tl;dr: talking about feelings is hard in any language, but easier in many? "Facing depression is a little like looking at the self in translation. " “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” 2 Corinthians 11:30If you speak Spanish at all, you know that there are two Spanish translations for the English verb “to be:” “ser” and “estar.” These words are the bane of many a high school freshman’s existence, but the distinction between them is actually fairly simple. “Ser” you use for conditions of being that are essentially permanent — “I am from the U.S.,” “puppies are cute,” “Yemeni food is delicious." The other use, which is admittedly confusing, is for time expressions (“it’s 3 am and I still haven’t fallen asleep yet, wtf”). “Estar,” on the other hand, is the “to be” verb you say when you want to describe a temporary condition. “I am underdressed, I am bored, and I am contemplating ordering a pizza." In Arabic, when you want to describe how you "are," you probably use the verb “to feel.” That might seem intuitive, but in English, as shown previously, we usually stick with "to be." Sure, you could say “I feel happy” in English, but odds are you’d say “I am happy” or “Why are you mad?” Even for the times in Arabic when you don’t use "feel" and instead say "is/are," you would at least form the subsequent adjective in a grammatical way that makes clear that this feeling is not a fixed characteristic of the person being described, but rather a position they're caught in temporarily. You might "be" mad or sad or tired, but only for now. I find this distinction very interesting. In Arabic especially, how we feel is plainly not who we are, even when we sometimes fudge the difference in our words. If I were a slightly different person, less intimidated by the many roadblocks to successful scientific inquiry into Babel, I would be curious to research how this subtle linguistic difference impacts the way people treat mood disorders across cultures. What does this mean for the way different societies talk about trauma? What would it mean if we had a linguistic marker in English that made extra clear that the idea that “I am depressed” is an extra unit away ("I feel depressed") from the idea that “I am my depression”? A year ago today, I was in the swells of the worst depressive episode I’ve ever passed through. Each day that winter felt crushing. And perhaps the biggest roadblock to my recovery was my inability to distinguish between the questions “how are you” and “WHO are you.” I felt like my depression was a character flaw somehow, and that the emotional swamp I was trekking through meant something terrible about who I AM, and my worth. "Snap out of it!" said the ceaseless voice on the broken record that was my brain. "You're being inconsiderate and selfish. Is this really who you want to be?" When I look back at this period, it’s honestly difficult to grasp what my mind must have felt like at the time. This is a commonly-described experience among people who face this illness. There were many things I needed during my depression, and one of them was certainly a therapist — a thoughtful outsider who could look in on my self at the time and pick out the patterns of thought that were occurring, as I needed extra help to figure out where and why my mind was getting stuck on the negative. Therapy may come out of empirical psychological research, but I have to say that the first words that I think of to describe my recovery are a fortunate mystery. In the end, there were both practical and spiritual dimensions to the thing. Of course, the person I was a year ago is in most senses the same person I am today. Nonetheless, when I look back at her, I feel a distance that is not related to time. Facing depression is a little like looking at the self in translation. I'm not seeing a therapist anymore. However, a good language class is like therapy for your tongue. Some context: usually, advanced second language programs don't allow you to say anything (even explanations and definitions) in your native language. They want a clean slate. For example, as many of you probably know, some of the best programs out there even include a “language pledge” policy that requires students to leave our mother tongues at the door when we enter the classroom. While this is a strategic and often fruitful step in the overall language learning process, it’s not the “final” or “best” method of getting one's skills to be the best they can be. Contrary to this methodology, my "Introduction to Translation" class is, of course, requiring me to bring my English to the table, and this has had an impact on the nature of my learning. In Translation, I’ve had to hone in on meaning unlike in any other language class I’ve taken. What is it I REALLY want to say? "Think again" is the name of the game. Am I using this phrase because it was listed on one of my vocab sheets once, or because it actually captures the nuance I’m hoping to express? Why this term, and not another? What potentially normative categorizations or other baggage are being carried into my speech via unexamined terms of expression? Do I mean "individual," or am I really trying to say "personal"? "Educated" or "cultured"? "Pass through" the border, or "sneak" over the border? Especially thanks to Translation, I’m trying to be better about choosing my words carefully these days. The terms we use matter, and what we choose to say — indistinguishable oftentimes from HOW we choose to say it — is a political, moral, and even spiritual matter. I hope this post reminds you all that even when you feel depressed, you are not your depression. To learn more about why language matters and how you can improve the way you talk about mental health with friends and family, I highly encourage you to check out this first aid training, which is offered all over the country. As always, thanks for sharing your time with me on this blog. I hope your start to Spring is full of rain & flowers & warmth & growth! Jackie🌸
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tl;dr: if you had any fear that this blog was just an excuse for me to *nerd*the*hECk*out, TURN BACK NOW, do not pass go، do not collect 200, c u next time The Arabic language is not your friend, and at least once, every Arabic student will meet with the associated Dementor. The despair sinks in, you feel like all the hope has been sucked right out of you, and there seems to be no reason to go on. Now, to be clear, this is not to say that Arabic is the hardest language to learn. At least it's mostly phonetic and people are friendly and encouraging about you learning it, unlike some languages I know... This Spring I'm taking an 8am grammar class (not quite as painful as it sounds) and I'm also finishing up online certification to teach English as a Second or Other Language. So basically I've been thinking waaaay too much about words. I do remembering promising y'all some more hard-hitting reflections on my coursework, culture and politics and stuff...but in the meantime, please enjoy this Harry-Potter-themed linguistics listicle (linguisticle?). It's basically what the inside of my brain looks like these days. I. HARRY POTTER and the ACTIVE ORIGIN In Arabic, as much as possible, it's best to form a sentence by putting the verb first. Not subject + verb, but rather verb + subject. Slays she, not she slays. II. HARRY POTTER and the MUTUALITY of FORMS Did you ever study Greek or Latin roots in English class? Suffixes, prefixes, etc. — they’re all a good way to guess the meaning of a word you don’t yet know. Arabic has tricks like this too, except on a whole extra level. Almost every word can be broken down into three core letters, and from those three (the "root") the dictionary branches off into dozens of words whose meaning are based on their "weight/shape." My favorite examples of this are the 10 verb structures, which all Arabic students have to memorize. Every single verb that breaks into three letters will have associated nouns (the "doer," the "done to") but also different flavors of the action itself. For example, one verb form means simply "to do x," but another "seeking to do x," another "pretending to do x," another "making someone else do x," etc. -- all from the same three letters. III. HARRY POTTER and the ORDER of the PHONEMES When I tell friends and family that I study Arabic, usually their first reaction is to comment on the "squiggliness" of it ("you can read that??"). At this point it's difficult for me to remember what it feels like to look at a word in Arabic and not immediately hear the sound of the letters. That said, every day I am reminded that Arabic is a language in which not all sounds are written out. Only some sounds (or "phonemes" if you're a linguist) are fully transcribed in a given text. The rest of the word you're just supposed to know from context. It's like knowing the melody but not the rhythm. Better yet, it's like that nerd phenomena where you frequently mispronounce words that you've really only seen while reading. IV. HARRY POTTER and the DISORIENTED POSSESSION Ask any multilingual person and they could probably tell you about the preposition problem. To speak...of? For? To? About? Is there a logic to any of this? Barely. Even more, Arabic sometimes doesn’t bother with prepositions at all. Trying to indicate possession? “Sara's friend’s father”? “The complexity of the problem”? “The love of my life”? Weirdly enough, the best way to write these phrases is to simply write the nouns back to back. Father friend Sara. Love my life. V. HARRY POTTER and ABSENCE of EXISTENCE Not only does Arabic leave out prepositions with abandon, but, to my horror back in Year One (I remember this sensation well), there’s such thing as a sentence without a verb at all. Just put two nouns, or a noun and an adjective, next to each other; there’s no need for “is” or “are.” America racist. Men in positions of power stupid. Me hungry. VI. HARRY POTTER and the SEXING of NUMBERS Let's give verb conjugations a gender! And adjectives, of course. All that I could handle, because I dealt with it while learning Spanish. What I wasn't ready for is that even numbers have gender. But of course, numbers 3-10 have a different number than 11-99. Which is different from the hundreds and the thousands. Whee. VII. HARRY POTTER and the DUALITY of PAIRS And if THAT weren’t enough, there’s a verb conjugation for when TWO people do stuff -- not only that, but there’s a difference between when TWO WOMEN do stuff and TWO MEN do stuff. 14 total conjugations for each and every verb. (Compare that to English, which is pretty chill: You walk. I walk. She walks. They walk. etc. Not you walky. I walkz. She walkt. Them two walkl.) Why do we care? If you made it this far, you're a champ. 10 points to Ravenclaw because clearly you're as much a nerd as me. All I really mean to say by sharing this info is "woah, it's amazing how the human brain learns to process this stuff without conscious thought!" (It's also amazing how much more I'd rather read a listicle than a normal article, and how I'm reading Harry Potter again for the zillionth time, and I'm still loving it...some mysteries are better left unsolved.) Will get back to you guys by the end of the month sharing some reflections on culture & translation! Cheers (& butterbeers), Jackie P.S. If you're a teacher and have recommendations on your favorite books/articles/lectures/poems about teaching, please let me know! Trying to find ways to reflect on the profession and boost my confidence that this is the right path to be walking down for me. tl;dr: dizzy, cold, having a grand old time Since when is it...February…?! Hard to believe it’s been almost two months since my last update here. Happy 2019, if I missed the chance to wish you one earlier!! I hope your holidays & initial weeks of the year were cozy and cuddly. My hot water bottles and I wish you warmth and wellness. <3 I’m writing this with my fourth week of classes under my belt, fully settled back into Amman after a spat of travels over the holiday break. I thought about doing a separate blog post to sum up my time in South Asia, but I decided against it because that trip was so many things all at once — not really a “sum up” kind of experience. Suffice to say that if I was going to do Christmas abroad, I really couldn’t have asked for better company than my love Geetha (check out her Fulbright blog here) and (non)resident co-adventurer in chief Shoshana. If you’re curious, you can check out pictures from my trip at this link. Also happy to answer any questions, as always. But forget December: now, I’m back in Amman for stint #2 of my academic year. Whole new ball game. This semester is for "tailoring to our content specializations," aka I get to study the things that I care most about (but in Arabic, of course). The courses I'm in are: Introduction to Translation, Grammar, Gender in Jordan, Advanced Jordanian Colloquial Dialect, Levantine Cinema, and Arab Leftist Political Thought. Basically I'm taking on the kinds of subjects that used to give me headaches in undergrad, only now with the added excitement of an ~80% likelihood I’m going to mispronounce something when I make a seminar comment! Whee! I’m 1000% submerged in Arabic due to the bonkers amount of prep work for each class, so much so that I feel distinctly weird during the week when I break the flow and start chatting in English. So if I sound like I’m drunk when I’m texting you, that’s why. (Frankly, beer here is far too expensive for it to be the other possibility.) I will definitely throw up some more posts later that talk about how my worldview is shifting in these classes alongside my language, so keep an eye out, and feel free to ask questions about any of the above topics. Other fellowship news is that I just started a volunteer position with a legal advocacy organization, which I’ll also share some reflections about soon. For now I'll just say that every day I am increasingly in awe of the resilience that refugees must embody to move through the world...also, the more I learn about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the angrier I become.
Other than academics & volunteering...honestly, if you want a sense of how exciting my day-to-day life is, the biggest news outside of my fellowship is that I recently figured out how to get library books on my Kindle, which -- no overstatement -- rocked my world. Friday nights are (candle) lit. Hope you’re staying warm through the winter blues, wherever you are, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if we’re overdue for a Skype catch-up! Next post, I’ll share my favorite concepts, factoids, and memes thus far from Gender in Jordan. Hugs & cheers, Jackie P.S. I'm a liar! I wrote this whole post and failed to mention the other exciting development -- I've convinced four talented (& gullible?) fools to get on a stage with me and sing a couple jazz sets later this week. Eek! If you want, check out our page here for updates & videos. اللغة العربية: سبع سنوات تعلّمك التواضعلعلك في السنة الأولى من دراسة اللغة العربية، تحدق في "ألف باء" أو "الكتاب الأول" و جبهتك تتصبب عرقا، دماغك يبدو مليئا بالضباب, ما زلت تشعر بالصدمة بسبب خطئك في توقعاتك حول مدى "التحدي" أمامك. "أنت" الماضي قلت للكل إنك "متحمس للتحدي." الآن تحلم في الرجوع للماضي من أجل لطم هذا الشخص في وجهه. لعلك في السنة الثانية أو الثالثة أو الرابعة و تبحث في كل مكان عن أي إشارة مشجعة على قدرتك في فهم أشخاص عرب غير "مها" و "خالد." فقط سماع نطق كلمة "الجزيرة" يسبب لك ارتفاعا في معدل ضربات قلبك، و تسأل نفسك "هل ستستطيع أن تفعل أي شيء بالعربية بدون هذا الشعور بالفزع"؟ و لعلك مثلي، في السنة الخامسة أو أكثر، و تنظر إلى الأمام و تثبت بصرك في طريق يبدو أنه يمتد الى الأبد عبر الأفق و تخطر على بالك فكرة الرجوع الى بيتك و القيام بتعلّم الفرنساوي. أنا اسمي جاكي، تخرجت من الجامعة قبل سنة و حالياََ أسكن في مدينة عمان و أدرس في معهد قاصد بفضل دعم منحة "مركز التجربة المحترفة الدولية" في جامعة ييل و أيضا بفضل "مركز الدراسات العربية في الخارج،" و مثل طلاب سابقين كثيرين بدأت تعلم اللغة العربية على أساس طموحاتي في مجالات السياسة و الدبلوماسية و الصحافة. ولكن بعد سنوات طويلة في هذا العمل لاحظت انّ اللغة العربية استخدمتني أكثر مما استخدمتها. انّما تعلم اللغات هو نوع من الرقص. كل خطوتين للأمام تقابلهما خطوة للخلف...أو للجانب...أو لاي اتجاه غير الاتجاه المتوقع في نفس اللحظة التي أشعر فيها بأنني وجدت استقرارا لغويا و سيطرة على قدراتي أجد جرفا جديدا و أكاد أسقط فيه. في كل مرة أتفهم قانون القواعد و في التمرين التالي أطبّقه بشكل فاشل. أحفظ مفردات و أشعر كأنها نقش في عقلي ثم في اللحظات التي أحتاجها تنزلق من وعيي مثل المياه. ولكن تعلم اللغات أكبر من حفظ الكلمات و ممارسة القواعد و حتى أكبر من فهم اللغة نفسها و أكبر و أقوى من طموحاتك الشخصية، بفضل التحديات اللغوية في طريقي الدراسي تعلمت تعقيدات العالم الاجتماعي و دور اللغة في تصرفاتنا اليومية والسياسية، و قد ادركت انني لست فريدة كشخص ثنائي اللغة بل عاجزة. و قد شهدت تأثير اللغة الانجليزية على الأطفال و العائلات و المؤسسات و الحكومات عبر العالم و في هذا السياق أدركت خطورة اللامساواة اللغوية و حجم العالم الذي تفتقده عندما تستطيع الاتصال مع نصف المجتمع فقط. المقولة “كلما تعلمت أكثر أدركت أنك لا تعرف شيئا” تطبق حتى على الأشياء التي تبدو ملموسة مثل المهارات اللغوية. ولكن على كل الاحوال أستمر في دراستي و أشجعك على الاستمرار في الدراسة أيضا. ولكن لا تستمر لأنك تريد أن “تتقن” اللغة، بل استمر من أجل قدرتها في توضيح مَن أنت في العالم. لا تتوقع أنك ستشعر بالسهولة. التطور ليس خطا مستقيما. يحتاج التطور الى العادات و الانفعالات و -- أهم مكون له -- هو الوقت. لا يوجد وقت كاف في العالم كله للتعلّم الكامل للغة العربية، و هذه الحقيقة المحزنة لن تجتنبها أو تتجاوزها. ولكن بغض النظر عن هذا الواقع كله يوجد شيء سعيد في وسعي أن أعدك به، و هو أنّ كل ساعة تعطيها لدراسة العربية لن تذهب سدى. tl;dr: I'm late! What else is new? Happy Thanksgiving! I have always had difficulties composing clear sentences, and I’m not talking about in Arabic. Many valiant college professors tried to diagnose and cure my chronic clunkiness and rampant run-ons, but it was my Dad who offered the roast for the record-books this week: "...'have I read your blog'... I mean, every sentence is a full meal deal, no? Big mouthfuls. Where you have to chew to get all the flavors. Could you do a caramel corn version, maybe? Where you can just pop in a couple at a time?” So here we go, folks, a "caramel corn" take on what I'm grateful for these days: My FolksForever grateful for how you roast me in so many necessary ways that no one else can... Thank you for your seemingly bottomless patience and support. You're my inspiration. Love you guys. EducationI don't forget for a second how lucky I am to spend another year fully immersed in learning. If you had told 14-year-old me what I'd be doing today, she'd call this merely a dream of a dream of a dream. Infinitely grateful to the teachers and professors who helped make this happen. Friends & Food; Food & FriendsI may have spent Thanksgiving away from the Salzinger Shmorgasborg, but I feel very blessed for the opportunities I've had to make and break bread with new friends in Amman. Harry PotterWhen I'm not pushing my comfort zone by reading horoscopes in Arabic, I'm still dwelling in the magical realm, nonetheless...young Jackie would not be surprised by this. Sometimes, when you're far from home, you have to retreat into the comfort-food-for-the-soul that is the Harry Potter universe. Staying in TouchI'm grateful for the technology -- Skype, smartphones, cameras -- that makes it possible for me to pretend, every once and a while, that I'm not so far away from the people I love. It's still not the same, of course. So grateful for the patience of my friends and family in working out a new normal for keeping in touch! Speaking of keeping in touch...later this month I get to see two old friends in an unexpected place. I'll be spending my winter break in India (Chennai, Jaipur, Hyderabad) and Sri Lanka! It's going to be a blend of tourist nonsense and catching up with long time pals Geetha and Shoshana. Both of them have been living in India for a while, so luckily we're not flying blind, but if you have any reading recommendations (or podcasts/movies) that you think would enrich my experience, please send them my way!! Thanks for reading! Cheers! P.S. Anticipatory gratitude for anyone who writes me a question via this form!
tl;dr: Double double toil and trouble; Beirut, bibliophiles, brouhaha. Basically, a language update. Hello hello hello! Happy belated Halloween and happy voting season, USA. I was luckily able to observe both traditions in Amman, and I hope you were, too, wherever you are. For those back home, I'm sure this is a time full of apprehension and political ads; the latter I don’t personally have to deal with this year, but I’ve still got a fair amount of spookiness going on around me. For example, I'm frightened to acknowledge that the semester is more than half over. Is this how time works, post-college? You sneeze and a month has gone by? Life is exhausting, but in a good way (for now). The toil and trouble of my coursework pays off tenfold with each passing week, alhamdulillah. I've even gotten to a point where it feels natural to be spending most of my free time in Arabic -- media, music, roasting my friends/being roasted (the latter is more common). I’ve got a few fav Jordanian meme accounts and a goofy daytime talk show that I can veg out to, and, of course, I’m keeping up with the times by reading...horoscope predictions. (The 12-sign astrological system we all know and love actually has an Eastern Mediterranean heritage, which is to say that people in the Arabic-speaking world also get to have debates about whether they broke up with their ex because he was an Aquarius.) But back to earth: somebody sent me a really thoughtful question a while back that I’ve been mulling over recently. The asker studied Spanish in college, but found themselves feeling uncomfortable about how the language operates as social politics in Latin America. After mentioning Quechua and other indigenous languages, they wrote: “How do you balance the desire to learn languages that reach out to the largest quantity of people with the notion that reaching out to people in historically colonist language may not be the best way to understand the cultures of minority and indigenous populations?” A (good) complex question about a (good?) complex world, but the answer, for me, is a fairly simple matter: I don't pretend that the language I'm learning is something it's not. Most authorities count about 400 million Arabic speakers worldwide, but that's certainly contestable based on one's definitions of "Arabic" and "fluency." In any case, learning Arabic doesn't mean I get the right to claim to represent them. As I’ve explained in a previous post, Arabic is a diglossic language; dialects vary greatly from place to place, while the formal register has about the same highfalutin’ tone anywhere. People crack a lot of jokes about Americans only ever learning formal Arabic — while it’s technically the lingua franca of the Middle East and North Africa, nobody really wants to grab a beer with someone whose conversational style resembles Shakespeare. Also, as the questioner wisely suggested, "International" Arabic doesn't really fly with demographic minorities in linguistically diverse places like Morocco or Sudan. My solution to this mess is to choose my battles. I'm better at picking up languages in casual social settings, anyways, so I’ve tended to focus on strengthening my skills in the urban Levantine dialect. It was never my intention to pretend that I can act as an authority on the goings-on of Northwest Africa and Libya and Sudan and the Gulf states and Egypt AND Iraq…I am consistently humbled by all the language(s) of Arabic I don’t know and will never master. It's worth noting that this isn't just a problem for foreigners -- even people who are native Arabic speakers themselves wonder what the categories "Arab" and "Arabic" really mean. By the end of this year, I should be fairly comfortable conversing in Lebanon/Syria/Palestine/Jordan (“the Levant”), and I'll also be able to churn through a "universal" book, inshallah. Will I probably sound elitist and foreign to a lot of people, based on my year spent in a classroom? Almost definitely. But all I can hope, as is the case for most such uphill battles, is that I can succeed at keeping up constant vigilance about this issue. After all, I don’t only just read horoscopes and memes! I’m an actual student, I promise!! Last week, we read our first novel of the year, Ghada Samman’s Beirut 75 . Hardcore literary Arabic. Elements of Samman’s style actually reminded me of the character development of one of my fav English authors, Virginia Woolf, which was exciting. It’s always a little strange to read dialogue that uses so little of the vocabulary I use in my day-to-day in Jordan, but that’s Arabic, for ya. Some chapters, it felt like I was reading the dictionary as much as the novel. Reading is a labor, but a labor of love.
I’ve had one other noteworthy chance to stretch my linguistic muscles, and it’s the last thing I”ll mention (thanks for bearing with me on a long post). Three weeks ago, I was over the moon to finally fulfill a long-time fantasy: visiting Beirut. Beirut is sometimes called “the Paris of the Middle East,” and while I’ve never been to Paris (and still don’t know if being compared to the French is a compliment), I can vouch that the city is full of art, fashion, and effervescent romantic charm. It was so fun to hear Arabic spoken slightly differently and, in a quintessential Beirut style, mixed with equal parts English and French (if you’re also a nerd about linguistic mixing, click here). I posted a Beirut section to my photo gallery, if you want to take a look at my favorite sights and scenes. As I've said before, I am so blessed by the classmates with whom I get to take these sorts of adventures. It was so cool to explore the city through not one, but five pairs of eyes and ears (also mouths, ugh the food was so good). Much love from Amman, in this time when the days are literally getting darker!?! If you have reading/watching/listening recommendations for my upcoming Saturdays spent in bed hiding from the winter wind, please do send them my way. “I identify as tired.” — Hannah Gadsby tl;dr: jazz, exhaustion, and the sighs heard 'round the world Ahlan, friends. I'm just finishing up my fifth week in Amman, and everything is still going well, alhamdulillah. Tomorrow we begin a new academic period, whereby our contact hours jump from 16 to 25 hours per week…Already the long days of back-to-back classes are reminding me too much of high school. My fidgety frustration hits me around the 2 & ½ hour mark sitting at a desk, just like when I was 15 and staring at the Westview ceiling. I should probably be taking more walks. Originally I'd intended for this post to be about music, a theme around which I am experiencing some exciting developments as of late. Not only have I had the privilege of seeing several friends’ bands live in concert these last few weekends, but a week ago I played the role of “jam leader” at my favorite jazz bar's weekly jam night. Not just that, but somehow I have convinced several talented instrumentalist friends to embark on a more thorough musical project, starting in November! (Please hmu with any cool band names you've been hoarding.) I’ve always imagined that my ideal musical adulthood would be some sort of monthly jazz set; soon I’ll be living that dream?! I wish I could spend the rest of this post talking about all that fun stuff. But I would be lying if I described to you these last couple weeks without acknowledgment of the dark and uninvited storm cloud that has been hovering over my days. I have been longing for the familiarity and comfort of friends and family, but in a different way; my last few Skype calls with my loved ones have undoubtedly carried more weight than usual. Lately, dreams have been punctuated by all-too-visceral nightmares. And this story is by no means mine alone. I am living halfway around the world from the actual proceedings, but the effects of the Kavanaugh hearings have rung loud and clear. The waves radiating from this sh*tstorm have found many a social string upon which to resonate (across settings, cultures, space and time) and for the last couple weeks I have found myself more sensitive than usual, even to the “little things.” My reactions to small tokens of injustice — a gendered slur, the self-indulgent gaze of a man on the street, a sudden, unsettling consciousness that I’m the only woman in the room — these reactions have been pouring out of a deeper place the last two weeks, a place of hyper-clear recognition about the interconnectedness of these outdated social practices and the violence being played out and replayed on the evening news. And Facebook. And Twitter. And group texts, family phone calls… When the news storm first started kicking up, I was initially grateful to be located so far away from an America that seemed to be talking nonstop about "good man'" Kavanaugh. In Amman, if I want to, I can go a whole day without talking about it. But it doesn’t take long for me to be reminded of the f**ked-up-ness of the world, whether by glancing casually at social media, or being helplessly harassed by a guy at the bar. These are not isolated events; they're a way of life. I will keep this post short. Others have said so much, and they have said it with so much more courage and grace and resolve than I can imagine. But it was important to me to let my friends and loved ones know that I am touched by this, too. Silence is not comfort. To those back home who need people to be there for them in these dark days: I am sorry for my absence, and please know you’re in my thoughts and prayers. I’m still here to talk, whatever the time difference. To those who are capable of doing some of the lifting these days: I hope you will. My heart breaks too often from the feeling that many of my guy friends would rather stand on the side and watch us continue to carry these burdens than take the difficult step of reaching out and offering to lift the weight. The undermining and abuse of women belongs to no country, no ethnicity, no religion. I wish fewer people would ask me “what is it like for women in Jordan?” and instead spend a little more time asking themselves about the weedy roots of power growing in their own backyards. It ain't Arabic, but I've been dancing it out to this song: الضوء جاي يا حبايبي tl;dr: home away from home, my cup overfloweth, the expat blob Hello friends and family! Yesterday marked the end of my second full week here in Amman. Mostly over jet leg, mostly settled in. Best way I can describe this first chapter is that it has felt like one giant group hug. The warmth is coming from several sources — first, it has been such a joy to reconnect with old friends, people who have made Amman feel like a home away from home these last two years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my adult life, it’s that for certain friendships, time spent apart affects us little, if at all. Alhamdulillah. Then, in addition to old friends, my new classmates are truly some of the coolest people I’ve ever met… Half of the cohort are straight out of undergrad, like me, and the other half have an astounding variety of life experiences under their belts. We're repping hometowns on different continents, work experiences ranging from English teaching to war reporting, and all sorts of graduate degrees and professional aspirations. The imposter syndrome is real (does anyone in their early 20s not become paralyzed by it at least once a week? lmk) but on a deeper level, I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to learn from these driven and diverse individuals. The first time I studied abroad, I was very sensitive to the implications of hanging out so often with fellow expat students. There’s certainly something bleak about the notion of traveling halfway around the world and then only building social connections via superficial common denominators like language, or "cultural background." This phenomenon is usually labeled "the expat bubble,” and there's an extent to which that imagery makes sense to me: expats seem to congregate in insubstantial and easily poppable social worlds suspended in a matrix of tourism and "comfort." However I think the reality of expat culture is far more complex -- after all, is there not something just as problematic about visitors who strive for a “pure” locality, who seek to distance themselves from the expat bubble entirely and in doing so oversimplify or essentialize what it means to be “native” to a place? The more time I’ve spent here and the more I’ve really thought about it, the term bubble doesn’t actually capture Amman’s expat scene for what it is. Different groups of expatriates permeate the city’s social spaces in different ways. Bubbles are too round, too neat — it’s more of an expat blob. My neighborhood has its social tentacles deeply bound up in the blob, but in a way that I find pleasant and effervescent. I live in an area called Jabal Luwebdeih. You could walk around the main perimeter in under an hour, and streets are mixed residential/commercial. Webdeih is known as a crossroads of expats and “alt” lifestyle types. Lots of cafes, several bars, Christians and atheists, even a yoga studio. The last time I lived in Amman, it was in a neighborhood where it was fairly rare to see single women out and about, and the bars with live music were a solid 30-minute cab ride away. This trip I intentionally sought out a different kind of immersion. Webdeih may be full of hipsters — both foreign and local — but this makes for an abundance of opportunities to talk explicitly about art, music, culture, politics, etc. It is also a short walk from the city center, which is a lot more “sha3bi” (popular/of the people). I was aware from the get-go that the expatty aesthetics of Webdeih will affect my experience of Amman, but the walkability and progressive vibe of the area make it a convenient space to call home. Anyways, long story short, friends, life is good. My cup overflows. When hanging with friends or writing gratuitously long journal entries like this, studies are treating me well. Classes started last week, and, God bless, the teaching staff (truly phenomenal pedagogues) have been merciful to us in terms of homework (as of yet). In the meantime, my classmates and I have been getting to know each other via bilingual conversations over happy hours across the city. Expatty? Absolutely. Honestly, our linguistic faculties are hovering around the level of nerdy, awkward 14-year-olds, so it makes sense right now that we wouldn’t subject the outside world of native speakers to our stuttering speech all that often. Within a month or two, I hope to get to the level of precocious, semi-put-together 16-year-olds, that age when you start trying to explain mature concepts to your (wiser, smirking) elders. I’ve started uploading pictures at this link. If you haven’t checked out my background posts, you can do so here (they’ll probably make these later posts more interesting). And please, if you have questions/comments, do not hesitate to send them my way! I’m screaming into the internet void here, and I’m just crazy enough to continue doing so. That said, it’s nice when the void shouts back every once in a while. تحيات الحارة and much love, Jackie tl;dr: wacky thought experiments, Barbie savior (!?), American accountability abroad A good place to start: You might think it a bit odd that I, a white Christian American woman, would spend so much time and effort learning about a Muslim society in the Middle East. You're right. It is odd. Now, on the one hand, having grown up in Portland, I have been raised to believe that a certain degree of strangeness is simply par for the course in the game called life. However, there’s a dimension to this particular strangeness that is not just uncanny, but off-putting. Travel, after all, is not immune to the darker elements that shape the way human beings move about the globe. On the contrary: travel is fundamentally political, and in this post, I want to talk about what kind of traveler that makes me. A thought experiment for you: why don’t we see Arab volunteers flying to the U.S. to support those fighting for clean water in Flint, Michigan? Why don’t tourists with Sub-Saharan African passports stop by the U.S.-Mexico border to volunteer with the refugee populations trapped there? Why is it so self-evident that international social work is frequently carried out by altruistic white Westerners working in the Southern hemisphere? You might be thinking: “well, foreigners do come to America all the time, both for temporary and long-term stays.” But unlike in Jordan, visitors to the U.S. are not treated with high-grade hospitality. They do not live in the nicest neighborhoods in the country, as I will as an American expat. Even the term “expat” itself reeks of all these inequalities (what really is the difference between an expat and a migrant?). This thought experiment is meant to be an exercise in recognizing privilege. Bear with me; I know this is a word that often halts debate before it even starts. However, I find it to be a super useful construct to illuminate the paths along which my travel takes place (whether I choose to acknowledge that or not). Because of the history of my family, the color of my skin, the nationality on my passport, and even the zip code I grew up in, I see and experience the world in a way that differs greatly from many other people’s experiences. This might all seem overly obvious to you. But it was of critical importance for me to include such statements in my initial blog posts because I take these facts about my life very seriously. I know they alter the way I view the world, and if my goal this year is in part to expand my own perspective, I’ll need to mind the blinders I was born with. The facts of my whiteness and my American-ness aren’t just a matter for personal reflection and navel-gazing — they are incredibly salient for dynamics in the classroom and in the workplace. I actually just spent a year writing my senior thesis on this topic, and though I won’t get into the details here, I’m happy to talk about that with anyone who asks (I may even do a post later on). At the moment, suffice to say that as much as I find jobs at diplomatic, non-profit, and peace-building organizations alluring, I also can’t help but question whether such projects have more to say about the wishes of the funders than the needs of those being served. Clearly I’m not the first white lady to go to the Middle East in search of growth and learning (and, if I'm lucky, a wee bit of usefulness beyond my own self). There are many predecessors in the realm of cultural exchange, some of whom I admire, some of whom I read about so as not to repeat their mistakes. In particular, I think often of the potential continuities between the colonial era and our current one. After all, it is the mere art of certain historians that suggests that the colonial era is “past.” (Did you know that the rest of the world calls it the "2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq"?) I don’t mean to pelt you with disclaimers, with self-deprecation, or, least of all, with guilt. Because even as an American white woman who is skeptical at this point that she will ever be “fluent” in Arabic, I do believe in the value of gaining cultural and linguistic competency in a region of the world that isn’t mine. Some days I can articulate that value better than others. I still worry about overstepping my bounds, about falling into old-fashioned tropes of “adventure” and “discovery,” but beyond such anxieties, I have faith that there is a reason we are often compelled to push past our personal boundaries. Respectful curiosity and mutual understanding are a powerful combination, I find. I don’t profess that there’s a “right” way to travel, as opposed to a wrong one. I don’t profess that what I’m doing right now is something that I will absolutely look back on without regrets. But I do profess that the day we stop asking questions about, for, and of each other is the day it’s all over. Shout-out to my friends who have been patient with me through all the times when I have not been sensitive enough to my blinders, and I am grateful to those who aspire to see beyond the obvious in me and in each other. In conclusion: if you, reader, find yourself lying awake at night lately, wondering what in God’s name your privilege is doing to YOUR movement through the world, know that I’m somewhere out there, probably awake, probably wondering the exact same thing...That said, it’s probably best we don’t let our late night existential crises keep us from rest for too long. We have to wake up tomorrow with full energy to take on the crucial political work to be done. After all, we’ve been imparted with the choices and power to do it. I’ll leave you with this beautiful Elizabeth Alexander quote: “Critical thinking develops when you go outside of your comfort zone, when you eat a different bread from the one you grew up with. Challah, chapati, hot-water cornbread, pita, injera, baguette — how wonderful to eat a different bread, a differently spiced meal. How wonderful to sleep next to someone who might be dreaming in a language different from your own.”
tl;dr: Places contain multitudes. Migration is cool. Jordan exists (but also it doesn’t). Context is good. In my last post, I talked about the "what" of my upcoming year: daily disemboweling of my ego to make offerings to an unfriendly God (the Arabic language). In this entry, I'll dwell on the “where" of my time abroad. Jordan is not the most exciting place in the Arab world. A variety of Arabic teachers and college friends, many with family ties to the Arabic-speaking world, or else who are much more travelled than I am, have kindly bestowed this information upon me when I share what I'm doing with my post-grad life. Lebanon is far more cosmopolitan, I’m told. Oman has phenomenal beaches. Egypt is the Arab Bollywood. Jordan, so I hear, is more like the Middle East’s Midwest, or Arizona -- not quite Nebraska, but definitely not California or New York. (Perhaps it’s the Arab Oregon? They do have lots of parks.) That all said, I’m excited about calling Jordan home for the next year. Generally speaking, these days Americans go to one of two places to learn Arabic: Morocco or Jordan. There are several reasons for this. Before the Syrian civil war, my college study abroad program was based in Damascus. Likewise, political and safety concerns largely keep Americans from setting up shop in Lebanon, Egypt, and North Africa (e.g. Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Sudan). As I talked about in my last post, the “where” of Arabic studies is super important, as it will shape the dialect you get to practice. Since Moroccans speak lots of French and have an Arabic all their own (very Berber-influenced), when faced with the choice, I decided to book a ticket to Amman. Jordan is a nation formed in the crucible of a lot of movements — political, migrational, everything in between. Like many of its neighbors in the “Fertile Crescent,” Jordan has basically been inhabited since the dawn of human time. Still, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, population was sparse. Jordan’s lands were controlled by the Ottoman Empire (i.e. Turkey) from the 1500s until the breakup of the Empire in World War I. After the “Great War,” when various European powers decided they were uniquely endowed to run everybody’s business, control of Jordan fell into the hands of the British. The Jordanian monarchy (which still exists today) was more or less installed by the Brits as a thank you to the influential Hashemite family of the Gulf, who fought as allies of the Allies throughout the war. The Hashemite brothers ended up multi-generationally enthroned in Jordan and Iraq; both their roots really stretch back to present-day Saudi Arabia. This is one of the cool components of Jordanian national identity: it isn’t just determined by whose roots are “deepest” in Jordanian sand and soil. On the contrary, Jordan is a country that has welcomed wave after wave of immigrants and refugees. A huge portion of the population is Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi (Jordan is the only Arab country to have given citizenship to Palestinian refugees living within its borders, I'm pretty sure?). There are also Christian minorities, and Circassians, Sudanese, Yemenis…This isn’t to say Jordan is an all-accepting paradise -- every country in the world has its own strain of border-loving bigotry -- but I have noticed that my life as an expat benefits from this general trend of the border-crossing personal history of many Jordanian residents. If we’re being honest, it’s fair to say that Jordan maybe shouldn’t have existed as a country in the first place. Post-WWI, European leaders drew borders where they suited European global domination, not where they necessarily made sense for ethnic, cultural, religious, and other identity groups in the region. “Greater Syria” was something many Arab leaders fought for once it was clear the Ottomans were no longer in charge. The British "Mandate" for Palestine lumped together lands on both sides of the Jordan River (i.e. both Palestine and “Transjordan”), which is interesting to think about today, given the massive flows of Palestinian refugees into Jordan over the last 50 years. “Transjordan” would have been a good name for the country, actually, because of the way Jordan acts as a crossroads/melting pot/salad bowl/maqluba of the world. (The other interesting thing about the British Mandate is that lots of Jordanians learn English in school, so I’ll probably have a fall-back on days when my Arabic is debilitatingly incoherent.) There’s a lot about Jordan that I didn’t get to talk about in this post, but that’s, of course, what the next year is for. In the future, I’ll cover the Bedouin roots of Jordanian national culture, the ecological and geographical features that shape the state, the idiosyncrasies of the capital Amman…lots more to open up, so I hope I’ve whet your appetite for more about this cultural-geographic underdog of the Middle East. Next time: Reconciling privilege, American cultural hegemony, and other uncontroversial and easy-to-explicate topics. (I may also break down how to land a rocket on Mars, TBA.)
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