I am Spinach and I Want to Use Your Pigeon

Day 3

Words learned: Magara (cave), shway-ay (easy), Fareesay (cinnamon cake treat), mashnoona (crazy aka three fries short of a happy meal), Sabanah (spinach), Melik (king), Hammam (pigeon)

Color of hijab: grey

# of Camels sighted: 1 caravan

# of Dranks (tea/coffee): 8

Battery Power left in ipod: 54%

Taboos committed:

1) Guests will face two enemies:  the bottomless cup of tea and a regrowing pile of Mansef.  It is a taboo to be full, though thankfully my host mom was very forgiving about it.  On this particular day, we had a mansef picnic at the foot of mount Jabel. I proudly proclaimed "Ana sabaanah".  The entire extended family laughed at me.  It turns out I declared "I am spinach", rather than "I am full" which is "Ana shabaana".  This language is going to be the death of me.

Picnic at the Mountain

This thob is getting a workout and so am I, much to my surprise.  I told them about how I climb and teach climbing and they pointed east toward the Jebal (mountain).  We went to Jebal Guyis today with the extended family: 14 kids aged 2months-18years old, 5 parents and myself.  I have decided that Fahleh is very much the patriarch who plays the soft approachable family man side when it suits him.  He is the breadwinner and I suppose that does give you special rights on the way you treat your dependents in this culture?  To be determined.

This is the second time this year I have ridden in the back of a truck.  It is my hidden passion, the Achilles heal of my composure.  I just lose it.  I had one of those "there is no where else in the world I would rather be right now" moments that leave my spine tingling and a smile lingering.

Instances in the backs of pick-up trucks:
1) Jungle 2) Desert 3) Baltimore next????

I’ve decided that my immune system is a strong as it is is because I sucked my thumb till I was 10.  Watching these dirty-faced, snotty, slimy-handed kids play then curl up and stick their thumbs in their months seems quizzical from my 20-yr-old vantage point but I can remember “good times”.

I fit right in with the four-year-olds.  We slid down the mountainside in a puff of volcanic dirt and when they declared it my turn I shouted..
“Ana Aasfor!  Weeeeee!”  (I’m a bird)
And every kid that went after me mocked me in a mimic-ing manner.  I thought it was hilarious.

I summited a 200 meter volcano, this time my guide was not an angst filled bipolar Ecuadorian man who was fixated on the phrase “vamos a la playa”.  Instead, it was a spunky 8-yr old girl in a purple hello kitty jumpsuit with the wisest eyes and the most grace I have ever observed in a child her age. We skipped and sashayed up the mountain while I sung “this land is my land” and “el pescador”  I didn’t feel the language gap between us.  We both wanted to climb.  "Ana assfor mashnoon.  Foq Foq!"  I am a crazy bird!  up up!!

My glorious mountain guide!

The women on the way to Jebel Guyis

At the Summit of Jebel Guyis (picture taken by my "guide")

As Americans, we are taught to display our identity through what we wear and how we wear it.  We are a people of action and individual pursuits.  Under my thob I wore athletic pants and a JHU Women's Club Soccer shirt.  It bothered me that I could not share "my person" with them.  Even my turtle earrings were covered by the hijab.  Not that I didn't enjoy wearing the traditional Bedouin garb, but It wasn't "me" and I viewed the experience in the same way that I viewed wearing a "uniform".  When you wear a uniform, you become part of something larger than yourself--a team, a religious group, a workforce, and army--but it is temporary.  This uniform was not temporary.  Today, a Friday, all the men walked in kufeeas to the church.  It was a chilling sight if only to see everyone shirking their own identities to become part of something greater and to humble themselves in the name of God and the Prophet. 


I was able to justify removing my thob for the 2 hours it took to play some soccer with the family and summit Mount Guyis. When wearing the thob, I became part of a communal identity and it was overwhelming at times.  When I returned to the house, my father immediately led me to the bathroom and told me to clean myself up and "put on dishdash now".  I felt angered but did my best to brush it off.  Suddenly, because he had ordered me to wear it in the insensitive tone with a nonchalant waive of the hand, I didn't want to.  I felt that I could control less and less of my world and this made me exceedingly uncomfortable. I always resisted change because I feared the consequences of stepping out of my comfort zone.  I also relished in the ability to control my surroundings.  These feelings stemmed from a childhood brush with OCD.  I have since been able to conquer these fears and let life happen but I still relish being able to retreat into the predictable insides of my turtle shell (have alone time).  In the Badia, I was exposed and subject to the whims of Fahleh who would often approach me and order me to help Sumaya make tea or put my shoes on to accompany them to a relative's house without warning.  I felt like a pet on a leash. 

The women of the family led me out into the desert with them with an unknown destination.  They kept saying what sounded like "cough! cough!" and repeating the word "magara".  Upon arriving at some ruins surrounding a large hole in the ground descending down at a 45 degree angle, I realized these were words for "cave". In broken Arabic I determined that 1) It was called Azeez Cave 2) It was not a special cave, just a cool desert cave. 

The location of Magara Azeez

Descending into the cave of wonders

Inside the cave, it became apparent that there was a passage off to the right.  The air was colder there.  I was thinking of pulling a "Gandalf" and sniffing the air to determine if it was safe, but I was feeling free.  I ventured to try it and as I moved toward it, my host mom, her niece and her sister moved with me, emitting nervous laughter.  After about 9 feet, the light from the entrance faded away again and we were left in complete darkness together.  My 17-year old host cousin gripped my left shoulder as I inched forward holding my cell phone out as an inadequate flashlight.  Her mother did the same with her own cell phone.  We were a two-woman concert crowd.  I focused mine on the ceiling which almost looked plastic in the poor lighting.  After about 15 yards of nervous silence, I felt the hand disappear from my shoulder and heard them scurrying back towards the light.  It was a moment of a million metaphors and apparently also of alliteration.  I thought of death cab's song "I'll follow you into the dark" which I saw performed passionately by Mat Kearney and Ingrid Michaelson together at Ram's Head in Baltimore. We all experienced the same emotions--fear and wonder--and it for a moment, I felt like we had bridged the culture gap.  Just like at the top of the mountain, no words were needed to understand each other.  I was conscious of the fact that I would never forget that moment.  I felt like a female Moses leading my people into the unknown and they trusted me. 


At the top of the mountain, I felt like "the melik (king) of the world".  I was freed from the thob and I was free to say and sing whatever I wished because it was just me and my young grinning guide.  I didn't have to worry about doing anything Haram.  It was my momentary escape, something I realized that I needed everyday or else I would go crazy like Colonel Jack O'Niell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxXTS0WAdc0.  I would proclaim to my family that night that this was the "Ahsan Yom" (best day) I have had in Jordan so far.  And I meant it.  But I felt that way for the wrong reasons.  It was the same level of excitement that someone who didn't eat all day would have when presented with a mountain of Chinese food (which every culture seems to appreciate).  I was starved of freedom and on top of the mountain, I was finally a free bird!
   

Watermelon seeds are snack food which fits in with the lifestyle--hard work, low reward.  The edible part of a the seed is about half the size of a finger nail and the shell is traditionally cracked by placing the seed perpendicular to your two front teeth.  The moment I thought “Man, I am getting really good at cracking these watermelon seeds, I cracked one and the insides rocketed down the miniscule slit in my thob and planted in my bra.  Knowing it would be a difficult situation to explain of one of the parents looked over and saw me digging my hand down the front of my thob, I decided wisely to retrieve it in the hamam (bathroom).  I cannot tell the difference between the word for pigeon and the word for bathroom because both sound the same to me (hamam vs. hammam) so I pity the shopkeepers/waiters in the near future who have to suffer me asking "Where is the pigeon?  Do you have a pigeon?"  It's bound to happen and probably already has.  Speaking of bathrooms, I now smell like one.  My family has the kind you have to bend down to use.  It is literally "a hole in the ground" but I enjoy it because it resembles pooping in the woods, which is an instrumental part of my job back home.

We finished the day by watching "Ironman" and "Sahara", both of which have men in kufeeas playing the bad guys at some point (though some Arabs in Sahara are cast appropriately).  I wonder if that angers the Bedouins or any of the Traditional Arabs.  Queen Noor reflects, "In the black-and-white dynamic of stereotyping, the media inevitably portrayed Arabs as terrorists or oil-rich gluttons, as religious fanatics or primitive beings." (196)

Here is an example:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkoyw7v56bw&feature=related

In the ORIGINAL opening scene of 1992 disney film Aladdin, a little Bedouin boy in a cartoon  desert happily sings “oh I come from a land…where they cut off your ears if they don’t like your face.  It’s barbaric! But hey, it’s home.”  

Queen Noor believes that "Such negative and distorted renderings of Arabs were misleading and damaging to any sort of rational dialogue." (196) I think that hollywood and TV focus on the bad in every culture (Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, Jersey Shore) because the extremes are more interesting and stereotyping is a perfectly human as a tactic of self-defense.  Flipping through channels, "Memento" was on again.  It puzzles me how this could be an international hit.   I had to watch it twice in English to understand it.  Even with subtitles it’s still a mess considering that half the meaning is written in tattoos and on notes.  But Jordanians like their action television.  MBC Action channel comprises 75% of what I have watched.

Fact #7:  I love riding in the backs of pick-up trucks.

Fact #8: The movie Ironman never gets old.

Fact #9:  Eating watermelon seeds is always an adventure.

Fact #10:  I can only take so much of "communal identity", and I'm not cut out to be a Bedouin housewife, sorry suitors.