New Pilgrim's Progress

Al-Ingleezeeya

            As an American in Jordan, even if you don’t speak Arabic well, you still have one skill that will do wonders to get you by: speaking English.  Sure you won’t open up as many doors to Jordanian hospitality or make as many friends, but you can navigate yourself from when helpful bilingual Jordanian to the next.  You can also get a job teaching English.  I decided to challenge my brain, already muddled by studying standard Arabic and speaking the Jordanian dialect by taking a job teaching English at nights.  I also wanted money because Amstel drafts cost like $4.50.

            My first foray into teaching English was about 2 months ago (or more?  the time has really flown by here) with a collaboration between Jesuit Refugees Services and the Fulbright English Teaching program in Amman that I heard about from a fellow CIEE student.  The program primarily serves the Sudanese, Somali, and to an extent, the Iraqi refugee community in Jordan.  Two nights a week we hold a 2-hour class in a hall the Jesuit Center has let us use, with about 100 people coming on a given night, although attendance is hit-or-miss and often depends on if the  bus service we’ve set up for the students runs on time.  In any case, this situation seems to be preferable to the set-up last year, where the teachers visited the houses of the students; the Sudanese men lived more than 20 guys to a house (we’re not sure what the deal is with their wives, who live in separate houses), which was not an ideal teaching situation. 

            Miss Grace, and Fulbright English Teaching Assistant from Alabama; Miss Christina, a Fulbright researcher, whereabouts not yet inquired into; and I teach the children’s class.  We have about 15-20 kids on a given night, from 7-12 years old.  They are almost all the family members of the adult students, who are mostly from 20-40, of which about 2/3 are men.  You can imagine in a hall with 100 students and 4 separate classes being run simultaneously, teaching kids who are out later than they might otherwise be is a challenge.  They are rambunctious, and the curriculum has slowly shifted from numbers and nationalities to games.  I have developed a contempt for the creators of the English language for making 15 fifteen and not fiveteen, and it is always cute to here a 8 year old kid stand up proudly and say “my name is Nasser and I am Sudan!”  Another challenge is that there are at least two Abdi-Fateh’s and Abdul-Nasser’s in each class.  However, they get their wiggles out, especially during ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,’ which was an instant hit, and while they might not be learning English in as structured a fashion as the teacher in me would like, they are getting good exposure.  It’s also good practice for my command verbs in Arabic-I am almost at the point where my pronunciation of “sit down,” “be quiet,” and “no hitting” in Arabic doesn’t simply evoke laughs.

            Of course, it’s also a cultural learning experience for me.  Early on, we learned some pitfalls in teaching refugees English.  For example, having children from war-torn refugees draw and label their family trees is more an exercise in morbidity than English, as there were several x’s in the kids drawings.  On a more light-hearted note, some of the kids full-names simply don’t fit on one piece of paper they are so long. There are also two 12 year old Sudanese girls in the class who are hijabbed and very quiet, despite beign very bright and knowing all the right answers.  They seem to very shy because of the boys in the class, and it is my suspicion this is because of socialization and not just their personalities.  Their personalities are the opposite of the younger Somalian sisters who are both firecrackers and go pinch for pinch, thrown object for thrown object, with the boys in the class.  I do wonder if this is just an age or personality thing thing, or a general difference between social expectations of Sudanese and Somalian women. 

            We also have a very bright Iraqi girl named Yousur in the class who wants to grow up to be a genetic engineer!! and go to school in the U.S.  Her family has a lot of relatives living in the U.S. currently and the Iraqis, not surprisingly, seem to be better off than the Sudanese and Somalians, although the guys said they do miss wearing dishdasha’s (the traditional long mail robes) all the time like they did in Iraq.  All the parents are a delight (Yousur’s dad gave me a pdf with an Iraqi dialect-regular Arabic dictionary ((there are 4 words for sink in Iraqi)) and it is a testament to the strength of the human will that our students come back night after night to improve their English, and thus their overall prospects in life.  I’m not sure what my work/study schedule for the summer will look like, but hopefully it will permit me to continue teaching when the Fulbright program students head back, so that we can maintain some continuity in the program. 

            As for the money I talked about making, I did a month long semester working with a small company near the university teaching 2 hour classes three nights a week, the nights I wasn’t volunteering, for what amounted to be about $10/hr.  My students were from 19-50.  The youngest was an eager freshmen nursing student at UJ named Ali, the oldest was a 50 year old named Muhammed who worked in agriculture.  They were all great guys, and by some act of god, they all had different names.  I realized three things during this experience: 1) English grammar is indeed really difficult: when do you stop use the present continous and start using the future, why don’t we say gooder, etc 2) Arabic is hard to wash out of your vocabulary: Iwas supposed to only teach in English, but besides using a few commonly switched words, I also slept into Arabic occasionally 3) I finally understood my teachers frustration with dying whiteboard markers.  It was also interesting to see most of them pray during out 10 minute halfway break (all of them if there was a test that day) and to chat in Arabic with them after class.  Not teaching this semester because I’m going to Egypt for a week, I already miss Muhammad’s examples of English grammar almost exclusively involving produce from the Jordan River Valley.  Some of their test answers were hilarious too (Describe three things in this picture: 1) the laptop worn’t turn on 2) the sink is clogged 3) it is a bad hotel).  Hopefully, I can work again their next semester if there is demand. 

            In the meantime, I’ve also started tutoring a pretty well-to-do family in English twice a week, once for the kids, once for the parents.  It’s interesting that they are grammatically at about the same level, they just have different vocabularies.  They pay me 8 JD an hour, plus cover transportation and provide a snack or meal, so it’s a great setup.  It’s also refreshing to see some of what I would consider good parenting in Jordan: the kids aren’t spoiled, don’t inhale piles of Turkish candy, they don’t have a foreign maid, etc.  Even without the pay and perks, it’s nice to make more personal connections in this country, and it is again inspiring to see peoples drive; the dad has a well paying job running a fitness club, but is really dedicated to being able to communicate with clients better. 

            One last note on speaking English in Jordan is that I’ve realized how much practicing language is a privilege.  Most cab drivers I’m with, once they feel comfortable with my ability to converse with them in Arabic, inform me of their ability to speak some English.  However, true to Arab hospitality, as I’m the guest, they allow me to practice my Arabic with them rather than the other way around.  Sometimes they’ll ask for a few relevant words like “good night” or “you’re welcome,” but in general they entertain my attempts at Arabic.  On one level, I am the student making the concerted effort at learning Arabic, and a lesson in English grammar in a cab wouldn’t accomplish much, but it’s still another privilege I enjoy, and I’ve started correcting Abdel-Salam’s English more, and hopefully will start a language-exchange type deal with a Syrian student I met at the barber shop the other day.  Did I mention a haircut usually costs 3 JD (4.50 us) and never more than 5?  Another thing I will miss when I come back home in August.

            Lastly, brief notes on my life here.  I found an apartment for me and my roommate (another CIEE student staying for the summer) owned by a lovely older couple who speak English well (the first landlords I met who preferred English).  I’m moving in Sunday and will post pictures shortly therafter.  I’ve also been accepted into my intensive summer Arabic program at Qasid, but have a month break.  You never really stop learning Arabic in Jordan, but it is nice to be able to sleep in, and go to Egypt. 

Don’t Tread on Me

Spring Break having ended, the illustrious students of CIEE resumed their scholarly activities. 

Also, my homie Nick got engaged in Petra.  Nick deserves far more than the explanation I’m about to give him, but he’ll probably write a book someday anyways (or should).  He is a 31 year old student at Boulder who resumed his studies of 9 years of ballin ass a world-class rock-climber, during which time he met his fiancée who is also a ballin ass world-class rock-climber (who graduated from Tufts!).  He’s the type of dude you can google to find more about, and it’s been my privilege to shoot the shit and drink with him at our secret spot—an abandoned lot with a beautiful view—as he’s quite the scholar as well, hence his 2 Critical Language Studies scholarships and some profound insights into the life and politics of the developing world, particularly the Middle East.

Here is a video of Nick doing what he does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT0051sGdXY&feature=related you can also, as I said, just google him. 

Anyways, to celebrate his engagement, the Thursday after we returned from Spring Break, we had an engagement party at one of the Jabal Amman apartments.  Now the apartment kids live a completely different life than us homestay folks, as they go to bed WHENEVER THEY WANT and can BUY ALCOHOL AND BRING IT HOME!!!!  I’ve only spent time there recently and it’s very enlightening to see how the other half lives.  Anyways, during the course of the party, someone drunkenly decided to tale down a poster that had the flag and the face of the king on it.  This did not go over well with Danny, Nick’s 25 year old host brother in attendance, and a heated argument ensued.  To the kids credit, he made a sincere apology.  To Danny’s detriment, he was drunk and didn’t really care, and Nick spent the rest of the night talking with Danny, unconvinced the beef was squashed.  It is probably a good thing Danny didn’t take the offer to translate for the US forces in Iraq a few years ago.

Anyways this was my first encounter with Jordanian flag respect, although much more nuanced than my second.  The second time, I was participating in our final community service trip with the great folks at IDEAL (http://www.liv-emodel.org/), an organization that promotes local tourism in concert with community service efforts.  CIEE is participating in their Adopt-A-School project, and for 5 weekends we have been re- painting the Ba’oun all-girls school in a village called Ayoun in the north as well as cleaning it up since these girls eat bags of chips and litter them like it’s the 6^th pillar of Islam.  So for the last visit, we were painting murals as well as ome brand new trashbarrels, hoping that they might use them.  My group, in charge of the trashbarrels, decided we would paint one of them with the pattern of the Jordanian flag.  Once the red triangle I was painting became evident, basically every adult Jordanian came over and asked my what I was doing.  I thought they were amused with my rendition of the flag, but to the contrary, the organizer only half-joking me asked if I was trying to get us all thrown in jail. 

Now it had not occurred to any of us in the group (among us, a young UJ student as well) that painting the flag on a trash receptacle would carry some subversive meaning.  Especially for me, from a country where we put the American flag on bikinis, beer cans, and many more questionable avenues for patriotic expression, this was one of those culture shocks I heard about.  It seemed to me that it’s better to have the idea that Jordan is a country that cares about keeping clean, so a flag could go on a trash can, rather than the flag of Jordan represent a country that was not clean, but the second is the case I guess.  Anyways I laughted it off, changed the pattern, and that was that.  The people at IDEAL are really terrific though, they gave me a beautiful gift set of soaps from the local women’s soap cooperative that is partnered with Ajloun.  It was really a great deal for us-they took us on hikes to local sites in the Area, and we had delicious meals in local’s houses.  Below are some pictures of the community service visits (the header photo is the un-subversive trashcan). 

Oh yeah

I attended Carlie’s beekeeping class at AUB.  The bees weren’t aggressive (evidently some types of bees have anger complexes) so we didn’t need to wear the suits.  I realized how incredibly complex beekeeping was during the lecture section, and at the lab I was amused by the idea that you can essentially get a C for Cowardice if you don’t participate well in the lab, which often entails getting stung (~1 beesting per class).   Virginia has a picture on her camera but can’t figure out how to upload it, so ask her yourself. 

Spring Broke (I’m not clever)

So even though I’m sitting down to right a whole lot at once, these will be broken up into several, more digestible posts for your reading convenience. 

First up, Spring Break.  It happened.  My friend Virginia who is studying in Art History in Rome visited me in Jordan, and I basically did a second round of going to the tourists sites, but with my residency card everything was about 1/50^th as cheap.  However, travelling with a platinum blonde female companion gives one the definite look of a tourist; I have never heard so many people say “Welcome to Jordan” during my time here as when we went through the Friday Souq at West al-Balid.  Taxi drivers where also frustrating; because I had a female companion they’d ask what we were doing, and I’d say seeing the sites, and then they’d try and convince me to let them drive us to the place itself (usually an hour drive away) rather than to the bus station.  The price difference is humongous (bus ride is like a dollar to Jerash, taxi probably 15), and when I refused, they made me take their numbers down in case I needed a ride in the future.  It was quite an experience being a tourist in Jordan and not a student, and frankly I’m glad its over. 

As for Lebanon, well…it’s not Amman.  Virginia and I stayed in the Hamra district, which is next to the ocean and AUB, where our friend Carlei is a student.  Carlie was a fantastic host, and basically stayed with us the whole time we were there.  The first thing I noticed upon walking around Beiruit (after being confused by their silly money which is counted in demonations of thousands, meaning a  1000 bill=75 us cents, and I’m convinced this is just for the hipness of saying something costs 3 thou) is that people were exercising, like jogging and all, and they also were walking pets.  These are things not done in Amman.  And I could have cried when a waiter at a restaurant spoke perfect English to us, because she was an American student, and advised us on which Lebanese beer was the best (they have more than Amstel!) for happy hour. 

Having Carlie as a tourguide was great because, although the many nightlife options of Beiruit readily present themselves, it’s a lot more fun when there are locals to talk and dance with while you drink til 4 in the morning.  In the Alley in Hamra (an alley with 2 floors of bars on either side, crowded every night of the week) we taught some of her friends how to shotgun, and I introduced Irish Car Bombs to the clueless bartenders at an “Irish” bar.  Her friend Ali, of Palestinian heritage from Jaffa, was great because we could converse in the Palestinian dialect (which is essentially the same as the Jordanian).   He was a really thoughtful guy who had coincidentally enough met me International Relations TA from Tufts (evidently he had also visited Beirut) and was impressed with my Arabic, because foreign students in general don’t learn Arabic in Lebanon.

This is the big downside to Beiruit.  For all its cosmopolitan-ness, the locals are not nearly as hospitable and amicable because they whole world goes there to party.  So whereas speaking Arabic in Jordan gets me pretty far, a lot of locals here just ask whether you speak French of English, and are not nearly as warm (in the service industry at least, plenty of the Lebanese I met were really super nice).  So while being able to buy beers and chill on a beach (on the OCEAN, although I didn’t float like at the dead sea =/ ), I was happy to get back to Jordan where I didn’t get called out on having an accent and where taxis have meters.

Concluding question: I wonder what type of idiot buys the inflatables they sell on the way to the Dead Sea.  Also it was funny seeing the same tourguide who showed me Petra when I visited the second time. 

Also, a collection of my Spring Break photos (courtesy of Virginia’s professional skillz and baller camera) can be found here: http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4461105022/a=9737079026_149114886/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/ although you might need to register with the website, it’s worth it. 

Getting from Point Alif to Baa

During my time in Amman, I have gone to a few places.  Several in fact.  But not all of these places are within walking distance.  You might be wondering how I get to these places.  Now I will tell you.

While roller-blading still enjoys an inexplicable popularity in Amman, cabs and buses are my preferred method of transportation in Amman.  Cabs are more expensive than buses, but are still significantly cheaper than American cabs, and in a city with no real public transpiration, they are the default mode of transit.  A 15 minute cab ride will cost you about 2JD, or 3 USD.  However, I think of the higher price in terms of an opportunity to practice Arabic.  With the exception of a few reserved cab drivers, if you demonstrate a working knowledge of Arabic by asking about the weather or commenting on the traffic, you’ll spark a conversation.  If you’re a guy at least.  (One sad reality of the culture here is that foreign girls have to take care with cab drivers; all girls sit in the back seat of cabs as a matter of cultural etiquette here, but foreign girls can face awkward marriage proposals from their drivers if they’re unlucky.  There’s also a few reported cases have groping, etc, although none in my program or in recent memory. )  Although the conversations usually follow a pattern-where are you from, how long have you been here, what are you doing here, why are you studying Arabic (a good time to ponder possible future careers, I might add), it’s good practice, and I can usually pick up some new vocabulary by pointing and asking.

The taxi drivers themselves are often interesting characters.  Many of them have been abroad and some know a foreign language or two.  Some also teach in addition to taxi driving, and I’ve had a conversation or two about Shakespeare with a taxi driver.  One taught me what to say to prevent jinn (genies) from entering my body when I yawn, and explained that most world conflicts are caused by jinn possessing world leaders.  I’ve had two real vulgar cab drivers particularly interested in my sex life as a college student which leads me to believe they’ve never stepped on UJ campus.  These taxi drivers make me nervous because they spend a lot of time using their hands to mime sex acts and not to drive.  A few cab drivers have given me their numbers and invited me to eat with their families, and one gave me free fare when he learned I was volunteering teaching English to refugees. 

Additionally, half Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, and I would estimate that more than half of the taxi drivers are Palestinian.  Talking to these drivers about their home villages and circumstances is one of the most sobering experiences I’ve had in my life.  It’s one thing to be self-righteous or consider yourself informed about a cause you’ve only read about, it’s another thing to talk face to face to a man who works 18 hours a day 7 days a week and says the issue will only end when the land is returned to its original owners.  Once, in a cab with a Palestinian driver, I was trying to remember the world I had recently learned for “tragedy” to describe the situation, and couldn’t for the life of me remember it, so he called his friend who had lived in America and had me talk to him to help remember the word (small world, this guy had also lived in Somerville). 

On the other hand, I speak very little Arabic on buses, but they are a good people watching experience, and about ¼ the price of a cab.  There are only a few routes in Amman that have government-operated buses running them, and these are very new.  Most buses are like elongated VW vans that are run by a teams of two: the driver and the chain-smoking hawker/fare collector called the “control.”  Usually these guys have worked together for a while, although it’s not clear who runs the whole operation.  In any case, the controls are the easiest people in Jordan to do an impression of because they lean out of the bus door announcing the destination the bus is headed to about in their gravelly voices about 60 times a minute.  Other than that, they announce the landmarks the bus is approaching (there are no fixed stops, just routes, really), and ask for change.  Additionally, they facilitate the ever-shifting seating patterns on the bus, as women are supposed to sit next to women, or at least not in between two men on the bus, so people constantly re-arrange themselves with the entrance and exit of passengers.  Besides watching and participating in gendered musical chairs, it’s fun to ride the bus to see the relationship between the control and driver, and to see Jordanians communicate with their hands.  The first time I saw two Jordanians talk with their hands, I thought they had for some reason picked up American Sign Language.  It turned out they are just good at talking with their hands, and I’m always fascinated by watching it.

What ties taxis and buses together, besides being modes of transportation, is driving styles and coffee.  As much as people like to say Arab drivers are terrible, I find their borderline reckless aggressive driving endearing and skillful.  There is no such thing as a “marked lane violation” in Jordan, and traffic will make as many lanes as can fit in the road as possible. If someone is starting to cut you off you just give them a beep for a heads up.  Drivers to curse, and it’s always amusing when I understand and chuckle, to the driver’s embarrassment or pleasant surprise.  Anyways, this system keeps traffic moving really fluidly and will be one of the biggest adjustments I anticipate having to make back in the States. 

What doesn’t get people where they are going is stopping for coffee.  Bus’s will stop without announcing at the little coffee and cigarette stands I think I mentioned previously, and the control will go and buy…coffee and cigarettes.  Taxi drivers will usually ask, but sometimes insist of the ride is long, to stop for coffee, in which case they wait for one of the stands runners to bring their order to them.  A sly move some drivers play is buying you a coffee, and then asking if you are tipping them instead of giving you your change (tipping isn’t typically part of Arabic culture).  Also, while smoking is technically not allowed in taxi’s or buses, seventy percent of drivers smoke, and taxi drivers always offer you a cigarette.  Another minor embedded paradox in Arab smoking culture is that most taxis have what appears to be a miniature fire extinguisher but is actually just a liter on their dashboard. 

In conclusion I’m glad I don’t have to ride camels as they are slow, uncomfortable and tend to fight with each other and buck you off. 

Littering, Academic Culture

Jordan is not doing its part to help the environment.  One of my ideas for alternative tumblrs was of the weekly phenomenon that is dumpster burning, in which most dumpsters you pass by are in flames because one of the best ways to dispose of the overflowing dumpster in your neighborhood is naturally to set it on fire.  Also, because the gas Jordan gets from Iraq is so unrefined, most Jordanians just remove the catalytic convertor from their car rather than having it break continuously (full disclosure, I had no diea what a catalytic convertor was heretofore).  Lastly, I commented to my super friendly neighborhood grocer that it was rather strange that everytime you buy anything, no matter how small, you’re given it in a big plastic bag.  He explained that it was expected from the customer that with his/her purchase he/she deserved a bag, regardless of whether they would throw it away and could have carried said purchase with no problem.  Quick note on this grocer: he has a degree in accounting and lived in the U.S. for several years.  His American city accent and use of “man” when he speaks English is a priceless slice of home.  Also, expectations of a degree are quite different here;  although I can’t guess as to his satisfaction with owning a small neighborhood bodega (which I think is an accomplishment anywhere), this would not be the career an American college graduate imagines himself entitled to. 

On that note, I want to make a few comments about the cultural and academic perceptions of degrees in Arabic culture.  Engineering, science,  and medical degrees, while respectable in the U.S., are really put on a pedestal here.  To apply to UJ, you need a 90% average to get into the Medical college, but only a 70% for the Arts college, as opposed to one standard of admission.  My peer tutor was astonished that my Tufts ID said “College of Arts and Sciences,” as it implied the equality and similarity between the two.  Because of the emphasis placed on these types of degrees, nearly all intelligent students enter these schools and these fields, and the liberal arts aren’t viewed as particularly important pursuits.  I realized Al-Kitaab (the most popular book used for teaching Arabic) made this clear in the beginner book when Khalid—the protagonist of the very deliberately pronounced drama familiar to most Arabic students—is told by his father that “there is no future in literature” and he must study engineering. 

This fascinates me because a lot of these liberal arts fields are, in my mind, where some of the Arab world’s best and brightest should be channeled into.  Although I can see why political science, until recently, may have been viewed as kind of a dead-end in the region.  Still, it strikes me as odd that most of the students hanging outside the International Relations building at UJ are kids whose grades wouldn’t have got them into UJ were it not for their tribal connections. 

This also contributes to the culture of tribal violence on campus (the liberal arts area is also where all the fighting occurs on campus).  Besides the fact that a lot of these guys have been going to single-sex schools most their lives, with no girls to show off in front of,  and are coming for the first time to the heterogeneous (triballys peaking) capital city of Amman, they’re also dealing with an academic culture that suggests that what their studying isn’t important anyways, so they spend their time at campus puffing out their chests and inevitably getting into fights.

I’m going to end with an entertaining cultural morsel: from time to time, when I tell a cabdriver where I want to go, or tell a guy at a street-food stand what I want to eat, I’ll be answered with “In sha’ Allah” (If God wills it, or God Willing). 

Walking in a Winter Tribal Land

So I’m trying to make my posts a little shorter and less intellectual so that I can capture more aspects of life in Jordan and post more often.

First, on the topic of nationalism, I have a couple of comparative notes on Amercian/Jordanian nationalisms.  In Jordan, the flag is literally everywhere it’s so ubiquitous.  If you’re in the street, it’s hard not to look around and see either a picture of the King or the Jordanian flag.  There’s also a flagpole visible from most of Amman that has one of the world’s larger flags flying from it.  All Jordanians pay a small “flag tax” which goes to the upkeep of this flag.  To me, this represents another way in which the “us vs. them” East/West dichotomy doesn’t work.  I imagine most Americans who are extremely patriotic and extremely bigoted against Arabs and Muslims would be impressed with the public displays of national pride as well as piety in this country (God being involved in a good deal of idioms, prayer mats in every taxi, etc.)  At the same time, a lot of the Jordanians I have spoken with, the air force pilot I met when my language tutor took me to the Circassian club in particular are very adept at navigating the line of healthy patriotism and Jordanian exceptionalism, a trait quite lacking in the American populace. 

In other news, there was a shooting on the UJ campus the other day (my friend called me in the thick of it, he saw the victim get put into a friends car and driven off).  It stemmed from a snowball incident (there was a big snowstorm last weekend, we’re talking HALF A FOOT HERE).  I’m going to post more about the story below, but first I want to make a note on Ammanian snowball fights.  Jordan sees the level of snow required for snowball fights once every few years, this year being the most snow in recent memory.  I think this is the reason that there are no real rules of engagement in these snowball engagements; it is not regular enough that people are accustomed to it.  Thus, snowballs regularly get thrown at random cars.  My dialect professor had his windshield broken and chased off the kids that threw it.  My taxi driver had a snowball in his lap half of our ride before throwing it at another car whose driver he had convinced to roll down his window.  Thank god he missed.   Pedestrians are targets too (especially foreigners, ugh), and there also seems to be a level of childish flirting going on with the snowballs; on campus groups of guys were constantly throwing snowballs at girls walking by, in a sort of third-grade teasing-because-I-like-you fashion.  This was most apparent when I left class and a group of girls were huddled together at the door avoiding the “flirty” snowballs of guys at the bottom of the stairs barraging them with snowballs.

Back to the shooting, I’m posting excerpts from the e-mail my program sent to me on the shooting and the aftermath:

a man who is not a UJ student was visiting the campus, and he passed by a group of UJ students who were playing with the snow. A snow ball hit the outsider and he was very angry that he decided to use the weapon he was hiding; of course it is illegal to carry any kind of weapon on campus except for the security guards.  The outsider shot the UJ student on his leg…

Today there is a heavy security presence on campus and around campus. You will see some of this at the main gate, but on campus it’s largely under-cover. The shooter is in custody and everything feels “on pause”The pause is deliberate and marks the start of a deeply ingrained, generations old method of sulha or conflict resolution designed to prevent revenge seeking…

The offender’s tribe will ask the victim’s tribe for a period of truce, which the  victim’s tribe will traditionally accept. During this period of truce, calm will prevail between the groups. The offender is in prison and the police and the government is informed of the intent of the offender tribe to make what is called an atweh:  the gathering the most important men among the tribe,- those are men with high social, political or academic status, to serve as a formal delegation or Jaha  to visit victim’s residence (Jaha) and  offer to make amends and  make up for what the son of their tribe did. The larger and more important the Jaha, the stronger the atweh. 

During this visit, the offender’s tribe apologizes to the victim’s tribe and asks them to name what they want as a compensation for what happened to the victim. Traditionally, the victim’s tribe asks for the medical expenses of the treatment of their son and sometimes they ask for nothing.

The reason behind this Atweh is that having the offender’s tribe most respected men as visitors at the victim’s tribe residence is an indicator of good intentions and is seen as a declaration from the victim’s tribe not to seek revenge from any member of the offender’s tribe.

Afterwards, the offender is normally let out of the prison on the basis of what is agreed between the tribes, although he is required to sign written commitments the police. As an official consequence, he cannot apply for a government job or join a public university, and the incident is permanent recorded in his personal file.

What fascinates me here, besides this ingrained tribal mentality in a country populated with McDonalds’, is the way the government has to work within this framework.  The tribes are influential, and it is tribal protests that are the most worrisome.  But it is still surprising to learn that a man obviously guilty of assault and battery, will be out of jail in a month with no repercussion other than what is decided upon in the inter-tribe negotiation.  That there exists a separate legal framework for tribal matters seems problematic to me, although I’m sure the government doesn’t have a lot of wiggle-room in dealing with such an influential section of the population.

To end with a less intellectual note, two anecdotes about Host Mom.  First, when the storm started, the satellite went out, and at dinner she explained to me how important tv was to her after a day of chores, and announced something along the lines of “bidoon television, bamoot” (without tv I die).  Doing my good host-son duty, I made 3 separate trips up to the roof of our 5 floor building in the storm, until I fugred out what exactly I was doing the 3^rd time and managed to adjust the satellite so that the picture came back.  Although I later found out the picture went out about 2 hrs later, when I was out…

One of the programs Mama watches every night on the satellite is a Turkish soap opera called “Song of Love” (اغنية الحب).  Despite Mama’s numerous attempts to keep me abreast of the never ending crises in the show, all I can focus on is the main characters mustache.  When I told Mama that I called the show “al-shawarba,” or “The Mustache,” she got a kick out of it.  And so I leave you with a picture of mom with the snow on the roof, and “The Mustache” itself.

Host Fam

So it’s high time I talk about the place of been living for the past month-ish.  I live with the lovely Samira Abu-somethingorother.  The name doesn’t make sense to me, because she’s not an abu (father) she’s an umm, a mother, but anyways.  She is a widowed Christian woman in her late 60s, who came to Jordan from Lebanon at some point and married her now-deceased husband from Kerak, a city near Amman.  She raised her 5 kids in a house in Kerak; 4 are married now, one of her sons and one of her daughters live in Amman with their families, 2 daughters are married living in the UAE and Australia, and the other son is unmarried and lives with her in the apartment in West Amman I currently live in with my program roommate Rory (she moved from Kerak sometime after her kids grew up, but whether this was before her husband died is unclear)

Most of this information I’ve inferred or picked up from her conversations.  This is because her Arabic is the most dialect-y Arabic I’ve run across, and when I don’t understand something, she has a tendency to repeat it again with different words, but faster.   Having Madhat, her unmarried son around, was helpful, but their unoccupied house in Kerak was recently robbed (common for unoccupied houses) and he jumped on the opportunity to get out of the house.  Besides his interpreting help, the dynamic between a grandmother and her 30 year old live-at-home son were endlessly amusing and are missed.

She is endlessly nice, and after living here for a bit and making the lifestyle adjustments, everything is great.  This is not to say it wasn’t a rocky start.  The first time I was chided with “ya haram” (essentially for shame) for not finishing my ungodly proportion of dinner, I felt super cruddy.  Rory and I soon realized the importance of being firm in saying while we love her food, we really don’t want any more, as to avoid the haram of throwing food away.  A ten minute conversation about locking the door when she went out the first weekend, in which I understood less than I started the discussion with, left me pretty feeling pretty defeated, but these things have been picking up.

She is endlessly nice, however, and I will never forget when she called the pick-up taxi service for Rory and me so that we could get to the American bar/restaurant where the Superbowl (which started at 2 am) was shown.  After dinner, Rory and I are always brought Turkish coffee and a parade of fruits and sweets, most of which I save for the next day, while we study.  Needless to say, when I can help her out by going to the local grocery store to buy her an international calling card, or pick up bread, I get a very special host-son-fulfilling-his-duty feeling. 

From what I can tell, she spends most of her day cleaning, calling her daughters abroad, receiving guests, and of course, watching TV.  TV watching is an important Jordanian custom, and the TV is on, even without being watched, from approximately 7:30 when she gets up, till she retires at 11 or 12.  Her favorite programs are Turkish soap operas dubbed by Syrian voice actors, infamous for their ubiquity through the Middle East, and Arab Idol.  Personally, I am really hoping Yousef Arafat (the Jordanian) wins, because the Saudi guy is really smug looking.

Despite the drawbacks of a curfew and sometimes limited menu, I really think the advantages of being invited to Jordanian family events and constantly practicing my dialect are well worth it.  Although the birthday party for her 15 year old granddaughter attended mostly by, you guessed it, overdressed 15 year old Arab girls—with whom I was forced to “dance” once or twice”—w as awkward (a word that does not exist in Arabic, despite all the times Arab culture manifests the phenomenon), her married son Ala, who always eats himself till he hurts and chain smokes Marlboro 100’s, is always a good time. 

The neighbors in the apartment building, too, are really wonderful.  Saif, pictured with me below, is my neighbors youngest son, and he is by far the cutest and most well behaved child in the country.  While Ala’s 5 year old is a brat who never stops yelling, the annoyance of which is compounded by the fact that it lisps due to missing front teeth), and his 2 year old is goes immediately from picking up a phone and dialing a number, to pressing every button on the tv, to pulling on the table cloth which has many breakable glass things on it, Saif is an angel.   He is quiet, but not shy, we have fun drawing dinosaurs together, and I can actually understand a chunk of his Arabic.  However, he seems to be the exception, and I think it is because Jordanian parents, from the collective observations of home-stay kids a) feed their children a lot of sugar and b)are always picking them up, tossing them around, and generally not doing anything to discourage their hyper-rambunctiousness. 

While Saif’s  older siblings, around 10 and 12, are also great, their English is a constant point of content for me:  they just know so much of it.  Their knowledge of English either acts as a source of motivation of frustration to me daily.  When I go to the UJ library and see students there reading Engllish textbooks on surgery and organic chemistry, it turns mostly to frustration.  Sometimes this is with myself, and sometimes it is with the fact that the U.S. public education system didn’t deem it necessary to give me a competitive edge by teaching me a foreign language from a young age.   While it is true that some American students spend their time developing cutting edge technology in specialized fields, time that Jordanians spend learning the English so they can work better in this field, it is certainly true that most American students (including me) don’t, and we really should, as a country, be learning more foreign languages in order to be competitive, and to have the world like us more.

I communicated a related thought earlier tonight to my cab driver (in Arabic, yay!) that part of American’s ignorance of the world stems from the fact that there are enough oppurtunites for work in America that we are not forced to live in other countries, learn other languages, and meet foreign people, in order to have a job.   When cab drivers inevitably ask where I’m from, and I say “Amreeka,” they either tell me of their experience working in a foreign country, or a list of relatives and where they live in America, or both.  And while this may not make them cosmopolitan cultural scholars, it does give a rudimentary knowledge of at least one foreign language and culture, more than an unfortunately large percentage of the American public.   

Next post, I will rant less about American education and talk more about public transportation in Amman and comparative cultures of nationalism. Also, I figured out more pictures and am getting some aesthetic triage from my friend Olivia (http://olive91.tumblr.com/)

ya salam, Abdel-Salam!

I’m forcing myself to write this post, knowing that it is taking away from time that I would either spend studying for my test tomorrow or sleeping (I have to get up around 6 to be on time for my 8am class).

However I’m learning that experiences abroad are constantly coming at you, and it’s just as valuable to try and document them and reflect on them as it is to study how to conjugate defective verbs.  There’s always Arabic coffee, too.

Anyways, I know I said I promised to get to my host family, but while they’re still fresh in my mind, I want to talk about 2 experiences with my language partner Abedel Salam.  As to remind myself, I also intend to write about the hip-hop scene I finally stumbled upon in Amman (hopefully I’ll be more familiar with it by the time I write it), as well as my teaching English with some Fulbright scholars. 

Abdel Salam is my 21 year old Circassian language tutor majoring in design in the Faculty of Arts at UJ.  By Circassian, I mean his ancesters were from the region of Circassia in South Russia, and bought and imported to the Levant as warrior-slaves by Arab dynasties  ~800 years ago.  By language tutor, I mean that it is not a language exchange where I teach him as much English as he teaches me Arabic; he speaks mostly Arabic,  sometimes using Arabeze (jumping in and out Arabic or English) and occasionally I’ll explain the English equivalent of an Arabic word or correct his grammar when he does use English.  I think he gets paid a small stipend by the program for this, but he’s definitely friendly with me and improving my Arabic a lot. 

We’re recommended to meet for around three hours a week, which we usually spend drinking juice or tea in a restaurant next to the University and just chatting.  Although the conversational practice and vocabulary I pick up with him is great, what’s really fascinating to me is the cultural knowledge I’m picking up.  I’ve learned a lot off the bat about Circassian culture in the Middle East.  I don’t want to go into explaining the general history (you can find that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adyghe_people sorry the hyperlink won’t work), but I do want to point out that the Circassians are one of many minorities in the region that are largely forgotten in the generalizations that not just Orientalists, but educated scholars tend to make about the region.  When thinking about the Middle East, I believe, it’s equally as important to understand the history of the Semitic peoples as it is to understand the minorities that constitute an important part of the demographic tapestry of the region.  The group-feel of these minorities is something for the most part lacking in American culture, and really incredible to learn about.  For example: after playing basketball one day, I saw some brass knuckles in Abdel-Salam’s backpack and inquired.  He explained that Circassian guys tend to get in fights with Arabs who catcall the beautiful Circassian girls (they tend to be paler, and thus, considered more beautiful according ot him). 

The Circassians in Amman tend to live in the same few neighborhoods, and their families are very close.   Abdel Salam friended me on facebook, and showed me a picture of him with all the Circassians at UJ, and has his families original village in Russia listed as his hometown (or at least what they believe to be, as there are still families with the same surname living there).  He was also keen to explain to me the Circassian genocide (also found on the Wikipedia page), which was something I was completely ignorant of beforehand. 

Of course he is super friendly, helping me explain direction to cabdrivers, eager to hang out, and want’s to plan some hunting and fishing trips with me, and I think he’s a great guy, but it’s the cultural disconnects I want to talk about more.   For one thing, he has a tendency to let racist comments slip.  At first it was just about blacks in the U.S., and I thought “he’s probably just ignorant of the history there, and doesn’t live in that culture.”  However, he also confided in me that, while there are many good Arabs, he thinks most of them are “dirty.” 

Today, I invited him to a lecture at the CIEE office, forgetting that it was about homosexuality in Jordan.  By the time I realized the snafu, the lecture at started.  He entered late and was the only peer tutor there, and after about 10 minutes he got up and left.  He didn’t storm out, but it was still one of my more embarrassing moments here.  However, he wasn’t mad at me for inviting him and we met up and talked after.  He admitted he knew a Circassian guy who he said was a good man, but after his friend was out, Abdel stopped shaking hands with him for fear others might think he himself was gay.  The way he voiced his opinions wasn’t vitriolic, but he firmly believed homosexuality wasn’t a choice, and that it was wrong because it was not a natural impulse and could result in human extinction.  When I countered with the fact that the world was overpopulated and we had artificial insemination, he said he “knew” that all homosexuals had had some bad experience and it wasn’t normal.  I reminded him we don’t “know” anything, we only believe, and made the classiest segue of my life, saying “Allahu aallim,” only God knows. 

The last thing I want to mention about Abdel-Salam is his tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.  The same way that he believed in certain things about homosexuals without evidence for his theories, he entertains the idea that the Free Masons control the world, and showed me a video of an Aalim (sorry to my Arabic-speaking readers for my English-friendly transliterations) or Muslim Cleric claiming that the Freemasons worked with the Islamic version of the Anti-Christ (Dajal).  He believed that the British Empire was so successful is because the Dajal and Masons were there, and that when things got “bad” in Britiann, the Dajal bounced to America, and thus spawned the American empire.  He is also not the first Jordanian I’ve met to tell me their theories on the Illimunati.  The funny thing is none of them have seen National Treasure or The Da Vinci code. 

My first reaction to some of these things is to be like, ‘wow, Middle Easterner’s sometimes live up to the stereotypical traits ascribed to them.’  However, I realized that are just as many people with similar conspiracy theories in America, and that I have no Gallup Poll saying that the level of more-easily-convinced people relative to those in America is any different.  The irony here being I made this big cultural assumption without the “dila’il,” or evidence, that I keep telling Abdel-Salam he needs to provide me with before I’ll believe his theories. 

Next time: one of those other subjects I mentioned, or maybe the Jordanian vs. Mainstream public & nationalism, and I’ll make the site prettier with some of my pictures from Petra and Wadi Rum. 

Internet, Dysntery, and Ahmed Abd-Allah

Having been without internet, I haven’t updated in about two weeks.  I wasn’t committed enough to draft a post on the crappy internet-café keyboards, and spent most of my time at the café with wireless perusing facebook and e-mail.  This is unfortunate because it has definitely created a backlog of experiences and reflections that I want to commit to writing, and I’m sure I’ve already forgotten some.

However, one of the main things I want to enjoin upon you, reader, is that it really is the little things that make all the difference when living 6500 miles from home.  I’m going to blurt out as many of them as I can remember right now just to get it over with.  Here we go: Amman’s equivalent of squirrels is cats, particularly ones that hang out around dumpsters; the current King’s face is on currency, cabs are constantly beeping AT you to see if you require their services, women far outnumber men at the university, and the men never carry backpacks or books;  sodacans peel out when you open the tab, they don’t puncture; coffees are tiny, but you drink 10 a day; cab doors don’t open on the left side (you’d get killed exiting into traffic); nearly all cabdrivers drive stick; a popular Lay’s flavor is Tomato ketchup.

It’s more these things that reinforce your foreign-ness rather than the obvious big things like the call to prayer, the ubiquitous red and white shemagh (or kuffiyah), and pictures of the King. 

Anyways, I quite honestly can’t communicate how far it feels I’ve since I was posting from the comfort of a warm hotel where showering was always an option and internet was problem free.  Posting up in an internet café for 2-3 hours after classes end—to have acces to A) a quick Arabic reference in the form of God’s gift to students of difficult languages, Google translate (I’d still stick with wordreference for Romance languages) and B) wax homesick on facebook, Boston.com, and blogs—can really accentuate the feeling of being alien.  It goes without saying that getting my wireless USB, then getting it to work a week later after my host brother and first call to customer service were of no help, was a small liberation.  I am not a world-traveler and I will freely admit that knowing that at the end of the day I can check my e-mail or favorite rap blog before bed, really makes me feel liberated to do more cultural swashbuckling throughout the day.  It’s corny and I know it, but I’m 7,000 miles away and life with a host mother who knows maybe 5 words of English, and speaks fast when she is not understood.

This reminds me that I have not even introduced you, esteemed reader (should I come up with a new epithet every time I address my readership?  Is that even suitable for a travel blog?), to the wonderful world of Arab host-families. In the interest of not getting to discursive in this post, I will save domestic life for another post, and mention only that food is a battle.

As for the Libyans, with whom I left off with nearly 3 weeks ago, they were in fact the real deal, and I feel super naïve for my earlier intimation that they were not.  Libyans are actually quite a hot topic in Jordan, as they are occupying most of the rooms in every 3 and 4 star hotel in Jordan as they await medical treatment in Jordanian hospitals from wounds sustained during the revolution.  I had lunch with one illustrious Ahmed Abd-Allah and a fellow CIEE student during Ahmed’s last day in Jordan.  Ahmed is a thick mustached and well travelled businessman;he gave me three numbers to reach him at, in case one of his phones was busy, and could quote the price for us of every automobile that drove past, both in Libya and in Jordan. 

There’s a lot to be said about the chat Nick (my fellow student) and I had with Ahmed Abd-Allah.  He was Arab hospitality incarnate, refusing to let Nick pay for coffee, even taking the money that Nick had tried to slip the cashier when Ahmed wasn’t paying attention, and then paying for our three (3) coffees with a one hundred (100) US dollar bill.  This after he had bought tea for Nick and his other Libyan comrades for several nights in a row.  Additionally, he repeatedly impressed on us that we must visit him in Libya; all we needed was a plane ticket and he would put us up in a car and apartment, and would even get the ticket if need be. 

However, on a more intellectual and abstract note, the significance I have drawn form my meeting with Ahmed is that people like him run or have a tremendous influence in many parts of the world, and “The Secular West” needs to learn how to better understand people like him.  What do I mean when I say people like him?  Aside from functioning as a terrible reverse-segue into the topic, I mean un­formally educated but nonetheless very world-savvy people, who have considerable influence in their respective homelands.  Ahmed seems to have had no formal education to speak of, and knew no English, but he still imparted on Nick and I, through our broken Arabic, a tremendous business savvy and charisma.  His itinerary after he left Jordan was Libya for 5 days, then off to Thailand to buy fruits to produce juices, China for car parts, and Brazil for something else.

To me, this type of independently-conceived business trip, upon which he had located himself a translator for each stop, right after being treated for injury IN A REVOLUTION, requires the type of character, the type of je-ne-sais-quois that they don’t teach in Western business schools (or French classes…sorry).  This is not to suggest that Ahmed represents some sort of farcical third-world entrepreneur, not at all, but rather that today’s world is full of professionals who come from “unconventional” educational and cultural backgrounds.  He was, after all, a well-dressed businessman with seemingly no formal educational background, 3 oft-used phones, an encyclopedic knowledge of commodity prices, of limited literacy, and who laughed at nothing harder in our conversation than when Nick mimed pretending to like mansef (a traditional, yet divisive, Jordanian lamb dish) for his host-mother.  Seeing Ahmed off in his cab after our 3 hour lunch, I wondered how well my generation’s ivory tower I.R. scholars and Business majors would be able to engage with the Ahmed Abd-Allah’s of the world, the by-their-bootstraps movers and shakers who readily more easily by tribe than university.