Today was a very frustrating day for Arabic. You know those mornings where you physically wake up, but you’re in a fog all day? That was me, and it didn’t wear off until the afternoon. My already horrible Arabic vocabulary shrunk down to the level of an infant. I watched an Arabic children’s show on you tube, and didn’t get a single part of it. Go me!
Anyways. Other parts of my day got better, especially when I had the first of many amazing “Contemporary Arab Women Writers” classes. My teacher is amazing: she’s a hardcore Arab feminist who openly discussed her frustrations with how closely feminine identity is tied to family honor and, consequently, societal expectations of how women are expected to behave in a more traditional context. Our readings will be phenomenal, and our small class discussions will most likely be incredibly good. Some of her points were particularly interesting and worth noting.
For starters, the University of Jordan didn’t have a Women Studies department until Queen Rania (go Rania!) created it in the past decade. Back in the early 90’s when my professor was hired, the head of the language department told her that she could “teach anything except sex, politics, and religion.” What’s a good novel without any of the above? She pretty much ignored those rules, thankfully. She has had a lot of difficulties with both students and other faculty complaining about the explicit, often sexual nature of the texts she uses in her feminist literature classes. I guess there was one particularly charged text that provoked a female student to report to the dean of students that the professor was teaching “pornography.” The dean suggested to my professor that she “skip the pages that mention sexual activity by omitting them from the copy books.” That didn’t happen, of course. There are still plenty of restrictions on the texts she can use in her classes. I suspect, however, that she has more liberty in her CIEE classrooms. I hadn’t realized that there was such an imposed level of self-censorship at UJ.
My first class-provoked discussion took place as we were leaving the classroom. Myself and a few other girls discussed our concerns: would the class merely emphasize a small, stereotyped portion of Arab women? As I have begun to learn, Jordanian women represent a mosaic of feminine identities: some wear hijab and smoke publicly or date, some do not where hijab but will not date, and countless other combinations: not all Arab women feel one way about hijab or niqab, honor killings are not a universally common occurrence in the Arab world, and so forth. I feel a little uncomfortable grappling with these concepts, since I will inevitable impose my own worldview and non-local perspective. I mean, I can barely figure out the language here. I can’t even say “help!” in Arabic, as the next story will demonstrate…
As I was leaving campus to go talk with my camping buddy for the weekend, I was lost in thought and unaware of my surroundings. My inner dialogue (which sounds a lot like Dr. Allison Hodgkins, the country director for CIEE and safety guru) is now telling me “you stupid idiot! Always be aware of what’s going on around you,” but I digress. As I normally do every day, I swiped my ID card at the infamous “Guantanamo Gate” to leave the campus area and go out on the street. I pushed through the spin-gate thing only to find a locked fence on the other side. I tried to turn back and go the way I came, but the spin things wouldn’t spin outwards to let me free. Rather than get help for me, about 10 Jordanian students stared at me from their benches. There was whispering and laughing, but no rescue attempts. Given my horrible Arabic day, I didn’t feel too inclined to make a fool of myself trying to speak in Arabic, so I chose to climb out using a very easily summited iron fence. It seems like this solution would not have have been “typical Jordanian behavior” as my Dr. Allison Hodgkins voice reminds me. The giggles and whispers turned to laughter, and finally two girls walked up and said something in Arabic. I assumed they wanted me to stop, since they did a weird hand gesture that (thank you CIEE required reading!) meant something like “wait” or “stop.” A security guy came and let me out, and in very, very slow English, kindly explained that I was using the wrong gate, and that I should use ‘this one’ instead. He walked me to the gate and showed me out.
The whole situation was too stupid to be embarrassing. It was hilarious, and all of the CIEE students in the office got a kick out of it. My only regret is that I didn’t get a picture. 🙂
Tomorrow is… more Arabic. And I might start my internship. I’ve officially ruled out a career which would depend on my Arabic speaking skills, so I feel a little less stressed out. My Arabic LISTENING skills are okay, but not speaking. I’m getting pretty good at following the Turkish soap opera (dubbed in Arabic) and being able to kind of figure out what is going on in the plot as well as in my host family’s frantic squeals of excitement for the plot twists. My host mom Nuha is really good for my Arabic: she speaks very clearly in normal conversations so I can generally get an idea of what the conversation topic is. (Not my host sister Dina. No clue what she’s saying whenever she speaks Arabic!)
Speaking of Dina, she and Leen helped me practice my taxi language skills yesterday night. I think Dina has a future career in being a chain smoking, swearing, cheating cabbie. 🙂 for pictures and more posts, visit mideastwandering.blogspot.com. (I can’t updload photos here.)
