the main event

A week ago, we met a friend of Bruce’s who works selecting students for the SIT Jordan program. In our discussion about the next three months, she related the most useful cultural observation I’ve heard since I got here: that students who come to Jordan are often very concerned with having an “authentic” Jordan experience. Don’t worry about this, she said: by virtue of being in Jordan, you have already achieved this. All of the experiences you have in Jordan are authentic. You don’t have to worry about riding a camel through the desert with the Bedouins unless you want to. (Which, by the way, I definitely do.)

This was very refreshing to me. I think there should be a word for the kind of culture shock that nobody ever talks about: the kind where you fly twelve hours and to a foreign land with a different language and religion and cuisine, having no idea what to expect, only to realize that, really, nothing is that different. A latte still costs three dollars in some places and one in others; taxi drivers are mean and frustrated when passengers don’t speak the language; I still get hooted at on the street and struggle not to make eye contact with the harassers; mothers fight with their daughters about how they dress. (Didn’t I have this same fight with my mother, like, two weeks before I left? Over a skirt, not a hijab, but isn't the principle the same?)

My point is that I think that maybe instead of lecturing us on all of the cultural do’s and don’ts of Jordan (they’ll stare because of your hair color, you’ll take showers that are too long and too hot, the music will be different and you will dress wrong, you’ll long for familiar food and wish you were home but don’t worry, it’s only three and a half months) the International Programs Office would have done better to shrug and say: some things will be different. You’ll see when you get there. Ask if you’re confused. Dress modestly and be polite, be aware of your surroundings and remember that the people are just people, and try to think of them that way even though you’re terrified. And aren’t all of these things we should be doing anyway?

(Note: it's completely possible that this WAS what IPO tried to tell us, and that I just totally freaked out for no reason. That is not beyond the realm of plausibility, especially given my propensity to freak out--in which case I'm coming a little bit late to this cultural-sensitivity- as-basic-human-courtesy party. But if that was the message they were trying to send us, I didn't get it. Only freak-out.)

It’s obvious that the biggest mistake I could make this semester would be to view the people I interact with as representative of AUTHENTIC JORDANIANS: CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, HOW QUAINT. After all, it would be bad news if I were viewed as representative of all global generalizations about Americans. That being said, there are some lifestyle differences between my host family and me, some small (they put the sugar in before the tea, or have I just been doing that backwards my entire life and I didn’t know?) and some huge and world-shaking (and this is my real observation for the day, thanks for reading through my four paragraphs of qualification) : no one here is ever alone.

This is what I want to write about today: the group mentality, the value that my host family and all of their relatives seem to place on always being together. This is especially true in the house. I will go to my room to read or study or just exist—but no one else will, and after a few minutes someone will come to find me, Ziad offering coffee or tea in the salon, or to show me something in a photo album or a magazine. Part of this is probably that I am a guest and my isolation is interpreted as unhappiness, but I think that maybe isolation is interpreted as unhappiness in everyone here, not only moody foreign exchange students.

I have noticed this phenomenon outside of the house, too. It’s true at the gym, where the women at the check-in desk is never at the check-in desk—she’s always having coffee with the woman from the other desk, getting up to swipe my card before returning to her conversation. It’s true in Al Balad, where woman travel in packs through the vegetable souk or teenaged girls in tight tank tops run their hands over rows of pashminas, gossiping. (When I first noticed this I thought of going to Tyson’s with Clarissa, how easily we drift apart inside a store, calling each other’s cells from the dressing room when we need an opinion.) On the rare occasion where I have noticed someone alone on the street they are on their cell phones, and even taxi drivers are constantly leaning out their windows to yell to one another, chatting at red lights.

This value was reflected in the work of Abdul Hay Mosallam, a Palestinian artist who works primarily in condensed sawdust on wooden backgrounds, whose exhibit we saw at the National Gallery during our first Contemporary art and Culture class. In his works he depicts the culture and tragedy of the Palestinian people. Some of his symbolism is on the subtle side...

and some is less so:

It’s rare that someone is alone in his depictions, and when someone is, they are weeping. They are not individuals but masses, feeling common emotions, grieving or celebrating together, and the pictures were richer and more vibrant for it. The sense I get is that this is a society where people interact with people; other people are the main event.

One last image to solidify this impression: at the wedding of Sakher and Samah, which I attended on my first night with my host family, I watched one hundred and fifty people dance until 2:30 in the morning. They were all screaming, clapping, dancing (and all 100% sober!) shrieking with excitement and genuine, tangible, electric pleasure to be together.