As this is my last day of Ramadan in Jordan (given that tomorrow I will be spending the Eid, my break, in Lebanon) I thought I would give an overview of my day today, as it was pretty standard. The next time I post (in a week or so) I will be able to compare and contrast life before and after Ramadan. I’ll be sure to post pictures of Beirut upon return. We will see if there is a difference in ambience, attitude and moral standards.
At 7am, three of us who live in the complex caught a cab at the corner of the next block as we do every morning after catching up about our night. Waiting for a cab driver is like waiting for your first visit with the dentist. He could be shady, you could not trust him with his equipment, he could take the longest way to where you want to go and he could overcharge. This morning was a joke. The man who picked us up was fully donned in a keffiyeh and white robe down to his trendy socks and sandals combo. Since waiting for a cab can take a matter of minutes or hours where we live, we take what we can get. He pulled up to our residential neighborhood blasting what I could have sworn was an Arabic Malcolm X. He was shaking his fists and yelling with the man exiting the cab as we took his spot. After hearing my surely endearing American accent, he was quick to switch the station to what without much deliberating was Arabic Teletubbies station. He happily bopped along forgetting his route and ended up making several unnecessary turns while in this rather strange stage between militancy and infancy. Getting out was a relief.
Class today was an Arabic listening exercise which was a nice break from rote memorization and recitation. Deciding to be savvy travelers, my friends and I walked over to the printers after class to print out our confirmation numbers for our flight tomorrow, and were told simply that the “printer-lady” was not there, and that we could not print on our own until she came back, whenever she would be back. They gave us a time frame of around 30 minutes… so by now we know that means forget it and it’s time to get lunch.
Lunch for the most part is the highlight of my day. It is always the same and consistency in a place like this is hard to come by. I’m unsure whether or not I’ve made past references to our little haven but life without Subway would be a miserable experience here. Subway is the only consistently open food place in and around our campus that serves during Ramadan. Of course, we can’t EAT at Subway, we have to take it and leave. As a result, the three of us made our sandwiches and crawled down the fire escape around the corner from the garage to quickly scarf down heaven in a bun. Who knew I’d come to Jordan to go on the Subway diet.
I didn’t fall asleep in class today which was a miracle (I mean I dozed a little, but there was no drool involved and hardly any squigglies on my paper). After class, which is so long, monotonous and dull that you would believe you were being read a bed time story of insurance manuals, we hopped a cab home. We were excited because the seats were leather without holes and the cab driver seemed happy, no militancy. We drove towards our house at which point the driver veered off into a gas station leaving the meter on. It is customary for the cabbies to simply take you on their gas errands, or other errands, whether you care or not. We told him somewhere around six times to please turn the damn thing off… he said “ok, ok…” and did nothing. We agreed to simply detract it from the final total. After leaving the gas station, we notice that he is incessantly checking his rearview mirror. Finally, he pulls over and motions to a beautiful, rather trampy uncovered girl to get in the back with us, she agrees. We are pissed. He is a pig. I’m surrounded by men who are pigs here. There is something in the air that makes it okay to be a greedy scumbag man and I encounter it over and over.
As a white American woman, I am let into every building and entrance that the locals need ID to enter without question. I am put on a pedestal and the idea appears to be if I let you in, you will flirt with me. You don’t have your head covered and you walk with your hair down so you must be easy. When we arrived at the house, we gave him two dinar, which was two dinar more than he deserve, but twenty five cents less than what the meter said. We gave him the two and crawled over the tramp to get out. He then threw the two dinar at my face and told me “MORE!”. He was furious. We left the cab and said two dinar is all you get homeslice. We were talking about a quarter here, but me being furious at the pig that he was, and he being furious that I was not giving him enough let alone tipping him made us both too stubborn to give in. We exited the cab at which point he furiously honked and abruptly stopped his cab and got out to give us a piece of his mind. I had given him the two dinar he threw in my eyes as if I were the leader of the brothel pack and he threw it back at me a second time. We were terrified he was going to beat us with his flimsy window shade so we finally gave him the quarter.
I have not had very good experiences with the men here. The cat calls and honks do not bother me half as much as the quiet smirks and under-the-breath side comments of a group of men just watching me walk. Those are the most common. I do not like the stories I hear from girls in my program in homestays who find themselves eating in the kitchen (as opposed to the dining room) when the male friends come over and being treated like a piece of meat or contrarily given special privileges with an expectation attached. Luckily, on our program, the men with whom I associate are dignified. They are kind but quick to help us defend ourselves or ignore the nuisances of life here. The men I have met on other programs are boys. It is as though there is a precedent set for how you can behave and western men are quick to pick up on it. They do not have to be equal here; they can be the leaders of the pack. If you are one of those feminists who argue that normativity in US makes it a man’s world still, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I am very uncomfortable around them, even some of the white ones from Suburbia, USA. Women are so quickly objectified. Some find it fascinating that there is a piece of hair peaking through the hijab and are quick to fantasize. Others enjoy the sight of a girl with a skirt a bit too high and a shirt a bit too low. I don’t know which is safer. I’m not sure if we actually have a long way to go still, or if I’m not being open minded. Regardless, this is my experience. When sexuality is so publically suppressed, it creates a tension that is beyond uncomfortable; I think it is almost dangerous. I’ve seen women making out with their boyfriends at the University literally sitting on the ground crouched between two cars in a parking lot. Homosexuality is entirely illegal. Some men seem to find the idea of being covered as alluring because of the mysticism underneath while others are simply lured by long hair and form fitting clothes. You just can’t win. Who knows who is protecting whom from what.
