Minarets and Marginality: 2009

My semester in Jordan is coming to a close. I have one more week before I’m on a plane back to New York and then three weeks to do absolutely nothing until I land in Capetown. We are cracking. My classmates are slowing break downing, cracking up, losing it. The countdown is too great to bear. Maybe I am an outcast among them because I can only minimally relate to the complaints. I feel at home and everything that appears to bother the others to the core does not reach me. I was walking home from Haboob, my grocery store, my lovely forty minute walk in this 64 degree, dry, sunny weather and thinking about how much I was going to miss this. As a result, and to be fair, I decided to list for you all the things I think I will miss, and will not miss in Jordan.

Will Not Miss:
• TAXI DRIVERS
• Smelling like smoke all day, every day
• Not having my own car
• The f-ing washing machine that doesn’t wash or work as a machine
• The oven and its gas tank which I must to remember to turn off and getting down on my hands and knees to light the back burner fearing for my hands’ intactness
• The pink bathroom, my shower and not flushing toilet paper
• Limited water and energy supplies
• A lack of nutritious foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and seafood
• My bed that a dozen people must have slept on before me
• The dust that accumulates in this apartment in four hours
• Relying on cabs to go absolutely anywhere
• A lack of domestic animals (re: DOGS)
• Not being able to run outside
• Wearing modest clothing all the time, except when I feel rebellious and don’t and then regret it
• Honks, stares
• Carrying heavy water bottles up four flights of stairs just to drink
• Recharging my cell phone with phone credit every couple of weeks
• Limited internet access
• Not being able to sleep in my bed for one night when I wash my sheets because they take a full day to dry outside
• The nuisance that it is to go places, especially if it rains, then all hell breaks loose
• Being separated at dance clubs for dancing too closely
• Techno music
• Smoke in clubs, bars, cabs, schools, restaurants, coffee shops, streets, AND my hair
• The University of Jordan or its ‘bathrooms’
• My classes, holy God
• Squatting in holes in the ground, peeing on my feet, and having no toilet paper or running water afterwards

Will Miss:
• Being called beautiful every 36 seconds by a complete stranger
• Jordanian hospitality with an unceasingly kind demeanor
• 64 degree, dry, sunny weather
• Sitting in a cab and reading all the Arabic street signs because I CAN
• Having people understand me when I say things like “Shway, Inshallah, Nam, Shokran, Yani” in English conversation
• Easy access to countries like Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian territories
• Discussing foreign and local politics with locals
• Struggling with Arabic conversation everywhere
• My apartment and the enormous palm tree in my window
• The view of Amman when you are on a hill higher than the highest building
• My friends who went through this with me, kept me sane and made me laugh
• Going out at night to ridiculous clubs and dancing like idiots to Techno
• Seeing people dressed “stylishly” in 1996 fashion (only)
• Arab Carrefour
• Arab anything
• The friends I made with the souk owners downtown who want “anything to make you smile!”
• Learning about Arab-Israeli relations from Arabs
• My fantastic gym
• Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuits
• Mensaf at the cafeteria (or any meal, for 1JD)
• Watching my friends date locals and observing gender norms
• The call to prayer
• Road trips to Jordanian cities, getting lost, having great company
• All the fantastic foreign people I’ve met not on my program
• My piece of crap Jordanian cell phone that never runs out of battery (ever)
• My dark grainy luscious moist zaki bread from the bakery
• Jasmine every day, all day
• The Arab music or Quran recitations in the taxis
• Buying movies for 1 JD downtown
• Being downtown
• Hashem, our local restaurant gem
• Struggling just a little bit more than others who are not living in Jordan and knowing that it has only strengthened my character
• Minarets and being marginal
• Knowing that all the things I said I won’t miss, I probably will.

The truth is that coming to Jordan has offered me so much in every aspect of my life. When I go home, I will be better able to sit back and reflect upon the impact being here has had on my person. The things I have learned by listening, by speaking and adjusting my character to better understand and become someone of the Middle East I’m sure will make me defensive when I return home to my other “reality” and listen to what people have to say about a place that I know well, and they do not.

While I have seen that being defensive and aggressive does very little to change people’s perspective, I still believe in a revolution and have learned that sometimes putting up a fight to bring about justice is the most effective method. In my own way, I will bring my revolution home in the way I can, and that is by being honest about my experience, and engaging with you and your friends about realities in the East. It is important. Everything we know is from a third party source, from the media, from books, from school. My goal is to bring home to you a direct link to this world, a more realistic and grounded source that explores the many dimensions of life here, not simply one. I recognize that until you’ve breathed Jordanian air and settled into the culture yourself, you will never fully understand what I’m saying and why I am so angered by what I view as gross misrepresentation of a very diverse community. The best I can do is record it, speak of it and remain firm in my conviction.

On a personal level, I have had many opportunities to reevaluate what I want to do with my life and what being here could offer for my future career paths. People so often ask me what I’m doing here. I hate this question. I want to say, “What aren’t you doing here?” Or if they are here, I want to tell them that I’m not doing anything differently than they are; I just want to see for myself. It’s important to me to live honestly and taking people’s word for my own is not honest. I’ve for once in my life lived as a marginalized person. Being a white girl from an affluent community most of my life has offered me little but cushioning and privilege. Of course I had spoken to people, and have many friends for whom my reality most certainly does not apply. Living as a social alien is impossible to comprehend until you are one. The range of emotion I have felt to this regard is all-consuming from terror, to inferiority, to anger, to dismay, to depression, to guilt, to pleasure, to superiority. It’s true that I will forever have an emotional and financial support system behind me because of the family into which I was born. On the other hand, I have had the opportunity to experience what I want more than that. And that is honesty, and simplicity. I hope that you’ve enjoyed following my trials and tribulations throughout Jordan. It’s been a release to share this with you the way I can. This will be my last post for Jordan until I return home and become so nostalgic I can’t help but post again. If you happen to smell Jasmine soon, I hope it humbles you. Maa salaama.

Minarets and Marginality

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