Part 1: Whistles
So, this afternoon, I was walking through the center of Amman with my roommate, when she turned to me and muttered, "If they don't stop whistling, I'm so tempted to flip them off!" I responded with characteristic confusion: "Huh?" She jerked her head in the direction of a group of teenage boys lounging in front of a small convenience store across the narrow street. They were all looking at us, and one of them, as it turns out, was whistling, not the fun kind of whistling that has some element of musicality, but a more suggestive, kind of creepy whistling that I had, at first, tuned out. I nodded my head in agreement with her frustration, but as we kept on walking, I tried to figure out why I hadn't even noticed the uncomfortable attention we were receiving. Part of the reason is because it's everywhere - being an obviously foreign woman in Amman almost seems to invite staring, horn-honking, cat-calls, and, of course, whistling. It becomes part of the ambient noise of the city, and I mostly ignore it because there's not much you can do about it and because I haven't quite worked out why it happens so much.
I think it has a lot to do with the "foreign" part of the equation - I've seen young Jordanian women not wearing the hijab and dressed in Western garb receive not so much as a passing glance from those ubiquitous groups of men who socialize in public spaces across the city. But being foreign, being Other, makes the staring seem acceptable to some of the young men here, especially when they're hanging out with their friends and killing time. It's also different being here for the summer - being not quite a tourist and not, of course, a resident - that makes the attention so frustrating that it's almost worth ignoring it just for the peace of mind. As a tourist, perhaps you can write off the attention as a natural reaction to a stranger - after all, though a little more aggressive, it's really no different from the way we react, with a little curiosity and some annoyance, to the bus-loads of tourists passing through Harvard Yard on a regular basis. And if you are a resident, you just don't even experience the attention. But being in this quasi-residential state makes you a target for longer than it is possible to just brush aside. It becomes personal.
Interestingly, the only time I've not experienced this sort of unwanted attention was when I was garbed in quasi-scandalous attire at the Dead Sea. Dressed in a sports bra and gym shorts (I forgot a swimsuit...) instead of being covered from the neck down to my ankles, I expected myself to feel a little uncomfortable, especially given that we were heading to a public beach. Yet, when we first arrived, at 8:30am, the only people we saw were a couple foreign tourists dressed even more scandalously than us (bikinis! gasp!) and the beach attendants, all of whom were friendly and un-phased by our sartorial choices. Even as the beach started filling up with Jordanian families - SO MANY cute kids playing in the sea and in the near-by pools - there were no stares, no comments, nothing at all. It was a welcome reprieve that came, ironically, the one time I've been in public and not completely covered up here in Jordan. Also, the Dead Sea was just generally awesome, to take a bit of a detour from my rant...two highlights = paddle boats in the pool and smearing mud (with supposed healing properties) all over my body. And just a warning if you ever go into the Dead Sea - it is so painful if you have so much as a paper cut! And it can dehydrate you in 20 minutes flat, less if you go in during the hottest part of the day. But the floating was fun :)
And back to the topic at hand - I just want to emphasize that, despite my musings here, I don't mean to imply that every guy in Jordan whistles at foreign girls, nor that it isn't something you can't address on a personal level. I've practiced my colloquial Arabic with men around Amman with absolutely no issue, I'm friends with an old security guard I pass every day on my way to class, and the guys at the sweets shop by our apartment always laugh when we come in, because they know we are going to walk out with more baklava than we initially intend to buy...and that's without even mentioning the taxi drivers, many of whom are AWESOME and willing to chat with foreigners who are attempting to speak their language. A little more on taxi drivers follows, after another brief side-note about the imminent end of my childhood and how it got postponed.
The Imminent End of My Childhood and How It Got Postponed: A Tangent
Part of my big weekend plans was to head to the local cinema to watch HP7:Part 2 and cry as I enter the world of adulthood. However, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that I get to be a kid for another six weeks! The bad news is that this is because I am not going to be able to see the final installment of Harry Potter until I return to the States...the cinema informed us with nary a word of encouragement that the film had not come in and would maybe arrive in "August or December". So, you all know what this means. You guys are all going to see Harry Potter TWICE! Once now, like any sane person, and once at the end of August with meeeeee :)
Part 2: Taxis
Amman, unlike Boston, is not a walkable city, nor is it particularly invested in public transportation. So, the way most people get around is by car, if they can, or by taxi. We've been taking a lot of taxis since we got here and have gotten very adept at judging whether or not a taxi driver is going to overcharge us (dead give-away: his meter is "broken") or drive like a crazy person (one sign is the condition of the car itself...but you never know - some of the craziest drivers have the most well-kept vehicles, because they're just really good at the crazy driving...which is semi-reassuring). However, while some of our most salient moments of culture shock have occurred in this space (i.e. near-death experiences and futile arguments over half a dinar of taxi fare), the taxi is also a great place to practice Arabic, learn a little about Jordan's people, and break through some of those gender boundaries that structure life here [see above].
Most taxi drivers are really friendly and will ask lots of questions, in English, if they speak it, or in Arabic, if they can be convinced that you (kind of) speak it. On our way to the Dead Sea, Mahmoud, our driver, was one of the ones who spoke English, and he told us stories the whole way to the beach about his experiences with tourists in the area. Also, he informed us that he spoke Russian, in addition to English and Arabic, and that one of the tourists in his tales was, in fact, a Russian gangster who he befriended as he drove him along the Dead Sea Highway. Unclear if this was true or not, in retrospect, but I thought it was great at the time! And then we definitely saw a few Russians at the beach, so it's totally plausible that gangster-types would make their way to the Dead Sea, as well as just regular Russians and Mahmoud was quite a friendly man, so his story may well have been true, despite the practiced air of his delivery.
In Amman proper, we've also had some really kind taxi drivers - we met one man who told us about his daughter who was around our age and studying at the University of Jordan, another who told us about his Bedouin heritage and native village on the outskirts of Petra, and another who asked us, in all seriousness: "Why aren't you all married? You're such nice girls!" As we get more confident in Arabic, we've started having more conversations with our taxi drivers, though because the colloquial ('ammiya) varies a little from the standard Arabic (MSA) we study, our attempts at speaking are, invariably, highly amusing to our drivers, even when we are speaking fairly good MSA. Apparently the most hilarious thing is when we try to incorporate some 'ammiya into our speech, because usually what happens is that we say what we mean in MSA and then add in the 'ammiya equivalent, so what emerges is, basically, a stutter, wherein we repeat the messages we are trying to convey a couple times over before the guffaws of our taxi driver incite us to refrain from such efforts.
Part 3: Nargeeleh Smoke
The final episode of this rather ramble-y post has to do with the last item in the series located in the title, obviously. First, some synonyms: nargeeleh = hookah = sheeshah = argeeleh. I've never smoked any of the above before, and I did for the first time last night, which - and this should come to no surprise to anyone who knows my track record with trying new things - was a HUGE fail for the most part. I am not so good at inhaling smoke into my lungs, even when the smoke tastes like strawberries, as this did. I ended up experimenting with various lengths of inhalations but to no avail. To make matters worse, our waiter definitely noticed my failures and started chuckling every time he came back to add more hot coals to the top of the apparatus. A large group of women sitting in front of us occasionally threw me glances of disdainful amusement as they sucked in unbelievable amounts of smoke and exhaled in measured fashion. I was jealous. New mission, as long as I don't get lung cancer: be able to smoke hookah like all the old grandpas we see sitting outside coffeehouses across Amman, or like a fully functional chimney.
The End
I'll post in Arabic soon about classes, because, let's be honest, no one but Ariella is really going to want to hear about my classes, and even that is pretty questionable :) Also, chances are that when I re-read this post at any time in the foreseeable future, I'll probably soften my words about the things I don't love so much about Amman...to be honest, I'm really glad I'm here and everyone has been super kind (a lot of people ask if I'm Indian, and then they emphasize the deep friendship that exists between Jordan and India, and then they tell me they'll give me a special price on whatever trinket they are trying to sell me, even when I know for a fact that they just offered the same price to my roommates when they say they are from Boston). But for real, most people are surprising tolerant of our poor Arabic, which is definitely to be appreciated. That's all, folks! Miss you all lots!
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