I'm Not Dead Yet

One of the biggest problems facing a female traveler in the Middle East is that no one can decide just how big the problem is.

I recently attended a Women’s Safety Meeting hosted by our school, which had little to offer in the way of practical advice and seemed chiefly an excuse to indulge in paranoia. The primary suggestions of the conference were:

1. Don’t talk to men.

2. Don’t look at men.

3. If men insult you, don’t say anything back – you’ll insult their machismo and then they may attack you.

4. Don’t go anywhere alone.

5. In fact, don’t go anywhere. It’s not safe.

6. Don’t ever carry a knife because an attacker will take it away and use it on you.*

It was primarily two older women who were harping upon the belief that Cultural Differences Make Middle Eastern Men Animals. I spoke later with several other students who had been present and they agreed that not only was the advice largely unnecessary, it wasn’t practical in the least. “Dangerous” though it was, all the women in that room routinely visited many places in the city, rode in taxis, and spoke to men – an absolute necessity in a city where all the cab drivers, waiters, and shopkeepers are men. The reason we didn’t point out the obvious during the conference itself was because one of the older women had actually been sexually assaulted, and we feared that by downplaying her extreme warnings, we were also downplaying her horrific experience.

Contrast that session with my visit to Petra, during which I was not only a female traveler in the Middle East but a single female traveler in the Middle East. Actually my group was quite large, but after touring the wonders of Petra (which truly live up to the title and about which I will write in the future) we had lunch and split up to explore by ourselves. Faced with a headache, I decided to return alone to the hotel. In the process of negotiating my way from the far end of Petra to its canyon entrance, I:

1. Took a chance and trusted my instincts. I was offered a free donkey ride to the spring by one of the local Bedouins. When he led me off a ways into the bushes, far from where any tourists customarily went (as proven by the bare-assed Bedouin I saw disappearing hastily behind the leaves), I decided that the situation was unsafe and turned the donkey around, insisting upon returning to the safe, crowded areas of Petra’s main road. He was courteous during our return and invited me to take tea with him under the bridge. There I sat among a group of eight to ten Bedouin, some officers of the Tourist Police, and several children, happily discussing fiancées. All’s well that ends well.

2. Flirted. Mostly with another Bedouin named Haroun, who was leading my camel back to Petra’s entrance (camel riding, by the way, is not recommended for those prone to sea-sickness or with a tendency to sea-sickness or back problems. Otherwise, it’s wonderful.) I felt like a queen sitting high on my camel, and I must have looked it, too – I got any number of admiring glances from passerby (if I say so myself), was called “Mrs. Bedouin,” and accepted Haroun’s offer of visiting me in Amman (platonically, of course). There’s nothing wrong with being playful sometimes – particularly if you’re certain you’ll never see him again.

3. Got free beverages. Besides the tea under the bridge, I also had free tea at a shop and free tea in a cave, this last courtesy of the Bedouin whose horse I was riding (yes, I rode a donkey, a camel, and a horse. I love animals and I was tired.) The horse ride was also free, and Hamsa explained later that he’d considered the time he’d spent drinking tea with me and galloping with me a pleasant break from work, which was the nicest thing I’d heard all day. He even invited me to his sister’s engagement party.

4. Touched a man - see “galloping” above. Hamsa was in the saddle and I was behind it, bouncing on the horse’s rump and holding onto his middle for dear life. However, this episode was also proof that some of the dire warnings offered by my supervisors had gotten through – as a last attempt to preserve propriety, I kept my hands balled into fists. I don’t know why I thought that just holding on with my arms and not my fingers somehow made the situation less familiar, but it must have made sense to me at the time.

5. Got another free beverage. Talking with the hotel waiter for twenty minutes earned me a free Bitter Lemon soda.

Perhaps I’ve been unfair to the ladies of the Women’s Safety Meeting. Some of their suggestions I follow instinctively. As a woman, it’s easy to tell when men are looking at me in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, and I always just refuse to look back. If someone speaks suggestively to me on the street, I don’t confront them, I just leave. Generally, I avoid taking taxis alone, and if it’s necessary I make sure to pay attention and am always prepared to stop the driver if we’re going somewhere that’s under-populated or otherwise suspicious (I’m also prepared to stab him, but that’s another story).

Overall, I think the lesson female travelers can take away is this: You’re in danger in the Middle East. But you get a lot of free stuff.

*This is a piece of disinformation that I consider very harmful. I always carry a knife, and I’m always prepared to use it. I’m five foot two, for Heaven’s sake! I’m already absolutely going to lose in a confrontation with even a small man. How much worse can it be if he takes away my knife? At least with it I have a chance. The trick is to keep it concealed as long as possible and stab him before he knows you have it – and once you’ve stabbed him, to stab multiple times, as one knife wound probably won’t stop him from chasing you/raping you/killing you. This is Heroine's Public Service Announcement of the day. (Thanks for teaching me this, honey.)

Love v. Hate

There are so many things I love about Amman.

I love the very early sunrise.

I love the white buildings by day and the white lights at night.

I love the donkey that lives nearby and brays like someone’s killing him.

I love the juice sellers that walk along the edges of the road, who carry enormous golden vases, as tall as they are, filled with artificial flowers as the mark of their trade.

I love the food.

I love the goats and sheep grazing on the hills between the buildings.

I love how, whenever I ride in a taxi, I always think I’m going to die and I never do.

I love the people who insist on pouring you a cup of tea.

I love how many different ways the women of Jordan can wrap a scarf.

I love the Roman ruins.

I love that they let you climb on the Roman ruins.

I love the intricacy of the language.

And, of course, there are many things I hate:

I hate the omnipresent smell of backed-up toilet.

I hate that there are hardly any proper sidewalks.

In general, I hate that this is not a walking city.

I hate that bare shoulders are taboo.

I hate the lack of parks or other natural beauty.

I hate that I’m not supposed to go anywhere alone.

I hate that, if I do go somewhere alone, I feel intensely uncomfortable.

I hate the stares.

I hate the comments.

I hate that even my Jordanian friends who are male are inappropriate sometimes.

I hate how trapped all this makes me feel.

I hate memorizing vocabulary.

And there you have it. Granted, I’m having a bad day today, so the cons list might be a little longer than usual. But hey, if you can’t vent on the Internet…

Okay, the next post will be about hijab, which is cooler than you think.

Representin'

…well.

Today we visited Parliament and spoke with an MP who had occupied that position for twenty years. He was an old man whose head was bald, save for a white fringe above the ears, two very curved black eyebrows, and a bony chin whose firm effect was mitigated by the sagging, bullfrog-like double chin beneath it. He looked like an aged, benevolent sprite, and a little like Robert Prosky.

The MP listened attentively to our brief introductions (name, state, and studies) before launching into the long history of Jordan’s constitution and government. I admit that I listened less attentively than he had . In fact, I dozed off, not because I wasn’t interested but because my body has a tendency to shut down when inactive for a long period of time. This works very well on airplanes and very poorly in the classroom - hence my constant desire to travel.

Then it was question time. He’d discussed the sad state of affairs for female representatives in Jordan – although seven were in the Parliament of 100-plus, only one of them had actually been elected; all the others had been appointed by the king, who is more progressive on these matters than his subjects. I asked what I thought was a safe enough question:

“Are you taking any steps to encourage voters to elect women in the next election?”

I expected an answer along the lines of: “Why, yes, actually we are. We’re distributing posters and erecting billboards that picture Queen Rania with her thumb up over the caption, ‘Vote for Boobs!’”

What I got was a heated lecture on the following:

• 1. The progressiveness of the Royal Family

• 2. The extremely low percentage of women in the Congress of the United States.

• 3. How women don’t vote for women because they’re jealous.

• 4. Something I didn’t catch about him not being able to give birth.

• 5. How women are unfortunately second-class citizens in Jordan, and if there was a third class they would be third.

• 6. How over fifty percent of university students are women, and almost all teachers are women, and the men still won’t accept the idea of a woman representing them.

• 7. The fact that even in the most progressive countries, women don’t represent in proportion to the population, and this is the same the world over…

• 8. …so maybe it’s you women, and not us.

The last was clearly intended humorously, which makes it a little bit better. A little bit. Sort of.

I wasn’t even trying to pick a fight. It’s common knowledge that Jordan has a better record for women’s rights than most other Middle Eastern countries. And even making allowances for my badly phrased question or an inadvertently hostile tone, his response was not only sexist but unnecessarily defensive.

The best part is, he went on a few minutes later to speak cheerfully about how areas with high populations of Christians or Russians are required to elect MPs that proportionally represent those populations. So…ethnic and religious minorities are reserved seats according to their population numbers, but there are only six seats reserved for women. Maybe the MP was right to feel defensive.

Next up: hijab!

Amman

Two recent episodes that I think really highlight the character of Amman:

There are Roman ruins at the top of tall hill in downtown Amman. Looking down and across, all one can see are simple, blockish buildings, yellow and dun with age, climbing the hills in every direction. Though they are not stacked, the first thought that sprang into my mind was “cliff dwellings.” I vastly prefer this part of the city to Western Amman. Downtown Amman has the comfortable, worn-in feel of a city with history and character. Western Amman just feels empty.

The ruins themselves are little more than foundations, but are still massive and impressive. A few columns are even now towering 30 feet in the air despite the 1500 years that have likely passed since their erection. (Heh, I said “erection.”) The rest have toppled, their stones spaced like fallen dominoes. We’re allowed to climb on the ruins and everyone does, scrambling for the shady parts so we can sit on the cool stone.

Ten feet away from the ruins, some men are constructing a winding concrete pathway. They wear baseball hats and fluorescent green vests, and there seem to be too many men for the job.

Ten feet away from them, three large goats with black silky hair, one with a blue udder bag, wander completely unsupervised. They nose through the yellow grass and chomp happily at the lowest branches of an evergreen.

I honestly couldn’t have put together a better triptych for Amman if I’d tried.

The other typical Jordanian experience happened last night. I and some friends had gone out for drinks and dancing, succeeding in the former but not the latter. So on the ride home last night I found myself crammed uncomfortably into the back seat of a taxi, a little fuzzy from the liquor and trying hard to soothe my soul into a state of serenity, because the driver was a crazy man and I didn’t want to die pissed off. My irritation only increased when the man (who’d been talking to my more Arabic-fluent friend in the front seat) suddenly pulled over and shouted at a stand for coffee and cigarettes. The sellers brought us a little cup of coffee, which the taxi driver promptly gave to his (slightly drunk, very American) passengers. It tasted more like cake than coffee – Jordanians don’t find drinks satisfactory until they’re oversaturated with sugar – but it did help me forgive the driver. Besides, it’s hard to dislike a man who pulls out his cell phone to show you pictures of his sixteen-day-old daughter, even if it’s while he’s driving.

How Unromantic

At our orientation to the Arabic School, the director – a friendly man from Pittsburgh, humorous in a self-deprecating way, with a skullcap and a bushy black beard sternly trimmed into an exact rectangle – made an important point.

We encourage you to blog, he said. It’s important for you to share your experiences. But keep in mind that initial, unqualified impressions aren’t the same as fact, and that the Internet is notoriously bad at distinguishing the two. You can cause a lot of damage by disseminating your own hasty conclusions.

Wise advice, of course, but what caught me was the dry humor – perhaps mingled with a tinge of bitterness – in his voice when he said, “And I understand the need for you to share your heroic narrative.”

Ouch. For someone whose Internet name actually has the word “heroine” in it, that single sentence felt like a direct hit. Of course I want to imagine that this is some epic journey in which I demonstrate my inherent worth by conquering, Indiana Jones-style, everything from the language of the country to the trust of its people to its most explosive political issues. Unfortunately, the fact is that I’m quite lucky to perform the Arabic equivalent of pointing and grunting without embarrassment and this scholarship program does everything for me but wipe my ass. Is this trip going to help me learn Arabic? Yes. Is it a heroic narrative? Not unless I get kidnapped by terrorists and escape by blowing up their secret compound. Insha’allah, this will NOT happen. (Do Jordanians knock on wood?)

There’s also the issue of balancing a considered analysis with a first impression. Obviously, the latter is probably more valuable, but I think there’s something to be said for the former, too. A stranger has the benefit of being new to everything, which tends to throw both details and generalities into a very sharp focus that may not be available to locals. With that in mind, my first impression of Amman is this:

Though a long ways away from any kind of shore, Amman reminds me of a very large beach town. There’s the same clear blue sky, the same box-shaped, heat-resistant architecture, the same vague sense of rapid development and impermanence. There isn’t really any grass in Amman, just yellow brush and bare stretches of ground between some of the buildings. This, along with the large number of construction sites, makes Amman feel a little unfinished. It certainly brings into sharp awareness how much the city has grown in just the last five years.

The streets are extraordinarily wide, leaving one feeling exposed to the traffic and the inevitable stares, and the sidewalks have a tendency to suddenly narrow, jump ten feet to one side, or simply end. So irregular are they that there are times when taking a walk through the city feels more like a hike than a stroll. The pedestrian bridges that span the busiest thoroughfares are utilitarian metal affairs with advertisements on the sides and a Godsend, as Amman traffic is unceasing, unpredictable, and surprisingly harmless.

The buildings themselves are all of textured white stone, worn-looking and streaked to a varying degree of yellow or gray. I like the buildings’ arched windows and simple, timeless lines. They feel unusually stable in these volatile times. They range from one story to six or seven, and all are short enough that, if one looks down on the city from a hill at night, the little dots of lights are visible all the way to the horizon, like a blanket of stars.

“Blanket of stars.” I really am succumbing to the worst excesses of travel writing. I think I’ll get some sleep and try and find a way to rephrase that sentence…

Heeeeeere's Jordan!

“Oh, wow, it’s beautiful,” is the first thing that I said when I saw Jordan – an uninspired sentiment, but true. Through the plane’s tiny window the multicolored lights of Amman looked like tiny Swarovski crystals scattered across black velvet.

“Did you see the fireworks?” asked the girl beside me, fashionably dressed in a thermal tee, jeans, and a gauzy purple headscarf. She was seventeen and had just graduated from high school in Chicago, where from what I could understand she’d spent a lot of time salsa dancing in talent competitions and being horrified by her fellow students’ penchant for pajamas and fetish gear. She’d come with her mother and grandmother to visit her relatives in Palestine, but was afraid that, since she’d been away for seven years, they might not let her enter the country.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. I stared for another minute, but couldn’t find them. Still, for a few seconds I enjoyed the conceit that Jordan was celebrating my arrival.

Right away, there were differences. They didn’t spring from the airport itself, which looked like any other boring, bare-bones airport, or from the treatment of the officials, who were more perfunctory than most but kept the line moving. No, like most Westerners, the first thing I fixated on was the women’s clothing.

I notice women’s clothing a lot anyway, no matter where I’m going. This can be a boon for my fashion sense but is more often personally tragic, as when I went to Disneyworld and came away with the conclusion that the idea of covering up one’s sagging, wrinkled, unpleasantly jiggling bits has a lot to recommend itself. So my scrutiny wasn’t atypical, but the immediate results upon my subconscious were. Gazing constantly at women in headscarves and loose shirts that covered their rears, I was outright startled by the tall woman striding confidently past in a tight-fitting pantsuit. So struck was I by the nipped-in waist of the tailored jacket that I turned to watch her leave, and stared – God help me – straight at her butt, which was clearly exposed by her perhaps slightly-too-small trousers.

That I stared at her ass does not worry me. I have stared at many asses in my lifetime, both in aesthetic admiration and in lust. What worried me was the thought that accompanied the look: “Sheesh, that’s really out there, isn’t it? No wonder Western clothing is frequently seen as too sexual.”

One the one hand, I’m pleased that I’ve managed to “empty my cup” enough to empathize with local attitudes. On the other, I’m not happy at all with how easy a conclusion it was to reach. I’m a Westerner who’s perfectly happy to frolic near-naked in the sunshine, and I’m already hypocritically condemning Arab women for wearing clothing that wouldn’t even be noticed in the States. Peachy.

One Flew Over the Tadpole's Nest

I've been planning to write a post examining The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch, but since the basic conclusion of my analysis is that I'm a narcissist, you're a narcissist, and your little dog is too, I was happy to be distracted by the random question widget-bob on my profile. Unfortunately, the widget-bob has succumbed to the peer pressure of Twatter [sic] and limits your answers to a ridiculously short number of characters, so I'll have to post it here.

Question: The children are waiting! Tell the story of the bald frog and the wig.

One day, the bald frog looked in the mirror and realized that he had lost all his hair. "Oh, dear!" he cried in his croaky falsetto, "I must get a wig!" So he went to the local hairpiece store and asked to purchase a toupee. They promptly called the police, who admitted the frog to a shady private mental hospital. There after many traumatic years of straightjackets and sadistic nurses, our hero finally remembered that he was a frog and had never had any hair to lose. However, he had become so fond of the sixty-year old, 350 pound head nurse and their little daily ritual with the thermometer and the vaseline that he faked insanity and lived happily in the asylum forever afterward.

THE END

...well, you try and write a story about a bald frog and a wig.

I'm serious. Post in the comments section.