I will start this post with a little note about the Arabic Language. As a language that stemmed from a society and culture that valued order, consistency, rules, and patterns the language will naturally follow suit. Nothing in this world exists in a vacuum and just as society and culture inform science and religion all these factors inform the way people speak and express their opinions, beliefs, and values in daily life. Arabic is set up around a root system; each word has a three-letter root, all words that have the same root have similar meanings. You can also take this root and conjugate it into any 1 of the 10 forms that exists to express that noun or verb in different contexts. I will be the first to admit that this system is not always logical or practical but alas it has been part of the language for over a thousand years. It is interesting when you continue to study the language and you find words with similar roots and things start to click on how those things are related. To most people these connections seem distant and rather unrelated but there are the times when you can understand a lot about cultural understanding from the words themselves. And so we begin our small lesson in semiotics and linguistics, this lesson has informed my experience here in Jordan and truly one of the larger questions in our world today about the divide between East and the West.
I remember the day that I was sitting in the third floor of Wells Hall overlooking the Red Cedar River at Michigan State while the snow came gently down and we were going over the new vocab in Arabic class. The new vocab that we were going over was about politics of the East and the West and with the knowledge of the root system our class had a realization. The word غرب gharb means West or Western facing in attitudes and perspectives and the Occident, a similar word غريب ghreeb which has the same root translates to strange, odd, foreign, bizarre, peculiar, exotic. And with this realization came a change in my perspectives on the Middle East and my attitudes towards what it would mean to live and study in a place where my identifier as a Westerner also identifies me as a natural outsider, someone that the language itself dictates to be in a separate and distinct class that will forever entangle me and my home together.
In all of this I can speak for myself and many others who have committed themselves to learning about people and places that differ from themselves and the true way to know you are on the right path is accepting that you will never be fully accepted. I could spend the rest of my life living and working and toiling away in Jordanian society, in work and at home and in friendships, constantly seeking the approval and acceptance of the people in my life in Jordan. I know now that all of that would be to no avail, I would never be fully accepted into society but that does not mean one should not strive to work as hard as possible to break down the social, cultural and societal barriers that inherently exist between two people from half way around the world when they first meet. It is not necessarily about the end result but more about the journey and the experience of breaking down barriers. This is no easy task, as proven by the engrained differences existing within the language itself that identities me as different simply by the place I am from.
As I approach the close of this adventure in Jordan I am reminded of this inherent difference between myself and those around me in this beautiful country and have come to no longer be frustrated by the differences but accept that I will always be different. There have been so many moments along this journey where I simply could not take the differences anymore and wanted to give up and go home. One thing that I was not expecting in Jordan was the amount of culture shock. If I had been dropped into a Bedouin camp on the edge of the desert or in Wadi Rum I would have had an easier time adjusting to the differences in culture because they would have been so extreme. In Amman and in our daily lives here the differences are ever so slight. Things operate like I am in any city in the world with bustling businesses, modern and fresh clothes, interesting patterns in hijab and a focus on international economics and culture. Yet there are differences, for example, being able to go to a website and have the entire thing be in a language I can't fully comprehend in addition to not knowing if all the information on said website will be correct. For example trying to find a specific item in Amman requires many steps. One must find the website and then translate the key information, then call them to see of the hours listed on the website are actually correct and then ask them for an address, once finding the address you must analyze a map to find out the nearest landmark because cab drivers do not use maps or street signs. After doing all these things you must hunt down a finicky cab driver and then convince him to go where you want to go in the traffic and pray that you can accurately describe where you actually want to go. Once you get to the general location you must walk around searching for it and using broken conversational Arabic to describe what is you are looking for and even then once you arrive at that location it might not be open even if it says that it should be on the website and then if it is open they still might not be able to do what they said online or that the one person who can do that serivce only comes in on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 3:00 and I will simply have to come back then. All of these things are normal and expected here in Amman but certainly does not make getting chores and shopping done in an efficient way a possibility. I have enjoyed adjusting to a slower pace of life but at the same time the reverse shift back in to the speed and efficiency of life back in the States will come as a shock. As our beloved friend here always says, “It is all part of the experience” and that is sometimes the only way to face what must be done and the challenges that lie ahead because it is simply all part of the experience.
This all relates back to the fact that this place to me will always be strange and never quiet what I will consider normal. People have an amazing affinity for making the abnormal into the normal in order to succeed in a situation. It is no longer abnormal for me to wake up at 4:00 AM for the morning call to prayer and fall back to sleep only to awake in our three-bedroom apartment and get ready for the day. To take a taxi to school, to consider pita bread just bread, to go to a café and sip on Arabic coffee while overlooking the Roman Citadel. Normal weekend plans include going to some of the world’s oldest recorded places, to have the opportunities to meet people from all over the world including maids from Sri Lanka, cab drivers from Egypt, students from South America, Businessmen from Europe, and Tourists from Asia all mixing in one place. These things have become normal to me; I am no longer riddled with worry about what will happen tomorrow or intimidated by people who differ from me. This place has taught me much more than I could have asked for about what it means to adjust change and adapt and if anything I have seen the power of humanity to adapt to literally anything happening around them. Life continues on and you can continually fight change or accept it and move on. The abnormal has become normal for me and in a place where my background literally defines me as a stranger both from a strange land and a strange person, I appreciate that I have been able to accept that as normal. Conversations about where I am from, what my background is, where my family comes from, what my political views are, the stares from children and adults as I walk down the street, the feeling that I know I am a stranger here has become normal to me. I am thankful for that, it has taught me a lot about myself and other people who exist in places where we are inherently different and that it is ok to be that.
And so here we are… we have reached the final stages of my study abroad at this point next week I will be at Michigan State University in my dorm room bed preparing for another insanely busy and amazing day at the place I truly can call home. How did I end up here, where will I be in a year from now, and what does this all-mean? I will try and keep the mushy stuff brief on here and I will need much more time and deliberation in order to figure out exactly how I want to shape my experiences in Jordan into an applicable life lesson. If someone where to ask me right now in a sentence how was Jordan, I do not think I would be able to do it. I am constantly trying to figure out how I want to phrase this amazing two months into a tight little compact present to give to people. I think that one phrase that I can apply to all of this is شوية shweya, literally used it means slowly and in a phrase شوي شوي shwey shwey which means step by step slowly. In a more culturally focused context it can apply to many more parts of life and is applicable to my entire experience here. Life could use a dose of slowing down every once in a while, something many places of the States do not value. Efficiency and the ability to only see time as money comes at a cost, a cost I had not realized I had been paying for most of my life. Life will always continue on and at some point you need to realize that life all ends in the same result it just depends on how you choose to get there and I have come to realize that the method of getting there is more important than the outcomes in life. Things come and go, people come and go, and there is in many cases little control over those things but you can control the way you view the world and I have begun to realize that if I simply slowed down and looked around I would appreciate this beautiful and crazy world that much more.
The other saying that I think has become critical for me to understand and that applies all the things currently happening in the region as well as around the world, in our communities, in our families, in our friend groups and in our daily interactions with people. It is important to understand a few critical things about each other and an Arabic phrase that I learned applies to all of these things and our impressions of people. “مش كل أصابك نفس الإشي" this saying translates to "even though there is a single hand; do not expect all the fingers on the same hand to be the same". This applies to all aspects of intercultural relations as well as relations within our daily life. That when facing people even though they may be from a group you know or think you know do not expect them all to be the same. This practice is something we all can learn from and certainly something that has applied to my entire time here in Jordan in learning to appreciate the difference between others and myself.
So this week other than focus on reflection and finishing up academically I had the great opportunity to travel to Jerash one of the best preserved Roman cities in the world and despite the heat and the fact that every Roman ruin looks exactly the same it was an enjoyable time because of the people we were with from our program. I also enjoy seeing many of the places because all of the tourism signs and many of the preservation projects and welcome centers in Jordan are sponsored by USAID Projects and I find it comforting that some of our taxpayer dollars are going to preserve world heritage sites and hopefully saving some of these places for generations to come with funding to protect and preserve them. We also traveled to Ajloun a beautiful part of the country that is cooler and at a higher altitude in the mountains and the area has a decent amount of water, which was a welcome reprieve from the oppressive heat of Amman. We traveled there and got to see a Crusader castle, which overlooks the valley leading to Jerusalem in the distance. It was overall a long and tiring day but in the future I will come to appreciate, at the time I did not simply because of the culture shock of coming back from Turkey to Jordan and although both Muslim countries both have a very distinct and different feel to them. I also had a great time getting my first Jordanina haircut and learning more about the culture and style here at a local barbershop. My barber was a guy who was born in Kuwait but had worked in Syria and France and spent a good deal of his time in the United States and Canada but his roots are all in Turkey and now he is living in Jordan, just another example of how this world never ceases to amaze me how people move around and define their life in different ways.
This past weekend we had a great time going out with our host sister Nataly and some of her friends and good friends from my program to a Jordanian Club. It was definitely an interesting experience going out in Jordan because of the Western stlye dress and culture of going out that clearly clashed with the very conservative and engrained modesty that comes with Jordanian society. Many people say that Jordan is simultaneously very liberal and yet conservative, a hard concept to explain to someone who has never been there but it relates back to how Jordan is so close to being Western with slight differences. I found that going out was a great fun but also so inherently different than what it would be like back in the States. Just when I felt I was adjusting to the culture here that was a curve ball I was not expecting and did not know quiet how to handle.
All in all it has been a great last week in Jordan all that lies ahead of me is two days of class and a long flight home. In a place where the language, the culture, my own perspectives have all pointed towards strange. If asked what the one word I would use to describe my experience in Jordan it would be, غريب ghreeb, strange. A great experience that taught me to slow down in life and take things شوي شوي shwey shwey as well as realizing that not all people are the same has been a great lesson in many things besides the Arabic language and for that I am truly grateful. So cheers, cheers to a great trip and to many more, to great friends, beautiful places, fun times, hard times, great memories, good food, love from family, appreciation of home, cultural understanding, soul-searching, and most of all fun. I have had the time of my life here and would not trade it for anything. I look forward to travel in the future and although I am sad that I am leaving this place, leaving is just as much a part of the experience as coming is. All things must come and go and this is part of learning what it is like to readjust to the familiar back at home. And as when starting any new chapter… Away we go!
I also want to thank my host family for being so loving and welcoming into their home. I truly felt at home and would not have asked for anything different. Thank you Dzovig, Garo, Nataly, and Chris!
