Fast food has always been a large portion of my diet. Between my mom's work and my dad's claim that taking us out to eat was "cooking", I developed a deep familiarity with the menus at many different chains. Arguably, the spot in my heart that is supposed to be filled with warm feelings towards puppies has been filled with a wealth of emotions for greasy mountains of cheap and easily accessible food.
Coming here, I knew I would constantly be presented with the temptation to fall back to my comfort zone and go to fast food restaurants instead of exploring new places with new cuisines. Still, I was morbidly curious about the McDonalds here. What's different about the McDonalds that you find in Jordan? How would it feel going to a McDonalds here? And most importantly, could I utilize my last name to get a free meal out of my adventure?
I made a deal with myself. I decided that I would go to McDonalds, but only if it was an educational experience. I was determined to order in Arabic, and to attempt to glean some information about the chain here. The first information I got about McDonalds was through a conversation with a cab driver. He told me he only ever ate at McDonalds because it was the cleanest restaurant around. This seems like a striking claim, and it's probably not completely true, but at the same time my cab driver was not completely off the mark.
When international food chains open up around the world, they are still subject to inspections from the corporate entity. This is to make sure the stores are meeting the standards required of them so they can flaunt the multibillion dollar names. A famous example of this is Dunkin' Donuts in Jordan. At one point and time there were numerous Dunkin' Donuts in Amman, but upon failing the inspection by the corporate Dunkin' Donuts these stores were closed down. Nowadays, instead of Dunkin' Donuts in Amman, you fill find numerous Donut Factory's. Donut Factory's are the exact same stores that used to be Dunkin' Donuts, they sell the same products, and even have the same color scheme as Dunkin' Donuts does, but they don't have the international backing of the company. When I asked one of my professors why Dunkin' Donuts doesn't try to shut these stores down, she said A. Because these stores aren't taking any business away from the corporation itself and B. Dunkin' Donuts has bigger worries than a couple of small shops located in Amman.
On top of maintaining corporate standards, McDonalds is halal here. Halal is the term for food, drinks, or actions permitted by Islamic law. For food to be halal, it must be slaughtered and prepared in a specific way. The entire point of halal meat is that the animal that dies for consumption should die in a humane way in accordance with God's will.
Prepared with my knowledge about the workings of McDonalds, I decided it was time to go test out McDonalds. One day after class I went with my friends, but I decided to start slow and just get a McFlurry. The McFlurry was different than ones that I've had in America, the candy pieces weren't mixed in with the ice cream, and the ice cream itself tasted slightly different. The week after I decided that I had to go back for the full experience. A simple McFlurry wasn't enough to curb my appetite for fast food. I went there with some friends to work on a group project and ordered a whole meal. In order to save face, I decided to order something not on menus in America. I got a Chicken Big Mac sandwich. This sandwich was missing the special sauce, which was replaced with mayonnaise, which I also received as an optional condiment to dip my French fries into. Satisfied that I had received the optimum McDonalds experience I left the restaurant with a full stomach that reminded me of my childhood diet.
Food isn't the only thing that reminds me of home here. When I came to Amman, I was expecting to put down my trombone for a semester. A chance meeting with the University band and a tattered trombone later I found myself as a part of a rag tag group of about five students and an instructor who enjoys jazz music.
I have never done improvisation in my life. I was in my high school's jazz band which usually struggled to toot out anything with a swing to it, yet alone take the music off the paper and follow that blues rhythm to where it means a thing. When I showed up there was no sheet music and the instructor listed off the key and the chord progressions and looked and me expectantly while they started off the song. It didn't go too well, and while I'm slowly getting the hang of what I'm doing, it's a learning process.
Attempting to learn how to improvise can be difficult work, and in order to destress I found something that was even more unhealthy than McDonald's. Cine Bistro is the joy of a movie theater with an all you can eat buffet. This ingenious creation had me hooked before I even knew what movie I would go see in it.
One night I went to Cine Bistro with a group of my friends from the CIEE and we watched the movie 13 Hours, a movie depicting the actions of hired security personal during the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi. When I went to Cine Bistro, I was expecting to just get to sit back and cram my face full of food, but I bit off a bit more than I was ready to chew with our choice of film.
13 Hours, because it takes place in Benghazi, has some moments that remind me of my time here in Jordan. By that I mean that Libya and Jordan are very different countries, but the ability of Americans to be baffled by local culture, as portrayed in the movie, seems to be a universal trend. The little quirks of the movie, the similarity of architecture, and the shared language, were a constant reminder of where I was in the world, and who the people surrounding me watching the movie were.
This reminder was hard to swallow because the movie blatantly showed how little is understood about Libya and the rest of the Middle East. This is even more shocking with the realization of how much about America is understood by people there. A classic example of this is the TV show Homeland. For an episode Homeland was airing in their fifth season, they hired some Arabic graffiti artists to do some pieces on their set for the shoot. These artists decided to write phrases like "Homeland is racist" in Arabic and not tell the producer about it. Nobody on the set spoke Arabic, so these phrases challenging the show were aired as part of the series.*
The fact of the matter is, if the tables had been turned and an American artist would have been hired to do graffiti for a Jordanian TV show, a Jordanian producer would have been able to identify what the artist wrote in English. The reason that the artists were right about their claims that Homeland is racist is because it's obvious that no effort was put into truly understanding the people they were portraying.
One day at band practice the band was working on a traditional Arabic song we're planning on performing. For the song the instructor was on the piano, a student was singing, my friend Aaron was playing violin, and two PSUT students were playing bass and guitar respectively. At one point and time the instructor paused and laughed. He pointed out the fact that all the instruments they were using were western instruments and how ironic it was that they were using them to perform a traditional Arabic song. Throughout my experiences with McDonalds, movies, and music, it has struck me much American culture has influenced life here, but what the instructor of the band showed is how people have used the aspects of my culture they encountered for their own benefit. The remaining question is what has happened in reverse? What part of my culture comes from life over here?
* http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homeland-is-racist-artists-subversive-graffiti-tv-show
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