It’s the little things
Putting yourself out of your element is almost worth it just for the entirely different markers of success that come with a foreign measuring stick. Returning to my room at the end of my third CET school day, I found myself assessing the success of my day in the following terms: more or less communicated my luncheon needs at the (now favorite) falafel place, had a brief back and forth with a storeworker on the best place to buy batteries, held up my end of a group conversation with real live Yarmouk students—maybe even cracked a joke (maybe was just misunderstood)—but certainly got one or two elementary-level questions in (profundity comes in the second part of the program), AND figured out that plush-lined stockings do in fact fit underneath my jeans.
Perhaps my warm and fuzzy feelings surrounding today were because I was at last appropriately dressed to confront the surprising chill of Irbid’s mid-winter, but I’d like to think it’s because the rhythm of life here is starting to kick-in. Patience is not my strong suite, and with the campus empty of the regular attendees (Yarmouk’s winter break doesn’t end until next week), and the classes not yet begun, I was feeling a bit afloat in even the one day of free time. This first week, however, I find myself in the midst of a routine that continues to take shape, but that suggests class from 9:30 to 4, a lunch break navigating the cafeteria of Yarmouk, or restaurants of Irbid, and long evenings in which I’m beginning to remember that academic semesters abroad do in fact replicate the demands of university life. E.g., homework is reasserting its ugly head.
As more and more of our time comes to revolve around the language center, childhood memories of time spent at the English Language Institute of University of Montana, where my dad worked, keep coming to mind. I remember my perception of the ESL students—even at three I found them strange, caricature-like, an eclectically sampled bubble on campus. The Yarmouk students I was introduced to today were eager to engage and delicate with their communication, seeming to already understand how to navigate the linguistic barriers, and happy to do so. Through the course of this interaction, I realized that we (the CET students) were the strange individuals I had once perceived, those caricature “friends” you take home to your parents, show off to your friends. It’s a hard dynamic to capture—being sought, not desired; friendly, but not intimate. There is no malice to the pursuit, but it does feel like An American Friend is the ultimate goal, and I wonder how interchangeable that “An” can be.
I hear rumors of a library on campus. To flesh out my act of belonging, my next goal is to study there.
Photo of the Week: Umm Qais
Posted by Mark Lenhart, Executive Director of CET Academic Programs
This is sunset in Umm Qais, Jordan. I was fortunate enough to visit one pretty evening in September. Umm Qais, 30km northwest of the CET Center in Irbid, sits in the corner where Jordan, Israel, and the Golan Heights meet. Umm Qais is the site of the Decapolis city Gadara, and what visitors see today are Roman ruins dating back to around the 4th Century. The evening we visited, the grounds were exceptionally quiet, with just a few families strolling through the ruins. CET students are very busy with their daily classes, language pledge, and local roommates, and I know life in Irbid can seem hectic. Umm Qais offers our students a break, and for the lucky ones, the chance to catch an unforgettable sunset.
What Are You Listening To?
You never notice the things you take for granted until you find yourself without them. How often do I in America take a twenty-minute hot shower without blinking? Or walk to the nearest Starbucks and order a tall, pumpkin spice latte (with whip please!)? Or even simpler things like being able to glance at a sign and understand what it says or have a real conversation without having to ask, “Could you say that again?” a million times?
However, I’ve found that in the absence of familiarity I’ve learned to listen. In a strange way, the language barrier has been a blessing in disguise. All too often at home, I fill my life with noise. I talk. I listen to music. I watch television. And while I do that here as well, there’s more of an opportunity to listen. My lack of language skills gives me the opportunity to step back, observe, and absorb my surroundings.
At least, that is my hope.
In the mornings on my way to school, the city is just starting to wake up. Outside of storefronts on University St., shopkeepers are beginning their daily routine of cleaning the sidewalks, washing windows, and catching up on the neighborhood news. Taxi drivers, one after another, honk at us temptingly as if to say, “Good Morning! It is early and walking is hard. Wouldn’t you prefer a comfortable cab ride?”
The campus speaks as well. Explosions of color dot the campus in the form of women walking arm in arm to class. Every colorful hijab, every pair of high heels, every perfectly defined face cries out, “This is who I am!” Everyday I am amazed at the wide range of style and fashion that these women wear. As the wind catches a hijab or the sun glints off a rhinestone, I am reminded that expression and individuality do exist here. It is so easy to think at home that the rules of Islamic dress prevent expression. At least here at Yarmouk, the women are colorful and vibrant. They have not let regulations constrict their ability to express themselves. Instead, they abide by the rules of their faith in a way that allows them to be fashionable.
I also hear desire and desperation in the footsteps across campus. Unemployment is a major problem in Jordan. Many of the cab drivers and store owners have degrees in computer science or engineering but there aren’t jobs for them. Therefore, the students here are caught between the desire to learn and the uncertainty of the future. “If I do well at Yarmouk, will it matter? Will I be able to apply my degree or will I remain in Irbid forever?”
Hospitality speaks its own language as well. It is in everything here. It’s in the restaurant owner who let’s us struggle through ordering in Arabic before explaining things in English—and then having us repeat it back to him in Arabic. It is in the coffee shop owner outside of the University who always says, “Hello! What have you learned today in class?” (and he really does want to know what you learned in class.) It is in the multiple dinners with my landlady, who always has coffee, tea, or fruit for me. It is in her family who welcome me into their home and “teach” me how to play Uno. It is in my roommates who kindly showed me how to use the washing machine.
Sometimes I hear fear. Unemployment. Lack of resources. Globalization. In a way, those fears sound similar. Don’t we at home have similar fears? Don’t we struggle with similar problems?
In a way, I’m glad that I can’t always fully express myself. If I could, I’m sure that I would always be talking. However, when you take away my ability to fully express my opinion, it gives the other person the opportunity to speak. In other words, it gives me the opportunity to learn from them. Studying Arabic has been a humbling opportunity. I’ve literally gone into the desert to a place where I don’t speak the dialect. While that could be constricting, I’ve found freedom. I’ve been given the freedom to absorb. I’ve been given the freedom to listen. I’ve been given the freedom to start afresh.
All it took was a little listening.
The Beautiful Challenge
One of my teachers here in Jordan insists that by the end of my stay I’ll be ready to blog in Arabic. I try to imagine an alternate reality where typing in Arabic is actually cathartic and where I actually feel able to express myself without crippling deficiencies. Often I have 150 word essays due in my Arabic class, and although this paragraph is already half way to that benchmark after only a few minutes, 150 Arabic words stare me in the face, filled with mockery, for hours on end. There’s no current of thought. No ebb and flow of emotions and rhythm. Only the daunting reality of each ك and ق and خ which, to my untrained ear, seem frighteningly similar. Each sentence is a reminder that there is no “is” in Arabic. Nouns sometimes feel almost naked as they butt up against one another without so much as the courtesy of a connecting article. Perhaps one day I’ll be nimble enough with this new language to capture the sensations of ephemeral Jordanian moments, but until then I’ll be forced to rely on my English and my camera.
Each day as I meander down University Street or speedwalk between the olive groves, on my way across the Yarmouk campus, I’m struck by some crystalline moment that begs to be remembered. They always catch me unaware, and are really remarkable only for their commonness. They’re the things that, as a photographer, I crave to capture and remember, but both my studies and the prevailing culture dictate that for now some images will only be remembered in words. I wish I could show you all these tiny pieces, the sum total of which equals the profound conundrum which is Irbid, Jordan. You glimpse it in the butterfly flutter of long mascaraed eyelashes on a smitten girl on the university campus. Her round cheeks are accentuated by the wrap of her floral patterned head scarf. She keeps her hands to herself by pressing her arm across her stomach and clutching the strap of her purse as she smiles shyly at the boy who leans back against a car with practiced ease. He wears a tight t-shirt covered with English writing he probably only barely understands and slicks his hair with just too much gel. They are young. They’re flirting under the olive trees, caught somewhere between the past and future. Crowds of students and teachers stream by. Two men shuffle down the street – avoiding the low hanging branches that side swipe you on the sidewalks – in their long white thawbs and red checkered keffiyehs. Across the boulevard a knot of admiring college boys watch as the muscled one in the middle slowly unboxes a pair of newly-acquired Ray Bans. The breeze ruffles the gossamer fabric of the black niqab which covers all but the eyes of a passing woman who might have stepped straight from Jordan’s Bedouin roots. Her physical geometry changes with the breeze as the exaggerated flat-top character of her costume ripples in time with her walk. As her eyes peer out, it’s impossible not to wonder how she sees her world and assesses the stream of high-heeled girls who flow past with tightly concealed hair and even tighter jeans. And what of the minority of Irbid women (though not at all uncommon) who brave the catcalls of countless insecure boys as they stride through life with hair flowing for all to see? You see Jordan in the uniformed and armed police officer prostrating himself in prayer next to his parked police SUV and in the saucy heels and fitted jeans that peak from below the ankle length robe of a conservative woman. It’s in the warm handshake of a store clerk who wants to sell you Turkish shoes, practice his English and assure you that faith is immaterial and that people are merely people – that terrorists are just as aberrant to him as to you. It’s in the old man who offers to walk with you far down the street, just to give you directions to the DHL office.
Nothing is simple here. You breathe complexity in with the sometimes smoky air. I’ll take laundry for example. Best not to even hope to get it done unless you have a whole afternoon free. We technically do have a washing machine in our apartment, but it’s a far different object than what bears that name in the US. It has a hose to be connected to a water source, but there’s no readily apparent water source. This means that the first time we did laundry we had to back the machine up into the bathroom and connect it to the water there. At the recommendation of my good friend Ahmed, I bought two buckets the next time and just filled the machine that way. After the clothes have marinaded and agitated in the soapy water it’s necessary to lift them a few at a time out of the water and put them into the other half of the machine that one friend had the audacity to call a “dryer”. In fact, it is merely the equivalent of the “spin cycle” on a more familiar machine. The clothes require rinsing in buckets and sometimes repeated spinning. While running the spin cycle it’s necessary to constantly monitor and drain the water that’s been spun out of the clothes because otherwise you merely end up blending your bright whites with a swirl of recently expelled water: no drying taking place. Finally when all the steps mentioned have been completed, all the damp clothes are ready. Ready to be spread out over every available surface in our apartment to dry! Thankfully the humidity is quite low here and the clothes usually dry within 24 hours. If I’m really honest, I have to admit that all of this may have been a catalyst to buy new clothes when I went out to the market with my friend. It’s easier (and perhaps cheaper when you account for time) to buy one of the many used shirts at the market than to launder my current ones. Perhaps this is slight hyperbole, but it is an arithmetic worth considering.
Down in old Irbid is the souq or market. You can wind between labyrinthine stalls that sell everything from fresh dates to water valves to used sandals. I could never find the places where I end up if it were not for local friends. They guide me down alleys and under canopies until I arrive at places I’m never sure I could locate again. One thing much stronger in Jordan than in the US is community. Something as simple as shirt shopping needn’t be carried out solo. Instead, you find the shop that’s run by an old friend. When you drop in he might just offer you coffee, and then show you the freshly arrived bag of quality European cast-offs. Together you and the owners will settle in to go through the bag, item by item, until something catches your eye. Then you get to try on the item and present yourself for the review of those running the store and possibly even the other browsing customers. The result is wonderfully relaxed and involves lots of storytelling, chair sitting, and perhaps even a wedding invitation, but it does not happen quickly. Nothing does. I’ve been here a month, and was shockingly gratified to realize that I actually told a story to a friend on a bus last night. My conjugations were horrific and my vocabulary also included a healthy share of hand motions, but I think she understood what had happened by the time I stopped. Being constantly surrounded by Arabic, I’m always reminded of how far I have to go. Still, it’s good to stop in brief moments and remember how far I’ve been able to come in these last weeks. Just like everything here in Jordan it’s slow, and rather difficult, but also surrounded with a great deal of spare but ineffable beauty.
CET Academic Programs