So, yep. Closing shop on CLS Amman, on my summer immersion. It’s been almost a month since I got back, but— backtracking— I really didn’t experience too much culture shock on this end. I was actually a little surprised by how happy I was to be back in Iowa City. I seem to be getting old, and traveling is becoming increasingly stressful. Makes me more grateful every time for my final destination.

So— summary of my last month, of settling back in. I managed to skip a full year in Arabic, am in the third-year Advanced class now. I don’t feel advanced, by any stretch of the imagination, but it blows my mind to think that I was learning the alphabet this time last year. My professor has actually asked me if I’d be willing to tutor one of his beginning students. I’m two chapters ahead of where our class is right now. My god. So CLS is painful, but I will say this: it’s effing effective.

In other news, I got a phone call one Day Two back in America, while sitting surrounded by boxes in my new apartment. A research assistantship had just opened up with the International Writing Program at Iowa, and an old professor of mine wanted to know if I wanted it. I did. I quit my coffee job and am now working with 37 foreign authors that are here on writing residency for the fall. Editing English texts that they’re writing for a library panel series. Met with a guy from Nepal on Monday, a girl from Hong Kong yesterday, an Irish woman today, and tomorrow, a Russian. I love my life. It’s not all hearts and flowers, of course; there are the divas, there are the vaguely lecherous types, and there are the people who flip out at the idea of writing in English and make me wait until the last second because they get some third party to translate their piece. But mostly— I love it. Keeping in touch with the Arab world, as well. One Palestinian woman is funded through Jordan, and we have an Iraqi guy and a Lebanese woman, as well. I’ve also bonded, to some degree, with the Martiniquaise funded through Paris. I’m hoping to get to know the Lebanese writer well enough to get some leads on thesis material.

Added to this: teaching a discussion section for a world literature class. Have one 18-year-old who’s way better versed in the classics than I am and one guy who brought up Clive Bell and the history of aesthetics in class yesterday. I occasionally don’t feel qualified for this, but I like my group.

Finally… apartment. Which I love. Living, for the first time, alone. PICTURES! It’s a basement apartment, so (to some degree) it’s got the basement damp/spidery/lightless/musty/bad cell reception issues. But I’m making it work. Had a friend over recently whose apartment is one of the most grown-up, lovely places in Iowa City, I swear, and he was genuinely impressed. Which was nice. (Especially given the walls, apparently inspired by a box of crayons, which— when he first heard about them— he likened to a brothel. Thanks, I was thinking daycare.) So. Home:

Proud of this coffee table:

I’ve been meaning to put together a post of amusing Arabish signs and shirts, etc, before I write a “hello, I’m back in America and closing down shop” blog post. Things that made me laugh. You already saw the “End of the World” and the Tourist corn pics. So here are more.

SO many men’s hair salons (“saloons”) in Jordan have Tom Cruise on the front. The patron saint of good hair. I love it.

And I love this even more. A salon down the street from our school— Sweeney Todd, anyone? 

Also right by the school. Someone has either confused his numbers or really likes the Beatles.

And— a food stand near the University of Jordan. Wondered for a moment if I was back in MS.

Also near the school… this is what happens when you allow your royal image to be used indiscriminately. BIG sales, pink plush lounges, and snickering Americans. Touch Wood— actually a furniture store…

They don’t mince words about lingerie…

Field trip to our friend Aboud’s father’s store, a men’s clothing shop in Jebel Hussein. We giggled a lot over these, and the guys working there had no idea why. We chose not to explain.

And the one that left me most bemused and amused (from another shop a few days later):

We are the champion.

People I will miss. Love the picture of Rania, who asked us not to post any pictures of her face online but is, in this photo, occupied in drawing a beard on Marilyn Monroe. She erased someone else’s curly mustache by accident and needed to rectify the situation. Sweetest woman alive. I’m so glad to have reasons to go back to Jordan— and people to welcome me when I do.

August 1 began the month of Ramadan. I’ve been fasting since, sunup to sundown, like my Muslim friends (though I’ve been drinking water, too— no desire to be the stupid American who passes out from dehydration). I wanted to be on the same page as my friends, as my professors, etc, wanted to better understand the way things work here

And I kind of love it. Not so much the fasting, though it isn’t as hard as I was led to believe it might be. More the feeling of solidarity. Most of the country is fasting, and it seems bring people together. Everyone suffering together, encouraging each other, etc. And I love the celebration that starts every night with the call to prayer. Ramadan twinkle lights hanging from balconies, iftar (evening breaking-of-the-fast), music, sweets, people out all night, breakfasting at 3 or 4 am before the new day dawns. Everyone smiling, buoyant. Giving. The country basically becomes nocturnal for the space of a month. Stores open later in the day, giving people time to sleep in, and then they’re open until two am or so, just breaking for iftar.

Since our final day of classes was yesterday, I’ve gotten a chance to breathe and to fully experience Amman during Ramadan. Got 2.5 hours of sleep last night, will get just slightly more tonight. To summarize: I LOVE Jordan bidoon (sans/sin/without) CLS, and I am completely smitten with Amman post-iftar. I understand how people get on so well here in spite of the religious ban on alcohol (something that would not fly in America). a) Arghileh, b) arghileh, c) Turkish coffee, d) sweets that would make a dentist cringe but that I LOVE, e) the desert night. Breezy, clear, fresh, no chance of thunderstorms. The best sense of community I’ve ever felt anywhere. Stretched to include foreigners, even.

We had a blow-out iftar for all of our teachers, Speaking Partners, and friends last night. My debke team performed, and there was a short play and a great deal of food. Pictures, tears, etc. Lots of love.

Afterwards, a few of us (because of our amazing debke teacher) were given free invite-only tickets to a celebration in honor of the third anniversary of Mahmoud Darwish’s death. Arabic poetry, music, Haneen (our debke teacher)’s dance troupe. Then two rather ridiculous taxi rides in which my friends and I were complimented silly, and I was (twice) handed the driver’s cell phone to speak English with his friends. Arghileh and coffee at a cafe near downtown, followed by wandering through the slowly emptying streets till sohoor at four am at Hashem’s (falafel, fuul, hummus, tea, a restaurant owner who was overjoyed to hear that I was fasting, etc).

Tonight (some days, I love people): shabbat dinner with a group of Jewish students from Qasid (my roommate and some amazing students from outside our program that I should have met earlier) and then coffee/arghileh with two Christian Arabs, one a friend of a friend of my friend Erin. François. He’s Lebanese but grew up in Jordan. Went to Chicago for high school, college. I speak more French than he does (he left when he was one because of the war), but he’s prettier than me (it happens). He’s also 22 and has been married and divorced already (to an American). (…) Has a sad story but seems to have come out better for it. Is okay with gay people. (How does this come up in every conversation I have with new friends? How does this come up at all in Jordan? How am I not in jail right now?) Invited us to a karaoke party at his parents’ home tomorrow night. We’ll go, I think… though I think we’ve also made tentative plans with at least three other sets of people. It will be our last night in Amman.

… Coffee at 1 am seemed like a good idea at the time. Insha’allah, I’m too exhausted not to fall asleep in spite of it. I am so happy to be alive right now. This… is what it should have been like from the beginning.

Tonight’s dinner conversation mostly consisted of my friend Jamil ranting about the way Jordanian men view women. He was already tentatively on my Favorite Persons list. Is now firmly fixed close to the top. Wish I’d gotten to know him sooner.

Things I knew:

• Western women, in large part because of the way our media portray us, are considered sluts.
• Double standard: men are freer to express their sexuality than women. A woman who chats too much with her male co-workers is in danger of getting a bad reputation.

Things I learned:

• People think that women are gaining equality with men because more of them are working. Really, according to Jamil, they’re only working because the economy sucks.
• “The Talk” does not happen here. Sex ed does not happen here. Kids learn about “the birds and the bees” from their friends. Dangerous, much?
• Women are widely compared to cars. If a girl has had a prior relationship, however chaste, she is considered used. Maybe 100 km of “use.” A lot of Jordanian men consider themselves lucky to get a girl with only 100 km on her because “These days, none of them are pure.”
• This is news to me because I have met, here, some of the most religious women I have ever known. My second MSA teacher, whom I love dearly, fasts two days out of the week for, as she put it, “extra credit.” During Ramadan, she doesn’t even rinse out her mouth during the day to clean her teeth. She doesn’t even use chapstick. She is an angel, and I love her (so much), but I am constantly floored by her gravity about religion.
• Apparently, some men here like to marry super-religious women like this because they’re too innocent and trusting to suspect that they’re being cheated on.
• And cheating happens. Of course. Prostitutes and foreigners are the preferred means of experimenting pre-marriage because they’re easier to hook up with than most Arab women. They aren’t worried about being stained by gossip and becoming unmarriageable at 22, and they don’t have family present to get in the way. They’re also chosen because they’re already “impure” and therefore inferior, and no more damage can be done. This is widely accepted.
• Prostitutes are also frequented post-marriage because apparently (I guess I need to read this book) the Qu’ran is very specific about what a man cannot do with his wife. Certain things are haraam (forbidden). So men go elsewhere.

I can’t even process.

I’m not gonna lie… I kind of love doing this.

Paris Square houses most of Amman’s art galleries and attendant artists. This is what happened last time I ventured out that way. Sent over via a bemused waiter to the great delight of my friends and to my utter chagrin. I wanted to hide under a table. (Like I said: social skills=gone.) Doesn’t look like me, though, right?

Edit: Yes, hookah. Also, I skyped with an old friend, and he agreed that maybe… just maybe… this could be a Jordanian version of me… in twenty-thirty years… with substantial work done on my face. I feel better. It’s not my favorite.

* Two-year boarding school in North MS, on the campus of the MS University for Women. My alma mater.

—-

1) Hard-core application process leading to a free education.

2) Intense academics and rigorous schedule. Verification required for illness (in theory), hours planned out for study.

3) Cafeteria food. Granted, it’s better here. Not that I wouldn’t kill for a grilled cheese sandwich.

4) Boys’ dorm, girls’ dorm. My roommate and I found ourselves hanging out of our window waving across the lot the other day at two male friends on their hotel balcony. Moment of strangeness. Though there are girls in the guys’ “dorm” here, as well. They also have air-conditioning. And sometimes bathtubs. Why I couldn’t have been placed in that building, I don’t know…

5) Resident Fellows at ACOR (the “girl’s dorm”)— researchers who (at least slightly) hate our guts for being smart, young, and occasionally overly loud. Rather like the college students whose campus my classmates and I took over.

6) People hide to drink. Public intoxication here would get you jailed, not just reprimanded or (at worst) expelled. Alcohol is also somewhat more difficult to come by. This time, it’s not because we’re seventeen but because we’re in a Muslim country.

7) People are now hiding to smoke, too. Ramadan makes Amman a no-smoke zone during the daylight hours. Again, penalty is potentially jail-time, not just a slap on the wrist and brief confinement to the dorm. Although if we count dorms as small, slightly more luxurious prisons, the difference might just be that the jailers in North MS didn’t speak Arabic.

8) What my classmates have termed “CLS Goggles.” When you’ve got a small pool of single people of the opposite sex combined with extremely high stress, your ”type” rapidly adjusts to fit what’s available.

9) Which can lead to… secret (or not-so-secret— gossip could be its own bullet point) hook-ups everywhere, significant others pre-program be damned. It’s actually a little disturbing how incestuous this program is getting. And in a country where PDA is Not Okay and people have roommates, there’s a lot of frustration going around, as well. Which also sounds like MSMS.

10) As always, going from being a straight-A student in one’s old high school (or being a language wunderkind back home) to being in WAY over your head is confidence-shattering. Of course. Goodbye, social skills. Hello, insecurity.

…

I sat on my fourth-floor windowsill tonight after iftar, watching fireworks over the city and drinking a glass of wine from a bottle that I barely managed to score before Ramadan. It’s really lovely here, and I’ll miss it… but it’s also strained. Honestly, it’s been that way from the beginning. I’m glad to have been here— but I’m really grateful to be in the final stretch.

This is not what we look like. Partially because of regional differences in dance and partially because of skill levels. But we have fun.

I went to Wadi Rum (gorgeous desert area in the South of Jordan) on Thursday night on a trip that didn’t actually get us all the way to Wadi Rum. We did sleep under the stars, though. And we saw Little Petra and drank a lot of Bedouin tea. Best, though— and the reason I’m legitimately glad I went— I made a new friend. Al-Hamdu lillah. When there are 56 people on one program (and some of us hide), bonding tends to happen with whoever is closest… not necessarily whoever is the best fit. (Though, honestly— I haven’t done too badly. I got lucky. I always seem to.)

After getting back last night, I fried some eggs with said friend, then went in search of cigarettes for him (since Ramadan is starting, and they may be difficult to come by) and watched this film. It’s good… and apparently all on YouTube. Maybe 100 minutes? Lebanese Civil War, coming-of-age, cheekiness. Two of the best child actors I have ever seen. I enjoyed it…