Masalaama, Goodbye
July 23, 2008
Apparently the fashion here is not to wear shirts with Arabic writing – I see almost literally none of them – but shirts with nonsensical English writing. I don’t understand who makes these shirts or how they sell so well or why nobody in the company can speak English even remotely well so as to catch the fact that the shirts are like 50’s druggie poetry. Take this example from Sibsa (Mama Fadia’s granddaughter)’s shirt, which has, in big, fun letters with two flowers:
GIRS
For Good
Hongsheng
Everyone Box
On Opening
Times To
Did they mean “Girls” and “Hongkong” and “Times Two”? Perhaps a deep meaning eludes me.
Or take this one on a shirt from a kid in Idrak:
King Boys
Super King Boys
King 33
Super King Poos
Here, men are served first in restaurants. And they don’t give up their chairs for women as far as I’ve seen. You’d think with all that women must concede here, that they’d get some more King-Arthur-age chivalry.
The poverty line in Jordan is 400 JDs a year. That’s about 1 JD per day. Even Leen, the maid who lives with Mama Fadia and gets food and housing on top of her 100 JDs a month, is living the life next to that figure. And it costs 2400 JDs to heat your house in the winter. And thousands to marry.
Random notes:
ÿ Right now, it seems that middle and upper-class women side with the men of their class rather than women out of their class (both lower-class Jordanians and foreign hired help) because there is a lack of empathy and a lack of investment in the same issues / problems. But for there to be a social movement, women must side with each other as a social class.
ÿ The Queen is on YouTube so she can “break stereotypes” about Arab women. But what is more stereotypical than a queen, so how can she do this? I think that what she says misrepresents Jordanian women, making them look more free and European than they are – what she says is true of the upper class, but not the lower class (such as saying they are free to go out and get pizza).
ÿ According to some local people at the NGOs, there has never been more unhappiness with the government than there is today. And economically there are big issues – the govt is rumored to be selling land to Saudis to try to pay off the national debt, a very unpopular move.
ÿ The population is 80% urban. 70% live in Amman, Sahab, and Irbid alone.
My digital camera is a huge novelty at Idrak – with the kids and my coworkers alike. They marvel that there is no film and everyone wants to play with it (really, the adult women too). Today as they went through my pictures without asking, my coworkers were scandalized at the pictures of me in a bathing suit in Acaba which prompted the following question from Abeer: “Are you Christian or Muslim?” “I don’t have a religion,” I say in Arabic, “but I am very interested in learning about all religions including Islam.” The women give each other looks as if I just said I liked to kill babies. One of them then says to me (in English this time): “My god, he will send you to the fire.” The women nod, and she continues: “You need to buy a hijab...” (they make head-wrapping motions and all have grim faces) “…because if you die today, you will be in hell.” I smile and chuckle and say: “Ma Fi Mushkila! Ana mish mareeda elliom!” Meaning, don’t worry, I don’t feel sick today! But they didn’t laugh, instead they looked even more grim and told me that just because I don’t feel sick, that doesn’t mean I won’t die today; in fact there are plenty of ways that, today, I could kick the bucket.*
*(I am generally well behaved when confronted with this sort of thing, as I have been more and more recently, but telling me that I must have a hijab to go to heaven is quite silly because hijabs were really taken from the Christians (the Byzantines) and before that only Mohammed’s wives had worn them.)
This one girl at Idrak, who is upstairs and I’m actually not sure what her diagnosis is, loves my camera so much and always wants to take pictures with it so literally half my pictures are her posing in the classroom or blurry ones that she took. Anyways, every day she asks me: “Are you from Saudi or are you from Amman?” I don’t know if she thinks I might be Saudi because I speak foosha or because she herself is Saudi or because she asks everyone this question. Each day, I tell her that I am American of Lebanese descent living in Amman this summer; and one day I told her, to mix things up, that I live near the police station. Now, every day, she asks me a new question: “Are you from Saudi, or are you a policeman?” When she says “shorta” or “policemen,” she crosses her fists to indicate handcuffs.
Today Nazic made ‘Hara Isbow’ which is Syrian and consists of lentils and pieces of cooked dough like dumpings and some crunchy things – alright, I’m really unclear what’s in it but it is fantastic. Today Mama Fadia made rice and chicken and vegetables and I asked what it was called: “Ismuhu Chinese Food.” Literally, in Arabic they call this dish “Chinese Food;” and if you say “Chinese food,” you are referencing this specific dish. Then, she says, as always, in English: “It is good. You will taste it.”
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July 26, 2008
I joined a gang. Well, technically a “clan.” I have infiltrated a “clan” of young men, the 8th circle gang, the neighborhood “shabab”. I may be the first female to have achieved such a feat in the region. This is how it happened: this whole time when I have go to home/bed early, Matthew gets to hang out with these guys and smoke on the roof, and while I wanted to meet them and smoke on the roof, I was told that it would be extremely inappropriate, no way would I ever see this roof due to my gender. They also hear about me from Matthew. One meets me at a café with Matthew. He reports to the group, who ask: “Does she act like a girl or a guy?” He tells them: “A guy.” More of them meet me and they also approve, meaning that I am sufficiently manly. Is it my short hair? My forearm hair? The way I sit? How much I smoke? My potty mouth???? I don’t know how I should take this but I will try to take it as a complement since this is such a masculine-dominated society. Anyways, somehow I impress them by making fun of them all to their faces and engaging in their low-brow humor and I am actually invited to go swimming with the whole gang the next day at the Ahilee (family) Club, on a day that was supposed to be co-ed but was really pretty much all guys. It was a truly glorious day of smoking and cussing and telling gross stories. If I come back to the Middle East, I really must come back with the ability to cross-dress well. These guys listen to death metal and techno and Kylie Minogue (girl music in the US is guy music here).
One of them is Hamdi and he is Palestinian and can’t swim at all and I tell him he has Bedouin hair which somehow is an insult and now we all tease him about having Bedouin hair (truly it is a rug). The other guys are Circassian, Jordanian, Egyptian, etc. which is very odd because there is so much racism and clique-iness and Palestinian versus Circassian hatred / racism. The guys are all BMEs and Engineers and have pictures on their phones that 13-year-old girls should have like tornados forming a heart. Maybe they grew up listening to too much Arabic music (which is all about love) because they are all sensitive and really want to marry but worry they won’t for financial reasons etc. They used to get in fights all the time, but now none of them get in fights, although we talk about who we should beat up next, and none of them have girls either. They are ages ~ 16-23. One of them (the guy I mentioned earlier who loves Israel and Germany !!!), Danielle, is a body-builder and idolizes Arnold Shwartzenager and has a huge upper body and little legs, and his nickname is Rommell after some video game army guy or something. He tells me earnestly not to hate Jews because they are good people and Isreal wouldn’t be the strongest country in the Middle East if this weren’t so. I agree that Jews are good people and shouldn’t be hated; I don’t understand how he equates goodness with power. Osama is another; his nickname is Gorilla because he is a big (somewhat hairy) dude with a beard. He loved a Saudi girl and wanted to marry her but his dad says he wont’ pay for the marriage or for anything for Osama ever again unless he marries a Circassian girl; preferably one from his own clan (not a good gene choice!). He was in a car accident and glass periodically falls out of his head. His cousins are in jail for stabbing a Salty man (there are rival gang fights between Circassians and people from Salt) and that was a month ago and if he dies they’ll be in jail for 10 years or so. Such Romeo and Juliet-ness! (There is plenty of ethnic gang fighting in Jordan but they aren’t called gangs, perhaps because they aren’t drinking or selling drugs or prostitutes.) But at least Osama has talked to a girl at some point in his life – most of the others don’t seem to have ever been on a date or really talked to girls (I don’t count, of course) and they say that Jordanian girls think they are goddesses and are snobby and put themselves on a pedestal and only want rich guys etc. His mom has to work because his dad and sis died in a car accident. Hamdi and Danielle say they aren’t going to get married ever; Danielle says he used to be a loved and a fighter and now he is neither. They were all apparently more delinquent but now they are all very seriously Muslim and have arguments over what is “haram” (Is weed haram? Etc.) There is also Hamza who doesn’t speak English except cusswords which he interjects from time to time for no reason Zed who speaks no English and Salah who, when I asked if he was studying English, replied: “No, thank you.” After the club we go to eat at Café Barcelona which is the most inexpensive restaurant I’ve ever seen (I eat Shwarma) and then back to Hamdi’s place and I am surprised I am still included. We sit around and smoke and talk about Godfather movies and they make jokes about everyone equally, from Circassians (funny dancing and really white) and Russians (Circassians hate Russians) and Al Bedis (drive funny and try to be gangster) and Bedoins (funny hair and funny debke) and Saudis (like little boys) and call each other gay and have intense affection for one another. I become the first female to view their homemade movie collection which includes each of them pretending to be the Terminator, some of them pretending to be James Bond, imitations of video game characters, imitating a WWF character called the Undertaker, dancing to techno. Stereotypical guy stuff and then there’s this intensely girly stuff like some of them putting stuffing up their shirts and pretending to be girls, or dancing to Backstreet Boys. Apparently with no girls and no money all they can do is make these videos. Osama leaves to buy detergent for his mom and comes back (they all live with their families). They put on James Brown and lipsync. Accidently, “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna comes on and they all become awkward.
Then at some point they decide to go to the roof, so I prepare to leave because it is really a males-only zone, but they decide that I should come! Good lord I must be terribly masculine. At this point, I become part of the clan. I am given a nickname, “Olive,” because I look like Popeye’s wife. (Mom had this same nickname for the same reason when she was my age which is really weird!). The roof is the most glorious thing I have ever seen – trash and satellite dishes and a mediocre view of the surrounding 8th circle area and wires and electrical boxes and two couches with wires coming out and cushion coming off and part of a broken swivel chair. I ceremoniously am allowed to smoke the arguileh and Osama’s goza. We make more jokes about Hamdi’s hair and about Zed liking feet and everyone goes crazy when they share their juciest story: Once, Danielle got a massage from a Chinese girl! A legitimate massage like from a spa. Why is thissuch a crazy story to them? Truly I don’t think they ever talk to girls. We halt the jokes and stories when prayer floats over from the minarets. We heat up our own coals in a little pan. In between crude (by their standards, meaning sanitary) jokes, they talk seriously and affectionately of their friendship and their bonds of friendship and the tests of their friendship; it is a very strong brotherhood and I’m not sure how I joined it. It was truly the best night, just to have the freedom to swear and smoke up a storm and joke around. And we talk about how Jordan is “the land of the homeless” (very true). They go father, they say it is the “land of the condemned.” They are only kind of joking. Osama kindly helps me with my Arabic; when I tell him I’m trying to come back, he thinks I’m crazy – I live in America, why would I ever want to come back here???
When I complain about female life in Jordan, Hamdi translates to Danielle by saying: “She curses herself for being a woman.” Danielle takes this literally and says in English: “She must not do this! THE GOD has forbidden it!”
Little Hamza, who is 16, covertly checks out a girl on the street as we are driving. Hamdi says Hamza was just looking at her backside but then Hamdi is accused of looking at backsides. Danielle seriously and somewhat angrily says: “When you look the girl from her ass you are a f****er.” He goes on to say how you must look to her heart and her personality but I am laughing too hard to really hear.
Really I’m in paradise having seen this epic roof, and I got along marvelously with a gang of partially woman-hating street urchins, but I am simply in shock to have joined a gang of mostly huge hairy Arab men, and even more in shock to have been declared an Arab man myself. (Hopefully this social code violation won’t merit stoning since I am a foreigner.) But when guys gawk at my from cars or the street they get very protective, and I am a woman again for one bizarre second.
Newest Noor storyline – this poor woman is getting divorced / left by her husband because she found husband a job and he is insulted because he is the man.
A Saudi prince spent $43 million to cover his car in diamonds and people are paying $1000 to touch it. Sickness.
The price of lentils increased x 5 in the past 2 years.
I head that some Sweedish professor who was killed by the CIA wrote that America fabricated the holocaust and lied to make Hitler look like a bad person; and that this information has worked itself into some Arab education systems; I hope very much that none of this is true, but it would explain the rampant Hitler fascination – books on Hitler in Arabic are on sale throughout downtown, and swastikas pop up from time to time, and there is so much love for Germany…
Dana only studies right before her exam – she says her children’s studies are more important than hers because her kids come first. Sure, my mom puts us first too, but she’s not in college. Marrying young means you stop prioritizing your own studies before you’re done with undergrad – that can’t be good for women wanting to seriously move into the workforce. Now Dana wants a part-time job and asks if I’ll help her find one with my contacts; I feel awkward – will Said allow her to work in a co-ed environment now that she’s older, or will it cause problems? And she’s pregnant with her third kid and in school…
Leila’s husband said it is a big joke that people here make often that Americans think that they have something to fear form Muslim countries – the idea that a Muslim country (they’re all poor) could threaten the US which is so powerful is absurd! He says that the soldiers who died in Iraq died for Israel, not the US. He doesn’t understand why all the “Jewish” in the world want to live in Israel – to him Zionism is ridiculous, and he says Zionism controls the US media. He says Americans don’t’ know the truth. He says 5 million innocent Iraqi children are without families thanks to America trying to carry out Zionism. He says Islam and “Jewishness” are against each other because of Zionism.
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July 27, 2008
I went to a Circassian-Arab wedding!! First the couple processed in with all the cousins clapping, then we sang happy birthday to someone’s relative – the usual techno version, with the usual mini roman candles lighting up the cake. Then there was Circassian dancing, which I’d never seen before and which seems so stiff-bodied and uptight compared to Arabic dancing and can be rather elegant...the men and women are on either sides and come up to dance in pairs, the women gliding and the men performing Russian-looking higher-energy movements. Then there was Arabic dancing for the rest of the night, and even a two English-language representatives: “I will survive” and, sadly, “Mambo #5.” I was surprised that the dancing tonight was both genders and some girls were in halters dresses. They served delicious ce cream with pistachio on the outside. Everyone was dancing, even Mama Fadia and her sister Fatwa!
Dina (Fatwa’s daughter with two jobs) says its lonely because she has nothing in common with the women around her. She says nobody ever gets anything done here because they just drink tea and party. I have heard many people here lament that Jordan is very disorganized and that everyone is lazy because they just want to party or have tea or coffee. I don’t think it is laziness – I think that family and friends are just prioritized much higher than career, getting ahead, getting good grades, entrepreneurship, etc. This is why people don’t understand why Dina works so hard, and honestly I have had this same problem: when I try to do work in my room, nobody seems to understand why I am not in the parlor having tea with all the women, no matter how much time I have spent with the neighborhood women lately.
I asked what the differences are between Circassian and Arab culture, as apparently mixed marriages can be difficult, especially between the families. Circassians more open, for example they usually have boyfriends and girlfriends (they don’t go out but talk on phone and see each other at weddings) -- this could be issue if Circassian girl takes a husband who is Arab; he is usually upset that his wife had boyfriends. Circus girls have more freedom such as to go to the club to swim and exercise. Circus must stand up when elder enters the room, so if you marry an Arab and he or she doesn’t stand up for your relatives, this can cause problems. Circus kiss cousins on their cheeks because to them cousins are like brothers but Arab cousins marry often so Dina’s Arab husband is weirded out when male cousins visit her or kiss her on the cheeks, but to her it is like kissing your brother on the cheek. Over time these little things can cause problems with inlaws. Also, most circus girls drive cars but less Arab girls are allowed to do so.
I think I forgot to mention that poor Matthew became an international criminal. Salma the perpetually MIA United Planet coordinator kept saying she’d take him to the police station to renew his visa but she never did; finally he went alone where he was declared a criminal for having let his visa expire and breaking immigration law and luckily he talked his way into a fine only instead of jail-time. If there’s one thing United Planet coordinators are supposed to do, I’d say it’s that. The bare minimum should be to not let volunteers become criminals because of you.
Matthew and I took our last trips – to Fahaiys and to Salt. Fahaiys is somewhere no tourist ever goes and goodness knows why we went exactly – mostly to go somewhere non-touristy, to have a place that was our own, because even locals don’t ever go there. So Fahaiys it was. Taxis don’t go to Fahaiys (I thought they went everywhere???) so we had to take a bus. We took a taxi to one bus-station, were directed to various places and buses and finally put into another taxi that took us to another bus-station, where we were directed to various places and buses and finally put into a bus that took us to ANOTHER bus station where we were directed all over and waited a long time and then finally got onto a bus. We wouldn’t have even gotten that bus if the guys working there hadn’t seen Matthew’s “Allah” necklace and decided to actually help us because Matthew’s Islam makes him their brother. (But forget me.) Anyways, so we are the only people on this bus because nobody wants to go to Fahaiys. Then instead of going to Fahaiys the bus goes all around the city trying to get more people. We left our house THREE HOURS AGO and we’re still in Amman! And Fahaiys is about 15 minutes outside of Amman! It is completely absurd and there is no other way to get there! I hereby condemn the public transportation system of Jordan! But it is worth it because the man leaning out yelling for more people has a fantastic mullet with copious hair gel, and the woman who comes to sit in front of me has a black hijab and a black burka and on the back of her burka it says “Jennifer Lopez” in big glittery letters.
Eventually, house later, we do make it to Fahaiys, where we must take yet another taxi to find the restaurant we want, which is called Zuwwada (eggplant) and it is worth all the trouble for a fantastic meal: the best hummus with meat I’ve ever had, plus two kinds of fatteh: fatteh maqdoush (lamb, tomato, rice) and fatteh zuwwada (eggplant, meat, yogurt). We drink non-alcoholic beer (yuck) and smoke more arguileh and the place actually has a great atmosphere, castle-like but open at the top with some tent flaps and complete with stain-glass accents and of course the picture of the king. We walk around and see many churches and a Lebanese flag and St. Sharbel stickers on cars (apparently lots of Maronites live here). It is quiet and peaceful and as such reminds me of Assisi; it feels more like Italy with the trees and the churches. Then we take a taxi all the way to Salt (which is pretty close actually) and get out to walk around the formar capital of Jordan. The street is full of gawking men who actually yell things (more like Italy than Amman) especially a guy on a donkey wearing aviators who followed us. We walked up and down the steep, street-lined hills of downtown and covered the whole of downtown in about 10 minutes. There was absolutely nothing to do except note that one guy had a ton of watermelons outside his shop. I now know why everyone gave us such funny looks about going to Salt and to Fahaiys -- some places just don’t have things to do or see. Sorta like Cary, NC. Having been there less than a quarter of an hour, we checked Salt off our list and decided to head out. I don’t know why Omar Abdolat is so proud to be a Salty and made that darn song about Salt, but people probably say this about Petey Pablo and North Carolina, so I’ll shut up. Anyways, we try to take a bus home and it’s the same mullet-man bus as before. It takes us to Amman and we take a taxi home.
Time spent in Fahaiys and Salt combined: 2 hours
Time spent in bus or taxi: 5 hours
Total of the day: 5 taxis and 3 buses
Went with Aya to University of Jordan to check it out. When I talked with her about the way girls dressed at the wedding, she shook her head and said: “Some women, Muslim OR Christian, don’t have very strong religion. So, they dress however they want.” I worry that the only reason we are friends – “sisters” in fact – is that she doesn’t know what I really think about religion or what constitutes a “good girl.” (I hear all the time that I am a good girl and this is I think the highest compliment I can get. Besides of course being a “good Muslim”, which trumps all. The good girl / bad girl dichotomy is very important.) I sat in on her lecture which was in a class called “Public Opinion.” We learned such terms as “in-group,” “out-group,” “prejudice,” “discrimination,” “ethnocentrism,” “power elite,” and “WASP.” WASP! It turns out the class is on American Public Opinion and is rather damning. I wish I could have understood more than I did – it was just the basics that day, such as that public opinion is manufactured and that nobody is truly objective and definitions of necessary terms. At the end, the teacher apologized if I was offended, but I assured him I was equally, if not more, critical of America. He then advised me to read Paolo Ferrer and The Mind Managers, a 1980’s book exhorting Americans to stop thinking they are the best. The first class was all girls except for one older man. The second class was literally all girls. The third class had two males. I asked Aya why this was; she says that it is like this all over the university although more-so in her major. She says women study more and do better – of course, they can’t go out and aren’t supposed to work, what else will they do? But since they aren’t the ones going into the formal sector, college training seems to be being poured into a population that for the most part will not utilize it. It would be great to get more men into college, and more college women into jobs…
We then went to the cafeteria where a huge meal of Mensaf and yogurt and a drink cost just 1 JD – incredible! She says this is because they know college students are poor (there are no scholarships or financial aid here). She was really, really shocked when I told her they hike the food prices up on our campus. We went to an archeological museum with old ancient pots of Roman goddesses and doors about 5 feet tall (people here were once very, very short). But best of all was the Jordan Historical Museum! Aya and I couldn’t stop laughing when we went through it. There are these mannequins, all white and with small noses and blue eyes, dressed up as Bedouins, sitting in Bedouin tents with a fake backdrop of blue clouds, with tea and the women by looms or by the fire to make food, and all of the women have NO LEGS and its just half the bust on the ground with the arms out doing something, absolutely the most absurd thing I’ve ever ever seen. There is a sort of shack where one legless woman sits in the kitchen, and no explanatory labels, but I think it fits. And there is a Bedouin man just standing by a cage with a stuffed chicken in it. And there is a platform that says “A typical Jordanian house and its contains” that has two chairs and two Bedouin musical instruments and we got our picture playing these instruments as well as sitting with the legless-people in the authentic museum sand. It was simultaneously the worst and best historical museum I have ever encountered.
Some people here say the ‘n-word’ but they don’t mean to be offensive. They think that it translates into an acceptable way to say ‘Black people’. In fact, I told my friends, this is such a bad word that it is not said by White people with any decency, but it is alright for Black rappers to say this word. It was hard to explain this double-standard of word usage – why would someone call themselves a word used by another group as an insult? – using my limited vocabulary. It’s hard enough to explain to Americans in English. Fun fact: Circassian names have sweet meanings. Danielle’s last name means “Head-cutter” and Osama’s means “Long neck.”
The people at Johud accidently sent me all over town trying to get my letter of recommendation. The man who finally got it to me said, as many have, that Jordan is ridiculously disorganized. But he proudly told me that it has gotten lots better in the last few years – for example, he bragged, water is now delivered to people’s homes! And they are putting up more street signs and signs on buildings! Amman is a very European city, yes? I honestly had to disagree. Sure, part of Amman is super-European, and perhaps all of Amman is European compared to its past or to its neighboring countries. But the attitudes, the way it looks…definitely not European, minus certain distinct sections of the city (main St. in Swifiah and Abdoun) and the population (the top 1%). He said there are two Jordans: the top 1% and everyone else. I think there are 3: the top 1%, everyone else in the city, and the rural population. I don’t think these Jordans understand each other at all or consider the others to be truly Jordanian, and the Queen seems to be in denial about the existence of the others, given the way her YouTube videos depict women’s lives in Jordan…
This man (head of accounting, I think) also defended the fact that Jordan doesn’t have free speech. My friends are scared to talk bad about the royalty for fear that they will “go behind the sun” / “be taken behind the sun”. (There is a fear that in jail they give you a coke bottle and give you one hour to make it disappear by any means you can.) And you can’t protest or strike without a permit and they are hard to get if not impossible so there are pretty much no strikes or protests. Anyways, he said that other places nearby like Iraq have free speech and protests and things but look what bad shape they are in! People in Jordan are very slow to act and think very hard and are very diplomatic and don’t want to stir things up, he said, and this is why Jordan is doing so well and has improved so much; really, five years ago, it was a completely different Jordan.
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August 1, 2008
My last day. I wake up to the sound of gunshots. And screams. And horns honking. All out of joy, it turns out! Today the kids got the results of their Tawigi or highschool exam. If they pass it, they can go onto college. And so they go around joyriding and eating kanafa and shouting. It was a sad day for some of my gang who failed their Tawigis and so the celebratory fireworks tonight were bittersweet for them, as they were for me.
Last day at Idrak – I will really miss the kids. Most especially those in my classroom. Most especially little Esam. He has been moved to a different class where he seems unhappy and lonely with much smaller children. Today Aya (she has down syndrome) followed me around and wanted to dress up like me in my headscarf and my bag and wanted pictures dressed like me, so we did that, and she pretended to teach the kids in my class. I let Basma and her friends take some last pictures, let Anas pretend he was my husband one more time, hugged Esam and left without riding the van because the van guy sent me a text message about not being able to stop missing me which could be a bad translation of something but I’ve been worrying he wants to make me his second wife and go to America.
During the afternoon, I said my goodbyes to everyone in the building. For dinner, Dana and Saad and Sibsa and Adam came to pick up Fadia and I and took us for a drive. We drove through the countryside to spots that normally have rivers but don’t this year because it didn’t rain this winter. We went to Wadi Ash Shita where there was a castle called Qasr Iraq al-Amir which was built by an Ammonite slave named Herkanus. Dana told me the story: he asked this woman to marry him and she said no because he’s a slave; so he builds her this castle and asks her again and she still says no! What a biach! After hearing this story, I asked Dana how in the world a slave was able to build a beautiful castle. She said she hadn’t thought of that and conferred with Saad and Fadia in Arabic and they all argued and then finally told me: “We don’t know.” We then went to a small town called Wadi Seer where Saad’s mom lives, and to the grave of Bilel bin Reban who was close to Muhammad and the first man to call out in a mosque.
Since the day at the pool, I have spent every evening with my new clan. It is a breath of fresh air and freedom to sit and cuss and be myself and say what I really think about everything and to be liked for who I am instead of for the fact that I am a “good girl” meaning that I don’t cause trouble. I will miss them. We talk about things that actually interest me rather than soap operas. Hamdi is pro-Palestine and Danielle is pro-Israel and they are best friends and so we all have debates on Middle Eastern politics, as well as religion and gender roles and etc. But despite serious discussions we spend most of the time laughing. Poor Hamzeh had some more wonderful, and accidental, quotes tonight: “Don’t shoot me, I want to study!” (He has his Tawigi this year). Also: “Suck my a**.” (He meant to say something completely different and quite polite but most of the words they taught him are swearwords, so such mistakes happen often). But even funnier than all these mistakes is the fact that the guys, in English or in Arabic, refer to men and women as “Adams” and “Eves.” Example: I am the only Eve on the roof. (Actually, they debate my gender. Osama says I am a girl. Some say I am a man, period. Most agree that I am a guy on the roof.) Also they always ask questions about what life is like in America and it is actually really hard to answer without oversimplifying or stereotyping, such as making all college kids seem like hedonists or all southern white people seem like racists. I wonder, then, how accurate a picture of Jordan I’ve gotten from them in return. Osama let me have my beloved Goza a lot because it was my last night, and I was really sad to say goodbye to everyone. Hamdi and Hamzeh gave me souvenirs to remember them by: they each gave me their favorite lighter, which made me feel sad. Hamzehs has his initials carved in it and a leather case, and Hamdi gave me his special skull lighter he’s had for years which says: “a skull, a anatomy, a cranium.”
Note: tampons not available for sale in most of Jordan.
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August 2, 2008
End of the trip…on the way home…apparently it is not a good idea to have a large silver dagger in your luggage…definitely got stopped because of the knife for Uncle Greg.
Overall, I’m really glad I did United Planet despite the actual program being the biggest rip-off ever, just because I was in a homestay. I got to interact with all different generations and people I never would have met had I been in an apartment and going out with friends.
I will miss falafel and hummus for breakfast. I will even miss mabalooba (upside down). I won’t miss all the trash, but I’ll miss the hills and I’ll really miss the people in 8th circle; and I’ll miss having arguileh all the time and I’ll really miss the roof and I’ll be spoiled to see tons of trees and I’ll be shocked to see so much skin when I get back.
Amman feels like a small town because really it seems like everyone knows everyone. Social circles are so tight. If you mess up here, I don’t know how you’d ever fix your reputation – it would spread too far and too fast. I like the sense of community, but the potential for anonymity in America is relaxing.
I came here to bond with Arab women, but quite frankly I felt at home with the young men, more connected to them in brotherhood, then I did to many of the women in sisterhood, for two reasons: 1) less women than I expected shared my values, my frustrations with the situation of women today 2) the group of guys I found didn’t try to force Islam on me and they accepted me the way I was instead of trying to get me to change the way I look or act, even if they disagreed with me about things like gender roles.
I read The Jordan Times again on the plane like I did on the way here. There is an article about how businesses are trying to make it so the universities can’t let as many women into their geology programs because they say the need is for fieldwork and fieldwork is too hard for “the ladies.” To Americans this is of course terribly shocking but there is no uproar at all, in fact the majority opinion may be that they should admit less women. Also, everyone talks about McCain and Obama a lot in Amman, and this is reflected in 3 articles in the paper about the two. On the plane on the way home, I sat next to a woman from Ecuador who married a Palestinian man. She was Catholic and converted to Islam – “It’s so easy,” she says. “There’s not too much difference between being Catholic and Muslim.”
Obedience is valued here as is duty – there is a soldier mentality -- but, generally speaking, free thinking is not, in fact it is sometimes considered quite bad
Now I’m home. My neighborhood looks like such a lush green jungle I don’t recognize it, and I positively worship the soft bright green grass, and I’m embarrassed that my house is such a palace and that I have more than one towel to use and so much to eat. There is much I will miss, but right now I’m happy to sit in the shade and to see my family and feel free – to speak my mind, to act independently
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