sticks & stones

Life in Jordan isn’t always easy. Frustration, uncertainty, and difficulty can come seemingly out of nowhere and hit you like a rock in the back. 

Sometimes, quite literally.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my room when my phone buzzed. 1 New Message. I opened it and quickly scanned over a text from my American neighbor. 

“Some street kids just threw a rock at me!”

I was shocked. Yes, the boys on the road can be aggressive and a little wild, but I had never seen them act out like that.  It immediately brought to mind my early encounters with the kids.  When I first arrived in Amman, I started hanging out with them in my neighborhood; they were always around and it was helpful to practice my Arabic.  But the first time we all went on a walk, I had four adults come up to me and ask if the kids were bothering me. I said no. But locals repeatedly advised me to be careful around the kids. Someone explained, “they may be nice to you now, but someday they will throw stones”. I assumed it was a figure of speech. Apparently not.

Then, I remembered a time the week earlier when I was studying at home on the veranda.  I had been outside for over an hour and was completely fixated on my book. All of a sudden, something hit the wall next to me. I pulled my head back in time to see a stick falling to the ground.  I stood up to determine who threw it, but the olive trees in front of me obscured my view.  I shook my head, moved my chair a few feet back, and continued studying. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in this moment I realized it had probably been one of the kids who threw the stick.

After reading my neighbor’s text, I put on my shoes and quickly found the main group of street boys. “KAY-TEE! “KITTY!” “KAAH-TEE!” they called out with varying interpretations of my name.

I looked at them. “Marhaban, ulaad, andee su'aal. Miin darab sadiqti ma… (Hello guys, I have a question. Who hit my friend with…)” and then I stopped. I had no idea how to say “rock” in Arabic.  They looked at me, confused.

I had lost momentum.  I tried again, this time with charades. They didn’t understand, or at least pretended not to. I scanned the ground for a rock to show them. There were no rocks. How were there no rocks! 

“Ta3a-lu! (Come here!)” I called. They followed. I was going to find a rock. 

I finally spotted a white pebble. “…hatha! (…this!)” I showed them. They looked at each other but didn't say anything. I also wanted to mention the stick incident, but I wasn’t up for another field trip. Now what?

I randomly thought of the phrase, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. Compelling, but I have no idea how to translate that. Also, I wholly disagree with the statement. On to the next idea.

I realized there wasn’t a lot I knew how to say in Arabic about the situation.  I finally just repeated everything I had said earlier (this time with my prop) and paused.

“…Hatha mushkilla…mushkilla (…This is a problem…problem)”. The kids waited for more. I tried to think of things, but I had no idea what else to say. After another minute I figured that was enough. We sat around and they resumed speaking in Arabic. I tried to follow along and answer some questions, but I'm painfully slow with grammar. They laughed about my weird phrasing, explained words I didn't understand, and then told me about their day. I felt ridiculous with my limited Arabic, but at least they didn't walk away.

They also didn’t declare a moratorium on rock-throwing, but hey -it was a start. 

:    :    :

(A short footnote: This is not the general experience of most ex-pats in Jordan. I live in a poor district in East Amman where there are a lot of street kids that just make irresponsible decisions when they’re bored. Sort of like me when I eat a pound of chocolate because i’m waiting for the latest New Girl episode to load.)

life, language, & the pursuit of internet

I came home from school last week to find the black rings of my wifi connection signal replaced with an empty gray. 

No internet, again. 

My apartment has had issues with our connection recently, but I had hoped it would work that day since I was set to skype with a friend at 7pm. I checked my watch: 6:20pm. Only 40 minutes until the green light next to my username was suppose to light up in the video contact list. But here I was, in my apartment, without any way to message my friend to say that I was having internet issues. So, I left my apartment and just started walking.  

In my part of the city, there are a lot of homes and shops, but not many places to sit down and eat (eliminating the possibility of finding a spot with free wifi). But I figured I would just walk down the main road and try to look for…something.

10 minutes went by, and then 20. Nothing.

Finally, I saw a building on my left with a large fluorescent red light: KFC. Would they have internet there? Colonel Sanders was smiling. It was worth a try. I walked over to an employee and asked “3ndak net hawn? (Do you have internet here?)” He shook his head. It was back to the main road.

After walking a bit further, I turned onto another main street and finally found an area with sit-down shops. But, once again, no one had internet. (To be fair, most of the places were chicken restaurants and not hipster cafes). I checked my watch again: 6:55pm. As a fairly time-conscious American, this was when I had my little freakout. 5 minutes! 5 minutes! 5 minutes!

I stopped a woman on the street and asked, “law samati, tarif ayya ma3tam 3indu net? (Excuse me, do you know which restaurant has internet?)”. She looked at me and responded, “bidik net? (you want internet?)” and I, quite emphatically, answered “na3am…LAZIM net! (yes…i NEED internet!)”. She laughed, turned the opposite way she was walking, and called out “ta3a-lee! (come here!)”. I followed her up the street, down a dark alley, and into the side entrance of a building where we rode an elevator to the 5th floor.  

The doors opened into a shop full of bright dresses with slender bodices but skirts so large that they seemed to only serve as containers for the miles of tulle underneath. My guide walked to the far corner of the shop where a woman was sitting at a table.  She stopped, pointed at the woman, and said “Sister.” And then she left. 

I just stood there confused as some of the employees whispered behind me. The woman at the table waited for me to say something, so I explained my situation. She nodded and motioned for me to look out the window.  Pointing to a blue sign across the street, she told me there was an internet cafe on the second floor. I thanked her and hurried back down to the ground level. 

When I finally stepped into the internet cafe, everyone looked over at me from their booths. I was the only woman there and very clearly a foreigner.  I went up to the main desk at the center of the shop and told him I wanted to use a computer.  He led me to an empty booth, and I quickly took a seat inside.  I didn’t see a webcam, so I asked him if there was one I could use. He brought me an external camera that only comfortably sat on the far right corner of the desk, making it appear on video as if i was very disinterested. I tried to move the camera in front of me so it could face the direction I was looking, but there wasn’t a lot of space on the desk.  What I ended up with was a frame of my nose and the lower half of my eyes. Great.

With the bright fluorescent lights surrounding the room, the cloud of cigarette smoke around me from the men, and the provided headset I was wearing over my head, I felt as if I was some call center agent in the 1970s working the late-night shift.

A message popped up on my computer “Do you want tea? Nescafe? Water?” I assumed it was sent at that moment from the main desk, so I looked over my booth and said “No i’m okay! Thanks!” The man at the desk looked over, a bit confused. Maybe it was a programmed message? Maybe he did send it but didn’t understand my response? Either way, I decided to go against my classic move of trying to over-explain situations that I’m in, and just let this one pass. 

After setting up skype and making sure the microphone worked, the green light next to my contact name appeared. 7:18pm. I was finally online. I found my friend’s username on the available list and clicked “video call”.

Connecting…connecting…

“Hey!”

“Sorry I’m so late. It’s…a long story.”

bedouin wedding

This weekend I went to a bedouin wedding about 2 hours south of Amman. I didn’t know the bride or groom, but I was invited through a connection that told me “they love having Westerners at their weddings”. Deal. I jumped on the opportunity to experience something new.

To get to the wedding, my neighbor and I had to take a cervees (taxis that run along a set route), sit on a bus for an hour, and then meet a contact that would drive us the rest of the way through winding desert roads. 

It was my first time on a bus in Jordan. They leave the station when the bus is almost full, and then the driver moves out of the spot slowly, yelling for any last-minute riders that might be drinking coffee in the shops nearby.  Buses here don’t stop at set points; they drive along a route and passengers just yell whenever they want to be let off. The same rule applies to people that want to get on the bus; they stand along the road and motion for the driver to pull over. It’s convenient for locals, but confusing for me since I typically rely on bus stop names to dictate my directions. However, my neighbor knew where to go, so I comfortably followed her.

Our contact picked us up and drove us to the wedding. We were quite far south at this point, and it was the open desert land-of-nothing that I had only ever seen in pictures or films like Lawrence of Arabia. In the distance, a man riding a donkey was herding sheep across the road.  A large desert dust cloud lifted from behind him and hung in the sun. When we got closer, the man yelled to us, asking what bedouin tribe we belonged to. My driver said she was from Germany. He furrowed his brow and tilted his head a bit; he had never heard of any tribe called “Germany”.

We arrived at the wedding around 7pm -right before the bride did. We stood along the road as seven or eight cars raced together to the home -everyone honking, yelling, clapping. They had brought the bride from her village to theirs, and at the sight of the cars, two men next to me shot bullets into the air in celebration while everyone covered their ears. (I took a picture and then quickly stepped to the side once I remembered that gravity means the bullets will return back to the earth at the same speed...) 

Colorful and small pendant flags were strung all over the property, flapping above the tent in the wind.  Under the tent, the hosts had set out large rugs that covered all of the mud and dirt, and they placed chairs in rows ontop of them. There were over 150 women in the tent, and the party was quite extravagant. I learned that most bedouin families pull all of their current finances (and finances from their extended families) to afford a celebration like this.

After a quick appearance by the groom, the men all went to another tent to celebrate by themselves. A curtain was then drawn around the property for the women, and they freely removed their black cloaks, showing off elaborate hairstyles and dresses that revealed their arms and legs. Most women wore a lot of makeup to the event, but i’m sure a good amount of it ended up on my face after they all greeted me with kisses against the cheek.

The bride sat at the back of the tent, overlooking the celebration.  She wore a large white dress that made it almost impossible for her to move. People went up and offered congratulations as she sat and smiled.  In front of her, people started to dance in a circle.  Girls all held hands and did a Jordanian type of line dance. I wanted to learn it, so I told one of the girls in Arabic, “I’m new here, can you please show me how to dance?” She laughed and added me to the circle. Only a few people danced throughout the night; at most there were about 20 at once.  It was a little odd to be watched the whole time, but dancing comes easier to me than speaking Arabic, so I stayed on the floor most of the night. 

At 9pm, dinner was served.  Women carried large circular platters of mansaf (the rice, yogurt sauce, and lamb dish) and set them out for groups to share.  About 7-10 people sat together in a circle around each platter and ate with their hands. Since you’re all grabbing food from the same dish, this is the point in the evening when you start to wonder how clean your neighbor’s hands are. And then you remember that you just spent the whole night shaking everyone’s hands, making it statistically impossible to have avoided any germs. So you just sit, grab a handful of rice, and enjoy the food. 

friday.

It’s early Friday morning and the sun is already sitting in my room. I always keep my curtains tied and windows open at night as an invitation for some cooler air to come in, but it does make for bright mornings.  I force myself to sleep in, since I’ve been having fairly restless nights (1-from jet lag, 2- from the loud hums of the 4:30am Call of mosques, 3- from accepting coffee at a neighbor’s home in the evening, and 4- from sticky summer night without a fan or A/C).  However, I’m feeling much more adjusted now, especially after finally buying a fan on my fourth night in Amman.  It makes me think of when my mom once incorrectly used the phrase “tossing and turning” and asked if I was “toasting and turning” at night. Yes, mom. I really have been.

I finally get out of bed and make some porridge over my propane stove. I look out the window, down at my neighbor’s home on the ground level. They have a large rug on the concrete outdoors where their children play.  Beside it is a wire that runs between two tall poles where colorful clothes hang to dry.  A small dirt patch sits in the center of their concrete property and shares its space with a large tree; the shadows of its branches and leaves rest unevenly on the floor and fabric.

It’s still surreal that I’m in Jordan. These white and beige concrete homes pressed together in hilly clusters look nothing like the red-brown brick of flat Chicago. The heat holds steadily around 93 degree F, and along with it -the desert dust. Literally everything here is covered in this white dust -it carries in the wind, across the streets, through the shops, against the cars, and into homes. I remember some Iraqi students in Chicago telling me stories of how they’d have to sweep everyday because of the dust in the air. At the time, I didn’t know what they meant. Now, with my brown shoes covered white in chalk-like powder and a broom often between my hands -I finally get the idea.

Amman is divided into the east and the west.  West Amman is much more Westernized; it’s the downtown area, men and women hang out together comfortably, the shops and restaurants stay open later, it’s know as being “young and trendy”, and you can find many tourists there.  East Amman is very traditional, and you hardly ever find foreigners living in that area. I live in East Amman -actually, quite east in a poorer district. As a Westerner, I definitely stand out; street children often run over and ask to take their picture with me and most people I encounter daily don’t speak English at all. Before moving, I decided I wanted to live with an Arabic speaker in Jordan, and so I tried to find a local that would be open to renting out a room. I got connected with an older Arab widow that speaks no English, and I figured that would be the best way to learn. Most of my classmates live in West Amman, and they find it challenging to practice Arabic with locals outside of class. But it’s quite incredible that simply because I live in East Amman, I can go for a walk, meet random people, be invited into their home, and spend a solid 5 hours sitting around trying to communicate in broken Arabic. On my second day I was already invited in and served “mansaf” -a traditional Jordanian dish made up of rice, yogurt sauce, and lamb or chicken. I've been amazed at the hospitality of strangers around me.


Here’s the view from my room:





  

"Marhaban, Jordan!"

It’s been exactly one week since I finished my job at World Relief Chicago, packed up my belongings, and got on a plane to Jordan. The transition happened so quickly that I hadn’t been able to process anything until I was seated on the airplane, waiting for takeoff. As I stared at the large screen ahead of me with the picture of the flight route from Chicago to Amman, I was reminded suddenly that I was moving to a part of the world I had never visited, living in a country where I knew no one, and interacting with people I couldn’t linguistically understand. Alone. 

Many people back at home and in Amman have asked me why I moved to Jordan. To be quite honest, I never had a strong interest in Arab culture until college. Even then, I never really craved Middle Eastern food or went out of my way to study the culture.  However, I’ve met more and more Arab families through my work with refugees, and I have come to deeply appreciate their hospitality, support, perspective, food, and language. Also, I knew that I wanted to continue working with refugees vocationally, and since most of them are Arabic-speaking, it seemed like the logical next step to learn the language. So I enrolled in Arabic language classes, moved to Amman, and am studying here full-time. 

I quickly became friends with the girl next to me on the plane -also another American. She lived in Jordan last year and is returning for a few years at least. We talked about the culture, expectations, interests, and quickly exchanged contact information.  I’m actually at her home now using the wi-fi since my house’s internet has been broken for a while. 

I had paid for the school to arrange a pick-up from the airport. I walked uncertainly into the main hall until I saw a sign with my name on it.  Even though I had never met the woman holding the paper, I felt an instant sense of relief knowing there was someone to guide me the next step of the way.  It made me think of the families I worked with in Chicago who were coming to America for the first time, many not knowing the language or where to go, but then being greeted at the airport with a sign -an acknowledgement that they were expected and welcomed here.

As the husband and wife drove me toward my new home, I studied my surroundings. We drove past sheep, camels, large hills, and an IKEA. Yeah, I had a little freak out.

The sun was setting, and I was surrounded by Jordanian flags stretched out in the wind. The couple that drove me spoke a little English, and they asked if I would be interested in visiting their home before taking me to the place I would be staying. I happily accepted and they called their daughter to let her know I’d be coming. Their three children (ages 17, 20, and 21) all spoke English very well, and I quickly became friends with the daughter. We all sat outside on their closed veranda, eating snacks and talking. It had cooled off a lot in the evening, and I was so happy to just sit and listen to the family speak. After a while, they drove me to my new home, and I was already invited to have breakfast with my upstairs neighbors before my classes in the morning (yes, I had class the next morning!). 

So much has happened since my first day in Amman; I have attended classes, learned enough of my surroundings to get to school and back by taxi, been invited in by strangers for meals and tea, explored downtown with new Jordanian friends, met classmates from all over the world, attended a bedouin wedding, and have made plenty of errors with my Arabic -mistakes like saying “ana jameela (I’m beautiful)” instead of “ana jadeeda (I’m new)”. Classic. Everyday i’m encountering new people, new perspectives, new places, new phrases, and (of course,) my new mistakes. But in the midst of these full days, i’ll try to create some moments to process and bring you all along with me. Much love, everyone!