Jackets, Jeans, and Jasmine

It's always been a staple of my life to lose various items, in fact one basketball season in Junior High I lost three pairs of shoes in one season. My reputation seems to have followed me to Jordan and over spring break I lost my jacket at a farm I was volunteering at. When I got back to Amman, I realized that the weather still required me to have a jacket, which meant that it was time to finally face the markets downtown.

I met my friend Aaron downtown for our shopping extravaganza on a Saturday. Down town is full of shops upon shops upon shops. There's big shops, street vendors, back alley shops, food shops, shoe shops, jewelry shops, dress shops, dessert shops, and shops containing things I don't know how to describe. In these shops you'll find thousands of people milling about looking through the plethora of options presented before them.

I had been to downtown once before, during our orientation week, and I hadn't really gotten to experience it in all of its glory. The sheer amount of stores gave me a lot of chances to buy a jacket, but since I had made my friend with me I decided to take him through the agony of walking past multiple shops with perfectly acceptable jackets. I was on a quest to find a jacket that gave me the looks of Arnold Schwarzenegger with the cost of a thrift store.

After getting Aaron sprayed with cologne from a street vendor and taking the time to explore alley shops and gawk at street vendors I finally found my jacket. I bought it for the cool price of twenty dinars, a price good enough for me to overlook the fact that I don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger when wearing it.

If Aaron would have had his way while shopping, we would have found a nice denim jacket for me, but I reserve denim as a material exclusively for jeans. In the orientation packet I received before coming here I was told that most people here didn't wear jeans to school, and that was going to be a big shift for me. I went out and bought a couple pairs of khaki pants so I didn't end up being the odd one out at school. I have since learned that most people here wear jeans to school. On the days I come to school in Khakis I'm usually one of a handful of students doing so. When I think back to my pre departure now I think it's funny how worried I was about what pants I would be wearing here in Jordan. I was focused on not standing out because I was wearing jeans to school. In fact the gray jacket that I lost during my trip made me stand out much more than a pair of jeans ever has. There are lots of big and little things you learn once you get to the place you're going, and often times it's something as simple as what jackets and jeans people where.

On top of not encountering many people who wear khakis to school here, I have also yet to encounter Princess Jasmine from Aladdin. Admittedly, I'm a huge sucker for Disney movies. I have fond memories of watching them with my sisters growing up, and I've spent some summers belting out Disney songs while washing dishes at a camp. Despite this soft spot, I also have to recognize Disney doesn't necessarily have the best record when it comes to how it portrays characters. The movies I watched growing up portray princesses with unrealistic body types, had songs with racist messages, and often times only offered single perspectives of non-white characters.

I don't think Disney ever intended their productions to be representative of entire cultures or populations, but when the only movie you've ever seen with a person from the Middle East is Aladdin, it's hard to picture anything else. As I've grown up I've left behind my stereotype of princesses with tigers and lamps with genies, but they aren't the only problems with what happens in Aladdin. Just about every character in the story who isn't the Sultan, Jasmine, the Genie, or Aladdin have over exaggerated features making them look not too appealing. Not only are they ugly on the outside, but many of them are rude or gritty. I think of big bodied men who are ready to chop off others hands, or Jafar and his scheming ways.

I don't think many people believe that the story Aladdin portrays the real world in any way, but it can still be distressing to think that somebody at some point and time made the active choice to give these characters their characteristics. It's in situations like this that I have to remind myself of how different a world can look when you're there. Whether it's putting on jeans or watching Disney movies, being here serves as a great reminder of how great it can be to get to know people for who they are, instead of how they're portrayed.

Ice Cream Trucks and Iphones

The ice cream truck is a lie. This is very important to anybody traveling to Jordan, and I repeat, the ice cream truck is a lie. Instead of peddling the dairy products of your dreams when you follow the trucks playing happy tunes you'll find a truck bed full of propane. These trucks circle through neighborhoods producing false hopes in the hearts of any innocent American with a dream of a cone full of refreshing ice cream.

As sad as I am that ice cream trucks are not actually ice cream trucks the propane they serve plays an important role. Energy consumption in Jordan is a hot topic. Jordan is one of the few countries in the region that has to import most of its energy sources. Importing energy has not been easy for Jordan. Because energy is vital to economic production Jordan has had a long policy of trying to subsidize energy production to help both the consumer and producers in Jordan. There have been multiple different projects, one being a pipeline between Egypt and Jordan. This pipeline was subject to attacks from the Islamic State, and other extremist groups, so now Jordan relies on other forms of energy imports. Jordan is also part of many renewable and alternative energy projects in order to decrease their dependence on crude oil from other countries. In fact there is a center for renewable energy that's part of the campus where I go to school, and I spent a day shadowing the son of the man who runs in. It's because of Jordan's great investment in the energy sector that there are many regulations, laws, and tariffs surrounding energy consumption. The regulations make household turn off their central heating for most of the day, leaving them feeling like a meat freezer. This took some time to adjust to for me, and rolling out of my mountain of covers in the morning was always a challenge. Despite this, the propane trucks always provided the fuel for alternative heaters in the house. These heaters fueled by propane are kept on more often than the central heating, and they always provide a nice place to warm your hands when the cold becomes a bit too much to bear.

Another popular import to Jordan is electronics. Computers, phones, and other electronics generally garner a high import tariff from the Jordanian government. It's because of this that the latest Iphone, which usually can go for upwards of $800 in the US, can go for the equivalent of $1,100 in Jordan. In fact, Jordan has been ranked as one of the most expensive places in the world to buy an Iphone.

I've never been a huge fan of smart phones, I was able to even hold off on the fad of owning one until this summer when it was time for an device upgrade through my family's plan. Naturally, in a very short time I have become very dependent on this handheld computer. I quickly become addicted to games, I enjoy the ease of taking photos at a moment's notice, and it's really nice to have something so tiny and portable to carry around while I'm Skyping family and friends. My Iphone is my biggest crutch over here. Any moment that I feel like retreating from the culture I've been placed in I can just whip out my portable device of distraction and ignore the passing of opportunities to do something different with my time.

Despite the upsides and downsides of having a Iphone it's interesting to watch the reactions of people when the learn I have an Iphone. Sometimes people don't understand the hype around Iphones in America. Despite their popularity, Iphones aren't really known as the most impressive smart phone. One day my friend here spent about 10 minutes going through all the different gadgets he had on his smart phone and explaining how much better his phone was than the phone I had. At the end of it all he asked me why so many Americans owned smart phones. I explained to him we enjoyed the familiarity and the ease of navigation on the device. He gave me a weird look that let me know he would never understand why I had gotten an Iphone and we moved the conversation to something else.

Whether it's what smart phones are being used, or how the consumption of energy happens here, often times I'm left searching for the pieces of how things work here. Even though it's really easy to fall into the trap of my comfort zone and ignore the different ways of doing things. The good news is every so often I'm able to put away my Iphone for long enough to listen to the sound of the ice cream truck that isn't an ice cream truck, and to do enough research to find some information about what's happening around me.

Hijabs and Heroes

I distinctly remember numerous pairs of overalls I would sport throughout my childhood. Even as the straps became hard to snap as I entered what my mom refers to as my "rolly-polly phase", I was still squeezed into those denim contraptions like the poster boy for tormented toddlers. When I was wearing overalls it was mostly because my parents had complete control over my fashion expressions. As I have grown up, I would argue that I've gained more autonomy in my clothing choices, but there is still one day of the week when there seems to be some tension around what I wear. On Sunday mornings, before I head off to church, I like to throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt and walk out the door like it's any other day. My dad, on the other hand, likes to follow the phrase of putting on your Sunday best, and jeans are not considered to fall in that category. There have been many days when I walk out into the living room with jeans on and my dad will send me back to my room to change into something more presentable for church. Most of the time when this happens, I grumble and complain, but at the end of the day I do as my dad tells me to and I change into khakis or dress pants and we head out to church.

My story is one that doesn't garner much attention. I think that's appropriate because the simple act of choosing what pants to wear, even though it is determined by cultural values and norms, is just a part of everyday life for me. I'm glad that my clothing choices aren't picked apart by the media, debated by people who come from a different background than me, and that conversations over my clothing choices are usually open and free of judgment, unless we're talking about the overalls I used to wear.

Often times, this isn't the case with the hijab. Wearing a hijab is part of everyday life here, but often times the conversations surrounding it aren't very open. For some reason I can't understand, the hijabs worn by women everyday around the world have become a more controversial topic than the overalls I used to wear. The reasons for people to wear a hijab, niqab, chador, or any other form of covering varies, and I am by far not the best source for the conversations around this. It's because of this that part of me feels like I shouldn't write about these things, just like I wouldn't want anybody else trying to describe why I chose to wear what I do on Sunday. This is a personal issue to many people, and I think too often it has been misrepresented by people, well intentioned or not, who take it upon themselves to talk about these veils. Still, I think the most helpful thing for me in understanding the hijab has been to interact with people on a daily basis who believe that the hijab is a vital part oftheir lives. I can't speak for these people about their experiences with wearing the hijab, but I can speak to what my experience with them is, and hopefully that will help contextualize other stories about the hijab (just like I hope you contextualize the story of my overalls and don't judge me because of it).

I have four different professors teaching me this semester, and all of them are women. My courses with them include Arabic, a literature course, and a political science course. I have learned a great amount from these women. One of my Arabic professors took to teaching us some inappropriate words early on, and when I repeated them to my friends they were amazed that a professor would teach me these words. My other Arabic professor has taken large amounts of time to explain aspects of Islam to our class. My political science professor grew up in America and is now living with her husband and children in Jordan. My literature professor is the only one who does not wear a hijab and she's spent many classes both defending the right for women not to wear the hijab as well as defending those who choose to wear it. All of this is to say that women here who both wear the hijab and don't wear the hijab have a lot to teach us.

It isn't only professors that have a lot to teach. Just over a week ago I had a chance to attend a feminist theory course at the University of Jordan. I stood out a little bit in this class of fifty because I was the only man in the entire room. As the short hour long class unfolded it became evident that these brightyoung women had more to say than they had time to express. The women in this class unraveled emotions and thoughts in a language that wasn't native to them in a beautiful way. They debated the meanings of symbols in our short story, and talked about the outside forces they saw being forced upon women. The vast majority of the students were wearing a hijab.

I realized after that class that despite the conviction many of these women spoke with, I had never really heard their voices whenever I heard conversations about hijabs in the States. Later, I had the idea that I could write a blog post about it, so I asked some of my friends from the class what they thought was important for people to know about them wearing the hijab. Here's what one of my friends said about it:

" I'm a normal human being who loves to swim, read and go on adventures. I was not forced to wear it and I don't think many are. Everyone wears it for a different reason just like everyone gets out of bed in the morning. Some wear it as an identity; they want others to know they are Muslim. Others wear it religiously so that they can be modest, because it's part of their culture...Do I love wearing a hijab everyday? No. Some days are hard and I want to walk out of the house with my hair but I don't because it's a choice. It's the same as going to the gym. I'm not as motivated every day, but I still go and some days I love going to the gym and wearing a hijab. It has become part of who I am....Just because I wear a hijab it DOES NOT mean I'm going to judge you. I will respect you as long as you respect me...It doesn't stop me from doing anything. I actually feel like it gives me freedom. I want people to focus on what I say and not what I look like, I want my intelligence and what I have to say to be the most thing that matters...Bottom line, I don't care what anyone thinks of it. I wear it because I want to. I believe in it and think it works for me. You don't? Cool."

My friends have helped me realize something, wearing a hijab is sort of like wearing pants. Some days I don't feel like wearing pants, but I put on pants anyway. The reason I do this is because I think it's immodest to walk out of the house without pants on. Some people could say that society is forcing me to wear pants and that that is oppressive, but to be honest I feel more comfortable in pants and I don't really care what these people say. Having people focus on what pants I'm wearing, (whether they are overalls, dress pants for my dad, or just jeans on a normal day) instead of focusing on what I'm saying and who I am would be incredibly frustrating. Sometimes the pants I wear are determined by many factors, like religion, pressure from my parents, or how I want others to perceive me. The fact of the matter is, I don't want other people to be telling me the reasons why I'm wearing pants. Even when I change pants to please my parents, I don't feel trapped in the situation, I do it out of respect for my parents and because I love them. No matter what, at the end of the day the most important thing is not the pants but the person who is wearing (or not wearing) pants. Finally, each culture has expectations for what pants will be like. In our orientation packet to come to Jordan, it was suggested that men don't fill their suitcases with shorts because the only time men really wear shorts is to the gym, it's considered immodest to wear something cut above the knee for men in public.

As a final note on hijabs, I want to focus on some women who are heroes in hijabs. This summer I worked with Somali Bantu refugees in Maine. Upon coming to Maine, many families were struggling to make ends meet and adjust to new culture in America. One of the programs they started was a women's empowerment program*. Women started coming together and having open discussions outside of the influence of men. They would open up and tell stories of what had happened to them during the plight of being a refugee. This section of the organization is run entirely by Somali Bantu women for Somali Bantu women. These women have emerged out of a dark situation and have found ways to earn a living, manage finances, and express their power in a different culture. They have done this while holding true to the tradition of covering their hair, whether with hijabs or other coverings. These women are heroes, showing strength in difficult situations, and showing how what they chose to wear is an expression of who they are, not of what other people think they should be. So just remember in conversations about hijabs how many different people there are in the world who wear them, and how important it is to listen for the voices of these heroes instead of defining them by what they wear.





*http://www.sbcmala.org/womens-empowerment-project.html

Graffiti, Geography, and God

I first started learning about graffiti (or street art, depending on your personal taste) in a class I took last year at SU. This class explored how hip-hop culture related to hegemonic society, and how marginalized people used hip-hop as a medium of expression. Hip-hop culture has carried over to the Middle East, and today in Amman you can find a handful of artists who choose hip-hop to raise their voice. These artists aren't in the game to score a deal with a big name label, since rapping in Arabic isn't necessarily conducive to financial success, but they care about the message they send out. A couple weeks ago I had a chance to go to an event held by the US Embassy called "From Harlem to Amman", and one of the performers was Amer Al Taher, an Arabic rapper, who was also one of the MC'S for the night. These MC'S talked at one point about how being an artist wasn't necessarily easy, and how they weren't rolling in mountains of cash with the profession they chose. This leads to the interesting question of why people do graffiti in Amman, and what it ends up being like.

Admittedly, most of the graffiti in Amman is pretty ugly. Usually it is just phone numbers haphazardly thrown up on buildings along the side of the road. There are some pieces in the city that are stunning. The first full piece I saw in Amman was on Rainbow Street, a hub of cafe's and Western style hangouts. This piece was done on some road barriers that lined the outside of the British Consulate in Amman. It was full of dazzling colors and poignant Arabic script, turning a defensive barrier into some sort of enticing display of character. This made me curious about what other pieces there were in Amman. Some searching on Google lead me to find that there are other pieces put up across the city, and I also found that there was a cafe called Cafe Graffiti.

Eventually, I made my way to Cafe Graffiti with a friend and we struck up a conversation with the man working the counter. My friend recognized one of the pieces on the wall because he had seen the same piece other places in Amman. The man working the counter said he was responsible for the piece, and he even runs an Instagram account,graffitirobot. My friend and I were instantly surprised by the fact that he had an Instagram account labeling his work. Back in the states, that type of thing is unheard of.,Bbecause putting up noncommissioned graffiti is a felony, most people choose to stay anonymous and avoid problems with law enforcement. Here in Amman though, he said it's really about following a simple rule:, don't put up anything political. Our new friend told us that as long as your piece didn't promote any sort of political message, police usually didn't care enough to try and track you down, or stop you. One of the famous graffiti artists in Amman, Wesam Shadid, has made a name for himself by doing only commissioned pieces. We were told if you really wanted to make a name for yourself on the street, you had to break the law and do a political piece.

One of the examples of doing a political piece is by the movement calledنسينا Nseena. Translated, nseena means "we forgot", and the campaign aims to protest the Israeli territories. A lot of the pieces put up by this campaign have been painted over by authorities. The people who are part of this campaign are pretty open with their work and even run a Facebook page. The man working at Cafe Graffiti said that they had a run in with the law where they barely avoiding getting in real trouble, but they were encouraged to stop the campaign.

The graffiti scene in Amman isn't necessarily frontline news. The thing about the graffiti that was being put up is it was a form of expression of politics, but it wasn't violent. Most of the people here learned graffiti independently or on the internet, presumably from some sort of hip-hop Bob Ross tutorial. These are the people that break down the concept of the Middle East that knows nothing but war. It's a fresh perspective about how messages can be created with alluring colors instead of bullets. What they also show is how people in this part of the world can unite. Despite the fact that a lot of these people have no formal collaboration, they seem to all gravitate towards at least one piece in their lives that express their love for Jordan. Here are just a few examples:






Some people claim that the first graffiti was done in the middle ages in the Middle East. Because people lacked the convenience of spray paint, or even a nice set of crayons, this graffiti took the form of carvings. I recently went to Wadi Rum and got to witness these carvings first hand. The ones I saw were of camels and people hunting them. Because cell phone service was so bad back in the day, these carvings were the medium people used to communicate with anybody else who happened to pass by. These messages would read something like "Hey Karam, we just dropped by here and knocked off a couple wild camels for dinner. We're on our way to Petra, hope to see U there. Say hello to the wife and kids for me."

These messages were pretty incredible, but equally incredible were the mountains they were scrawled on. These canvases are behemoths, reaching incredible heights that neither high definition photography nor Bob Ross's wonderful landscape paintings can fully capture. These mountains are so out of this world that Wadi Rum was chosen as the film site for "The Martian". Despite our failed attempts to find Matt Damon out in the dessert, we were able to find the city of Petra before we went to Wadi Rum. Petra is an incredible city, and definitely lives up to being one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Between scrambling to get that perfect photo for Facebook, rushing to see all the sites I could, and eating food, I was able to take a couple moments to marvel at the ingenuity of the ancient city I was touring.

Part of the reason that Petra is such a marvel is the geography of where it's located. Being a city in the mountain allowed Petra to stay hidden from many would-be attackers, and even if these attackers did find Petra the only feasible way to enter the city was through a narrow passage that could fit one camel at a time. This location worked so well that even Alexander the Great failed to conquer Petra with military force, choosing instead to result to coercion and diplomacy to rule the city.

Mountains didn't just protect Petra, they are also the reason for Amman's location. Mountains are a great way to maintain military control, and so when people found the seven mountains that originally comprised Amman, it seemed like a good idea to start building. Even though Amman was chosen for its military advantages, nearby is the Dead Sea, which is the lowest point below sea level on earth. Now I'm not one to get incredibly excited over geography, but between seeing gorgeous mountains formed by pressures of water and divisions of faults, visiting the lowest point on the globe, and living in a city built because of the significance of mountains, I've come to appreciate just how important something as mundane as geography can be to the environment we live in.

Not only is the place I'm living full of mountains, but it is considered by many to be holy land. One of the most striking differences between the culture of Jordan and America is the recognition of religion. When we got here we were told that it wasn't entirely uncommon for people to ask what your religion was here. We were also told that it's almost entirely unheard of to identify as an atheist, and that if we were an atheist we should probably just lie to anybody asking us because they might not understand the concept of there being no God. On top of that, there are numerous cultural expressions that center on god (الحمدلله - Thanks be to God, أنشاء لله -God willing, والله - honest to God, يا لله - dear God, and more).

Over 90% of the population in Jordan identifies as Muslim. In Amman you can hear the call to prayer five times a day, every day. On Fridays I don't have school because it's a special prayer day in Islam. This country is by no means religiously hegemonic though. There are Christian schools here that get off Friday and Sunday, going to school on Saturday, because of religious weekdays. Often times you'll find that the mosques and churches are next door neighbors. The King of Jordan is the 42nd descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. These are all examples of everyday things for Jordanians that completely flips the perspective of religion being a topic to avoid in America. Jordanians express religion with pride, and despite the concepts about religion being a point of contention, they show that public expressions of faith are not a precursor to violence.