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.”