SJPL #3: Expressive automobile honking

If you are accustomed to the automobile honking etiquette of the American suburbs, or even better, the rural South, and have limited experience in traffic-inundated cities, then you may be shocked by the excessive and expressive use of the automobile horn in Jordan. Despite its humble beginnings as a simple audible signal for drivers to alert other drivers or pedestrians, the horn in Jordan has many meanings which often elude foreigners. The lingua franca of the street, horn honking ranges from a friendly “hello you’re in my way” to “you look hot, er, I mean haram (forbidden)” to “I just passed my high school exit exam!!” If you plan to visit Jordan, it would be helpful to familiarize yourself with the following five horn-honks:

1. “You’re walking in the road. Move.” This one varies from a light tap to several evenly spaced, urgent taps, but once you learn to recognize the annoyed tone, you’ll know it. You’ll also know it since you’re probably in the roadway when you hear it. Don’t be fooled by the crosswalks you might see in some of the nicer areas, because no one respects your pedestrian right-of-way, and jaywalking is only a problem is you’re hit by a vehicle. But that’s unlikely once you master weaving-in-and-out of traffic; until then, follow closely behind any Jordanians you see crossing the street.

2. “Do you want a taxi? Because even if you don’t, I’m going to keep honking…” You’re sure to hear this honk especially as a foreigner. Like the “Move” honk, it consists of urgent taps, but instead of the rapid, annoyed tone, these taps are less evenly spaced and become longer and more imploring in duration as the taxi approaches you and slows down. Example: “Honk.” You turn and see a taxi approaching, but you wave it off because you, like many a foreigner, prefer to walk. “Honk.” You keep walking; really, you don’t want it. The taxi pulls up beside you, and the driver leans toward the open passenger window, asking “Tak-see? You want tak-see?” Saying anything in Arabic like “La” (No) unless you are a native speaker is not always effective; perhaps you really mean “yes” and are just confused about your Arabic. The best response is to keep walking, looking straight ahead, or try ducking in the nearest dukkan (shop).

3. “You’re hot” aka “Ya haram (how shameful).” No matter how conservatively you dress, if you’re a foreigner, a woman and alone, you’re likely to hear this. Of course, you may not recognize it for what it is, especially if you intentionally dress conservatively. But once you’ve traveled in a taxi and witnessed it from the other side – the driver snaps his head toward a woman standing or walking alone and taps his horn as he passes – you’ll know it. Should you experience righteous anger at this honk, remember that in this gender-segregated society, men don’t actually know what to say to you. This light tap of interest could mean that this male driver simply wants to experience a communicative exchange with a woman, for even one so vague and indirect can be exhilarating. Or it could mean that he is offended by your very gender, especially if you are unaccompanied by a male – especially, mind you, if you’re exposing arms, legs or something worse. In that case, the tap will likely increase in intensity inversely to the amount of clothing you are wearing. If you’re not careful, the driver may try to give you a lift – and then some money for your services.

4. “I just passed my tawjihi (taw-jee-hee)! Yeah!!!” This high school exit exam is a big deal in Jordan, that is, if you care about your academic and career trajectory. The highest scores can propel you into the best medical programs while the lowest will land you in less respected courses like journalism or graphic design. When the exam results are released in the summer, chaos ensues in the streets, with caravans of young Jordanians cramming into vehicles, honking in a particular pattern of two slow honks followed by three quick honks, repeated over and over, and accompanied by shouting, tongue-trilling, and fireworks. If you’re a pedestrian, beware: people hanging out of windows are likely to point and shout at you, reaffirming their superiority (at placing into business management) over you lowly pedestrian. Every year, the Public Security Bureau, aka the Police, vow to catch and prosecute honking-offenders, but there’s little anyone can do when, at any moment in any street, convoys of honking high-schoolers go flying past. That day was today, so you’ve got the next 364 days to avoid this one.

5. “ We're getting married!" This one is like the tawjihi, except that it poses less of a threat to everyone involved: as a pedestrian you’re less likely to be involved as everyone will be focused on the two people pledged to one another and with the support of two tribes backing it and their honor at stake, no one is likely to bother you. The caravan is usually bedecked in flowers and proceeds with the reverence of a funeral procession, only slightly more lively as evidenced by the repetitive 2-3 honking pattern. The real party is the wedding ceremony itself and especially the after-party.

SJPL #2: Practicing their English with foreigners

Stuff Jordanian People Like #2: Practicing their English with foreigners

Arabic is the official language of Jordan, followed by English and Taxi-Driverspeak – a synthesis of practicing basic English phrases and questions with foreigners, colloquial Arabic, and cursing in an astonishing number of languages. If you look like a Western European or an American, or if you just look like someone who might speak English, and you are visiting Jordan, be prepared to encounter Taxi-Driverspeak. Even if you are a long-term resident, don’t be caught off guard by the weekly, if not daily, “Welcome to Jordan” offered mostly by taxi-drivers and old Arab men sitting in chairs outside shops. Saying “Saken(ah) hon” (“I live here”) is not an appropriate response, because this will probably provoke a brief lesson about where “here” is in relation to where you are from. Example:

Old Arab man outside falafel shop: Wel-come to Jor-dan.

You: Saken hon. (I live here.)

Old Arab man: From America?

You: Yes.

Old Arab man: Jor-dan and Ameri-ca like this (rubs index fingers together in a creepy sawing motion which means “close”). Min wein enti? (Where are you from?)

You: Alabama

Old Arab man: New York?

You: La (No), Alabama.

Old Arab man: Chicago?

You: La (No), Alabama.

Old Arab man: Wash-ing-town?

You can walk away from an inquisitive old Arab man more easily than you can leap from a moving taxi. If a taxi driver initiates a “Welcome to Jordan” conversation which you wish to avoid, simply say “Shukran” (Thank you) and stare out the window. If he persists, speaking to you in Arabic, English or any other language, simply say “Sorry, I am from Hungary”, because he is unlikely to know any Hungarian.

If, however, you are feeling bold, you may reply “Shukran” with some interest, waiting for the inevitable question “Where are you from?” to which you may reply with the truth or with a country of your choice – but be careful which country you choose:

Taxi driver: Welcome to Jordan.

You: Shukran.

Taxi driver: What country?

You: Israel.

Taxi driver: Ya haram (what a shame/shameful)…

Taxi driver #2: Welcome to Jordan.

You: Shukran.

Taxi driver #2: Where are you from?

You: Canada.

Taxi driver #2: (silent)

Clearly, Canada is a good choice. Most taxi-driverspeak conversations tend toward “So how you like Jordan?” to which you must always reply that you like it, saying “qway-yays” (good), “helu” (nice), or just nod and smile. This will either ingratiate you with the driver or it will confirm his suspicions that you are being untruthful, which for most Middle-Easterners is to say that you are the typical Westerner, and anything you promise now may be denied later. Either way, he will not bother you any further, inshallah (Lord-willing).

Stuff Jordanian People Like #1: Photos of King Abdullah II

While I have been busy with research, I’ve neglected my blog, not so much because I’ve been too busy to write, but because I’ve had little I can share with a general audience. So to keep the creative juices flowing, I’ll be doing a parody series of "Stuff White People Like" (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/), inevitably titled "Stuff Jordanian People Like".

#1 Photographs of King Abdullah II.

Nations love immortalizing their heads of state in various media, but none more so since Stalinist Russia than perhaps Jordan - like a cult of personality only less fearful and more blissfully ignorant about what the king actually does, which, besides his presumed political duties, is everything: from scuba diving, to piloting helicopters, to riding motorcyles, to acting as an extra on Star Trek, Abdullah has done it and probably has been photographed doing it; all but the most intimate bodily functions are fair game. The English daily features a different Abdullah shot each day, and if Jordanians munched on cereal in the mornings instead of zait ou zatar (olive oil and thyme with bread), they would no doubt collect portraits of King Abdullah in cereal boxes. Whether or not Jordanians approve of Abdullah is inconsequential, like trying to decide whether or not Jordanians actually prefer the desert; that’s just how things are here. And at least in Jordan, unlike some of its neighbors, you won’t be imprisoned for three years over a satirical poem about your leader. Displayed in the ritziest restaurants to the humblest falafel stands, framed astutely inside homes, and weaving in and out of traffic plastered to taxi windshields, Abdullah’s face is more familiar to Jordanians than their third cousin’s – and that’s saying a lot. Consequently Abdullah infamously dons a bushy black beard when mingling with the common folk, like sneaking into a hospital ward to check up on the state of healthcare or smoking argeelah with some old men on a street corner talking about the state of the economy.

He learned such covert activities not from his military training but from his father, the late King Hussein. And while he’ll never have the classic patriarchal and mustachioed Arab good looks of his father, whose now fading visage still graces shop windows and peeling, sun-bleached car decals, Abdullah makes up for this lack of Arab-ness with an appealing Anglophilia: he founded the King’s Academy in Jordan, modeled after his experiences at the prestigious American boarding school Deerfield Academy and from his time at Oxford; he speaks English like a true Briton (much to the befuddlement of Jordanians who recognize that Abdullah speaks Arabic with a foreigner’s accent); he has unusually blonde-haired children; and like many a clever world leader, he’s married to a supermodel. The only personality Jordanians enjoy fawning over more than King Abdullah is Queen Rania whose slim, attractive figure has defied the law of nature that Jordanian women inflate like baking khobez (bread) by kid number five or by age thirty, whichever comes first.



(King Abdullah as an extra on Star Trek, "Investigations", 1996)

Anglo-Saxon hips don't lie

From 6 July

“We have a word for it in Arabic,” Katti said. Listening intently, I traced her thickly-applied black eyeliner from one corner of her heavy-lidded eye to the other, following the high-arch of her silver-blue eyebrow ridge, her blackened lashes fluttering up and down at the bright headlights bearing down from the opposite lane and diffusing across the windshield. “You can’t see it, but you can feel it. People are not happy like they were in the old times.”

“Not happy?” I asked numbly, my thoughts still with the party we had left minutes before. At 6:40 P.M. I had leapt from a taxi and had darted through multiple lanes of traffic to reach Katti’s car waiting on the opposite side of the highway. Katti began merging into traffic as I was closing the door, and we exchanged Arabic greetings. Her twelve-year old daughter, Tuleen, meekly said “hello” from the backseat and cradled a bouquet of lilies in her slender, tanned arms. The car smelled like mint chewing gum. Katti had loosely tied a sheer black scarf to obscure the set of curlers wound tightly in her bronze hair. As she gripped the steering wheel, her golf-ball sized rhinestone ring stood out like a sixth knuckle. Silver high-heel pressing the accelerator to the floor, we sped toward Anoud’s party, and I turned my glance out the window, embarrassed by the alarmingly short hem of my friend’s sleeveless dress. Obviously this was going to be a segregated, or women’s only, party. We were late, and I was underdressed – or overdressed, depending how you looked at it.

And there was much to be looked at – but for female eyes only - in this private party of approximately two dozen Arab women and myself celebrating Anoud’s university graduation and her mother’s birthday. It was for female eyes only, and yet the sensuality of their dress, makeup and dancing startled me. Turning up the stereo-system volume, Anoud sauntered to the middle of the salon where the guests sat in a circle. A mischievous smile played across her lips, and Anoud began flicking her wrists, curling and uncurling her long fingers; the women began clapping with the beat, trilling her onward. Soon she was joined by a gyrating, swaying company: plant one foot on the first beat; shift the hips loosely around to the opposite foot; kick that foot out on the next beat; the spiraling motion consumes the torso, extends to the graceful arms, the furling braceleted wrists, slender fingers and manicured nails; pull the hypnotic motion inward again to the core; on the next beat plant the other foot and repeat. Imagine any “belly-dance” you’ve seen and now replace the beaded and fringed two-piece with “Western” party apparel. It was a dizzying array in which every few beats one woman would step out as soloist and the others would clap harder and faster for her, trilling and whistling: women dancing sensually to be appraised only by other women, young and single or aging mothers, celebrating their flesh, their femininity, smiling, laughing, caught up in the dance. My thirty seconds on the dance floor were an exercise in futility. These Anglo-Saxon hips don’t lie; they don’t do Arab dance.

“You can’t see it, but you can feel it,” said Katti as she drove me home. “Maybe because I work in human rights, I understand why women want to work outside the home. I work outside the home. Today, I haven’t seen [two of] my children, but it’s a compromise. I love my job. It’s exciting,” she said, smiling at her contentment. What Katti doesn’t mention is that she employs a live-in Indonesian woman to clean her home and care for her children on a two-year contract, but so do thousands of other Jordanians – women buying the labor of other women.

“But part of my mind is with the old way,” Katti said after a pause. “The woman must build her home, her family, before she can go outside and build other things, other buildings,” she said turning to me. “Why build other buildings when your home is falling down?”

“You can’t see it, but you can feel it. I don’t know what’s happening in Jordan. The people want to live the way they see in movies and on television. But now you don’t see your family anymore. Maybe you don’t even know your cousins,” she said, shaking her head.

Passing through downtown, I saw men in groups silently smoking argeelah, the water pipe resting on the broken concrete beneath their plastic chairs. A luxury vehicle with blue accent lights sped past Katti’s car, dull base pounding. All was bright and empty, alive yet dying. I saw silhouettes of thin men leaning in shop doorways, backlit from fluorescent lights revealing stores without customers. The men also stared outward into the night, seeing yet not seeing. This thing we were all watching, you couldn’t see it, but you could feel it.

Food for thought

From 3rd July


(Befriending camels in Wadi Rum)

Although breakfast was being served after the desert tour I had missed (see previous entry), and I knew I might miss a meal too, I didn’t care. I was getting reacquainted with Wadi Rum camels who were passing just outside the camp. I wasn’t very hungry anyway, and when I slipped back into camp I assumed my absence had gone unnoticed; it hadn’t.

“Why did you not eat?” several Sri Lankans asked as they crowded around me.
“Oh, no problem. I was looking at some camels.”
“No, this is not good. You must eat.” But there was no breakfast food remaining, and I continued to try to convince them I was, in fact, not hungry. “Why do you say you are not hungry? You haven’t eaten, you must be hungry.” Wishing to avoid going into detail about why I wasn’t hungry, I tried to walk away. The group sat me down, saying I must wait until some more eggs could be cooked and jam and bread found. I ate the heaping mound offered me reluctantly, and noticed the camp was strangely quiet and watchful. Thinking the Sri Lankans seated near me and staring at my food were suspicious, perhaps concluding it was a second breakfast, I felt I had to explain myself.
“This is the first time I eat today, ok?” I said stupidly. They continued staring. One of the men said something sarcastic in Sinhala and the rest laughed quietly. Something was up, but I couldn’t tell what, so I asked what the man said.
“He says eat your fill,” a woman explained in English. I nodded in his direction. It was only much later that afternoon that I learned the 1am traditional Arab dinner allegedly made half the camp sick.
“Last night they were smelling it and saying it was no good. The chicken didn’t even have salt,” Angelica, a tall eleven-going-on-twenty year old Sri Lankan whom I had befriended easily for her observant nature, her good sense of humor and of course, her English proficiency.
Recalling how I had eaten the salad, the rice and chicken with relish, I replied, “I didn’t notice anything strange about the food.”
“Oh, they were all saying it wasn’t good,” she said seriously. “Besides, we never eat Arab food unless we cook ourselves [usually for their Arab employers]. My mom says to never eat it off the street [from street vendors] or at another house. We don’t know if it’s clean or not.”
“I eat street falafel and shawarma all the time, and I haven’t been sick from it,” I said. I thought back to an interview with a Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ, like a Free Trade Zone or FTZ) agent three days prior. He had gone at length to impress me with the rowdiness of his Sri Lankan contract factory workers and how unclean their living quarters were despite the management imploring them to clean it. “In their living quarters they fry garlic, eggplants, these things in their small pots,” he had said, wrinkling his nose. “It smells disgusting – no disgusting is not strong enough a word. Is there a stronger word?” he had asked me.
“Repulsive?” I offered reluctantly.
“And when you come visit the QIZ with me, I’ll show you how dirty they live, these Sri Lankans. And we give them good clean food from the cafeteria,” he continued. “And they go on strikes when they don’t get fish with their rice!”

I turned my thoughts back to what Angelica was saying as we strode through Aqaba’s fish market. Placing my hand over my nose, I tried to ignore the bloody bits of fish littering the gutters of the meat shops. Shark fins freshly sliced hung like trophies in shop entry-ways, and Angelica continued: “We always get fish when we come to Aqaba. It’s so much cheaper here than Amman.” I watched her family members haggle over a slab of bloody fish; a wizened Arab shopkeeper placed the raw fish meat barehanded on a scale.
“Won’t it smell on the bus on the way back?” I asked, lightheaded at the thought.
“We brought coolers and ice,” Angelica replied cheerily. Then less cheerfully she commented, “I guess I’ll be eating a lot of fish this week.”
Fish shopping completed, we returned to the bus for lunch. “Where are we eating, do you know?” I asked Angelica.
“Burger King,” she said. That, more so than the raw fish, make my stomach turn. Two weeks ago the international church I attend took a field trip to the nearby Burger King; over the next few days, about half the congregation became sick, myself included (see entry “All part of the experience”). At the time, I had assumed it was the Filipino or Sri Lankan meals I had been served; now I was more suspicious of fast food joints than any “ethnic” dish offered me. I told Angelica about my food poisoning at the Burger King in Amman.
“Well, this should be better than the one in Amman,” she affirmed.

The 46 orders had been placed in advance, but when we picked them up, intending to eat them on the bus, the confusion began. Angelica’s uncle opened one of the brown bags and held up the tiny sandwich, a greasy, junior sized bun, and began shouting. As an example, the single serving greasy brown bag was passed around, and the angry voices multiplied. Since they spoke in Sinhala, I only could guess at what was happening. After ten or fifteen minutes of arguing with the poor tour guide in broken Arabic, the Sri Lankans gathered up the food and returned the three large sacks containing 46 smaller sacks to the Burger King. “What happened?” I finally asked the Sri Lankan priest.

“My people have been cheated!” he exclaimed. “They got this small bun only for 3JD (about 5 dollars) – no fries, no drink!” I suppressed a laugh.
The Brazilian and I were unimpressed, having seen the Burger King menu in Amman. Fast food in other countries, Jordan included, is often expensive and indeed, a luxury, and I said this.
“Yes, she’s right,” the Brazilian joined in. “My friend and I ate at a McDonald’s in Amman and for the two of us to eat a burger and fries, it was 16 JD (about 25 dollars). It is too expensive,” he said.

The priest just blinked, bewildered at this revelation that reputedly cheap fast food was not cheap after all. Long story short, the Burger King honored the request to add fries and drinks – the smallest size, mind you – but reduced the meals by half. So half the group, enraged at being cheated, visited the Popeye’s restaurant next door and purchased what they considered a reasonable amount of food for a reasonable amount of money. The Brazilian and I exchanged, once again, a knowing look. Again, I thought back to the QIZ agent’s rant about Sri Lankan factory workers “taking their food for granted”. “They don’t know how much it costs us to have that food for them – good, clean food from the cafeteria,” he had said in defense of factory policy. “We can’t have fish every day like they want. That’s expensive!” And as the argument continued on the bus, I wondered who was right: the QIZ agent, the Sri Lankans, or no one. It certainly gave me some cross-cultural food for thought.

"Getting to know you"

From July 2nd and 3rd

The engine choked, spattered and gurgled, and then the bus lurched forward, lumbering out of the church parking area and through the narrow Jabal al-Weibdeh streets en route to Wadi Rum. Some of the 44 Sri Lankans seated behind me trilled their tongues in excitement and began clapping and improvisational drumming on water bottles and the backs of bus seats, including mine. The Brazilian priest-in-training seated across the aisle and I shared a knowing look. As the only other near-proficient English speaker on this trip, conversing with him would be like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke preserving my precious sanity threatening to burst.

If only all cross-cultural exchange were like that scene in Roger’s and Hammerstein’s The King and I where the English teacher Anna and her “Siamese” pupils sit in one big happy circle and delightfully sway back and forth to “Getting to Know You”; if only becoming a part of their circle was as simple as donning one of their hats. Instead, cramped in my tour bus seat, I was serenaded by traditional Sri Lankan tunes during a three hour sing-along of trilling, clapping, improvisational drumming and karaoke through the hapless Jordanian tour guide’s microphone passed incessantly from one performer to another. It was like a Bollywood musical gone bad, and more than once I found the high trilling female vocalists grating on my nerves. And the food! Every ten minutes some novel spicy cuisine was shoved in my face, with admonishment to “try this – it’s a little hot but very good”. Spiced chai (tea) with ginger and black pepper, spiced desserts – doughy balls of cooked rice, minimal sugar and generous amounts of black pepper – and Halls’ throat lozenges in between, perhaps to clean the palate? I wondered if the lozenges, too, were appreciated for their “hot” menthol qualities. I quickly tired of listening for the ten or so words in Sinhala that I know, and I soon found myself daydreaming out the window, seeking escape. I was appalled to realize that I might be experiencing a sort of culture shock; did I really think I was beyond that? Brushing that thought aside, I nervously hummed “Getting to Know You.”

It was an anticipated three-hour trip turned five-hour exodus to Wadi Rum, a popular desert locale known for its rosy and golden sands eroding from majestic rock formations which attracted the makers of Lawrence of Arabia and thousands of tourists each year – but this group was unique. These were Sri Lankan migrant workers and their families now turned tourists for the two-day trip for which they had saved their salaries and collected donations. Their transformation from workers to tourists was completed by their sunhats, sunglasses and snap-happy camera fingers. As their volunteer conversational English teacher on Fridays and Saturdays, I was invited along, but it was no vacation for me; every moment, every incident was an opportunity to observe. After we pulled in camp around 1am, we ate a traditional Arab dinner, had a dance-off competition of sorts, and trudged to bed around 3am to fall asleep – everyone it seemed but myself. Soon I was punching my pillow in frustration for being stuck in a tent with a comically loud snoring woman. Rather than disturbing her and risking some sort of miscommunication, I decided to seek an empty tent at 5am, and finding one, fell fast asleep thinking I could sleep a few hours – surely no one would be doing anything before 8am. I was wrong.

At 7:30am the flap to my tent flew open and half a dozen dark faces peered in, silhouetted by the early morning light. Alarmed, I grabbed my mobile phone and leapt up, pulling the sheet with me (it was hot in the tent so I had shed my outer layer of clothes). But their voices sounded distant, for I had left my earphones wedged deep in my ear canals even though they were insufficient to block the lion-like snores. Jerking them out, I heard cries of, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you since 5:30! You gave us all a heart attack! We thought you left the camp! We’re leaving now, so you can go back to sleep.” They ducked out as quickly as they intruded. Right. Adrenaline pumping and heart pounding there was no way I was going back to sleep. I ran with the sheet wrapped around me for modesty to my original tent, and I dressed frantically. I reemerged, bag packed, to find myself practically alone in the camp. “We’re leaving,” they had said, but they should have added “to go on a tour of the desert”. Having dressed and realized they hadn’t left the camp for good, only for a tour, I stood at the edge of the camp, waiting for my heartrate to slow, feeling like an idiot. When they returned an hour later, my shame grew.

“Why did you do that?” asked one of my tent-mates, quite upset. I had to decide then whether to explain about the snoring woman and risk embarrassing her or to make some other excuse; I chose the former.

“What, you can’t sleep with a snoring person?” asked another women incredulously. I began to wonder whether my light-sleeping as we call it wasn’t culturally conditioned; does anyone in this [Sri Lankan] culture not sleep as soundly as a rock in the desert?

“No, I can’t sleep with noise like that.” I loudly imitated the snoring, which evoked some laughter from a group standing nearby. I looked around and realized everyone was studying me, some glaring, some whispering, some laughing.

“How could you sleep on the ground by yourself like that?” one of them asked. “Were you not afraid?”

“It seemed like the natural thing to do,” I said, realizing as I said it that it would never seem natural to the group no matter how I explained it. It was noisy, so I went to a quiet place where I had assumed anyone would think to look should they need to find me. When the Sri Lankans discovered my original bed empty, they concluded I had left the camp, for why would anyone voluntarily sleep alone on the ground in a strange place among strange people (Jordanians) who can't be trusted? The presumably empty tents were the last place they looked after a two-hour search. I couldn't believe they concluded that I had wandered off from a camp in the middle of the desert.

And that was only the beginning of the (mis)adventure.

The naming of things

From 25 June 2009

“You like the hubbly bubbly?” asks Anoud, pointing mischievously to the argeelah, the Arab water pipe. Her Saudi friend and former college roommate giggles and remarks on the name “hubbly bubbly”.
“Na’am, bahebb argeelah (Yes, I like the argeelah),” I reply.
“Oh, you call it argeelah, not hubbly bubbly?”
At this I’m getting a bit “huffy puffy”. Why do Arabs so enjoy this running gag about foreigners and the hubbly bubbly? “Yes, the Americans I know and I call it argeelah like everybody else.”
“Wallah (really),” says Anoud, a hint of disbelief in her exclamation.
“I don’t know who calls it hubbly bubbly” I begin, but remembering the British couple seated behind me at the film showing (see previous entry), I continue, “but I think the British call it hubbly bubbly.”
“Yeah, maybe because they occupy Jordan long time ago,” Anoud says, half-serious, half-joking.
“Occupiers, colonizers,” I affirm.
“Yes, colonizers.”
Take that nasally British woman.

We’re seated on a hillside in Salt, a hilly, rocky region dotted with olive trees and a flock of sheep meandering through an adjoining field, their shepherd slumped over a boulder and keeping a watchful eye on them. The waning sunlight of the hour before sunset frames their wooly outline in warm, golden hues, and the breeze stirs the tree branches of the tree shading our group; the air is dusty yet fresh. Katti is my language partner of sorts, a Palestinian human rights lawyer who approached me a few weeks ago at a café. “I need someone with whom to improve my conversational English,” she explained. I smirked; with her correct grammatical construction, clearly this was going to be an imbalanced language partnership. I couldn’t construct a sentence like that in Arabic if my life depended on it. But in the past couple weeks, while I haven’t, regrettably, learned Arabic, I’m pleased with how natural Katti’s conversational English is becoming – and that she’s my ticket to social occasions like rowdy graduation parties and picnics in the countryside outside Amman to see the sunset.
“Eyeyeyeyeyyeyah!” trills the proud mother of a recent university graduate, and she begins dancing proactively Arab style in the middle of the 40 or so guests on the patio. “Amrekiyyah!” she shouts pointing at me. “Taeli!” (You, American, come here!) I’m no dancer, and my awkward efforts at Arab dance evoke laughter – a lot of laughter. I felt my face redden, but I smiled it off. Smiling, acting eager to learn, and taking advantage of my youthful appearance and presumed inexperience have been effective research strategies, and the same goes for such social settings. And more and more I’m learning that being willing to embarrass oneself, to laugh it off, and to be patient and humble, are key for this kind of fieldwork.
“What do you call what you study?” asks one of the younger Jordanian women, impressing me with her studied, clear American accent, and tossing her long, amber hair with cosmopolitan flair.
“Sociocultural Anthropology.”
“What is that?”
“The way people live and make sense of their world.”
“Sounds fascinating,” she said turning back to the woman seated next to her.

Believe me, it is.

All part of the experience

From 21 June to 25 June

I like to think that it’s all part of the experience. A story in five-parts:

The Exposition
I hope I’m not using all the water in the apartment, I think as I flush the toilet for…I don’t want to think about how many times.

“Did you clean the house today?”
“Yes madam,” I’m cowering beneath my employer’s temper and fierce accusatory eye. Something’s not right here…
“Then why does it look so dirty?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know why I’m here, and why I’m watching myself, except that’s not me, is it, this is just a dream, right?, I can’t believe I’m dreaming about my research like this…

What’s that noise? My hand is reaching, scrambling in the darkness for my mobile phone. My bedroom in this cavernous apartment allows very little natural light. “Hello?”
“Oh, did I wake you up?” I look at the time on the travel clock on my desk. 1:13 P.M.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Sorry. This is Cathy. I want you to come and have a meal. You come now?”
I have met four Filipinas named Cathy. I have no idea which Cathy this is…Cathy with a ‘K’, or with an ‘ie’ or with a ‘y’ or…
“I’m sorry, Cathy but I can’t. I’m sick.”
“Oh, maybe I call back later, you come for dinner, yes?”
“No…look, do you know the word ‘vomit’? Yes? O.k., that’s why I don’t come.”
“Oh, ok, maybe later,” Cathy says, her cheerful ramble unabated by the prospect of a sick guest.
“Look, I’ll call you when I’m better,” I say as cheerfully as possible.

I flop back on the mattress. The fan purrs on the nightstand and I give into the spinning…vibrating…ringing of my phone. Ugh! “Yes?”
“Hi, this is Mariz. You remember me?” Of course I remember her, I met her two days ago.
“Oh yes, how are you, Mariz?”

And on it goes, calls or texts all afternoon, people I promised I would see. Maybe I overextended my schedule for today…what is today?

The Rising Action
Into the black garbage bag I’m shoving all the Filipino food in the apartment refrigerator, holding my nose and trying to think of other things like cool meadows with ponies and rainbows. It took all my energy to shower and dress and then venture out into the hottest part of the day, to do my bit of research so I don’t feel totally unproductive these past three days. Then back to the apartment to collapse on the mattress in the cool, cavernous haven that is my bedroom, now turned sickroom. And all those hours spent on my back staring up I am consumed by the burning – literally, burning – question: was it the funky Filipino dumplings, the spicy Sri Lankan curry, or the greasy fast-food chicken sandwich – or just a flu bug? Gasp, what if it’s the flu-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken? I drag myself to the computer and search the CDC website, and once I’m convinced it’s not the flu-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken, I go back to bed.

The Climax
“Oh god, there are so many Americans here,” says the nasally female British voice in the seat behind me. “What are they doing here?”
“Probably learning Arabic, study abroad programs, that sort of thing,” replies her male counterpart.
“Actually,” I imagined myself spinning around to face them, “we’re here to infiltrate your post-mandate expatriate niche, invade your indie film showings, your good-intention NGOs and your precious afternoon teatime.” But I’m not that bold.

This is the part of the story where I think I am well enough to see a documentary about the Sudanese Lost Boys at the Film Institute conveniently located a few blocks from my apartment. I love the area where I live in Amman. Unfortunately I realize halfway through “God Grew Tired of Us”, which I highly recommend, that I am covered with an itching, burning rash. Eeww.

The Falling Action
“What do you want me to say? Don’t do anything and here’s some pills?” the Iraqi-Jordanian doctor sitting opposite me smirked, his arms crossed smugly. “You’re not vomiting, your fever is gone, the rash, well, take the antihistamines if you must – really Yasmine, you bring them to me at their last breath,” he said turning to my Palestinian-Jordanian friend who has brought me to this trusted family doctor. She threw her hands up in mock frustration. Turning back to me he continued, “Do what you feel like doing and drink mint tea, it’s good for the stomach – we’ve been doing that for thousands of years! I don’t know why you Americans insist on antibiotics – you have more cancer than us, that’s for sure!”

Had I not given some previous thought to the contrasts between biomedicine and other medical systems in a medical anthropology class, and had I not reminded myself that I should be open to such views, I might have taken this berating of biomedicine to heart. As it was, I was relieved to escape the usual biomedical diagnostics like being poked with needles and solutions like being prescribed a cocktail of drugs.

The Dénouement
Mint tea is delicious, and I am well on the way to recovery. Alhamdulillah, really.

All things to all people

From 19 June 2009

The young Jordanian woman lies on her back, and her dark eyes flutter upward toward the midwife who massages her belly and smoothes wet strands of hair strewn across a pale face. Sunlight washes out the delivery room, and all is white and still. After the struggle, this strange quiet has settled over the maternity ward of the Italian Hospital in downtown Amman. Scrubbed in, I’m standing awkwardly in my sterile booties and gown next to a Filipina nurse named Evelyn. She has proudly shown me around her ward and the delivery records, detailing her daily duties, proudly introducing me to all the staff, Arab and Filipina. Evelyn is one of three Filipina nurses I met a couple days ago at a Pentecostal church serving Filipino migrant workers, and I have answered her invitation to see the facilities at this hospital serving lower and lower-middle class patients from East Amman.

For six days a week, sometimes working night and morning shifts back to back, Evelyn and her two Filipina co-workers use years of nursing training they received in the Philippines. “The Arab nurses are our practical helpers, but their training isn’t as good as ours,” Evelyn explains. “Here we do all the hands on work, the midwives and nurses together. Here we work as doctors in other hospitals. It is good work.”

“These are the delivery records,” Evelyn is saying, flipping through a green binder. “This month we have already delivered 152, so we’ll have twice that.” I’m scanning the mother’s age column: 17, 24, 18, 22, 19, 21, 17…so many young mothers. The most recent entry reads “24”, and I look back at the midwife and her patient. Maybe she already has a couple of children between those frowning wrinkles on her pale, sweaty forehead.

***

The Sri Lankan mass was scheduled for 3:30, but I was early. Walking up the steps to the chapel, I heard faint chanting, not from inside but from somewhere nearby. Slowly I walked down the steps and around the corner where around twenty Sri Lankan women, two Salvadorian sisters and a priest stood before a statue of Mary. Stepping as quietly as possible across the stone-paved courtyard, I came behind Sister Concy, who turned after a few seconds and greeted me warmly. “We’re saying the rosary,” she explained. “You are a Christian, no?” I nodded, realizing that in Jordan, indeed in many parts of the world, "Christian" and "Catholic" are tantamount. Of course I don’t know the prayers in English, so I stood beside them, hands clasped in front of me, wavering in the hottest part of the day. I stole a glance at the Sri Lankan priest, beads of sweat standing out in droplets on his dark face, made darker by the bleached whiteness of his vestments; he stole a glance back at me, and startled, I turned my attention to the Mary shrine.

Suddenly it all came together: Mary, her doe eyes cast heavenward in perfect appeal, eternally preparing herself for the sacrifice of her son; Mary, draped in a pale blue veil reminiscent of Arab covering but more relaxed; Mary, paler and fairer than any woman present in this chanting mass asking Mary to have mercy on them; these poor workers appealing to Mary, fairer than any employer they might have on earth; Mary, strength and weakness embodied before them, candles flickering and blood-red lilies trumpeting at her smooth, white feet which were not dirtied despite their catholic (universal) travel. Again, in the back of my mind, I heard Emily, transferred to Syria against her will by her multi-national company contract, saying, “I don’t want to go to Syria, but I will sacrifice for my family.” And I heard Marisol, an abused runaway maid living for 22 months in the Philippine Embassy shelter saying “I want to give my son a future”. Marisol seated beneath the shelter's altar with a figure of fairest Mary, Mary, the exemplary mother sacrificing for her son and the exemplary employer, the saint of migrant mothers laboring abroad for their sons.

When I clasp hands with Filipinos and Sri Lankans in mass, I am not Catholic, but I pray with Father O’Connell that God have mercy on these migrant workers far from home. When I clap to the beat of ribboned tambourines and shouting Filipinos, I am not Pentecostal, but I nod along with the pastor imploring workers to be careful when they are on the streets, to be obedient to their employers but to know their rights, too. Tagalog, Sinhala, Arabic – I don’t know these languages, yet I know intuitively what they are saying, what they are praying. To the younger workers I am a sister; the older, a daughter; but to most, I hope to be a friend. Although my skin and my hair and my youth betray my foreignness and the seriousness, the earnest desire with which I labor, I hope that as Cathie, one of the Filipina workers commented, my love for my work and purpose “shows on my face”.

"To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some." - 1 Corinthians 9:22

The hand that guides them

From 18 June 2009

It’s summer in Amman and kites dot the skyline and dart across it as bright, billowing jellyfish, their tales-tentacles dragging over rooftops.

On 16 June the State Department released its Ninth Annual Report Trafficking in Persons Report. Upon its release, Ambassador Cdebaca and Secretary Clinton called for “partnership with foreign governments, NGOs, international organizations, and international development agencies”, and they cited several “heroes” for their efforts in stopping TIP:

"Indonesian hero, Elly Anita, a trafficking survivor herself, advocates fiercely to liberate Indonesian contract laborers in the Middle East…

Hero Aida Abu Ras, a Jordanian anti-trafficking activist, is a fierce advocate for the rights of foreign domestic workers, often so vulnerable as they labor behind closed doors.”

The extensive report covering 175 countries includes what are called, interestingly, “Country Narratives”, and I’ve included excerpts from Jordan’s summary below (countries are ranked in three tiers, the best tier 1):

JORDAN (Tier 2)

"Jordan is a destination and transit country for women and men from South and Southeast Asia for the purpose of forced labor. There were some reports of women from Morocco and Tunisia being subjected to forced prostitution after arriving in Jordan to work in restaurants and night clubs. Women from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines migrate willingly to work as domestic servants, but some are subjected to conditions of forced labor, including unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical or sexual abuse. During the reporting period, the Government of the Philippines continued to enforce a ban on new Filipina workers migrating to Jordan for domestic work because of a high rate of abuse of Filipina domestic workers by employers in Jordan. At the end of the reporting period, an estimated 600 Filipina, Indonesian, and Sri Lankan foreign domestic workers were sheltered at their respective embassies in Amman; most of whom fled some form of forced labor…

The Government of Jordan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. During the year, the government amended its labor law to cover agriculture and domestic workers, passed comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation, initiated a joint labor inspector and police anti-trafficking investigation unit, started a Human Trafficking Office within the Public Security Directorate’s (PSD) Criminal Investigation Unit, and improved efforts to identify victims of trafficking and related exploitation among foreign domestic workers, foreign laborers in the QIZs, and foreign women in prostitution. Nevertheless, anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts were nascent and the identification of labor trafficking offenses and related victims was inadequate, with some victims treated as offenders and penalized for acts committed as a direct result of their being trafficked.”

Visit http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/123136.htm for the complete Country Narratives.

I applaud the report for an accurate summary or “country narrative” of Jordan. I can attest to the runaways: in November 2008 I visited some 200 women in the Indonesian embassy shelter and two days ago, some 130 women in the Philippine embassy, and I believe the Ministry of Labor has attempted some recent legal reform. Yet what this study lacks as a trafficking in persons and hence a victims report – not a study of the spectrum of workers from abused workers to those workers enjoying fair employment opportunities – I hope to supplement with fieldwork.

As they flutter across the Amman skyline, the kites appear as free to wander as the light evening breeze. But kites, like migrant workers, no matter how long the string and how far they travel, remain tied to their origin and the gentle, familiar hand guiding them.

Fanning the flame

When she answered the phone my Filipina friend must have been crying. “I can’t go with you today,” Emily said quietly. She sniffled.
“Isn’t today your day off?”
“Yes, but I’m packing for Syria.”
“Syria! You said you might go next month…” I began.
“I know, but the supervisor wants me to go today. They have a new restaurant with all new waitresses, and they need someone to manage them.” I didn’t know what to say. Emily had signed a two year contract with a multinational company which moves its employees almost without notice. Only two months before she had been uprooted from Beirut and placed in the sushi restaurant in an upscale Amman mall where I had met her two days ago. She had talked to me longer and more openly than the other three waitresses, and she had served me sushi without letting me pay. We had agreed to spend together her one day off during a week of thirteen-hour working days.
“I’m sorry, Emily.”
“I know, but I will sacrifice for my family. Yeah, I will sacrifice for them.” I heard the sound of her moving things, probably packing. “I don’t want to leave my friends here,” she said, her voice breaking. After a pause, she recovered and said flatly, “Look, I will call you back, o.k.?”

I don’t expect her to call me back, I thought as I checked and rechecked the mobile phone in my pocket. From First Circle to Third Circle I stumbled over the blocks of breaking pavement and dodged litter, construction, pedestrians and cat-calls from Arab men leering at me from open doorways of dukkans (shops). The sun beat down on me from above and from below in the bright reflection on the beige stone used in buildings and sidewalks in Amman; the hot, sooty air burned my nostrils; taxis honked incessantly, either to attract business or as commentary on my pale skin, now pink, and my blonde hair. Just as my Arabic returns slowly and with it confidence, so grows my resentment for the general treatment of a foreign woman walking alone. While it was safe to walk all those city blocks in the daylight by myself, I was more than a little relieved when I finally arrived at the Zahran police station.

“How did you come into Jordan?” The woman in uniform and hijab held up my passport and flipped through the pages as if to show me she could not find something.
“I flew into Queen Alia Airport on June 2nd,” I said pointing to the initial entry visa. She turned and spoke to the man at the adjoining desk, who listened, looked up at me suddenly and stood up.
“Follow me,” he said, leading me into the adjacent room which was dominated by a large wooden desk with an outdated computer model; he sat behind this and studied my passport. There was no chair for me, so I stood at attention, steeling myself for an interrogation.
“Where is your visa?”
“Here,” I said firmly, pointing again to the 2 June 2009 stamp.
“This is your most recent visa?” His accent was too thick; I shook my head in that confused way which Jordanians shake theirs at me when they cannot understand my Arabic.
“Yes,” I said. He gestured rapidly, and again I followed him out of the room, back to the female officer with better English.
“You’ve been to Palestine?”
“Yes, last week.”
“And how you came to Jordan, from which crossing?”“King Hussein Bridge.”“Did they not give you a paper?” Oh, this is what they want, I thought as I flipped through my field notebook, retrieving a crumpled slip of paper handed to me at the border crossing; I laid it on the counter.
“You must go to the Borders Department,” the woman promptly replied. After a trek across town, an hour of processing from bored Jordanian officer at one window to another bored Jordanian officer to another ad infinitum, I returned to the same station, where the culmination of those three trying hours was a simple stamp and customary “Welcome to Jordan.” I could have punched someone - for Emily’s deportation, for the cat-calls, for the taxi driver who tried to cheat me, for the five banks which refused to cash my traveler’s checks, even for the weather.

I needed to cool off, literally, and I remembered I had decided to buy a fan. When I stepped inside a tiny appliance shop humming with the noise of display fans, I was ready to give in and pay whatever the owner requested. No matter how hard I haggled and explained in my limited Arabic that I am a student on a research budget without funds to pay for an overpriced fan, the shop owners felt little or no sympathy. I looked back at Manila street as it is called, and studied the littered gutters, the empty shops, their owners leaning in doorways, haggard and hungry for a sale. Maybe I expect too much in this country, I thought.

“Can I help you?” asked a kind voice behind me. I began my spiel in Arabic, but the man interrupted with me interest, asking more details. Astonished, I told him more about what I study (anthropology), how I had come to be in Amman, my research and the hard day I was having. After a pause he said, “You know, these are hard times for everyone. These people,” he said gesturing to the surrounding shops, “they don’t have the money either. But I will let you have this fan, and you can give me whatever you think best, because you need it, and you are a polite girl.” I felt almost ashamed, because I could pay the asking price, though it is overpriced, and because he probably needed the money.
But we both understood the principle of the matter, I think. “I’ll give you 10 JD (about 17 dollars) now, and before I leave Amman to return home, I’ll bring the fan back and you can keep it or resell it.” He agreed and introduced himself as Imad.

Stepping out of Imad’s shop and into the brilliant sunshine, I bore my happy blue fan through Manila street, smiling inwardly if not outwardly. It was one of those contented moments when faith in the power of compassion and of sacrifice is restored.


(my happy electric blue fan)

"I have wasta in high places."

13 June 2009

Lacing my gym shoes as slowly as possible, I kept watch on the janitorial closet across the locker room. I could see her flip-flopped feet under the doorway. A Jordanian woman came puffing around the corner from the exercise room, and I quickly turned back to my temporary locker and fumbled with my belongings, stalling for time. She gathered her things and headed for the showers, and I moved to the changing station across from the closet. I felt a little odd for essentially stalking this woman, and I was ready to leave, except that I had paid too much for a one-day pass in this gym in upscale Abdoun as a means to contact the migrant women I heard were working here. The latch turned and I jumped to meet her as she emerged from the closet.

It registered a few seconds after I began speaking rapidly in English to this woman that she didn’t understand me, and that she was not, as I had been misinformed, Asian. After a few minutes of charades and a spattering of poorly spoken Levantine Arabic (I don’t know any Egyptian colloquial), I remembered I had an Arabic cartoon about maids (similar to the one from the May 31st post) in my field notebook. I watched her face as she ran her eyes over the cartoon and the captions. Meanwhile, I wrote my mobile number on a scrap of paper and offered it to her. Unexpectedly she shoved the papers in her cleaning uniform pocket, propped her mop against the wall, and led me upstairs to – not other cleaning staff as I hoped – her employer. He looked at it, laughed ominously, and said, “She knows about this, yes, but she cannot read!” Relieved, I reached out to take the cartoon back, but he held onto it, and continued: “What do you want with her? We treat her good here, not like this [cartoon]. Are you investigating?”
“No, I’m just a student. I’m sorry, I don’t want anything from her [Egyptian worker]. I’m sorry, it was a mistake.” Faye walked past the front desk, her blue eyes widened in concern.
“You’re gonna get me kicked out of this gym,” she whispered as she walked behind me and into the machine room. I excused myself and pedaled my frustration away on a stationary bike. “You’re the worst researcher ever,” said a half-joking Faye jogging on the treadmill behind me. In that moment of frustration, I believed her. Later as we packed up our things in the locker room, I looked up to see the Egyptian woman shuffling toward me in her lavender flip flops. I grimaced, thinking of all the better ways I could have managed that situation, but then she slipped a scrap of paper in my hand.
“Afaafa,” she slowly pronounced her name. “Wa hada mobili (and this is my mobile number)”. Then she smiled a wide, toothy smile.

A rocky start to the research, perhaps, but I had rediscover the value of wasta (not what you know who you know) in Jordan. When I stopped trying to do it on my own, I saw the resources all around me; a Palestinian Christian friend of mine connected me with some international congregations, particularly Filipino ones, and I’m optimistic about what’s to come because I have wasta in high places.

"Please don't stop the music."

7th June 2009
“Please don’t stop the music!”

My time in Jerusalem was not the Holy Land expedition I always anticipated. Perhaps, had I been traveling alone, I could have walked the various historical sites in deep introspection; as it was, I was in Palestine not on my own terms, tagging along after two Americans I had just met and their Palestinian friends. Speeding around Jerusalem while blasting “Please Don’t Stop the Music” with intermittent Palestinian commentary was not conducive to pilgrimage. That said, just being in Jerusalem was still moving. I was glad to be with these new friends and grateful to hear so many opinions and histories, and I was glad to be seeing the city from many sides.

The Old City with its maze of markets descending from the Jaffa Gate reminded me of Khan-al-Khalili in old Cairo, and was decidedly Arabesque, brimming with a mish-mash of Arab and Israeli tourist kitsch: from yarmulkes custom embroidered with one’s name to t-shirts which read everything from “Israel: Uzi does it” to the superman emblem labeled “Super Jew”, to tributes to Arafat and Palestine. We sifted through racks of postcards circa 1960 and laughed over their dated peculiarities; ran our fingers over exquisite textiles; discovered a new smell every few feet wafting from barrels overflowing with a rainbow of candy, nuts, raw meat, beautiful fabrics, spices, chemicals – sweet and foul all at once.

(The Church of the Holy Sepulchre)

From this bazaar, we emerged at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, considered to be Calvary, or the site of Christ’s crucifixion and burial. The church viewed from the outside is not an impressive structure, especially as it is shrouded in the Old City. But inside, it is a cavernous and cool, bedecked in precious metals glittering in candlelight, flames flickering in a motion like lips moving in whispers and prayers, fingertips wiping moist eyes, heads nodding, figures pausing in reflection in dim corners, kneeling. Orthodox men in full regalia kept a weary eye on those snap happy tourists quickly passing through and passing their hands over artifacts like grave robbers. “Here’s where the earthquake cracked the foundations, here’s where they found the crosses, here’s where they found the tomb, here’s where they…”

Nidal, a Palestinian who attended Catholic school in Jerusalem, led us through this unceasing tour of artifacts. My head was dizzied by the ever ascending architecture, the stone steps worn down in the middle from tour groups crowding up and down them and into dim corners, straining to hear tour guides speaking in so many languages. Bump into something in that place and it was sure to be holy.
(Shrine)
Shabbat had begun while we were in the Church, and so we would not be visiting the Dome of the Rock (Temple Mount) or the Western Wall; maybe I’ll return one day to visit those sites. We emerged from the Church and back into the blinding heat. Nidal persuaded us to try the fresh squeezed orange juice at a small kiosk outside the bazaar, saying quietly that these oranges were from the area where his grandparents once lived; we sipped it beneath the Tower of David. As we surveyed the Old City and sipped the juice, there was a tinge of sadness: the battle in Jerusalem is fought everyday through such small tragedies: the best hamburgers in town are made (supposedly) by extremist Israelis; the Palestinians we were with constantly made wisecracks about Jews and admitted as to not having a single Israeli friend, refusing to get to know any Israelis; the best oranges, hommus and Taybeh beer brewed in Ramallah are popular with (if not claimed by) Israelis while Palestinians must purchase Israeli products almost exclusively. These small, daily tragedies foment the hatred, the sadness, the regret on both sides.

At night, the wind swept across the Mount of Olives and over hundreds of graves. I stood at the brink, staring down at the Dome of the Rock and across the sleeping city, wondering what the sunrise will be like.

(The Dome of the Rock, as seen from the Mount of Olives)

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” Matthew 24: 37

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40: 1-2

"They wear their astonishment."

6 June 2009

The sunlight pushed through the slit in my left eye, and I rolled onto my side on the bare mattress. The bleating and tinkling of a goat herd pushing through the brush on the terraced hillside below my window tricked me into thinking that I was back in my homestay from SIT Fall 2008; there, in Dahiat al-Rasheed, goats or sheep wandering through the scrubby valley had awakened me most mornings. I sat up and pushed off the blanket, which surprisingly was necessary in this cooler mountainous region 900 meters above sea level. I was in Omar’s house in Ramallah, and it was late afternoon.

Maybe it’s the heat that makes the night-life here so vibrant. Our hosts regularly awakened mid-afternoon and stayed up until 4am, and I soon found myself in this reverse schedule, one night on a rooftop of an old evangelical boys school in Ramallah with a motley crew watching the distant lights of Tel Aviv twinkle on the horizon. The rooftop had the air of an expatriate gathering, despite the Palestinian majority, as most of the Palestinians present had spent much of their lives abroad: Omar and his brother were born in England and lived in the States; Sara, our Palestinian-British host spending her gap year in Ramallah, was English through and through; I’m fairly certain there was a quiet Jewish kid on the fringe. Muslim, Christian, Jew, agnostic, devout, skeptical, optimistic, discouraged – here was a real interfaith dialogue, a roundtable, a panel:
“But you Americans,” Sara was saying in her English drawl, “are such imperialists!”
“And who do you think we learned it from?” Wes contested.
“But what do you think about Obama’s speech in Cairo?” Sharook, puffing on the hookah, leaned in and asked. She had this sophisticated way of brushing her loose curls of rich, dark hair away from her heavily made-up face, her metallic jewelry glinting in the darkness. She continued, saying, “Obama said something about America breaking away from an empire…”
“It’s just words…” began another Palestinian.
“But to have him, to have an American president acknowledge the record in the Middle East, now that’s promising,” began Sharif. Nidal took the hookah from Sharook, shaking his head. Wes, Faye and I had watched Obama’s speech at Rami’s house in Jerusalem, and I suspect Nidal had felt ambivalent about Obama’s allusions to the “clash of cultures” – especially the conflation of Arab and Muslim. As Palestinian Christians, Nidal and Rami shook their heads and clicked their tongues at phrases like “the Muslim world”.
“The best part was when he said our women wear the ‘haajib’, and the people in the audience were like what did he say?” said Sharif, laughing.
“The haajib?” asked Wes. “You mean the hijab, the veil, right?”
“Yeah, haajib means ‘astonishment’, so rather than saying that the women cover themselves with the veil, Obama said women cover themselves with astonishment!”
“Yeah, but when he said as-salemu alaykum at the beginning, that was pretty intense,” Faye contested. “He got that right!”

The rooftop discussion went back and forth like this, until the lights twinkling toward Tel Aviv quieted themselves and the pink ribbon of dawn unfurled across the horizon.
(From a rooftop in Ramallah, Tel Aviv in the distance)

"We're kidnapping you!"

5th June 2009



(The wall, behind it are the rooftops of an Israeli settlement)


“We’re kidnapping you!” The Palestinian man pulled me and the two Americans into the backseat of a dark car and we sped away…to a trendy Ramallah restaurant.

(Did that opener send up any red flags?)

The wall separating Palestine from Israel flew past Sharif’s car, the graffiti melting into a continuous stream of colors of pain and hope. Sharif’s music rattled his tiny Asian-make car, and we Americans settled into the backseat; I let my eyes roam over the streaming wall, rising and falling with the roadway speeding beneath. It was one of those timeless moments I sought to internalize, until Sharif interrupted our reverie by pointing out an architecturally unusual section of the wall: “Look, the Israelis are trying to get all creative with building the wall!"




(Graffiti on the wall - "free Palestine, from Palestine with love", etc.)

Later, at Rami’s house in Jerusalem, he and his friend Nidal showed us mock terrorist videos they made in high school: young Nidal and Rami stood defiantly in front of a Palestinian flag draped in the background, hattas (koffiyas) and flags wrapped around their faces to disguise their identity. Holding a shaking piece of paper to the camera, Nidal read his last testament as a soon-to-be martyr, and Rami offered an occasional rousing “Allahu akbar!” In the dozens of outtakes, they doubled over in laughter or broke into dance moves. In one spoof, Rami huddled behind Nidal’s desk, pressing a yarmulke to his scalp, speaking to the camera as if he were an Israeli reporter while Nidal, off-camera, pelted him with various bedroom objects – pillows, crumpled pieces of paper, school textbooks.

I could not begin to recall and relate all the wisecracks and parodies my new Palestinian friends related to me, with a bewildering mixture of good humor and melancholy. As Omar, our host in Ramallah, ran his finger along the trench cut by a stray Israeli bullet through the stone framing his bedroom window (his house adjoins a military service road), or where a car bomb had exploded across the valley, or related events of the second Intifada as we drove through the city, it was with this strange mixture of enthusiasm and sadness.

There was no laughter, however, at Arafat’s tomb. Noisy Ramallah disappeared behind us through the gates as we stepped onto the eerily silent tile platform. A quote by Darwish, the late Palestinian poet, was engraved on a granite slab near the entrance. A solitary building, modeled after the Kaabah, but in the smoothest white stone rather than gleaming obsidian, rose before a reflection pool. Inside, we stood before the tomb guarded by two Palestinian soldiers, and we were silent, our various political beliefs put to rest. The only sound was the gentle flapping of three Palestinian flags billowing in the breeze, pressing outward like soldiers’ chests thrust forward and collapsing back into one another, inhaling, exhaling.





To learn more about the Separation Wall, check out NPR's four-part series "Israel's Barrier" at http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/israelbarrier/part4.html

Checkpoint. Checkmate.

4th June 2009

Checkpoint. Checkmate.

“What are you doing in Israel?” Wiping the sweat from the back of my neck, I strained to understand the heavily accented Israeli woman with her thinly penciled, arched eyebrows staring at me with some mix of boredom and hostility. I am pressed against the passport control counter, the crest of a wave of tired, angry travellers poised to break out of the narrow queue line at the border crossing from Jordan to Israel.
“I’m a tourist.”
“Are you here alone?”'
“No, with two other students.”
“Students? Where do you study?”
“In Amman.”
“Where are you going?”
I hesitate. I’m with two American students I just met, going to Ramallah, the de facto capital of Palestine, to carouse with some Palestinians for a few days. I’m not going to tell her this. I glance at Faye, one of the two American students who are my ticket to the West Bank, and say, “We’re going to Jerusalem”. At the time, we didn’t know if we would make it to Al-Quds (Jerusalem); we did, but that’s a story for a later entry. It was safer to say Jerusalem.
“And where are you staying in Jerusalem?”
“We haven’t made reservations.” I study the insignia on her uniform and glance over at the next window where Wes is flirting with a considerably more attractive guard; she quickly stamps his passport, half-smiles, and Wes grins smugly as he passes through the checkpoint. Faye and I groan.
“No reservations? And how long will you stay?”
“Three of four days.”
“Three or four days. And have you booked a flight out of Israel?”
“No, I’ve booked a flight out of Amman in August. That’s where I’m living, Amman.” I told her this already. I push closer to the hole in the glass. My voice is rising, my tone strained, rising to join the other heated voices in the crowded checkpoint. She calmly holds my passport up as if to compare my present appearance with the 2006 passport photo, and stares blankly, unimpressed, stalling as she surveys the crowded checkpoint; then a quick stamp and shove under the window. “Next.”
“Can you stamp this piece of paper, not in the passport?” asks Faye. Countries like Lebanon and Syria deny entry to persons with an Israeli visa in their passport.
“I have to stamp the passport,” says the guard. Faye and I share a knowing look. Refusing to stamp a separate piece of paper is arbitrary on the part of this testy guard, not a uniform policy.
“But I have a piece of paper, just stamp that,” Faye protests.
The Israeli woman looks up at Faye pressed against the checkpoint glass, theatrically raises the stamp above the passport, and says pointedly as she snaps it downward, “I am stamping your passport now”.

When the checkpoint was behind us and our frustration subsided (although Faye will need to apply for a new passport to gain entry to Lebanon or Syria), we could laugh. We imitated the guard’s curt “I’m stamping your passport now,” over and over. Granted, it’s a serious conflict, and sure, several months of being on the Palestinian-Jordanian sides of things does skew one’s view. I fully acknowledge that. But it was something about my initial impression of unrelenting Israeli seriousness juxtaposed with having the time of my life with new-found Palestinian friends, a contrast which by degrees would convince me of the power of laughter in the face of oppression.

West Bank Bound

Headed to Ramallah for the weekend with two other American students. Expect some posts next week about Palestine/Israel!

No w(h)ining allowed

3 June 2009

No w(h)ining allowed

Like sentinels guarding my plane seat, the two matronly Jordanian women looked up at me quizzically if not rather hostilely as I stood there in the aisle, studying my boarding pass, hoping that my seat was not 22E. One woman bounced a screaming, red-faced infant spewing saliva while the other rummaged through a diaper bag, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. Yes, it definitely says 22E. Three children ran in circles around the center aisle seats and around me, while an older girl, presumably their relative and appointed to keep watch over this zoo, shooed them away and laughed loudly into her trendy mobile phone while she covered her free ear to dampen the chaos:
“Oh, but Lila, do you know how we got the sleeping pills so Ahmed could sleep on the flight? We put those in with the shampoo in our bag, and they made us put it in the other bag that’s in the plane. So now Ahmed is not going to sleep – he can’t sleep on planes! Funny, right?”
At the mention of his name, the ringleader of the chaos paused his chase and leaned into the girl’s phone, triumphantly proclaiming, “I’m going to stay up all night!”
“La! Halas. Go away, Ahmad!” the girl protested, transferring her phone to the other ear. Meanwhile, the sentinels were using my seat as a diaper changing station, while I continued standing dejectedly in the aisle, kicking myself for choosing 22E on a 12 hour non-stop flight from JFK to Amman.
I turned toward the front of the plane; in both aisles as far as I could see, flight attendants frantically crammed overflowing carry-on luggage into the overhead bins, checked the bags which wouldn’t fit, and warded off protesting passengers refusing to be separated from their American souvenirs.
Accepting that 22E was indeed my seat, I was crushed – literally. I quickly regretted relinquishing my aisle seat so that one of the sentinels could stretch her legs in the aisle. This can’t be too bad once the plane takes off and everyone falls asleep; it is almost 10:30 P.M.. And then the two kids behind me began pounding their balled fists into my seat, shouting, “Yallah! Yallah!” (Let’s go! Let’s go!), and I wondered what sort of crime against humanity deserved this exceptional punishment that is 22E.
It was in this state that I gladly accepted a complementary mini-bottle of red wine when offered to me by the flight attendant. Anticipating the warmth in my arms and legs and welcome drowsiness, I poured a full cup for myself and placed it on the edge of my tray table, brushing away the thought that it was a precarious spot. A minute later, the infant arm shot out, and I saw myself in slow motion reaching for the cup, too late, as red wine spilled onto my legs, feet, pillow and book. The sentinels merely looked on, unphased (and perhaps unfamiliar with the smell of alcohol). Across the aisle a woman surveyed the mess and asked, “What it all that?”
“It’s wine,” I said.
Raising an eyebrow, she replied, “I thought I smelled something. You know why that happened to you, don’t you?”
I knew what she was going to say. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s haram (forbidden).” She smiled and nodded, satisfied by my answer, and I half-believed it myself. Finally, the flight attendant appeared. I sheepishly handed my purplish pillow over and apologized for the mess.
“Unfortunately we don’t have replacement pillows,” he said and I accepted grimly, knowing I wouldn’t need one anyhow since Ahmed and his tribe wouldn’t be sleeping.
“I’m awfully sorry for the mess,” I began again, but he smiled and disappeared into the flight attendant nook adjacent to my aisle, reemerging with a new bottle and cup. “Here, you can drink away your shame,” he said good-naturedly.
I didn’t drink away my shame, but I did drink away this flying island of Jordanians and too much Arabic too fast, the screaming infant and Ahmed and his posse – until an hour later a strong shaking of my shoulder awakened me and startled, I found myself accepting a request to switch seats with one of the sentinels. “Her legs are hurting,” explained the woman whose suspicions I earlier had confirmed about the dangers of alcohol (namely, falling fast asleep). Squeezing into 22D, I reclined my chair only to have the kids behind me renew their fist-pounding. I looked enviously at the sleeping baby next to me, now wrapped around her relative’s shoulder like one of those neck-pillows. The saying slept like a baby never seemed truer than in the following ten hours of bleary-eyed reading and dozing.
What happened after those some 24 hours of traveling until now, sitting in this café, is a bit foggy. In a zombie-state I staggered off the plane, procured my visa and my baggage, and searched in vain for an open mobile phone kiosk where I could purchase minutes for my Jordanian mobile phone. Realizing I wasn’t going to be able to use my phone, I borrowed one from a private-taxi driver, allowing him to think I would shortly thereafter be using his taxi. I called Lawrence, a fellow Sewanee student who is traveling through the Middle East this summer, to meet up near the apartment, and as soon as the driver heard the word bus, he grabbed his phone. I quickly headed for the yellow bus to Amman, the taxi driver harassing me all through the terminal and down the sidewalk. At the bus station I bought minutes, and called Lawrence back (only to find out he had called the taxi driver back thinking it was my phone; apparently the rejected driver answered in a devilish tone with a “Hello, Lawrence”). We met, I got a whirlwind tour of the rather spartan apartment, the friends and family. We headed to Hashem resturaunt and a spread of typical Jordanian food, especially some excellent falafel. It was their nostalgic last night of touring Amman; it was my starkly real first night of two months of research, not play. I felt displaced among sightseers. I lagged behind them through familiar streets until once again we were at the apartment, where I rolled onto, or rather into, a collapsing mattress and slept, almost as well as a baby.

Back so soon?

Why am I going back to Amman, Jordan this summer? Didn't I get my fill of dust, falafel and strange looks?

Supported by my University, I'm continuing a research project I began last semester while studying in Amman about women migrant workers, popularly known as "maids" or "housekeepers". Jordanians employ some estimated (legal) 70,000 women mainly from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, as domestic workers (cleaning, food preparation, caring for family members, etc.), typically on two year contracts settled through private labor recruitment agencies. For a good summary of issues concerning women migrant workers, I've added a link (on the right margin of this blog) to UNIFEM's website. The brief explanation on that link, which I would encourage those interested to spend five minutes reading, summarizes the issues well, at least from the humanitarian perspective.

I suppose Jordan "maid" a good first impression (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun), or a bad one considering popular Jordanian cartoonist Abu Mahjoob's critique (below):




Roughly translated, the Jordanian employer chastises his Indonesian housekeeper over the abundance of expensive phone calls home...regarding the (then) recent Tsunami. Ouch.

Even after having witnessed abuse of domestic workers last semester, I can still smile at Mahjoob's biting humor, if not a little bitterly, because I know the situation of women migrant workers in Jordan is not one of hopeless, vulnerable victims - abroad, alone and abused as news media and some humanitarian discourse stereotype them. (Even UNIFEM in a recent forum concerning migrant workers commissioned Mahjoob to produce a series of cartoons to raise awareness about housekeepers in Jordan .) As an anthropology student, I did a lot of observation and a good deal of thinking about what I saw, and what I saw was potential for improvement. The conclusion I reached in my 50 page report included incorporating women migrant workers into the Jordanian labor legislation, and I'm optimistic about the Ministry of Labor's recent revisions of the Labor Law - especially the inclusion of unions representing women migrant workers.

But I've had my fill of bureaucracy - of ministries, embassies and labor recruitment agencies. While these organizations and their representatives informed my initial report, I hope to get past the official discourse about women migrant workers (maids) and into the lived experiences of these women. What exactly that entails...we'll both have to wait and see.

Feel free to send your questions or comments throughout the summer - the more critical thinking/discussion the better. Well, I'm off to bed, or at least to lie awake thinking about all this for a few hours before my early morning flight.