Benjamin N. Duke University Scholarship Program

Like A Lollipop

By Paula Rosine Long | Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Thursday July 10th, 2008 Day before yesterday was wonderful: Mo picked me up in giant van of his various ex-pat friends (Duke, Ireland, Amman, Russia?) and we drive to Lili’s house where she made “mensaf” – finally I eat this famous Mensaf, the main dish of Jordan according to tourist books at least! It is lamb, rice, and a sort of “not-soup” which is between yogurt and soup. It is all put together on a plate and you use three fingers to make it into a ball. A bunch of us had out first mensaf together, standing around the plate with one hand behind our back and the other hand making mensaf balls. I am proud to say that I was among the last standing, consuming mensaf deep into the night. I am not proud to say that I was unable to shape my mensaf into balls. And while the other Americans I had talked to hated mensaf, I thought it was freakin’ delish. We had kanafa for desert, some girls sang Russian songs, and all of this took place on a rooftop under the stars. I slept over at Lili’s lovely apartment complete with wall hanging of the king and framed roll of toilet paper, and she took me to Bait al Bawadi in Abdoun in the morning where I crashed a course on Jordan NGOs and finally secured another internship, which is going to JOHUD project sites and interviewing people and reading documents and making reports to go on their website. ___________________________- July 16, 2008 Random notes: 1) there are fireworks all the time here in Amman. And guns shot off for weddings. 2) One of the Circassian teens here hates Arab governments (says they are thieving). He likes two governments: that of Germany, and that of Israel. He says that Germany was at its peak under Hitler. 3) Hitler is rather often-mentioned here, compared to in the US. There is some graffiti that says “Hitler” about two blocks from our apartment. 3) Noor update: Noor was raped by Abdeen and then killed him and was in jail a short time. The rape was edited out of Arab TV (show is Turkish). But now Mohanned, her husband, is jealous that there was something between her and Abdeen, which is a very lame storyline, and I have stopped watching. 4) We get 3 meters of water a week. Downtown shopping: hijabs galore, men’s underwear out on tables (not in plastic), Sadaam Hussein mugs and keycains. More stuff that says “Palestine” than says “Jordan.” We went to Fadia’s brother’s house (when I say house I pretty much always mean apartment) and I was shocked to see him drinking strait vodka – and even more shocked that he offered me some! Fadia clearly disapproves; drinking is so intensely taboo in 8th circle, if not almost all of this Muslim country (Rainbow Street and Abdoun for example don’t seem to have such a taboo). When asked, I say that I drink but believe that getting drunk is a really terrible thing to do. They find this acceptable. Anyways, Fadia’s brother (can’t remember the name as there are 9 siblings!) collects old guns and has a giant model boat and loves old movies (“back then, the men were men!”) and says that Russians are crazy and Brits are dirty (“they do it in elevators, I swear to you”) and the Indonesian maids didn’t bathe when until taught by his family, but Germans are the best people in the world. I went to the last Souk at Beit Al Bawadi for the summer (it is getting too hot) and I had a great talk with one of the women there. Her name is Ola and she was wearing a brightly colored batik robe with a brightly colored hijab. She is probably the first true “Islamic feminist” who I have talked to here. She is an artist with her own business where she makes the most incredible jewelry and windchimes. She used to work in graphic design but she says that she couldn’t get high up in her job, despite being very qualified; she says that this is because she wears a hijab. People with a hijab, she says, are seen as being less open, less creative, less active, less into new ideas – less qualified for something like graphic design. So she left that job and is now trying her own business, but her father makes her come home before sunset and the time when people go out is 7 or 8 at night – nobody shops during the day – so it is very hard to run the business. He also won’t let her take a taxi home (too dangerous) so she must pack up her shop very early. She doesn’t blame her father because the problem isn’t him – the problem is the expectations of the community that are unfair – but in the end, she is the one who suffers. And now Ola now has a job with the ministry of culture and so she will work two jobs. I asked her why she chose to take the hijab and she said that she likes to think of it in terms of a lollipop! She says that if a lollipop is not wrapped, there is more chance that flies will stick to it. And so you must wrap it, but very nicely and beautifully, so that people will want to buy it. I asked what the flies were in real life, and she said that they are objectifications of a woman’s body. She is against objectifying the female body, and so she takes the hijab so as to avoid sexual attractions to one’s hair and one’s body. She wants someone to see her mind and to see her heart – “and then maybe they can see my body.” (She laughs). I find her attitude interesting because while the hijab is often justified because women should be covered because they lead men to sin (the blame is put on women), Ola doesn’t seem to think that there’s anything wrong with her body – rather, she doesn’t want it to be seen as a body only and puts the blame on men. Also, her views stand in such stark contrast to American feminism, where so many women show off their bodies or explore their own sexuality in the name of feminism. Taken globally, feminism may be the most divided movement on the planet. She says that her family was actually shocked when she took the hijab and advised her against it. Her father told her that it was too hard because it makes you a representative of the Islamic faith – everything you do when wearing the hijab will be judged more harshly, and people will judge Islam itself by your actions. Now she must act very well or people may think badly of her whole faith. To her father, this is too much pressure. Another woman, feminist #2, butted into the conversation at this point to tell me that Ola had her own opinion but she disagreed and didn’t think the hijab was important at all. What matters is your actions, not your clothing; and she has seen many girls in hijabs behaving more suggestively than girls without hijabs. The two women were fairly polite about the whole thing but there was tension because both had such strong opinions; they illustrated further divisions within feminism (within Islamic feminism itself, in fact). One last note: Ola said that she is upset when the hijab is forced on women. But the problem is not the hijab, the problem is the forcing. Last weekend, I took a trip to Madaba and to Mt. Nebo. Madaba is called “Mosaic city” as it is, obviously, chock-full of mosaics. The oldest surviving mosaic is from the 1st century BC, but most are from the 6th century. There are churches in Madaba built upon old Byzentine churches, and excavators discovered fantastic mosaics under the floor. Under the floor of the Chruch of St. George, for example, they found a giant mosaic of the entire middle east, with I believe 150 labels of different places. In the ruins of the Church of the Virgin, there were mosaics of different goddesses, including the goddess Madaba. And there is a Roman road surviving in the middle of town. I asked the tour guide if he ever got completely sick of mosaics (Madaba is literally all about mosaics and has a school where students are taught the art of mosaics and churn out even more darn mosaics) but he just laughed and said that there are many, many, many mosaics in Madaba. Mt. Nebo was a fantastic, if brief, experience. From the top, you can see the holy land, and a map points out what direction to look for Jerusalem, Bethleham, the Dead Sea etc. Looking down from Mt. Nebo, I couldn’t imagine this rocky, arguably eerie landscape, reminiscent of the background of a Di Vinci painting, to be the land of milk and honey. More like sand and rock! Perhaps it looked quite different, had more trees maybe, in Biblical times. Or perhaps Moses was hallucinating. There is a big monument called the Memorial of Moses looking down upon the promise land; it is a snake wound around a pole with what appear to be arms at the top, resulting in the shape of a cross. It is supposed to represent the snake Moses raised up in the desert, and at the same time represent the crucifixion. The whole Jesus-as-snake thing was somewhat beyond me, but it was a pretty interesting statue visually. There were tons of postcards of the pope, since John Paul apparently visited here. Last week, I also met my first Islamic anti-feminist. His name is Hisham. He is friends with Essa’s cousin but I’m not sure how much anyone actually likes him. He is very unpopular because he singlehandedly outlawed smoking at Jordan University when he was a student there – he really hates smoking. Like Sama, Essa’s cousin, he is a physical therapist. The whole time we’re hanging out having arguileh, he kept saying “I am anti-girl.” I think he is joking because this is such a blunt and silly way to talk – anti-girl!-- so I keep laughing. Sometimes I ask Essa and Sama if he is joking and they say “no” but I think they are joking too so I laugh and tell them they can’t trick me. So then everyone else laughs because really it is not a joke. Hisham is “anti-girl”! Not that he is gay – he loves women he says – but he is against women working or leaving their “sphere of duty” which is basically the kitchen. After a long time when I realize that he is not kidding, I am so shocked that I make the mistake of having a serious debate with him on the subject. I presented arguments from the Koran, but he was more interested in making scientific points: 1) Men have more blood in their body than women do. So they form better muscles. And are better at athletics overall. He kept using arguments about physical strength, which I told him that, even if true, applied to physical labor jobs only, and that of course there were many exceptions to the rule that men are stronger than women. (Women who are stronger than men, he argued, are no longer women but have become men as they have gone out of their sphere/duty). 2) Why would men and women have different bodies, different physical structures, if not for different functions? (Very Confucian, my dear Hisham!) Here are some of the different functions: women are better at taking care of children. Men are better at logic. Women are better at math. Women are better at cooking. Etc. He also tried to throw women a bone by saying that women do better in school but I said that this was nurture, not nature, since women must be home at ten and so they probably study more then men who are allowed to go out at night and have fun. Hisham happily conceded this point. I tried to argue that the other differences were also cultural – woman are not inherently better cooks! But he wouldn’t hear of it. He says that there are things where men are better than women (most careers) but there are also things where women are better than men (cooking, changing diapers). He seemed to think this was a great concession that should make me very happy. 3) Women should not be doctors. They are naturally squeamish around blood. He has seen it himself. I feel this to be a cultural difference – women are expected to be delicate and squeamish – but he thinks it all goes back to our different bodies. In non-labor jobs, women are still ill-suited because they are more emotional – there are mental as well as physical differences. He’ll show me a textbook from 2007 from America to prove this point. And what if in physical therapy something happens and they must lift a heavy patient? Or what if they are on the road and a tire needs to be changed? For these things, women must – and always do – call a man for help. I tell him how many women I know who change tires, who are stoic, who are not afraid of blood; that I even know men who stay home with the children are happy about it – but he becomes a little angry and says “Don’t tell me about people’s lives in America. Social life in America is completely messed up.” And while my arguments are things that have been said by Jordanian Islamic feminists, he writes me off for being American and not understanding his culture. 4) Ideas from the West have gotten into women’s heads here in Jordan and that is why we have so many problems now like the 50% divorce rate. Western ideas are destroying the family. It is better for the kids if the woman stays home with them rather than if she works and hires a maid to take care of them or relies on a grandmother because the kids learn their personality in the 1st nine years of their life – should they learn their personality from the maid?? 5) He says that he has talked to American women who are very unhappy working and don’t want to work – from this he generalizes that American women don’t want to work, period. I tell him that I have talked to unhappy Jordanian women who do want to work or feel that their lives are unfair. He says that this cannot be true. He is vehement: “should we become like US women? No! US domestic life is the biggest mess in the world!” Maybe so – but not because women are too uppity – and if Jordanian domestic life is a mess now, it is not the fault of women trying to leave their sphere of ‘duty.’ 6) Again, my retorts to all of this were strait out of the mouths of Jordanians – even King Hussein himself, beloved King Hussein, has wanted to change some unfair laws, but Parliament opposed him (in 2001)! But nothing I say is of credence because I am from messed-up America. I discuss such laws as the one that says that a husband can make his wife quit her job but Hisham says this can be taken care of before marriage by agreement. I say that the agreement is no good as the man can always change his mind, and he says this ‘doesn’t even count’ because, in this case, the man is ‘bad.’ He must have a great deal of faith that Jordanian men are almost always ‘good.’ 7) At some point during the argument, I remember how much he hates smoking and blow my arguileh in his face and laugh. At some other point, Sama and Essa leave the table. I don’t think Essa knows what is going on because his English is not as good. Matthew just sits there. I wonder who they agree with more; I know they are all somewhere in between in the grey space between where Hisham and I sit, at either end of the Jordanian bell-curve. 8) Hisham says I’ll be happy to know that most men are now looking for wives who can work and help support the family. I tell him he’d be happy to know that my mom stayed home with me when I was little, and I might do the same. We make peace although he is still resentful that we had a serious discussion when he wanted to only have fun, which is hilarious because he is the one who started the whole thing – I was a good sport and make jokes about women belonging in the kitchen for a long time before I realized he was serious. Essa is mortified and tells Hisham that every time he sees him (this is the second time), bad and crazy things happen. He and Sama tell me that Hisham is crazy (as they had warned me earlier) and I tell them not to apologize, that I have never laughed more in my life (despite that Hisham was not trying to be funny) and that they should bring him again next time we get together. Hisham tells the boys that he is confident that he will convert me to his anti-girl stance before long; Essa is mortified and tells me that his friends are not “crazy like Hisham.” He complements me on having Matthew as a friend: “Matthew is, eh, good. He is not crazy like Hisham. He has, eh…[chooses words carefully]… a beautiful personality.” Islamic feminist #3: I talk with Fatwa’s daughter – she is thin and worn and never wears a Hijab; she lived in America in San Francisco for 3 years; she seems about 30 or 35 but has a stand of grey hairs. I rarely see her because she works so much. She opens up to me immediately: she says her family is very angry at her because she doesn’t want to have kids, but she doesn’t want the responsibility, doesn’t feel that its her duty, and also thinks it is cruel to bring kids into this world (given the environment and etc.). Now she suspects they are all still mad but they tolerate her. She says she wouldn’t even have married – never wanted to – (!) but felt that she had to in order to survive in this culture, lest she become dependent on her brother and his wife when she was older. She says that sure, some women here are abused, but some are “huge b*tches” – they use half their husbands’ money but don’t share their own money with their family, use it all for themselves, as technically this is the woman’s own money. At the same time, she understands this mentality of wanting their separate money because if the husband dies, the woman only gets a ¼ of his money – the rest goes to his kids and his “family”. She knows that this is in the Quran but she says that when the Quran was written, it was a good deal for women at the time, an improvement. But now, the law is simply unfair. Especially in her case: she and her husband are partners in their company and work alongside each other equally. But the company and all the money is in his name so if he dies, she’ll get a quarter, not a half – some partnership! Even if when he dies he writes in the will that he wants the money to go to her instead of ¾ of it going to his family, this will not be allowed because it is illegal to do otherwise in your will here. I tell her a little about Hisham and she says he should come see her at work – she works from 7-9, two jobs. From 7-1 she is in the factory, lifting things, her hands becoming like man’s hands, alongside tons of men. It is manual labor and she is just as capable. Then from 1-8 or 9 she works at a computer store programming tons of computers. She works with men at both jobs and most of the men are worn out from their one job, and here she is, a woman, working two! But if Hisham saw this, he’d say it simply proved his point – what corruption of the family, that this woman doesn’t want children! Also, she dismissed the social life here – the women are housewives and so all they talk about is what is on the television – she finds the constant socializing to be small talk and uninteresting and quite a burden as it goes on all the time. Also, in the span of 24 hours last week, I had an insane amount of people try to convert me. The first batch of them were the girls at Aya’s house (Aya’s mother is the one who gave me the first set of Muslim prayer beads). They talk to be about the Quran and Islam and tell me that its really easy (“shwaya shway”): why, you don’t have to wear the hijab every minute, do you! Only when around men! See how here they are relaxed and not wearing the hijab (there were no men present). And drinking alcohol: first you just give it up when you pray. Later, you give it up all the time. Little by little. Piece of cake. To them, it is the one right way. It was a long session but definitely not as intense as the second, which was with Nazic and her neighbor. Nazic talks in Arabic and the neighbor translates. Since I understand a lot of what Nazic says, I hear it twice. We talk about heaven and hell and how the only way to go to heaven is to say “Allah is the only God and Muhammed is His Prophet”. If I do this, no matter what, I go to heaven. If not, flames. They like me so they want me to go to heaven. The whole time, Nazic’s brow is furrowed with seriousness and her neighbor is glowing with a smile of joy in her religion. I feel like I’m back in North Carolina with North Raleigh Christians. Also this same neighbor always wipes off my Cleopatra-style eye makeup with her thumbs and tells me to put the liner around my top and bottom eyelids instead which is more beautiful. They also tell me that my short hair makes them sad and encourage me to grow it out. Another beauty tip: they try to get me to shave my arms. They pluck at my forearm-hair and shake their index fingers and say “Not beautiful.” I have been resistant and I think they are giving up on my prospects of beauty. But the large happy neighbor woman still wants me to marry her brother (he lives across the street, too); she tells me to look at him through the window and see how young and handsome he is but I refuse to look and say that I am “shy about marriage, but thank you”. Best of all is when they ask me “Do you think you can go to the stars? Do you think you can go now, maybe by two o’clock in the afternoon?” This question seems so out of the blue I don’t know what to say and they repeat the question several times until I say No, even with a space-ship it would take longer since the stars are so far away. Then they smile at me and wave their fingers and tell me that Muhammad went immediately to the stars on a winged horse, thanks to Allah. They don’t know how to say “winged” so the woman flaps her (hairless) forearms for the translation. Because I politely sit and listen to the whole thing (although I had been trying to check my email), Nazic and the neighbor are very encouraged. They try to get Matthew and others to talk to me about Islam too, and I now have been given three sets of prayer beads. Also I try to bond with the little girls here by playing Monopoly but they have just gotten Monopoly and the adults don’t know how to play either and nobody believes me when I tell them that the point of the game is to buy the real estate. The girls don’t want to buy any real estate and when I buy a place and they land on it they don’t see why they should pay me any money. They also refused to roll both dice. And they would keep rolling the one dice until they got the roll they wanted. Although eventually I managed to convince them that you really do get $200 for passing GO, I think that I appeared to be some big, stupid, insane cheater who was trying to steal their play money. ________________________ July 18, 2008 This weekend I went to Acaba with Mo and his friends; and looking out from his friend Zain’s house, you see the Red Sea, which is incredibly clear and still and blue, in front, Israel pretty close on the left (you can make out individual buildings), more of Jordan on the right, and in the distance on the right there’s Saudi Arabia, and strait ahead if you kept going is Egypt. Four countries. It still hasn’t really sunk in that I really saw that…and there was an Israeli dolphin (I still don’t understand how we know he’s Israeli) who swims around Zain’s boat a lot and we actually swam with this Israeli dolphin! _________________ July 19, 2008 Today Matthew and I went on a roadtrip to Ajloon and to Jerash. In Ajloon there is a giant castle which was built in 1184 by Saladeen (please ignore my spelling on this whole post) who was Iraqi and united four countries against the Crusaders. The castle’s spot was chosen because 1) you can watch and have control over the West Bank and 2) there are iron mines nearby. It was built over an old Byzantine Church from 610 AD – in fact, it is the spot where it is said that Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes (there are mosaics of 5 loaves and 2 fishes under the floor). Looking out from the front of the castle, you can see Giliad where the prophet Elijah did something or the other. From the back side of the castle, you can see the Sea of Galilee, Golan Heights in the distance, and the West Bank. It just looked like normal hills, so it was completely insane to think how many people have died for these hazy, mountainous, dry plots of land… More fun castle history: In 1187 there was a huge battle there and Saladeen was victorious; they added onto the castle in 1214 AD; and there was celebration in the castle in 1262 when the Mumlooks (spelling??) used the castle to defeat Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Then the Ottomans controlled the castle from 1514 to 1916. For defense, the castle had a moat (but never water – we are in the Middle East, after all) and a drawbridge and some sweet cannonballs and catapults and those slits for shooting arrows and places to dump hot water on attackers; but best of all there are carvings of pigeons as it is said that pigeons were used to send messages to Saudi Arabia. I am skeptical. This is a little bit too much like the owls in Harry Potter. Then we went to Jerash, which is pretty lovely to look at despite being another pile of ruins (I have been absolutely spoiled this year in terms of the ruins I have been able to see), especially when the sun is lower in the sky and the shadows are more dramatic. Our 15 year old tour guide recognized me from last time and we figured out that the guy who proposed to my friend (the guy who offered the 100 camels) was his cousin, and when he discovered that Matthew was Muslim (because he wouldn’t climb into the giant baptism bowl and pose in prayer position with me), he said that Matthew wasn’t my brother (as we tell everyone for safety purposes) but rather his brother. From then on, I took pictures of him with Matthew and then got pictures by myself, being left out of the Muslim brotherhood (before this, I made Matthew do Wu-Tang signs in all our pictures, to make my real brother proud). Anyways, our nice little tour guide really bonded with us and he insisted on bringing us back to his house for tea and coffee (oh my, that does happen all the time here!) and also to see my old friend Bara with the 100 camels, and so we go along with him back through the ruins and up a hill with a lot of trash and then we climb through a hole in a chicken wire fence and go a bit more along a road to reach his house. I felt extreme culture shock as the day before I’d seen more wealth than I have in my whole life by far, and now, in this same country, some of the most poverty. His family was pretty huge, per usual, and all the girls were on dirty mattresses on the floor of the same unadorned room. Bara re-invited me to a concert for free (Amr Diab!) but sadly I will no longer be in Jordan; I told him that I would mail Erin to him from the states to be his wife and he thanked me. The family was so welcoming, especially after finding out that I am Lebanese and Matthew is Muslim, and shortly I was ushered inside to sit with the womenfolk so the whole clan was nice and segregated again; I was especially fond of Lana, the already-engaged 17-year old wearing bright red lipstick alone in the house with her mother and sisters; and with the women I was queried on the usual topics among women I have just met: Am I married? No. Do I have a Jordanian boyfriend? No. Don’t you think my daughters are beautiful? Yes they are all very beautiful. Don’t you just love Muhanned (from Noor)? Yes in all television shows he is the most handsome and, Allah willing, in the future, I hope to have a marriage with him. They were very sweet and seemed so genuinely happy to meet us and I wish I could have stayed longer, but the driver was anxious to get home so it was back through the hole in the chicken-wire fence and home we went. ____________________________- July 21, 2008 The guy who drives my van home from work (a big dude, I forget his name always!) is very nice and funny and always gives me cigarettes and teaches me new words. He wants to go to the US for five years to work but his wife says ‘no’ and if he tried for a visa for both of them, he says he’d be denied. Yesterday, he gave me piece of paper on which he’d written a website for me to check out: www.islamreligion.com/articles/204/ Please everyone check it out. I was surprised to see that the site tells you that to go to heaven you have to say the sentence about Allah and his Prophet out loud and to do so there is live help online to make sure you pronounce the Arabic correctly. Allah forbid you mispronounce a word and go to hell for it. Also it says that Allah “is forbidden” to send you to hell if you say this sentence no matter what a bad person you are – but how can Allah be forbidden? Who forbids Allah? Allah’s god? I was very confused. Something to discuss on the next bus ride. And as for today’s bus ride, he told me congenially that he doesn’t think women should drive as they are the most terrible drivers – he is frightened whenever he sees one driving. Is this a joke? He then says that women should stay in the kitchen. Now I know it is a joke. I laugh loudly. “Bimzah kwayyis!” I say, “Good joke!” He assures me that none of that was a joke. I can’t stop laughing though, because the idea of him going to America for five years is hilarious. “You’ll have a heart attack when you see American women leaving the kitchen to drive big cars! You’d go crazy there!” “Do you think they’d put me in jail?” he asked. No, luckily, I think freedom of speech protects chauvinism. But he’d probably get beaten up by a mob of girls. Tonight – my ‘sister’ Shireen’s birthday party – another epic all-girl dance party after the most excessively large and delicious buffet (kibbeh, tabouleh, labneh, tzaziki, pizza, etc. etc. etc.) and too many deserts (most especially “honey cake” which is Russian and made by Circassians). Unfortunately, being the newcomer, I was constantly called upon to be the entertainment aka the dancer in the middle of the circle of women who had shed their hijabs to reveal, on this special occasion, short skits and bra straps and cleavage and tons of makeup and styled hair, all hidden from the outside world of men. (I still marvel with the same-sex dynamics of girl dance parties and girls really dressing up only for each other and men holding hands with each other that there is so much homophobia here…) Anyways, they kept pulling me out against my will and tying leopard print scarves with jingling coins on me and laughing at my debke (Jordanian debke is softer and feminine and graceful and my Lebanese / Palestinian debke apparently makes me look like a man). Even more unfortunately, they put on the CDs I gave to Dana and made me demonstrate “English dancing” to a Gorillaz song and I have never seen Hip-Hop in such a ridiculous light – whereas their dancing is pretty and attractive and soft, my censored American dance-floor moves looked aggressive and hard and silly and incredibly masculine. I really thought they’d die laughing. They tried the crip-walk and the twist and some moves from rap videos and it was positively ugly in comparison to quivering hips and twirling wrists of Arabic dance and even the dignified, gliding Circassian dance. Then, in phase III of the dancing, they showed me dances to do but apparently they kept tricking me and showing me things that weren’t dances. Like one woman walking holding her stomach – I imitated her and everyone laughed because she only danced that way because she’s pregnant. Then the same woman showed me a hand motion to do as I danced and I did it and people absolutely fell out of their chairs because it wasn’t a dance, it was the hang signal for “F*** YOU.” It is a darn good thing I have no shame. Also I was very pleased to finally have some rowdy humor coming from a Jordanian female. To cap the night off, after having really nice chats with everyone and feeling very accepted and at home, I found myself having to defend my arm hair once again (they find it so fascinating and manly) and then I was asked: “Do you eat lots of chocolate? Because you have very bad, ah… [everyone points to their blemishes].” I am not sure how to respond to this, especially since I don’t think offense was intended somehow. I said that actually I eat very healthy things. I wanted to say that my skin was never this bad before I came to their excessively-hot and dusty land and burned my face with the Dead Sea mud; but I didn’t. Today at Idrak, Easam’s mother came to pick him up. Easam is the only Bedouin boy in our class, with the big smile who always just wants you to play with him and hold him. The others are: Hisham, who almost never smiles and loves to play with balls and jump and bite things; Jhalid who always looks deep in thought and walks sideways and likes to throw things; Sarah and Madgd who are twins and who you can tell apart by the fact that Madgd’s hair always is in a foo-foo and Sarah always has puts her hand down her pants. I have basically been in charge of the classroom, with random actually employees coming in and out, a new one in my room each day, because it is probably the most difficult class in the school. Anyways, Easam’s mother comes and asks how he was today and I say (in Arabic) that he was very good, as he is everyday and that he is always the best [behaved] student and that “I want to take him with me to America!” I thought this last part was a cute joke. I have said to many people that I want to take them home in my suitcase. But judging by her face I don’t think she got the joke; rather, I think she’s going to get a restraining order to keep me from kidnapping her 5-year-old child.

Like A Lollipop

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