Fluent in Face

SQUINT NOW!

DOES THIS NOT LOOK LIKE A CAMEL?

Turns out that this is the international symbol for "something's up with your air bag".  Being the experienced car genius slash camel enthusiast that I am, I was ecstatic when I saw a camel light on the dash of the taxi cab.  Wrong.  Ayib, Anne, Ayib. 

Fact: The collective noun for a group of camels is a "caravan" of camels.

This was the first of many moments of shame (Ayib) that mark the past week.  I’ve been thinking about how I would define my experience in the Badia.  During our Badia debrief in Madaba, I found myself floundering for a meaningful way to summarize my adventure. The 1-10 scale doesn’t do it justice.  I’d say overall my experience was a 6.78 but that comprised moments as high as 9.9 and moments as low as 1.2.

So I asked myself in essence “How do we measure a day in the life?”

  In laughter?  In strife?  In taboos? In cups of coffee??  In colors of the hijab?  In musicals quoted?  In bowel movements?  In cheese consumption?  In camel sightings? 

Some general background:

My Badia homestay family consisted of my mother Sumaya, my father Faleh Al-Musa, and their five children: 2-month-old Muhammad, 8-year-old Abdullah, 11-year-old Ibrahim, and two girls 7-year-old Ayat and 3-year-old Aya.  My father works as the headmaster at the local Middle School and attends class at a nearby university to get his masters in administration.  They are financially located somewhere between lower and middle class but they do not act it.  They are devoutly religious and culturally traditional and live in the town Dayr Al-Quinn, the last town before the Syrian border.

Day 1

Words learned: Ayib (shame), Magloobeh (standard rice chicken dish), Shanta (bag)

Color of hijab: off-white

# of Camels sighted:1 caravan of camels on the side of the road

# of Dranks (tea/coffee): 4

Battery Power left in ipod: 87%

Taboos committed:

1) caught myself picking up a glass with my left hand mid-tea completion.  Haram!  But I think I am the only one who noticed.

2) walked into house with hiking boots on.  Reflex.  My host mother Sumaya just pointed out my mistake with a smile and a glint of amusement.

Within 10 minutes of my enterence into the household, Sumaya had given me the arabic name Maha.  This marked the beginning of my loss of identity.  I found the choice horrible ironic given that Maha is the main character in Al-Kitab (the series of Arabic text books JHU uses) who describes herself as having only one friend, being lonely, hating her life and complaining all the time.

Doesn't this woman look very miserable?

My impression of day 1 is as follows: Badia Homestay is like a glorified slumber party with a twist of cold reality.  Everyone sits around like old friends and watches TV, eats communal food, drinks sweet beverages, gossips and has no discernible bed time.  Lastly, everyone camps out on the floor.  Everything is a regal shade.  My room is a soft gold color and my mother is dressed in a shade of purple befitting of a queen.  I never really liked slumber parties, they were traditionally loud and involved more sitting around than action.  I was never one to enjoy communicating in large groups where the loudest and largest people get the attention.  I wanted to tell her I liked her hijab but I did not for 2 reasons:

1)    I am afraid she will give it to me because these people are that unselfish.

2)     I am afraid I’ll mix up the words “want” and “like” again like I did this morning when we got into my host father’s colleague’s car.  The dashboard was a bright, fluffy red “Clifford the big red dog” color.  It was endearing.  When I declared that “I wanted his car” instead of “I like your car”  he got confused and it took a good 5 minutes to straighten out the innocent compliment. (Thank you Biff for holding it together)

After the above event, prospects for verbal communication with my host family looked bleak but I came to this country to be humbled.

I feel like I walked into a bible story, and not the cute veggie tales version.  All 5 children in my family were named after Quranic figures. And, at the end of the day, there is a moral and a lesson to be learned from my experience.  In every section of the family that I met, there was a Muhammad (I met four), I also met 2 Abdullahs.  My father and his brother both married women who happened to be sisters and I'm guessing also cousins given the pattern. It was that confusing every time I was introduced to a new person: "This is my mother's brother's sister-in-law's youngest son's former roommate."  And they treat that person like one of their own kids. 

I found that my impression of a Bedouin Jordanian family was parallel to Queen Noor's...

“Jordanian families are very close, and I envied them that.  Their house-holds seemed so different from my own family’s and, indeed, from many of the families I knew in the West.  Arab culture stresses interdependence,  In Jordan, children my age, both sons and daughters, did not go off to live on their own but stayed home until they married, so they always had each other for company, supervision, and security.  My  friends the Asfours had seven daughters; with that many children, they were a world unto themselves.  They were not desperately driven by material or social needs because they had everything they needed within their own family.  I enjoyed every visit to their home for dinner, where I was welcomed as one of their own." (51)

When they introduce a father, they say "Abu" (father) followed by the name of their oldest son.  So my dad was "Abu Ibrahim".  It seems the system of cycling names fits with Queen Noor’s diagnosis of the Jordan's focus on "communal identity":
“I found [the lack of personal space] quite unsettling and intrusive.  Over the years to come I would realize that some of this dissonance was cultural—the differences between a Western sense of privacy and personal space and an Eastern emphasis on communal identity and space.”(127)
 I found that I was welcomed as one of their own extended tribe but it put me in a constant state of discomfort not only because we had to sit Indian-style for hours on end but also because it was culturally unacceptable to do anything to reciprocate.  I express myself with actions and by showing people I am not afraid to laugh at the world or myself.  I was trapped.  I was unable to help because everything I did was inefficient (cutting cucumbers, washing dishes) so the entire time I was looking for a way that one of my skills could help.  I played soccer with the very young children, I played naming games with the older girl and I showed pictures and videos on my phone to the parents.

I also found that I discovered a lot of my own personal limits, adorations, and quirks on this trip...


Fact #1: I love sleeping on thin mats on the floor.
Fact #2: Bring on the sugary coffee and tea.

Day 2

Words learned:  Ayid (hand), Hashim (nose), Ras (head), Thom (mouth), Abaya (another name for my dress clothes), Lehyeh (chin), Katif (shoulder), Hatim (ring)

Color of hijab: off-white

# of Camels sighted: 0

# of Dranks (tea/coffee): 9

Battery Power left in ipod: 68%

Taboos committed:

 1)  Mistook a 2 year old girl for a boy. Aya had super short hair and I was trying to explain to my mother that I have a brother and pointed to Aya.  Thankfully Sumaya just thought I was confused with my arabic and not the gender of her child.

My bedouin family had 5 SIT girls before me, one of which was the same “Annie" that my homestay family in Amman had 2 years ago  I have heard her named mentioned so much, she has passed from tangible person status, to myth and then legend.  I imagine her to be this cultural goddess with a charismatic demeanor and infallible motivations.  I keep fixating on this because I often catch myself wondering “Am I doing this wrong?  Could I be putting more effort into this? How can I maximize this experience so everyone benefits?”  In other words, what would an ideal "Annie" do?


I noticed that the women don’t seem to laugh outloud, only smile or let out a short-lived chuckle in recognition of a joke.  I find that I am the only one with my mouth open laughing with my entire body.  I can’t help it and I don’t understand how they can hold their emotions in.  Maybe this minor cultural difference is why media casts Muslim women in the brkha or hijab as miserable or oppressed.  Somehow, a women in the full-body black burka clutching her sides in laughter is a contradictory image in my mind.  The lack of expressive laughter does not sit well with me, so I laughed with the children.  Ayat and I played a game called Ayid (hand) which was a fancy name for “Anne loses” and involves slapping hands, making bee noises and extensive cheating.

Sometimes I would just sit there and wonder how different I would be if I had grown up like the children tugging at my thob.  I wonder who I would be if I had years of conflict resolution experience/diaper changing experience and extreme closeness with extended family.  I’d probably be better at expressing myself verbally.  I'd probably appreciate my remaining grandparent more.  Yet, I probably wouldn’t have had enough time to build a resume worthy of JHU’s attention.

Fact #3: I am at a fluent level in "face" meaning I can communicate almost anything with my overemphasized facial expressions.

Fact #4: I am at a conversational level in the "pictionary" language.  My rudimentary drawings were often misunderstood.

Fact #5: I should not pursue a career in marbles.  Abdullah vanquished me several times.

We'll be right back with "Days 3-5" after this commercial break...

                              This is the town of Dayr Al-Quinn as viewed from the roof.