Being a Woman in Jordan

No you don’t have to cover completely or wear a burka but this is definitely a fairly conservative culture when it comes to gender relations. Girls dress pretty modestly but are still fashionable – its all about the cute patterns on the headscarves, and jewelry, and SHOES. Jordanian woman love their heels and are also perfectly groomed (you can get a mani/pedi for 15 JD which is like $17 and eyebrows done for 3JD.) I also really need to make some Jordanian girl friends who can teach me how to do eye makeup with the heavy black kohl liner.

Beauty aside…

You could see the huge Zara on Wakalat street or the huge shopping malls that are nicer than most I’ve been to in the states and assume that this is a pretty modern culture. However when it comes to women it seems very traditional. For instance girls always ride in the backseat in Taxis  - but quiet your Rosa Parks impulses for a second ladies because this is actually a sign of respect, like a wealthy Jordanian man will ride in the backseat if he has a driver.

98% of Jordanian woman wait until marriage to have sex and it is a very taboo topic. In fact, girls don’t really go out at night socially unless it’s with their male family members or a group of girls. Dating is uncommon unless your engaged.

The harrassment issue as a Western woman isn’t unbearable, but it is pretty bad. You get cat calls walking on the street and definitely stares in the supermaket. If you dress modestly it’s not bad and I pretty much just tune it out. These guys are coming from an extremely sexually repressed culture and value base so I try to look at it from that perspective – they’re not horrible or dirty people but their concept of Western women is constructed from what they see on Friends and Grey’s Anatomy and, lets face it, American t.v shows don’t exactly give us a great rep. (thanks Meredith Grey!!)

What this basically means is you shouldn’t travel alone after dark or take a taxi home after 12. If you go into a café or restaurant and there are all men smoking Shisha LEAVE because they will assume you are a loose woman at best and at worst, ummm very nice how much?

Entering Ancient Ruins

Photo Cred: my rajul Daniel 

Ahlan wa Sahlan to Amman!

Almost a week down and the reality of my being here and the fact that I’m going to be living in the Middle East for the next four months is finally starting to set in. There are seventeen of us American students on the program and we’ll be taking Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies classes at Amideast’s facilities in West Amman (the nicer, more westernized side of the city). We’ve all been staying at a hotel near Amideast until we move-in to our various accommodations for the semester – apartments for some of us and host Jordanian families for others.

I’m living in an apartment with two other American students (both from New York so we’ll undoubtedly be having an ongoing WestCoast/East Coast debates..)

The week has been a whirlwind of jet-lag and adjusting to the dry heat and hearing Arabic spoken everywhere and learning to BREATH amidst the hazardous concoction of high altitude, car exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, shisha smoke, cigar smoke, smoke…

Amideast 2012

Having traveled to many places in my life I can say with absolute certainty that I have never been to a place like Amman. The city is the chaotic, loud, dusty result of overlapping forces – you have ancient ruins like the Roman amptheatre and the surreal crumbling pillars of the Citadel alongside distinctly Arab stone houses cascading down the hills into the distance. There are the distinct signs of globalization infiltrating the traditional society (McDonalds, Starbucks, Popeyes) next to cafes overflowing with bearded men and hijab-wearing woman sipping coffee and smoking Hookah. Sometimes I feel like I could be walking down the street in San Francisco (Rainbow Street is the hip, cultural epicenter of Amman and has lots of artsy stores and bookshops as well as a fat-free fro yo store and an independent movie theatre) and other times I feel completely out of place in a strange and foreign world. Some observations I’ve made so far are:

- Far from a Mubarak or Gaddafi character, Jordanians LOVE their King…you can actually be arrested for slandering King Abdullah’s name. It’s the Parliament and the prime minister that many Jordanians blame for high inflation and unemployment alongside the high cost of living here. When it comes to the royal family though – celebrity status – you can’t really go anywhere without Abdullah’s grinning picture present.

-Jordan can be confusing because on the one hand it can seem very modern – most all young people speak English perfectly and you can get pretty much any food from sushi to Chinese take-out to nice oven-baked Italian pizza – but then you can’t forget the conservative bedrock of society. It took us thirty minutes and lots of failed attempts walking into restaurants and checking menus before we could find a single place that served alcohol around our hotel!

-Arab time is a real thing….let’s meet up at 8 can turn into 9 can turn into 10…promptness is definitely not valued like in the U.S

-I would NOT get behind the wheel here – the city is organized in a linear progression of numbered circles (for ex. our apartment is near seventh circle and Rainbow street is by the first circle) and that’s basically how people orient. Rather than street names, people mostly give directions by describing nearby landmarks. The fast and reckless driving, especially around the roundabout circles, makes crossing the street, especially for somewhat of a space cadet like me, a bit of an issue. Also, on cars, CRAZY expensive here – apparently there’s a 100% sales tax.

-Jordanians are very centered around TRADITION and FAMILY, which our program diretor explains, is why the culture is having such a hard time grappling with the Arab Spring. They don’t take well to change and, as you can see by the construction going on almost everywhere, Amman is undergoing a lot of growth and progressive changes lately that are shaking up society a bit. I guess they only got their first McDonalds in 1996!

Map of الأردن

For geographically challenged people like me - this is where I'll be spending the next four months! Flying to Amman from Heathrow Airport in London tonight :)

"Protests likely across the Middle East in run-up to September 20 UN vote on Palestinian statehood. Violence possible."

Just received an e-mail with this heading...no worries, right?
On September 20th Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, will address the UN General Assembly and make a bid for Palestinian statehood.


As the e-mail said, leading up to the vote there are probably going to be pro-Palestinian demonstrations throughout the Middle East - especially in countries with large Palestinian populations...


WELL
according to the U.S State Department's website, there are about 1.9 million Palestinian refugees living in JORDAN today and some estimates say that HALF of Jordan's people are of Palestinian origin!


Hopefully the rallies will remain peaceful and help to further the Palestinian cause - hopefully the Jordanian government won't respond to demonstrators in a Syria-like, abuse of power, BS way! As Arabs would say, In Shah Allah ( meaning if God willing or hopefully for us more secular peeps) everything goes well with the protests that they're expecting in the Greater Amman Municipality Square and the Israeli Embassy in downtown Amman, as well as the northern and western border areas with Israel
Definitely will be interesting to follow the events of the upcoming month...from my new apartment in AMMAN (which i move into next week!!!)


Good article about Palestinians' plan to enhance their likelihood of getting the results they want on Sep. 20th
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/10/palestinian-protest-plan-_n_923688.html

Change of Plans

“Because of the uncertainty and fluidity surrounding the political process that is playing out in Egypt, coupled with other issues related to student safety in the run-up to the parliamentary elections that will take place in November, we have decided to cancel the 2011 fall program in Cairo…..”

With this one sentence, which I received in an e-mail from the Amideast powers-that-be in Washington, my aspirations of studying abroad in Egypt during arguably the most exciting time in the country’s history, were dashed. Despite obvious safety concerns, I can’t say I wasn’t crushed. Meanwhile I was faced with the decision of where to spend the upcoming semester instead of Cairo. My options were two other Middle Eastern countries that the US State Department deems at least incrementally more stable at the moment: Morocco or Jordan??

One of my main goals for the next few months is to immerse myself in the Arabic language so as to comfortably ‘get by’ in the Arab world (getting a taxi, haggling without being ripped off, talking to cute Arab guys – you know, just the essentials.) The Moroccan dialect is very distinct and not widely understood elsewhere in the Middle East, so I didn’t think it would be the most strategic place to study Arabic. Other factors drove me to the Hashemite Monarchy of Jordan, however. Located northwest of the massive Saudi Arabia, between Israel (to the west) and Iraq, Jordan is smack-dab in the heart of the Arab World and thus in prime real estate to play a pivotal role in the region’s political and social landscape. Whether its sheltering Syrian refugees fleeing the brutal crackdown of the Assad regime, or exerting its influence in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Jordan itself has a large internal Palestinian population) or upholding its status as a Western ally (although recent protests and ensuing reforms may alter this historically cozy relationship hmm…) Jordan seems to be a key player in the area. Amman appealed to me as a unique base from which to observe the current changes sweeping across the Arab world .

Now its just a matter of brushing the dust from my Al-Kitaab language book, packing my probably oversized suitcase, and beginning the countdown til I move-in to an apartment in Amman with other American students on September 4^th! Can't Wait!

The Seeds of Change??

While certainly not dramatic enough to rival the cataclysmic events in Tunisia and Egypt - the Arab Spring has definitely come to Jordan. Last January, thousands of Jordanians began holding weekly demonstrations in Amman and other cities to protest government corruption, rising prices, widespread poverty, and high unemployment rates in the Hashemite Monarchy. Responding to his dissatisfied people, King Abdallah replaced the prime minister with supposed reformer Marouf al-Bakhit. Also, in June, Abdallah announced that future cabinet members would be approved by parliament instead of by royal decree, thus satisfying a key demand of the protesters.

Unappeased, the marches have continued as many citizens are calling for political and constitutional reforms. Apparently, most of the protests happen after Friday afternoon prayers, led in large part by leftist and youth groups like the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the country's Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. Amideast sent us an e-mail regarding the protests that described them as mostly peaceful, with some minor violence: “One anti-government protester was killed and dozens more wounded March 26 in central Amman after regime loyalists attacked a protest sit-in. Additionally, on July 15, at least 15 people were injured in Amman after security forces forcefully dispersed protesters attempting to set up a tent encampment.”

Amman is also the center of other political, religious, and social tensions. Jordan's Salafist movement, who rigid and conservative views about Islam and the prominent role it should play in Jordanian society are jumping on the momentum of the secular demonstrations and holding their own marches. Also, in the wake of the violence in Gaza and Pro-Palestinian groups have also been active and staging demonstrations around the Israeli borders.

All to say there is definitely a lot going on. Don’t worry mom, I plan on taking Amideast’s latest e-mail to heart:

“Advice!!!!! Avoid all protests. Use caution around prominent places of worship, which may be gathering points for demonstrators. Allow additional time for travel.”

Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I’m certainly not naïve enough to think a white chick can just jump into the political landscape and start demanding human rights for Jordanians (no matter where my convictions may lie.)

Instead I will be watching intently as these protests progress and asking A LOT of questions. I’m interested to see what the news covers (or maybe leaves out?) How do young Jordanians, whose future jobs, homes, and aspirations hang in the balance, view the changes that their country is moving towards?