"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.