think we know where we’re going, and I settle into the darkened backseat after a long day of research and transcription of field notes for a case study due two days from now. My mobile phone begins its annoying Nokia ringtone, saving me from the Arabic questions of the friendly (curious) taxi driver. “My dad needs to cancel the interview.”
“I’m already in a taxi on the way there…”
“I’m really sorry but he has to leave. He can do it tomorrow at noon.” I don’t say anything for a moment. Yeah, tomorrow will be interesting with two interviews when I should be writing up the final report, not conducting more interviews. Does no one respect times or appointments here?
“Yeah, no problem. Tell him I’ll come at noon.” The taxi driver looks askance at me. “Yaeraf saken omeima?”
“Taeraf saken omeima?” Of course I know saken omeima. It’s my neighborhood here in Amman. “Baiti fi saken omeima. Yalla.”
*****
Huffing and muttering, I’m fumbling with the key in the door when my host father appears behind me in the darkened stairwell, greeting me saying, “Assalemu alaykum.”
“Wa alaykum salem.” Good thing I didn’t say that nasty comment on the tip of my tongue about no one being home and having to fish my key out of my overpacked backpack. But I’m brightened by this thought: there’s a wedding tonight for my home-stay cousin, and she has invited me personally. As my father follows me inside, I wonder why Mohammad was lingering in the stairwell, looking ridiculous in his suit; I’m accustomed to his pajama-thob. Khatm is rushing around the house in her fancy dress and heels; she greets me uncertainly, perhaps not expecting me home so early. Does she know I have a personal invitation from the bride, her niece, to attend? She pauses in my doorway, disappears, and appears a few minutes later with the phone, handing it to me. It’s her daughter, who offers a vague explanation about some car being broken down, and there’s no room for me. “Ma fi moushkileh (no problem),” I say, my heart sinking. And I had been practicing that crazy tongue-trill that Arabs do in celebrations. No dubqa dancing tonight.
“Sor-ry,” Khatm said, taking back the phone.
“Ma fi moushkileh…,” I say, admiring her dress.
“Biddik akl?” (Do you want food?), she asks.
“Oh, la, ma biddi ishi. (No, I don’t want anything).” Especially not coconuts. I think I’ve had my fill of those today.
I retreat to my bedroom, this paper looming large over me. Sitting at my desk, I stare at my newly arrived absentee ballot. Hmm, case study paper or ballot? Either way it’s about as tricky as a coconut.
“Jordanians are like coconuts.”
“I call Jordanians coconuts. They look very rough on the outside, but they are very pleasant on the inside,” said the Jordanian lecturer. We all laughed, delighted at this metaphor and this lucid, engaging talk by a middle-aged economist with a great affinity for all things American, especially American film. “And when I was in prison (for being in Palestine illegally), I asked the guard what the difference was between me and him…like Burt Lancaster in The Birdman of Alcatraz.” And a few minutes later I was musing over what practical wisdom Jordanians like this lecturer (and previous speakers) could find in American movies. “Or like in The Godfather…,” he was saying as I was scanning the faces of my classmates; they were pleased. Not only was his English strong, his personality cheerful, his intelligence and wit sharp, and his love for American culture endearing, but hearing your country and people discussed so aptly by an outsider is such an eye-opening experience, perhaps one of the most valuable parts of studying abroad. You begin to see how the rest of the world sees your country and appreciate that perspective, even when you don’t agree with it.
“...Because we believe the United States to still be the most influential country,” the lecturer was saying, “we choose American hegemony.” I couldn’t recall anyone ever using that phrase, “choose hegemony”. Isn’t the concept of hegemony that an individual would believe in a certain set of cultural values and practice them accordingly, part of that belief and practice being a certainty (belief) that this system was the natural and best system? “…And I watch three to fours hours of American, you know, domestic, programming everyday…CNN, NBC, CBS, and I read the NY Times, etc.” Our eyes widened; I fiddled with my pen and paper, feeling shamed that I couldn’t even manage to read the Jordan Times everyday, much less keep up with international or U.S. news. He proceeded to give us his impressions of the candidates and issues, obviously more informed about the American political system than many Americans. And when asked what he felt were the greatest challenges facing Jordan right now, he suggested that foremost was the lack of resources, especially water (Jordan is the fourth water poorest county), and secondly, the upcoming U.S. elections. Perhaps Jordan should have some votes in the electoral college…
*****
“Yaeraf suaq al-salaam?” I’m trying to explain the location of a quickly approaching interview to this taxi driver; I suspect he wants me to get into the taxi without being certain of the destination (he’ll still get a fare). After we exhaust my Arabic, we think we know where we’re going, and I settle into the darkened backseat after a long day of research and transcription of field notes for a case study due two days from now. My mobile phone begins its annoying Nokia ringtone, saving me from the Arabic questions of the friendly (curious) taxi driver. “My dad needs to cancel the interview.”
“I’m already in a taxi on the way there…”
“I’m really sorry but he has to leave. He can do it tomorrow at noon.” I don’t say anything for a moment. Yeah, tomorrow will be interesting with two interviews when I should be writing up the final report, not conducting more interviews. Does no one respect times or appointments here?
“Yeah, no problem. Tell him I’ll come at noon.” The taxi driver looks askance at me. “Yaeraf saken omeima?”
“Taeraf saken omeima?” Of course I know saken omeima. It’s my neighborhood here in Amman. “Baiti fi saken omeima. Yalla.”
*****
Huffing and muttering, I’m fumbling with the key in the door when my host father appears behind me in the darkened stairwell, greeting me saying, “Assalemu alaykum.”
“Wa alaykum salem.” Good thing I didn’t say that nasty comment on the tip of my tongue about no one being home and having to fish my key out of my overpacked backpack. But I’m brightened by this thought: there’s a wedding tonight for my home-stay cousin, and she has invited me personally. As my father follows me inside, I wonder why Mohammad was lingering in the stairwell, looking ridiculous in his suit; I’m accustomed to his pajama-thob. Khatm is rushing around the house in her fancy dress and heels; she greets me uncertainly, perhaps not expecting me home so early. Does she know I have a personal invitation from the bride, her niece, to attend? She pauses in my doorway, disappears, and appears a few minutes later with the phone, handing it to me. It’s her daughter, who offers a vague explanation about some car being broken down, and there’s no room for me. “Ma fi moushkileh (no problem),” I say, my heart sinking. And I had been practicing that crazy tongue-trill that Arabs do in celebrations. No dubqa dancing tonight.
“Sor-ry,” Khatm said, taking back the phone.
“Ma fi moushkileh…,” I say, admiring her dress.
“Biddik akl?” (Do you want food?), she asks.
“Oh, la, ma biddi ishi. (No, I don’t want anything).” Especially not coconuts. I think I’ve had my fill of those today.
I retreat to my bedroom, this paper looming large over me. Sitting at my desk, I stare at my newly arrived absentee ballot. Hmm, case study paper or ballot? Either way it’s about as tricky as a coconut.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
al-Badia part II: "This is living history."
Al-Badia, part II: “This is living history.”
“See that village, far to the left?” I’m not looking for the village, I’m clenching the dusty glass mango juice bottle in my hand, watching in my peripheral vision my backpack sitting on the rock several feet away from me, out of reach, wondering about many unrelated things like how to trim the string trailing from my abaya sleeve and the production of mango juice, yet in the back of my mind trying to remember the location of my phone inside that bag. “Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s in Jordan. See that village just beyond?” Go up this mountain. O.k., I’m on this mountain in the middle of nowhere; now how do I get out of this?
“Yes.”
“That is in Syria. That’s where we’re going.”
“Just to the border, you mean.” My guide hesitates dramatically. Does he think this is funny?
“Of course. But the border is still very dangerous.” Right. “Very dangerous”. My academic advisor said we could see the border if we wanted, that our families might even offer to take us since we live so close. My guide is trying to impress me.
“O.k., let’s go.”
*****
The front gates of the K through 12 school in Naefa, the previous day: my black abaya flaps and furls around me in the strong wind. I pull my hijab lower and invite myself inside. In the courtyard, around 20 children circle in play around two teachers, also in dark, billowing abayas, who turn in my direction. As I stride toward them, faces appear in the windows of the three, bleak, utilitarian, sun-bleached buildings, the separate buildings for girls and boys. “Hello! Hello!” Children push through doorways and open windows to see me. My disguise is worthless; they have spotted my foreignness from across the courtyard. After introducing myself to the two women, one who speaks English well shows me around the school. While many of the younger students greet me with enthusiasm and curiosity, many of the older students, perhaps weary of fasting at the end of Ramadan, greet me mechanically, reciting the Islamic welcome rehearsed for guests regarding me with a haggard, almost hostile, look. As I felt like my presence was disruptive to the school, I ducked in a seventh grade math class for a while; the girls were studying decimals with Arabic numbers (not Arabic numbers as we know them), and that old fear of being called on in math class fluttered in my stomach and rose up in my throat. Realizing some of the teachers and students thought I was a prospective teacher, I was terrified at the possibility of being asked to demonstrate my knowledge of math, even simple math, for the class, even more than I was terrified of demonstrating my lack of Arabic. Alhamduillah, my math skills were not solicited, but my interest in Jordan was. Why would anyone from America travel all the way to Jordan to study, the girls asked; everyone in Jordan wants to study in America, the teacher explained. The class seemed unconvinced by my explanation about thaqafa (culture); I suppose if I were in one of those stiff desks and uniforms in a dreary school in a bleak landscape I might be unconvinced, too, even if that (what seemed to me dreary and bleak) setting was all I ever knew. A bell rang; a girl, who I later learned was a relative of my Badia home-stay family, appeared in the doorway and reached up to my hand, intending to lead me the half mile back to my house. At all times I needed an escort; even my four year old host-brother was preferable to me walking alone. But maybe this was better, after all.
*****
The clerk puts his cigarette down beside the identification documents on the rickety table to motion “discretely” to me; his glittering eyes met those of the men huddled around him. I start to get up from my observation place on the stool, but he must think my movement is too conspicuous; he motions for me to stay. Sitting up tall to see past the crowd of Bedu at the counter, he spots the old man entering the post office; he turns to me and makes a motion like taking a photo with a camera. One of the post office employees leans in from the open office window behind me, startling me with his whisper. “You see that old man?” he asks rather slyly. The old man, with a leathery tanned face scrunched into so many wrinkles and squinting, perhaps unable to see clearly, shuffles toward the counter in dirty, wrinkled thob, assisted by several men from the crowd. “That ,” he says triumphantly, “is living history.” Truly, the man looks like a veteran of the Arab Revolt.
“Are you sure it’s o.k. if I take photographs?” I ask, knowing full well they all want me to photograph not just their respected elderly, but everything – livestock, homes, university diplomas, road signs, and each other posing with all of the above and more. One boy insisted I photograph him holding each of the family chickens in turn. With only my notebook and pen in hand, I might be an unwelcome government worker; raising my camera to my face, several in the crowd straighten up and stare confidently into the lens. I wonder how and when the residents of al-Badia came to revere the camera, the photographer, and the photograph. Perhaps the photograph is a medium they can see and discuss in an oral culture, unlike handwritten notes. Despite being a woman and a student, the camera endowed me with access and authority among the Bedu which was unparalleled (and perhaps unnecessary) in Amman.
I perched on my stool, holding my camera up long after I had finished documenting the scene only to appease the eager post office employees and visitors. It wasn’t until I was leaving that the system was explained (or attempted at least) to me as a sort of welfare program. Before stepping back into the hot wind, I lingered for a moment, inwardly delighted at the abundance of red and white checkered kofiyahs (head-scarves) of the men and the facial tattoos of the old women. This was al-Badia.
*****
“Over that way…boom!” My guide chuckled, pointing to the area surrounding this snaking dirt road in the desert. Maybe it was dangerous, but my Academic Advisor had said it was fine to visit the border as long as we didn’t cross it. I checked my cellphone to ensure I hadn’t received a “welcome to Syria” message as I had received a “welcome to Palestine” when passing the Dead Sea several weeks prior.
“Uh huh, land mines?” I asked skeptically, though I had heard something about livestock wandering into the no man’s land between Jordan and Syria and meeting their demise, not in the traditional mansef dish but by stepping on explosive devices. But maybe that was a rumor. The car crept to a standstill, engine rumbling. We leaned forward into the dashboard and stared through the windshield at the red, rocky landscape before us, and beyond that, the lone guard tower. The land between us and the guard tower and the land beyond that looked no different; no lines in the sand, no fences, no ominous warning signs, only the guard tower rippling in the heat. And was life so different ten, twenty kilometers beyond? From the mountain’s viewpoint earlier that day, nothing had separated the two countries; somehow I still subconsciously expected black lines as on a map to appear on the landscape. In that moment and in the days after that, I began to understand the concept of nation-states as “imagined communities”; borders signify everything and nothing. After some moments, we turned the car around and headed back to Naefa. It was not the end of my story in al-Badia or Jordan, but that chapter in al-Badia remains unfinished. The possible conclusions are endless.
“See that village, far to the left?” I’m not looking for the village, I’m clenching the dusty glass mango juice bottle in my hand, watching in my peripheral vision my backpack sitting on the rock several feet away from me, out of reach, wondering about many unrelated things like how to trim the string trailing from my abaya sleeve and the production of mango juice, yet in the back of my mind trying to remember the location of my phone inside that bag. “Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s in Jordan. See that village just beyond?” Go up this mountain. O.k., I’m on this mountain in the middle of nowhere; now how do I get out of this?
“Yes.”
“That is in Syria. That’s where we’re going.”
“Just to the border, you mean.” My guide hesitates dramatically. Does he think this is funny?
“Of course. But the border is still very dangerous.” Right. “Very dangerous”. My academic advisor said we could see the border if we wanted, that our families might even offer to take us since we live so close. My guide is trying to impress me.
“O.k., let’s go.”
*****
The front gates of the K through 12 school in Naefa, the previous day: my black abaya flaps and furls around me in the strong wind. I pull my hijab lower and invite myself inside. In the courtyard, around 20 children circle in play around two teachers, also in dark, billowing abayas, who turn in my direction. As I stride toward them, faces appear in the windows of the three, bleak, utilitarian, sun-bleached buildings, the separate buildings for girls and boys. “Hello! Hello!” Children push through doorways and open windows to see me. My disguise is worthless; they have spotted my foreignness from across the courtyard. After introducing myself to the two women, one who speaks English well shows me around the school. While many of the younger students greet me with enthusiasm and curiosity, many of the older students, perhaps weary of fasting at the end of Ramadan, greet me mechanically, reciting the Islamic welcome rehearsed for guests regarding me with a haggard, almost hostile, look. As I felt like my presence was disruptive to the school, I ducked in a seventh grade math class for a while; the girls were studying decimals with Arabic numbers (not Arabic numbers as we know them), and that old fear of being called on in math class fluttered in my stomach and rose up in my throat. Realizing some of the teachers and students thought I was a prospective teacher, I was terrified at the possibility of being asked to demonstrate my knowledge of math, even simple math, for the class, even more than I was terrified of demonstrating my lack of Arabic. Alhamduillah, my math skills were not solicited, but my interest in Jordan was. Why would anyone from America travel all the way to Jordan to study, the girls asked; everyone in Jordan wants to study in America, the teacher explained. The class seemed unconvinced by my explanation about thaqafa (culture); I suppose if I were in one of those stiff desks and uniforms in a dreary school in a bleak landscape I might be unconvinced, too, even if that (what seemed to me dreary and bleak) setting was all I ever knew. A bell rang; a girl, who I later learned was a relative of my Badia home-stay family, appeared in the doorway and reached up to my hand, intending to lead me the half mile back to my house. At all times I needed an escort; even my four year old host-brother was preferable to me walking alone. But maybe this was better, after all.
*****
The clerk puts his cigarette down beside the identification documents on the rickety table to motion “discretely” to me; his glittering eyes met those of the men huddled around him. I start to get up from my observation place on the stool, but he must think my movement is too conspicuous; he motions for me to stay. Sitting up tall to see past the crowd of Bedu at the counter, he spots the old man entering the post office; he turns to me and makes a motion like taking a photo with a camera. One of the post office employees leans in from the open office window behind me, startling me with his whisper. “You see that old man?” he asks rather slyly. The old man, with a leathery tanned face scrunched into so many wrinkles and squinting, perhaps unable to see clearly, shuffles toward the counter in dirty, wrinkled thob, assisted by several men from the crowd. “That ,” he says triumphantly, “is living history.” Truly, the man looks like a veteran of the Arab Revolt.
“Are you sure it’s o.k. if I take photographs?” I ask, knowing full well they all want me to photograph not just their respected elderly, but everything – livestock, homes, university diplomas, road signs, and each other posing with all of the above and more. One boy insisted I photograph him holding each of the family chickens in turn. With only my notebook and pen in hand, I might be an unwelcome government worker; raising my camera to my face, several in the crowd straighten up and stare confidently into the lens. I wonder how and when the residents of al-Badia came to revere the camera, the photographer, and the photograph. Perhaps the photograph is a medium they can see and discuss in an oral culture, unlike handwritten notes. Despite being a woman and a student, the camera endowed me with access and authority among the Bedu which was unparalleled (and perhaps unnecessary) in Amman.
I perched on my stool, holding my camera up long after I had finished documenting the scene only to appease the eager post office employees and visitors. It wasn’t until I was leaving that the system was explained (or attempted at least) to me as a sort of welfare program. Before stepping back into the hot wind, I lingered for a moment, inwardly delighted at the abundance of red and white checkered kofiyahs (head-scarves) of the men and the facial tattoos of the old women. This was al-Badia.
*****
“Over that way…boom!” My guide chuckled, pointing to the area surrounding this snaking dirt road in the desert. Maybe it was dangerous, but my Academic Advisor had said it was fine to visit the border as long as we didn’t cross it. I checked my cellphone to ensure I hadn’t received a “welcome to Syria” message as I had received a “welcome to Palestine” when passing the Dead Sea several weeks prior.
“Uh huh, land mines?” I asked skeptically, though I had heard something about livestock wandering into the no man’s land between Jordan and Syria and meeting their demise, not in the traditional mansef dish but by stepping on explosive devices. But maybe that was a rumor. The car crept to a standstill, engine rumbling. We leaned forward into the dashboard and stared through the windshield at the red, rocky landscape before us, and beyond that, the lone guard tower. The land between us and the guard tower and the land beyond that looked no different; no lines in the sand, no fences, no ominous warning signs, only the guard tower rippling in the heat. And was life so different ten, twenty kilometers beyond? From the mountain’s viewpoint earlier that day, nothing had separated the two countries; somehow I still subconsciously expected black lines as on a map to appear on the landscape. In that moment and in the days after that, I began to understand the concept of nation-states as “imagined communities”; borders signify everything and nothing. After some moments, we turned the car around and headed back to Naefa. It was not the end of my story in al-Badia or Jordan, but that chapter in al-Badia remains unfinished. The possible conclusions are endless.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
"It's hard to unlearn."
13 October 2008
“It’s hard to unlearn.”
“Squinting hard through my smudgy, cheap-seat window, Cairo began to emerge from the dark; a vast ocean of light spread across a milk-chocolate landscape. The desert gave way to gathering assembly of low-lying buildings and the city grew in dimension, seemingly chasing the snaking green Nile…”
– from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelstories/article/myfirst24hourscairo_0307#
I look up from the paper in my hand as one of my teachers explains, “It’s hard to unlearn traveler’s discourse.” My academic director has passed around the above excerpt called “My First 24 Hours: Cairo” from Lonely Planet’s travel stories. Does this sort of thinking (Eurocentric-here’s what happened to me in the exotic East) creep into my blog writing? I haven’t updated my blog in a while, and I’m already overwhelmed with somehow conveying al-Badia and Mesr (Egypt) to you – especially Mesr with all its romanticized, ancient Egypt discourse.
Only travelers who cannot see past the dirty surface squint through “cheap-seat” windows and imagine that the city emerges from “the dark”; the only troublesome darkness in Cairo is our ignorance about it and the rest of Africa and the Middle East, that lingering idea of the “dark continent” in Western consciousness. No oceans of light threaten confectionary landscapes, as tasty as a chocolate desert would be. Only tourists passing through a city feel that it grows in dimension to the point of bewilderment; for those who linger, whether as traveler-wanderers or as residents, the city does not expand but implodes, reemerging, recreating Cairo again and again, full of color and light – overpopulated and polluted at 25 million people on 4% of the land, yes – but full of life. Egypt is “Umm al-Dunia”, the “Mother of Life” in the Middle East for those who will rest on her lap and listen to her teachings. Only Orientalists chase after mysterious green snakes; the wanderer and student of Umm al-Dunia drifts down the gentle river in a faluka with no destination, nothing specific to see as mandated by a travel guide book, but everything to observe. We can leave the cultural dissection to the Egyptologists and “pyramidiots” who wish to embalm “ancient Egypt” and bury with it any hope of understanding the process of modernization in Egypt. So if you were anticipating tales of a snaking green Nile, of mummies in museums, of sheesha and sufi mystics, of bartering and of belly-dancers, then you had better read some other blog. (For those interested, I recommend the ethnography Pyramids and Nightclubs about tourism in Egypt.) And yes, I finally rode a camel.
*****
After Cairo, Amman suddenly seemed small, slow and familiar; we traveled the same route from the airport to Abdoun as we had over one month ago. I recalled some of the thoughts, hopes and apprehensions of that night; the desert lay just beyond the reach of the street lamps streaming past in golden, dreamy hues. The chilly air poured in through the taxi windows on the way home; it was far too late to call anyone. As I fumbled with the key in the keyhole, I realized the family set of keys was inserted in the other side, blocking my key; no one was expecting me at 1:30am. With no one lamenting my departure in Egypt and no one to welcome me home to Jordan, I felt displaced as I rang the doorbell to my own “home”. A few minutes later, I sat on my bed in my dark bedroom in Amman listening to the silence, and I began to process it all, mentally reaching out into the darkness as I had when I first dipped my fingertips into the murky Nile…
(More about al-Badia and Egypt to come tomorrow, inshallah.)
“It’s hard to unlearn.”
“Squinting hard through my smudgy, cheap-seat window, Cairo began to emerge from the dark; a vast ocean of light spread across a milk-chocolate landscape. The desert gave way to gathering assembly of low-lying buildings and the city grew in dimension, seemingly chasing the snaking green Nile…”
– from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelstories/article/myfirst24hourscairo_0307#
I look up from the paper in my hand as one of my teachers explains, “It’s hard to unlearn traveler’s discourse.” My academic director has passed around the above excerpt called “My First 24 Hours: Cairo” from Lonely Planet’s travel stories. Does this sort of thinking (Eurocentric-here’s what happened to me in the exotic East) creep into my blog writing? I haven’t updated my blog in a while, and I’m already overwhelmed with somehow conveying al-Badia and Mesr (Egypt) to you – especially Mesr with all its romanticized, ancient Egypt discourse.
Only travelers who cannot see past the dirty surface squint through “cheap-seat” windows and imagine that the city emerges from “the dark”; the only troublesome darkness in Cairo is our ignorance about it and the rest of Africa and the Middle East, that lingering idea of the “dark continent” in Western consciousness. No oceans of light threaten confectionary landscapes, as tasty as a chocolate desert would be. Only tourists passing through a city feel that it grows in dimension to the point of bewilderment; for those who linger, whether as traveler-wanderers or as residents, the city does not expand but implodes, reemerging, recreating Cairo again and again, full of color and light – overpopulated and polluted at 25 million people on 4% of the land, yes – but full of life. Egypt is “Umm al-Dunia”, the “Mother of Life” in the Middle East for those who will rest on her lap and listen to her teachings. Only Orientalists chase after mysterious green snakes; the wanderer and student of Umm al-Dunia drifts down the gentle river in a faluka with no destination, nothing specific to see as mandated by a travel guide book, but everything to observe. We can leave the cultural dissection to the Egyptologists and “pyramidiots” who wish to embalm “ancient Egypt” and bury with it any hope of understanding the process of modernization in Egypt. So if you were anticipating tales of a snaking green Nile, of mummies in museums, of sheesha and sufi mystics, of bartering and of belly-dancers, then you had better read some other blog. (For those interested, I recommend the ethnography Pyramids and Nightclubs about tourism in Egypt.) And yes, I finally rode a camel.
*****
After Cairo, Amman suddenly seemed small, slow and familiar; we traveled the same route from the airport to Abdoun as we had over one month ago. I recalled some of the thoughts, hopes and apprehensions of that night; the desert lay just beyond the reach of the street lamps streaming past in golden, dreamy hues. The chilly air poured in through the taxi windows on the way home; it was far too late to call anyone. As I fumbled with the key in the keyhole, I realized the family set of keys was inserted in the other side, blocking my key; no one was expecting me at 1:30am. With no one lamenting my departure in Egypt and no one to welcome me home to Jordan, I felt displaced as I rang the doorbell to my own “home”. A few minutes later, I sat on my bed in my dark bedroom in Amman listening to the silence, and I began to process it all, mentally reaching out into the darkness as I had when I first dipped my fingertips into the murky Nile…
(More about al-Badia and Egypt to come tomorrow, inshallah.)
"You are Seeta. We give you the famous Bedu name."
12 October 2008 (with excerpts from 27 September 2008):
“You are Seeta. We give you the famous Bedu name.”
Al-Badia: the northern semi-desert land of the Bedu, the traditionally nomadic pastoralists of Jordan. In the early days of Transjordan, the Bedu filled the ranks of the Desert or “Arab” Army as T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) dubbed it, and to this day, Bedu dominate the armed forces. Attempts to settle them within the emerging nation-state have been long and largely avoided, as most Bedu, even those with substantial homes, continue to pitch their tents beside the house and occasionally move them with the sheep and seasons. No land is private land; even in Amman livestock occasionally graze on the hillside next to my apartment complex. Theirs was a beautiful, windswept plain dotted with rocks, shrubs, livestock, and tents – literally “houses of hair” in Arabic; beyond a horizon extended far and blue toward Syria in the north and Iraq in the northeast. Romanticizing about the freedom and nobility of the nomadic life, with its open spaces and fresh air away from Amman, was inevitable; reconciling this beauty with the despair of poverty and the lack of development in the region proved far more difficult, especially when compounded with my sickness and harassment (subjects on which I will not elaborate here).
The following excerpt is from my field notes. In the Badia I lived for three days in a village called Naefa in a fairly "modern" home with a family of five - a husband and wife with three boys ages 2 to 6 - but even in their seemingly modernized life I saw much of the traditional Badia I was I told to expect. I have so much I could share with you, but something about these observations concerning the conservation of resources and the maintenance of the household are a good summary of the sort of activities to which I (as a woman) was confined the first two days:
“…'My wife, she clean the house today,’ began my Badia home-stay father. I was taken aback that he spoke English; he broke my awkward silence: ‘You help.’ Thus, I quite literally stepped off the bus in Naefa and onto the inch-thick coating of soapy water in Umm Hashem’s house, looking back at Rob [another SIT student placed in a home-stay in the same village] who was standing hesitantly on the landing. I looked back at him with a mixture of amusement and despair. Was this going to be my Badia experience – sick and scrubbing floors…?
Now that I reflect, I see that I had the opportunity today not only to observe the maintenance of home and family, but also to participate as a fellow cleaner. I have never seen water so deftly used…when I’ve observed my Amman home being cleaned, the work is done, about ninety percent of the time, by the family maid who uses primarily a damp wipe to quickly swipe surfaces with some mixture of cleaning products in original containers. The furniture is rarely moved...here Umm Hashem entirely unassembled the floor furniture (cushions and pillows) and systematically moved from room to room…using a recycled bucket, Umm Hashem splashed water with a flick of her wrist into the corners of the room, filling the windowsills, and splashing the doors – all with a certain precision, directing the water from one end of the room with a floor sponge, moving it into the hallway and into the next room to be cleaned.
I stood in the soapy water, the hem of my abaya soaked, struggling to follow Umm Hashem’s rapid, guttural Arabic. Is this even Arabic? When Umm Hashem pointed to my abaya, saying “helua, bas…”, I scampered into the bedroom and changed into pants and shirt…Umm Hashem placed the floor tool in my hand and gestured to the hallway. As I fumbled with the cleaning, I realized I’d had this misconception that the traditional abaya was worn at all times in a society too simple to have different clothes for cleaning, that all the women probably wore the abaya and hijab at all times. But in the freedom of her home, Umm Hashem wore rolled up sweat pants, a t-shirt and no scarf. She approved of me doing the same, and I felt somewhat scandalous without my abaya and hijab…
As I waded through the soapy mess, wearing Abu Hashem’s cumbersome house slippers, Umm Hashem directed me to a back patio…the uneven tile on the back patio allowed water to collect, making “sweeping” water off difficult. Thinking the cleanliness of this back patio to be insignificant, I gave it a few broad strokes and returned to Umm Hashem. She peered out the window in the back door, laughing and shaking her head. “Moush qweyes (not good) ?” I asked.
“La, kul mayyeh (no, all the water),” she said, returning to her work inside. So I “swept” it again, only to have her come behind me with her rapid, precise strokes, leaving me wondering why anyone would be so concerned about the cleanliness of a back patio. (As I later observed, it was the main reception area for evening iftar or coffee guests, and the indoor cushions were placed directly on this surface, as was the food. In the Badia, as is the tradition, Bedu eat on a mat or blanket on the floor from communal dishes without utensils.) All the while Umm Hashem deftly fielded her three rowdy boys aged 2 to 6 as they interrupted her work with requests and complaints; I watched her with a mixture of appreciation for the versatility of space and conversation of resources and of sadness for the way her days seemed dominated by domestic duties leaving her hands rough, especially after observing how she more or less collapsed onto a cushion after our several hours of cleaning and cooking [she later asked me if I had any lotion and sorted through my toiletries with great interest]...I was feeling feverish and dropped onto a nearby cushion.”
It wasn’t until after my sickness improved on the third day that I, in my abaya and hijab, boldly stepped out from our small doorway alone into the blinding, open space before me in a scene befitting John Ford a la Stagecoach (only in this case the cowboys were Bedu and the horses were camels, which much to my disappointment were not common in Naefa.) That was when the adventure, for better or worse, really began.
“You are Seeta. We give you the famous Bedu name.”
Al-Badia: the northern semi-desert land of the Bedu, the traditionally nomadic pastoralists of Jordan. In the early days of Transjordan, the Bedu filled the ranks of the Desert or “Arab” Army as T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) dubbed it, and to this day, Bedu dominate the armed forces. Attempts to settle them within the emerging nation-state have been long and largely avoided, as most Bedu, even those with substantial homes, continue to pitch their tents beside the house and occasionally move them with the sheep and seasons. No land is private land; even in Amman livestock occasionally graze on the hillside next to my apartment complex. Theirs was a beautiful, windswept plain dotted with rocks, shrubs, livestock, and tents – literally “houses of hair” in Arabic; beyond a horizon extended far and blue toward Syria in the north and Iraq in the northeast. Romanticizing about the freedom and nobility of the nomadic life, with its open spaces and fresh air away from Amman, was inevitable; reconciling this beauty with the despair of poverty and the lack of development in the region proved far more difficult, especially when compounded with my sickness and harassment (subjects on which I will not elaborate here).
The following excerpt is from my field notes. In the Badia I lived for three days in a village called Naefa in a fairly "modern" home with a family of five - a husband and wife with three boys ages 2 to 6 - but even in their seemingly modernized life I saw much of the traditional Badia I was I told to expect. I have so much I could share with you, but something about these observations concerning the conservation of resources and the maintenance of the household are a good summary of the sort of activities to which I (as a woman) was confined the first two days:
“…'My wife, she clean the house today,’ began my Badia home-stay father. I was taken aback that he spoke English; he broke my awkward silence: ‘You help.’ Thus, I quite literally stepped off the bus in Naefa and onto the inch-thick coating of soapy water in Umm Hashem’s house, looking back at Rob [another SIT student placed in a home-stay in the same village] who was standing hesitantly on the landing. I looked back at him with a mixture of amusement and despair. Was this going to be my Badia experience – sick and scrubbing floors…?
Now that I reflect, I see that I had the opportunity today not only to observe the maintenance of home and family, but also to participate as a fellow cleaner. I have never seen water so deftly used…when I’ve observed my Amman home being cleaned, the work is done, about ninety percent of the time, by the family maid who uses primarily a damp wipe to quickly swipe surfaces with some mixture of cleaning products in original containers. The furniture is rarely moved...here Umm Hashem entirely unassembled the floor furniture (cushions and pillows) and systematically moved from room to room…using a recycled bucket, Umm Hashem splashed water with a flick of her wrist into the corners of the room, filling the windowsills, and splashing the doors – all with a certain precision, directing the water from one end of the room with a floor sponge, moving it into the hallway and into the next room to be cleaned.
I stood in the soapy water, the hem of my abaya soaked, struggling to follow Umm Hashem’s rapid, guttural Arabic. Is this even Arabic? When Umm Hashem pointed to my abaya, saying “helua, bas…”, I scampered into the bedroom and changed into pants and shirt…Umm Hashem placed the floor tool in my hand and gestured to the hallway. As I fumbled with the cleaning, I realized I’d had this misconception that the traditional abaya was worn at all times in a society too simple to have different clothes for cleaning, that all the women probably wore the abaya and hijab at all times. But in the freedom of her home, Umm Hashem wore rolled up sweat pants, a t-shirt and no scarf. She approved of me doing the same, and I felt somewhat scandalous without my abaya and hijab…
As I waded through the soapy mess, wearing Abu Hashem’s cumbersome house slippers, Umm Hashem directed me to a back patio…the uneven tile on the back patio allowed water to collect, making “sweeping” water off difficult. Thinking the cleanliness of this back patio to be insignificant, I gave it a few broad strokes and returned to Umm Hashem. She peered out the window in the back door, laughing and shaking her head. “Moush qweyes (not good) ?” I asked.
“La, kul mayyeh (no, all the water),” she said, returning to her work inside. So I “swept” it again, only to have her come behind me with her rapid, precise strokes, leaving me wondering why anyone would be so concerned about the cleanliness of a back patio. (As I later observed, it was the main reception area for evening iftar or coffee guests, and the indoor cushions were placed directly on this surface, as was the food. In the Badia, as is the tradition, Bedu eat on a mat or blanket on the floor from communal dishes without utensils.) All the while Umm Hashem deftly fielded her three rowdy boys aged 2 to 6 as they interrupted her work with requests and complaints; I watched her with a mixture of appreciation for the versatility of space and conversation of resources and of sadness for the way her days seemed dominated by domestic duties leaving her hands rough, especially after observing how she more or less collapsed onto a cushion after our several hours of cleaning and cooking [she later asked me if I had any lotion and sorted through my toiletries with great interest]...I was feeling feverish and dropped onto a nearby cushion.”
It wasn’t until after my sickness improved on the third day that I, in my abaya and hijab, boldly stepped out from our small doorway alone into the blinding, open space before me in a scene befitting John Ford a la Stagecoach (only in this case the cowboys were Bedu and the horses were camels, which much to my disappointment were not common in Naefa.) That was when the adventure, for better or worse, really began.
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