So it's been nearly two months since I wrote a blog. I sensed that my blogs were negative in some ways, and I stand but what I wrote, but I feel like sending negativity home about the Middle East is kind of like giving bread to a baker. The fact is, Jordan is an amazing country with fantastic people and it's an honour to live here. I've had a couple of challenging months, which is part of the reason I stopped writing, because I thought, if I can't write anything nice, I shouldn't write anything at all. And my personal negativity and hangups are not really going to allow for a balanced view of anything actually.

So various stuff has been happening in the domains of love life and the universe and now I feel like I've woken up after a storm and been able to make some sense of my recent craziness. And laugh. It's so good to laugh sometimes.

It's summer here now. And when it's summer here, you know it. It's not just the day after day not a cloud in the sky hot sun and sweat. Everything changes in summer. Construction, road works, graduation parties that drive through the streets with teenagers hanging out the windows, the gulf arabs come, foreigners leave and new ones come, the days are long and the nights are busy. And the mosquitoes. Nights of scratching. I think I have the whitest softest skin within 10 kilometers. I drench myself and the room in insect repellent. The water by my bed tastes of it. The air is thick and the windows closed. But nothing helps. Cold showers in the middle of the night take away the itching maybe for long enough to fall asleep. By morning they're gone and the construction drills start. But it's beautiful. Everything about summer here is beautiful. Driving around the hectic streets, windows down, sweaty legs sticking to vinyl, flamboyant Arabic music mixing with the constant horns. Traffic jams at all hours of the day. It's all back to life. Not a drop of rain will fall for the next four months. Sandals are back, and still most of the women dressed head to toe in this heat. It's not so hot, all the Gulfies come here to escape the real heat. It's just a perfect warm summer, of long evenings on the terrace of restaurants, families picnicing on roundabouts and days and nights that never stop.

And so I contemplate my return to Australia. It must come soon. This month I think. It's been a year, and in some ways it seems like nothing, and in others, I feel I've lived a lifetime here. Everything that could change, has, many times. I studied a semester, volunteered for three different organisations, worked five different jobs, lived in two houses with 8 different housemates. I've had dozens of friends come and go and some who stick. I learnt to talk Arabic, to actually talk it. My opinion of this life and culture has changed so many times that now I don't really even have one. I now have a kind of lazy bemusement and acceptance of whatever comes. And of course at times a deep frustration, because there are so many things I just don't get, or I feel other people don't get.

I have seen and heard stuff that I never imagined. I have experienced deep kindness and horrible perverted nastiness. I have been propositioned and protected. Accused of being a prostitute in my own house, which my boss found for me when I complained of my shower in the old place. So many contradictions. And without trying to be dramatic, I feel that life here has been incredibly dramatic, and in many ways, very calm.

I hate the thought of leaving here, and at the same time, am dying to go home. And for once, I feel that all these contradictions are more logical than the simple understanding I believed I had of my life back home.

I love Jordan. It's nothing of what I expected, in any way really. There are bad things, that I wouldn't have thought of, as there are good things, amazing things I couldn't have imagined and know I couldn't find in my country. And the good things and bad things I had heard about the Middle East, well sure, I see some of them, but they're peripheral. It's all a big empty narrative, this view we get of this world. It's meaningless in so many ways. The diversity of lifestyles and opinions here is just as, if not richer than in my country, and I would be silly if I tried to define it. So I summarise it to myself as nice, confusing, sometimes frustrating, but always something, not quite sure what.

May tomorrow be the day

I do this little volunteering gig with Rian at the 'Princess Basma Youth Resource Centre'. They have an 'Intel Clubhouse' out there which is basically an after school self-directed learning hangout for local kids and teenagers. They have access to computers, graphics software, cameras, video recording equipment, music equipment, games, art supplies and so on. There are a bunch of mentors in their early twenties who volunteer and help the kids out. It's a very nice little centre, with a lot of highly motivated local kids from reasonably disadvantaged backgrounds. They produce some pretty nice stuff and are very passionate about what they do. 

So we go out there for two hours each Tuesday and do 'Why Not?' with about 20 of these kids. 'Why Not?' is an initiative of the NGO 'Mercy Corps' to connect youths from around the world, share their experiences and break down barriers. Students in the program are connected through an internet forum where they can post links, music, discuss etc. It's a very nice concept. 

A lot of the kids that come along to our group are there as an opportunity to improve their English, as they all feel that is very important. But each week we discuss issues affecting them, and it's sometimes quite personal-developmenty, debatey, etc. The issue that really got them going, all of them coming from Palestinian families but unable to go there, was Gaza. During the Gaza crisis in December-January, one of our students wrote a song for Gaza. 

This guy is only 16 years old, has never left Jordan, but speaks English with an incredible proficiency and eloquency and with a beautiful accent. He's really a very inspired and inspiring guy and this centre has given him some great opportunities to follow up his passions. 

So he wrote an amazing song, melody and all, and we were quite shocked when he sung it to us, it was really great. 

Our group was asked to submit something representative of the 'Why Not?' program to be shown at a Development Conference in Doha in mid-April, at which Bill Gates will be present. So on the spur of the moment we decided to record the song. 

So Rian and this guy worked on the song, perfected a few of the lyrics, put guitar to it, and on Tuesday, we were ready to record at the local radio station.

In the taxi on the way to the youth centre, we saw the song guy standing on the side of the road, so we picked him up and took him with us. He had bad news. He had told his parents that he was going to sing a song. Apparently this upset them greatly. He told them it was for Gaza, thinking this would make them happy. Their response was along the lines of 'Nothing you can sing for Gaza will make a difference' and 'singing is for girls'. 

Now there are people everywhere that have this attitude, but really it's very sad. This guy was so excited by it, had worked so hard on it, and is now not just forbidden from recording it, but also forbidden from ever going back to this youth centre. We were forced to record it without him, and who knows what effect this will have on his motivation levels. So that was very sad. 

The good news is that the rest of the kids showed up, with their Palestinian scarves and flags, and we crammed 15 of them into the tiny recording studio and they belted out the chorus. I never saw people in such an uncomfortable, hot, airless space look so happy. It's really very nice to see these tough 16 year old kids get so happy about singing songs. Really not something that would have happened with the guys in my class at that age!  

Here's the link for the song on youtube 

Love - let's talk about it in dialect

Rian and I (Dutchie housemate/wing-girl) have recently started a new job. We do some administrative work/English teaching at a language centre in exchange for Arabic tutoring. It's quite a good deal, and a bit of an interesting experience.

So one of the many great deals is that we have a two hour lesson once a week in conversation in dialect. Now this is a fairly big break through for our teacher, who was also my teacher in Australia for two years, as he hates dialect and generally considers that language students should not waste their time on it. He has noticed however that after both of us being in Amman for a substantive amount of time we have become quite proficient in dialect, basically because it is essential for survival. The Arabic spoken in each Arab country differs from each other country and is incredibly different to the formal Arabic used for writing and reading. Formal Arabic is basically used by the media, politicians, and communication between Arabs from countries with dialects that are mutually incomprehensible. If I speak to either friends or strangers in standard Arabic as I was taught at uni, their reaction is always laughter and often confusion. If I were only familar with standard Arabic, their response would be completely incomprehensible to me.

As you can imagine, the whole standard vs. dialectical Arabic debate is ongoing with foreign students and their teachers. There are many students that take their teachers' advice and insist on speaking only standard Arabic, and others that come to Arabic countries without any standard Arabic and see no value to learning it, after acquiring dialect. I'm somewhere in between; I would like to improve my standard Arabic so that I can read and write and basically be well rounded, but I'm not too concerned about being able to speak it well - until it's really good and I'm the Australian ambassador (ha) I'll never actually have the occasion to use it outside of the classroom.

So today we had our dialect lesson, and while fishing around for a topic, we decided that love would be a very good one to focus on in dialect, as we are much more likely to want to talk about it than read about it in the news, or even prophesise about it once we become ambassadors...

Love...since being in Jordan, we have both had some fairly interesting love experiences. Most of the time it was accidental love, friends that unused to having girls as close friends deciding very quickly that this must be love. Or in some cases, a nice opportunity for something else. At one point, when a very close friend got a little too involved, just after we both broke up with our Jordanian boyfriends we really had to say to ourselves, what the hell!?

We had always believed that love was basically a universal concept and that though difficult to understand most of the time, dealing with 'love' in a different culture couldn't be too much different. Well...It really is. I don't have any answers, but I do love making speculative generalisations. I think generalisations and stereotypes are fantastic ways of understanding the world if you just want some kind of peace and not too much head smashing. They explain a lot. I think that most of what I do, think, how I act, feel, believe, etc. is not very unique, but can be explained in the same way as thousands of other girls from a similar background (though I like to delude myself that it is sometimes). (So there's the disclaimer to anything I may say below, i.e I don't attempt to exclude myself from silliness or say that my views are better, cause really, whose views are they....they're not really mine. It's all programing. (Can you tell I studied social sciences...blah, euk, gag....).

The Jordanian society, like any, is very layered, full of different people with different experiences, morals, plans etc. There are those that date, and those that don't. Some of them because they can't, maybe for family reasons (honour, values etc.), or maybe cause they just can't find anyone to date. There are many who date, those that have close contact with their families often do so in secret, others, such as my ex. have suprisingly open families, and of there are some, such as the crowd at the bar where I work, who just don't care about what their families think, or their families are open or whatever.

But basically, at the end of the day, it is haram (wrong) in Islam to have a relationship outside of marriage. Incidentally, one of the many things that led me to break up with my ex. was a conversation I had with him in which he expressed his desire to one day be a good Muslim. When I asked him what that meant, he said many things, but for example, that if he were a good Muslim, he wouldn't be with me. I asked him when he intended to become a good Muslim. He said, probably once I get married. Right. So I thought to myself, once you're no longer in a position to date girls because you're married, you'll stop. Talk about sacrifices for one's beliefs....

And this kind of hypocrisy, I find, is fairly rife in Jordan when it comes to love. Officially Muslims, and in Jordanian culture, one should not date outside of marriage. Go to the University of Jordan, the largest in the country, and you'll often be surprised that it's an educational institution and not a dating house. That's ok. What I don't particularly like, myself, is the attitude many guys have in this country towards girls. They are quite happy to date them, sleep with them, go out with them. But most of them would never date a girl 'like this'. They want someone untouched, that would refuse these kind of things. Even if they happen to be in love with a girl, the rationale is often, well, if she would go out with me and sleep with me, and we're not married, how do I know what she'll do with other guys once we're married. I find it a bit sick, that they're prepared to 'ruin' these girls (as they would see it) but not marry them. I find it sad that these kind of ideas about what a girl should be and how she should act override what may actually be true and sweet love.

And this idea about honour and staying 'intact' is pretty frightening. Jordan is fairly well known as one of the countries most rife with honour killings - the concept of family honour is very strong, and the laws against those who perpetrate such crimes are very lax. In most cases in Jordan, perpetrators of honour crimes will be sentenced to less than six months in prison, and often much less than this. In some ways, I think honour killings are exaggerated in the West, exploited as an example of the corruption of Islam etc. A famous case of this is Norma Khouri's book 'Forbidden Love' which she sold as 'memoirs' recounting the supposedly true story of her best friend in Jordan who became a victim to an honour crime when she was killed by her father for having innocent liaisons with a Christian man. The book, like most books with exotic oriental covers that recount the horrors and perversions of the crazy Middle East/Arab/Muslim scenario, sold amazingly well, until it was discovered by a journalist in Australia that the book was fraudulent and the Khouri had never really spent any time in Jordan. But people love eating that stuff down, and using what are actually in most countries very small incidence rates of honour crimes as evidence of the true nature of the people in these countries. That said, it is a genuine problem and I find that rationale behind honour killings pretty foul. 

I went to see a play in Amman a few months back about honour crimes. Basically, a girl's family saw her arrive home in the the car of a man one day, and even though she explained that the man was the brother of her friend and that her friend was in the car, they were enraged. The son, being a juvenile and thus having more immunity from the law, and also desiring to please his father by cleaning the family name, killed his sister. It was all very dramatic and horrific and upsetting. I believe that as far as honour killings go in Jordan,  which I must add are not an everyday occurence - estimations are that there are around 20 each year here, this is a very standard scenario. Other 'rationales' behind honour killings may be that the girl has been raped, sometimes by a family member, or simply suspected of having a relation outside of marriage. I was told of a case by a doctor friend the other day, that they had been told about in a medical seminar: mother brings daughter to the doctor, and tells the doctor that she has had a nasty fall and has broken her hymen, and could he check it out, so that if that did happen, he may write her a note so that she will not be in trouble when she gets married (ie. her husband can not claim that she is not a virgin). So the doctor verifies that indeed her hymen is not intact and writes her a note. After leaving the hospital, the girl is killed by her family. In fact there was never any fall, they had just suspected her of having a relationship, and wished to ascertain if she had lost her virginity. The fact that less than two thirds of virgins have intact hymens is generally unknown. So many honour killings are committed on what could be considered 'false grounds'. All are pretty horrifying in my opinion. 

Anyway, what was pretty horrifying about going to see this play, and which in a way contradicts what I was saying about us in the West liking to get up in arms about stuff like honour killings that we can exploit to prove a point about our superiority and the perversion of others, is that the play was designed as an educational event for teenage boys. It being that they are often involved in honour killings, the play was made so that they could bring groups of boys along to watch it, and afterwards, discussions were conducted. The outcome of these discussions were fairly disheartening (from what I heard and my comprehension of Arabic is certainly not perfect, and from what the director of the play told me later), because many of the boys were very open about saying, 'I would do the same', 'he did the right thing', 'she deserved it'. And while this may just be boys being boys (doesnt that sound nasty in this case) showing off to their friends in a way that they may thing defines them as tough, it is disturbing that such comments would apparently warrant that kind of peer acceptance. Even after a fairly emotive play, involving people that didn't affect the reputations of these teenagers' families, they were still pretty ok with the idea of a girl in that position being dead. Anyway, nothing conclusive, who knows what all the kids were thinking, most were not very vocal etc. But there certainly is an element of that attitude among some people here - that girls must behave in a certain way, leave the family with a certain image, and god help her if they don't. 

An incident that happened to me last night makes me once again think about this subject (I started writing this blog nearly a week ago and then got distracted). 

On Thursday night  I met some Algerian guys at the bar I work in. I was very happy to have some people to speech French with, so when I finished work and went to another bar and saw them there, we kept chatting. One of them was hitting on me a bit, so I told him immediately, listen, I'm just not interested, pointing to the guy that I am in fact semi-involved with (god we're getting personal now...). Anyway, that was fine, he said ok, it's nice to talk to you, give me your number anyway, we'll catch up sometime. He was a nice guy and I was enjoying speaking French, so I gave it to him. 

A few days later, and following from this experience of speaking French again after a long time, I decided I needed to try and keep my French up, so started a bit of a hunt for French novels. They're hard to find in bookstores here, and expensive. So I called a few of my French speaking (though not French) friends. No one has anything. So I called the Algerian. He said he'd look, and by the way, what are you doing. I was having a drink with some friends, so I invited him down. He came, we got chatting and had a few drinks. All very nice and fine until he said, come to my place, it's nice and we can hang out and watch films. I said, no really, I'm close to home, not up for it. He had once again asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said that for all intensive purposes, yes. I thought that was pretty clear. He pushed this whole business of going to his house, which I really wasn't keen on, having just met the guy, and it being fairly far away. I told him, no it's too far. No it's not, he says. So where is it? He's not from here and couldn't really explain it, so I called a friend over, and said where is this place? Algerian didn't seem too happy about me getting someone else involved, but pretty much let it fall. In the end, in order to get him to drop the subject of going to his, I said listen, come and watch a movie at my house if you want, it's right around the corner. So he came, and as soon as we got into the house, put his arm around me. I said, take that off and moved away from him. He told me, no, give me a hug. I said no! I really don't want anything like that. And then it began. He started to get very antagonistic and demand that I go to his house with him, that I was treating him like an Arab, that I shouldn't have asked my friend where his suburb was, that I was messing with him, that I was going to end up alone and without anyone who would want me. I don't even remember all the crazy stuff he was saying. He was just going a little insane. And I, silly as I am, when I clearly should have just told him to get the hell out of my house, tried to reason with him, and explain why I didn't want to go to his house, and why I didn't think he was behaving well etc. This all just made him more annoyed, and he was being really quite bizarre. I decided I needed to get out of this situation. So I called a friend and asked him if I could go over to his place, cause I really needed an excuse to get out of my house so this guy would leave. So I came back from the call and told Algerian, listen, I've got to go. He said, why? What happened that made you change your mind? Call your friend now and tell him you're not leaving. Stay with me. Get me a drink. Come to my house. And all manner of craziness. I was being fairly firm by now and just said no over and over. We left the house, and he tried it all once again. Let's go buy drinks, come to mine, don't be angry, this is your fault, I told you how sensitive I am so you should have known not to be like this with me. Etc. Etc. So I told him bye and walked off. He started following me and calling after me. The first few times I stopped and said what, explained to him once more that I didn't want to talk to him while he was in this state, and kept going. After doing that four or five times, I ignored it and kept going. 

I don't really understand what happened. All I can say is nutcase. Certainly no Jordanian girl (or very few) would go back to the house of a guy they barely know, so it was really quite an innapropriate proposition. And so he tried to wiggle his way out of that by accusing me of treating him like he was a Jordanian or an Arab or I don't know what. Anyway, when I wouldn't do what he wanted me to do, and the more upset he got about the whole thing, the clearer it became what he really wanted, he was very annoyed. He couldn't handle me not doing what he wanted. Maybe that's cultural. I don't know. I really don't know that many Algerians. I think it's more likely that he's just a little insane and used to getting what he wants. It makes me upset that I think I am getting involved in a friendship with someone, being very clear and explicit that I don't want anything else, and they have entirely different intentions. I've been feeling quite annoyed about that today really. 

Living here is paradoxical really. On the one hand, so many (surely the majority) of people here have very strong feelings about girls being good and staying away from men and what have you, and on the other hand, there's many many guys who see a girl and just have one plan, that they are very well able to mask for a longtime. As I said, don't slay me for my generalisations, just one way for me to see things, and a few little anecdotes for you to consider. I am by no means expressing a complete or clear picture about love or anything else. It's damn complicated wherever you go, it's pretty impossible to define it, to decide what's ok and what's not, and to work out what people really want. In most cases, I think people are too confused by what they want and what they think they should want, and what they're allowed to have, to be able to function properly. Tonight I'm sitting in a dark and quiet room alone, for now my own craziness is enough to entertain me, without that of unknown nutters like mister Algerian. 

Spaces between

This is a rant I made about a week ago - jet lag was making me a little crazy. I intended to fix it up once back to normal, but a week on and I'm still feeling kinda nuts, so here it is : 

I got back to Amman at 3am this morning from a 2 week trip to Australia. 

Living between two cultures, or just two countries really, can be challenging. Think 'Almost French' (Aussie woman falls in love with Frenchman and moves to Paris to live with him, loves both countries, can't have it all...). Splitting your life like that is a choice you make, and the challenges can be easily identified before it gets too late to turn away. 

Lately I've been thinking, 'why invest so much of myself personally into another world....keep it simple, stay at home, it's a good place...'.

But 'home' has very quickly become an abstract place for me. I've lived in 17 houses in four countries with people from around the world. That's not to brag, in fact it's a bit sad in some respects. But that's just how it is, and it's getting a bit ridiculous. How far can you go, spreading yourself around the world, looking for yourself, and just losing yourself in times and places and cultures that you don't really get. I don't get Australia, and that's my home. So what do I want from Jordan?

Most Jordanians tell me I'm crazy to want to live in their country and lament that they will probably never have the chance to leave. Obviously that's another issue that complicates it even more - I can fanny around the world as I like, in and out of countries on the back of my innocent little Australian passport. The guilt could be worse of course, for example if the Australian dollar was worth anything (or if I had any Aussie dollars) and was able to live a glorious rich expat existence in a cute little poor country. But as it is, it's bad enough. I complain about getting abused for being Western (see whingy post below about being groped etc.) but at the same time, I hate the respect that often comes from my Westerness/Australianess/Whiteness (call it what you will...) as though my origin makes me worthy of some kind of deference (once again, not that big a problem, it would be a fleeting encounter with me that would leave any doubt as to my true worth on the respect scale...). Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is that there are sometimes things to feel guilty about, living around the world, as we crazy home rejectors do, but they are insignificant...I'm trying very ineloquently to get to the point: Why? 

Why is such a confusing question. It's like remembering childhoood moments: do I really remember the first ride on that pony, or am I remembering remembering it, perhaps with the help of photos....Likewise, when people ask me, why do you live in Jordan, the answer is lost between fact, fiction, time, ideals, lies (to myself, or to others that I may have started to believe), and basic confusion. 

Obviously, at it's roots, I'm living in Jordan because at some point I decided that learning Arabic was a good idea, or rather, that continuing to learn Arabic, and getting serious about it, was a good idea. 

I intended to stay three months in Jordan, then a further five months, and now as I enter my ninth month, I'm not sure how many more times I'll back out of my intended departure. At the moment, it stands as July, and after my visit to Australia, I'm becoming more convinced that I will actually follow through this time...

Going home made me realise how close I'm coming to losing my sense of being Australian. Already, living abroad, especially in a country so different to my own, does that in a way. Because in Jordan, I'm not Australian. I stopped being that a long time ago. I'm Western. I have one Australian friend here, and was recently told by some Americans that I 'look, speak and act like an American'. Growing up in Australia, I was convinced that we were the one English speaking country that didn't have an accent, that we had no particular food, customs, behaviours or attitudes that characterised us. But we do, and each time I go home, I am more aware of this. I think this means two things. First, that I am now better able to regard my own culture critically and objectivally, but second, that I am becoming less a part of my own culture. This is normal and not necessarily bad. But as they say, it's a slippery path...to somewhere. Not sure where, a really bad accent maybe...

Anyway. My first week was in Hobart, regrettably for the funeral  of my dear grandmother. I will acknowledge that the exceptional and unexpected circumstances surely affected me more than I expected or realised, but, I have never felt so alienated from my own country. A week in Hobart and I thought, 'what could I possibly want in coming back to in this country?'(obviously excluding my family and friends). I judged it, I critisised it, and I didn't see a place for me in it. I can't describe it, I just felt nothing pulling me there. 

A bank advertisement in the Abu Dhabi airport proclaims 'Home is where the heart is'. And I thought yes! of course it is, it's that simple! And then, hang on,where is my heart? 

The first time I went overseas was when I was 16, and I was living with a host family in isolated Finnish countryside. I was alone and all my ideas of self, strength, independence etc. were kind of crushed, and then drowned by my tears of self-pity. And I knew there was only one thing I was pining for. And it wasn't my friends (they pretty much sucked back in those days), and it wasn't my lifestyle, or the familiarity, or the trees, mountains, birds or smells. It was my Mum. Just. No one, and nothing else. Obviously I would have accepted other people or things in her place that would have calmed me substantially, but the point was, I was home sick, and home was my Mum. 

So that was simple for a while. Then of course I grew up a bit, and moved away from my Mum, and learned to live for myself and so forth. And then the concept of home became more complicated. Of course, always, everyone (most people) will feel some kind of strong migratory force towards their family, but there's clearly a point, at least for me, where that's no longer enough. 'I want more'. 

When people ask what it is that keeps me in Jordan, I'm not entirely sure. Because the same things I love are often the things that drive me to frustration on a bad mood day. I love the relaxed lifestyle, where anything's possible, and nothing's urgent. I love that people come first, and not just people in the sense of 'me' but actually collective people. And I'm not saying that Australians are anti-social, but we do put significantly less value on friends/family time, and often we just don't have time for other people. And in a way, I like that in Australia, people are more inclined to get on and do their own thing. But it's easy to get lost in that. It's also easy to get lost in living your life through the group. And I guess it's these kind of contradictions that keep me torn between here and there. I love both, and on one day, appreciate what irritates me the next. 

I guess life is a bit of a battle between yourself, and how you fit into the world. Maybe it shouldn't be, maybe it should be between yourself and god, or yourself and your higher self. I don't know. But my reality is clearly how I fit into the world. And the world very quickly becomes the society we live in. So getting out of their is a good way to find yourself. And I think going back there could be a good way to place yourself, now that you're found. I'm not sure, just a theory. I'm neither found, nor placed, so I can't really say. I hope it's going to be something like this. I hope that I'm not losing myself in times and places, which is equally possible. 

Being back in Australia for a few weeks reconnected me, and that feeling of alienation now feels surreal. Because Australia is so clearly my home, in that it is where I can sort of place myself. But for now, my heart is very much in Jordan. I'm not entirely sure why, or for how long, but it keeps things interesting for now. Maybe I'm distracting myself from finding myself in the place where I really belong. I don't know. Another of the important things to figure out. Anything's possible, and nothing's urgent. 

Rain

I always knew rain caused some problems in Amman. The drainage systems don't seem to be able to cope with more than about 10 minutes of rain and the roads and footpaths become rivers. Driving is pretty hectic as indents in the road become ponds that throw water all over the car, momentarily destroying visibility. Rain here is often accompanied by strong wind and thick fog and fortunately because it is rare and fairly hectic, the usually crazy Ammani drivers reduce their speed by about fifty percent and put their hazard lights on. It might seem like overkill, until you remember that people believe lanes are a suggestion for if there is a car behind you. It becomes more serious when the drivers can't see these cars around them....

Anyway the weather here the last few weeks has been up and down. Just the weekend before last, we hired a car and went for a bit of a roadtrip to the Dead Sea. The fog was so thick that at times I had no idea where I was, and I completely missed the turn for the Dead Sea. So we ended up on a back road that alternated between positive signs - directing us towards the Dead Sea - and strange nondescript signs advertising a detour. It was unclear what the detour was for....In the midst of our confusion in the fog and on unfamiliar roads, a huge down poor of hail started beating us. After the four to five summer months of 'not a cloud in the sky' it's startling to find yourself at the end of a road (we found the reason for the detour), completely disoriented in the blinding fog, with this crazy hail. 

A week and a half later, and little has changed. Fine days alternate with torrential rain and the shoes, laundry, streets and cats remain sopping wet. Expected, and thankfully this silly weather signals the end of winter, and the last hope for farmers before the deathly summer sun comes along for six months. 

What is not expected is that all the schools in Amman were shut yesterday. I originally thought they were being shut because snow was expected. But no, it's because of the rain! I laughed on the one occasion in Tasmania when my school was shut because of one centimetre of snow, but rain! I never heard of that (floods maybe, but there are no rivers here, and though the streets are pretty nasty, they're definitely not flooding.) 

So, there was I, marvelling at the silliness of shutting schools for rain, at the same time as wishing that my uni had too been shut for rain. Alas. Anyway, I asked my teacher about it, because it seemed too silly to be without reason. And it was. There was a very good reason, and it's not silly at all, but a reflection on how, even after all the time I've spent here, I still don't get it. 

Many school children have to walk long distances to get to school because they cannot afford transport. And those in that position may also have limited access to gum boots, raincoats and such luxuries. A classroom full of wet children is not such a good outcome. So I recognised my silliness and forgot about it. 

Until my housemate's dance rehearsal was cancelled because of the rain! Different situation. People simply not wanting to go out in the rain. 

And I kind of get that position now. I'm pretty happy sitting in my room with our petrol heater slowly burning away. Feet are dry and things are calm. I like this lifestyle, where if things are just not super practical or convenient (such as going outside and getting cold and wet), don't do it. I can live with that. 

String quartets vs. Dubka

I went to two concerts last week. The first was of a world famous British string quartet performing Beethoven, Hayden and Tchaikovsky organised by the British Council. The second was a birthday celebration for King Abdullah and featured several of Jordan's popular singers and a troup of young Jordanian dubka dancers (dubka is a traditional Jordanian dance - very nice).

The two concerts were apart. They were both exceptional, and enjoyable, but their differences ran much deeper than the style of music performed.

The classical concert was held in Amman's nicest theatre. A security check was given upon entrance, and the audience was probably half expat. The King's concert was held in an enormous indoor sports hall at the Amman Ahlia University. No security check was given, despite the Prime Minister being in attendance, and the hall was jammed with thousands of patriotic Jordanians adorned with national scarves and clothes, and waving Jordanian flags. There were huge groups of Jordanian teenage boys chanting songs, running around the stadium and basically causing havoc. I have never seen such excitement for the birthday of a head of state before. The atmosphere was comparable to that of a football final, and many hoped that the King would make an appearance. With the lax security, we were deeply hoping that he wouldn't. It was at this concert where I was groped between the legs, some of these teenagers were truly out of control.

It was a very exciting concert and it was fantastic to see so many young people (if a little annoying) taking such pride in their country and appreciation in the talents of its singers and dancers.

The atmosphere at the classical concert was very different, just polite clapping.

Anyway, the point is, these two concerts got me thinking. In particular a comment made by one of the British Council staff as she introduced the string quartet. She said something like, the British Council is working to bring music to Jordan. Or classical music or something. And probably because I have studied anthropology, I thought, hang on, isn't that just a new form of cultural imperialism? i.e. we can't civilise them by ruling them, so let's just bring some civilised music to them...

Probably an over reaction on my part. And it certainly is nice to have a variety of music here, and I really enjoyed seeing this string quartet. But is it really the role of Britain to try and culturally develop Jordan? And even if it were, is it really necessary? Jordan has an Orchestra, it has a big music scene, it is keeping alive oriental music traditions. So why should Britain be spending money on bringing its musicians here. If it has money to spend, wouldn't it be better spent on helping the Jordanian musicians who are already struggling to make their careers here? I don't know, I don't know much about music, but after going to the King's concert and seeing the wonderful performances, Britain's stance seems a little patronising.

I'm sure there's a lot more to it than what I've said, but there you have a few ideas.

The people who teach me

I have a teacher here called Sana' and she's the best Arabic teacher I've ever had. She's well spoken, intelligent, and down to business. She doesn't put up with any stupid comments and she's very open about her views. Obviously, this leads to me disagreeing with some of the things she says - normally internally, sometimes orally.



Today for example, we came across the word for 'fortune-teller or psychic' in the text we're reading. She mentioned that this is haram (a sin) in Islam, and that such people are just liars, for no one knows the future except God. She then asked us whether we had ever had our fortunes told by such people. I was the only one admitted that I had, telling her that my Mum is a fortune teller. This provoked some laughter from class. In fact, my mother does not claim to be able to tell the future, and certainly doesn't call herself a fortune teller. But she is able to very accurately read people and understand many things about themselves and about the type of life they lead, and what the likely patterns will be for them in the future. So, I guess I was baiting my teacher in a way, but we were able to have a very nice discussion about this which is something I appreciate from people that have very different view points.



The previous discussion we had had about love had also warmed me to her somewhat. She recently won an international prize in a short story competition, which the theme of love. Sana' is avowed feminist and has very interesting and pertinent views on love and women. When she accepted her prize in Cairo, she was asked on stage, how much it meant to her, obviously with the expectation that she would whoop on about how this was a great affirmation for her career etc.



Instead, she said, I would take back all the books I've published, all the prizes I've won, all the acclaim I've received, in exchange for true love.



Now, I can't say that this is an opinion I share, or that I don't share it. I honestly don't know if I would pass up a succesful career for love. Which would be more fulfilling? It's hard to say. Sana' herself is very sure, but then she, like me, has never been in love. So how to know? Her views on love make her position even more confusing. She believes that in most cases love is one sided and thus unfulfilled, or that one person is much more in love than the other. In her view, the cases where two people love each other deeply and completely a all but nonexistent. Why? Because for Sana' love means giving and giving and giving. And most people do not have this in them. They just want to be loved. I'm exactly sure where I stand on this view, though I think that a need to be loved, and a belief that love involves the sacrifice of giving, are both equally unhealthy ways to approach love. I'm just happy to have a teacher that is thought provoking at the same time as teaching us Arabic in a very accesible way. An engaging language teacher is pretty rare.



I have to contrast this highly satisfying class with the second class I went to today. We had a professor called Awni (that's also the name of my local supermarket). He very proudly told us that he has published 23 books, more than 20 academic articles, and studied in the US, Russia, Sweden and god knows where else. He's a very proud man, and most of his sentences begin with 'Well, I studied/lived/visited in ..... so I know'.



We will have Dr Awni once a week and he will teach us about media. He says we will read all sorts of newspaper articles, but we wont get bogged down in the politics of them, as we are here to learn the language. Oh, and we wont read articles about sex. Fine, I respect that. So then, he started telling us about a recent new item he had read in the British papers, about Chantelle Steadman(15 years) and Alfie Patten (13 years) who have recently had a child. I hadn't read about the case, and was confused about the news, as I know that such teen pregnancies are pretty common (there was a girl in my sixth grade class who gave birth). So I said, that's normal, obviously not in the sense that I think that's normal, but that it happens. I was confused about why it was news, and news enough that he was bringing it up. He assured me that such a case is not normal, in any way.



So, someone asked him, what is the legal age for marriage in Jordan? 14 for girls, 16 for men, he replied. Observing the shock on some peoples faces (I was not shocked; a friend of mine's mother was married at 13) he defended his country, saying well in Saudi Arabia, the legal age of marriage is 9. That certainly registered a shock in me. But he had another defence, and this is the part that got my goat...



He says, girls that live in hot climates such as Saudi Arabia develop younger (he cites heat as a trigger for puberty...) so in Saudi Arabia, 9 year olds are fully formed women (the implication that physical formation is all the constitutes womanhood was not discussed) and thus ready for marriage. I told him that I had grown up in an incredibly hot climate (Narrabri) which certainly is as hot as some parts of Saudi Arabia (no exaggeration) and that I hadn't started puberty until 12. And, though I didn't mention it, was not a fully formed (supposedly) woman until some years later.



No, no. In these hot countries, girls become women younger so its fine. And Awni has lived in Sweden, so he knows, and there the age of marriage is 18. That's because Sweden is such a cold country that they become women later.



I was pretty outraged by this whole discussion, not because of his view that you can be 9 and be a women, which I certainly don't agree with, but at the same time I am certainly not going to get outraged against a commonly held opinion being recycled by my teacher, but more by his general hypocrisy. The cases of these kid-parents in Britain is an outcry, but not in Saudi Arabia. And that's because of the weather.



Anyway, I decided I should check my facts, in case I was horribly wrong. And it is clear that environment does have some effect on the onset of puberty, namely malnutrition and stunted development leads to a later onset, while obesity and diabetes can lead to early onset of puberty.



I can easily accept that people everywhere in the world have views that disgust and anger me, as well as views that make me sad or relieved or happy. It's not just that I'm living in Jordan, I feel these sentiments with any people I mix with in the world, and I try not to buy into their views too emotionally. But this man, well, I guess it was the way he tried to establish his authority as an educated and worldy chap that really made his views all the more offensive. Ignorance when it's being supported by arrogance is much more painful.


(The above was an old post that I didn't post due to internet failure. Now I have one more to add to my 'interesting comments from teachers stream').


This week's class with Dr. Awni was once more insightful. Al-Taib Salah, a very important Sudani writer recently passed away. We study one of his most famous works in our course, so naturally we talked about him following his death. Dr. Awni introduced Salah to us, telling us about his life and publications. Salah lived and studied for many years in Britain, and experienced some racism as a black man living there. No surprises there, because as Awni was very quick to point out, countries like Britain and the US are very racist and were even more so at the time when Salah emigrated to Britain. But often Western countries get a pretty bad rap in the Middle East, not least by academics. So I quickly pointed out that racism is also a problem in Jordan.


'In Jordan!? No, we don't have racism here.' (Undertones of Ahmadinejad's famous speech at Columbia University in 2007).


Well, yes, you do, I experience racism here all the time.


'No! How can we have racism when we don't have blacks and whites here (not that I like using those terms).'


Well racism isn't just about colour, and certainly not just about two colours.


Westerners can never blend in in Jordan. We will always be ripped off more than your average Jordanian, frequently assumed to be morally loose and lacking a strong cultural background. And the racism experienced by immigrant workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philipines etc. is of an even nastier kind.


'But in Islam, and in the Arab culture, we don't have racism.'


I don't think many cultures or religions state racism as one of their tenets, but bad stuff happens and people don't always follow their culture, in fact when it doesn't suit them, I think they rarely do. There are bad people in every country, and mentalities and attitudes spread through populations very quickly to the point that they no longer seem remarkable.


The fact that someone grabbed my vagina in a crowd today, following multiple jeers in English (one look at me and you know I'm not Jordanian apparently - that's not racist?) does not instantly make me think, wow, these teenagers are racist. But they are. So why does that not evoke in me the thought that the people doing or saying these things are racist, whereas someone being called a towel-head would? A Palestinian being beaten up by an Israeli would be a racist attack, but my vagina being groped by a Jordanian is not?


This is not meant to be a comment on the injustices done to white people, who clearly responsible for some of the most repulsive racial tirades in history, but merely an observation on how we develop our opinions on what is racism.


Racism is typically seen as a savage vs civilised dichotomy where one people designates itself as more civilised than another. Whereas the racism directed at Westerners in Jordan comes (obviously from many things but) largely from negative media images that portray Westerners as sexually loose and morally vague. The wealth that they bring to this poor country also obviously has a part to play, as well as a sometimes different lifestyle, values and priorities. All these things lead insidiously to Western females being considered sex objects and undeserving of basic respect and decency.


I don't agree with such an image of Western girls. There is nothing about me or my culture, or even the way my culture is sometimes portrayed in the media that can in any way justify or excuse someone violating me.


And if these teenagers' vision of my culture was actually accurate, would that make it any more appropriate for them to abuse me?

Well no, because there are real differences between cultures and cultures are frequently constituted of (or mainly identified with) one main 'race'. So to attack someone on the basis of their culture (identitfying them as such by their racial appearance) even if an aspect of their culture is apparently abhorent, would set a fairly dangerous precedent.

What I'm trying to say is that racism is not simply about skin colour or a sense of biological/physical superiority. It has definite associations with the culture assumed to be related to a particular race. And so racism can become a more complicated problem, when it can backed up with complaints against a culture more than with weak biological or physical complaints.

And that is the way racism is moving now. Arguably, Arabs experience the most racism in Western countries at the moment. And this is a comment on the way their culture is perceived, much more than a complaint about their physical appearance which was once the largest driver behind racism.