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.
ere 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. 
