yella bye

so, as i write this, it's raining cats and dogs in amman (masha'allah!), and i'm hoping that i'll face better weather tomorrow when i fly to GREECE. most of my friends left this morning, meaning last night was spent crying in public, much to my embarrassment (friends, if you're reading this, i don't miss you AT ALL, especially you, Boeuf). thank god natsi is still here to console me, and we went on an excellent double-date today with dropek and jane.

i guess the most appropriate thing to do now is to make lists, my favorite hobby.

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT JORDAN

1. the SIT tribe, i guess.
2. waking up at sunrise to the sound of the call to prayer/my host dad praying in the room next door.
3. reem shwarma.
4. the architecture, and the way all the buildings are white and turn pinky purple at sunset.
5. "welcome to jordan!"
6. my host mom.
7. generally not ever knowing what's going on, but being ok with that slash always being out of my element.
8. feeling like i actually sort of understand arabic, which i'm sure will disappear as soon as i don't have to rely on it anymore.
9. the amazing natural beauty.

THINGS I WILL DEFINITELY NOT MISS ABOUT JORDAN

1. bread
2. bread
3. bread
4. the harrassment ("hey! shakira! shakira!")
5. having to think/stress so much about being culturally appropriate.
6. generally not ever knowing what's going on.
7. feeling like i really don't know any arabic.
8. the fact that it's not california.
9. the lack of greenery.

THINGS I AM EXCITED FOR ABOUT AMERICA

1. preparing my own food (that's not bread).
2. generally feeling in control of my own life.
3. being able to go for walks, runs OUTSIDE.
4. california.
5. greenery.
6. my house/bed/family/dog.
7. everything.

OK, i think i'll have more insightful reflections later, but for now i'm stoked to leave tomorrow for a romp around europe with juliet.

maasalema, al urdun. it's been real.

the war is won?

here is an email i just recieved from the academic director at SIT:

"Dear All,

We all want Peace and stop the terror everywhere in this planet not just in the Muslim world. The USA managed to achieve their dream after 10 years of following up Osama, therefore, Kindly Please be low profile regarding this issue, there are Jordanians who will be upset about his death and they consider him as Martyr.

Please don’t defense the USA position in this regard, and don’t show public happiness about it.

Your safety and security is high priority for us."


on a related note, i just read a very interesting article in the NYT magazine about the current legal actions by the US military regarding the premeditated murder of three afghan citizens. here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01KillTeam-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast. it serves as an important reminder of the psychological toll taken on soldiers by war (especially a war as chaotic and disorganized as this one) and how failures to deal with problems in the system and turning a blind eye to inhuman behavior lead to innocent deaths. and we wonder why osama is a martyr and we are viewed less than favorably in the middle east...

but how weird are cell phones really?

behind a house in sebha, a village in the northern badia, i sat down in a tent on the rug, careful not to show my host the bottom of my feet (which is very haram in bedouin culture). i leaned up against the camel saddle being used as a back support and sipped my small cup of bitter coffee. my host moved a scarf away from his throat, held a tissue to it, and cleared his throat via the HOLE IN HIS NECK (a heads up on his traecheotomy would have been nice. the family later showed us a photo album from when he went to new york for the surgery). i pulled out my notebook and ash flurries from the fire pit at the center of the tent settled on the pages, welcome warmth from the spring rain that was falling outside. i was interviewing my host for my ISP (independent study project) about shared water resources between jordan and syria, as he is a prominent farmer in the northern badia. just as he started to answer my first question in frog-throated bursts, my cell phone rang with a call from my mother. i knew i couldn't answer, not because it would have been rude (arabs tend to answer all phone calls no matter the situation and without apology), but because i don't think i could have mentally coped with occupying two such different spaces at once.

i've been thinking a lot about these two worlds (and though they aren't so different as to call them different "worlds," i lack a better alternative to use). i've been quite homesick lately (reading joan didion's "slouching towards bethlehem" and her remarkably accurate depicitons of life Out West aren't helping) and have been pondering just how it is that i can feel so connected to two places that are halfway around the world from one another. i'm literally living two parallel lives. one by keeping in touch with family at home, wasting time looking at facebook photos of my friends having a ball at college, getting an easter phone call and being able to hear the voices of my entire extended family on the other line (but how weird are cell phones really?). the other, by speaking half in arabic, by spending 20 minutes planning my outfit in the morning as i ponder whether or not showing the bottom half of my calves at an interview with the jordanian secretary general at the ministry of water is culturally appropriate, by generally not undersatanding what the hell is going on most of the time.

i feel like right now i'm occupying both these worlds simultaneously. the smell of the pacific ocean and the feel of a coastal breeze are as strong in my mind as the taste of shay marameeya or the sound of the call to prayer. i don't exactly know what this means, or if this is damaging to my psyche or whatever, or if i should just "carpe diem" and all that jazz. all i know is that it's exhausting, and i miss home, and as much as i love jordan and i love SIT and the fact that it's not actually school and my host mom and i had a good cry last night over tea and dessert about how we both don't want me to leave, i feel mentally like "hallas," i'm done, let's wrap this up, let me enjoy some of my mom's delicious grilling on the back porch because that's what summer means and right now all i want is SUMMER please allah. because while i've gotten used to functioning in this culture, and i really do LIKE this culture, and i feel that i have learned so much that i could never have learned back home, it's not HOME and i don't think it could ever be home because home is california and it will always be california and please GIVE ME CALIFORNIA. now, preferably.

but maybe i'm just overwhelmed with emotions (lots of crying this week, incidentally) because i'm stressed with this dumb ISP and i'm worried it's going to suck and i hate handing in a sucky end product and what the heck am i doing with my life and i'm a crap researcher and do i really want to even be at college because all i really want to do is hang out with babies on a farm and eat vegetables or something. and maybe it's just because the end is nigh and with only 3 weeks here in amman i'm sort of just feeling like "ok well just hurry up and end already" because the deadline is in sight and i feel i'm inching towards it at a snail's pace. and i just applied for a job in MN and if i get it i will literally have 2 days at home before i have to turn around and jet off to st. paul, which is putting a tarnish on my otherwise happy silver 4-week eurotrip fantasy that looks something like that movie "if it's tuesday, this must be belgium" but without all the protagonist's casual girlfriends and am i going to be in belgium on a tuesday? cuz that would just be too much. and then if i don't come home for thanksgiving and go to chicago as per usual then i will have spent 2 days at home in 11 months which is just absurd, really.

and even though it doesn't seem like it, i'm really quite alright, but this quote by joan didion did make me cry yesterday because did i mention i miss california?:

"California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent."

happy easter!!

this morning i went with dave's host mom, who is christian, to easter morning services at her evangelical church. i've had a very diverse springtime religious experience, i guess you could say.

earlier in the week we had a passover seder at SIT. ben led the meal/service/i don't know what exactly you call it, and he did a GREAT JOB (ben, if you're reading this, you did a great job!!). he also did something that almost made me cry. traditionally, at the end of the seder, you say "next year in jerusalem" in hebrew. but he changed it slightly to say "next year in jerusalem...for everyone." also, i found the afikoman, which is half of a piece of matzah that the oldest memeber of the family hides somewhere in the house for all the kids to find. mabrook to me!

so yeah today i went to church for easter services and learned how to say "god is risen" and "risen indeed" in arabic: "al-misah (messiah i guess) qam" and "haqqan qam!" so that's neat. dave's mom, nancy, is this tiny little woman, seriously no more than 4'10", and it's funny because everyone we met at the church thought that i was her daughter. HA. we arrived at 5 min. to 10:00, and the service started at 10, and we were literally the only people in the church. nancy started to get a little upset. she said "time is sacred," that people here seem to take their sweet time and always show up late to church.

anyway, the service started with "god is risen" in ARABIC! i followed along in the hymn book and actually was able to keep up and follow along with most of it, at least the chorus. the entire service actually was in arabic, so that made it sort of boring as i couldn't understand any of it except for "allah" and "amen." but nancy wants me to come with her next sunday (i think she thinks i'm a lot more religious than i actually am, which is like 2% religious) and she says next time we will sit in the back so she can whisper me a translation of the sermon.

she kept on mentioning how "david's father is a jew" which i already knew. then she gave me a copy of the new testament that has both the english and the arabic (again, thinking i actually read the bible), and then told me to give it to dave after. she "really wants him to read it."

sadly, this easter didn't have the usual flair that i'm used to at home, the kind that i haven't had since going to college. i miss getting dressed up in springtime church wear and walking down to piedmont community church and seeing everyone and everyone's parents and cousins and grandparents in their easter best, and getting my toes wet from lawn sprinklers on the way. and if we go up oakland ave and down pacific insteadand of down oakland ave and across on highland we pass by the rosemary which wafts into the warm spring air. and PCC is just the right size and the stained glass makes the morning light dance and the sermon is always lively and energetic. and the music is amazing because the piedmont church choir is unbelievable and easter music is so joyful and the organ must somehow be a little bit magical because every time i hear it it makes me with that i were a better christian, which means i wish that i were a christian (in my heart, not by birth) at all. this service only had a piano, no small instrument, but def not a church organ. easter always fills me with hope. sadly, today i didn't quite get that same feeling.

however, it is a beautiful spring day, and there is something to be said for that.

"we exist so we are winning"

yesterday i attended the TEDxRamallah event in amman, an all-day marathon of speakers and performers participating from 3 cities (bethlehem (it had to be moved from ramallah), beirut, and amman) and all connected via live video streaming. the vast majority of the speakers were either palestinian in origin or now called palestine their home, and they shared inspirational stories of their personal successes in transcending the occupation.

for those of you who don’t know, TED is an american organization that puts on an annual convention in california during which people speak about their “ideas worth sharing.” in their spirit of what they call “radical openness” they have made all their lectures available for free online. and, in order to get the speakers’ inspirational messages to as wide an audience as possible, they have invited the online community to translate lectures from english into their home languages, which people now can enjoy as subtitles on the videos they stream from http://ted.com. TED has been such a success that there have been hundreds of TEDx events, or independently organized, TED inspired/endorsed events around the world. TEDxRamallah was one such event.

but its tri-city character was unique and an important component of the message this event sought to send. due to recently-imposed travel restrictions by israel in response to renewed violence (as well as long-standing bans on entry for many palestinians), many scheduled speakers were unable to make it into the west bank for the event. and so they transcended (buzzword of the day), using that ever-powerful tool called the internet, and showed up anyway, albeit in beirut or amman.

there were over 20 speakers and a handful of artists performing, including the infinitely wise alice walker (the color purple); palestine’s first hip hop crew and the startlingly clever DAM; huwaida arraf, founder of the international solidarity movement, which has been twice nominated for the nobel peace prize; and numerous other scholars, activists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc., all with an important and inspiring story or idea.

i have to say that my favorite lecture came from a woman named julia bacha, who is a brazilian of lebanese descent and an award-winning filmmaker. she talked about her 2009 film “budrus,” which told the story of the village by the same name in palestine that successfully staged a non-violent protest to resist the construction of the israeli dividing wall that, if built, would divide and demolish the town. she played for us the film’s trailer, and now i want nothing more than to see that film. it showed palestinians and israelis, men and women and even children, peacefully resisting the demolition of homes and olive trees (several women actually put their bodies between a bulldozer and an olive tree to keep it from being uprooted) and the construction of one of the most glaring symbols of oppression today.

bacha said that after her film came out it received a lot of attention from mass media. this surprised her, not because she didn’t have faith that budrus’ story would strike a chord with audiences, but because when budrus launched its non-violent campaign about 7 years earlier it received virtually no mainstream media coverage. she asked a journalist she knew why this was so, and he said something bacha found shocking coming from a respected and established journalist: at the height of the second intifada, budrus’ story “wasn’t part of the narrative at the time.” meaning because budrus showed nonviolence from palestinians, showed palestinians and israelis working together at a time when the dominant message was that palestinians were all stone-throwing terrorists, it wasn’t incorporated into the intifada’s history.

ms. bacha linked this back to a term she learned from a psychologist friend of hers: confirmation bias. this principle states that humans have the tendency to be attracted to, and accept, stories that confirm our narrative of understanding. this is related to another phenomenon bacha described for us called cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable feeling we get when we receive new information that challenges or runs counter to our internal narrative. when this happens, your brain actually physically and chemically generates/experiences pain, and you are forced to either ignore the pain-inducing information, or rewrite your narrative to incorporate it.

ms. bacha enlightened us the work of norman holland, who is a neurologist who studies the effect of literature on the brain (cool, right?!). he proved that there is neurological evidence that people, at least briefly, accept and believe stories. there is proof that people respond better to stories than to facts. that is exactly what julia bachus has tried to integrate into her filmmaking company JustVision: to use story-telling as a means of challenging people’s narratives, and to provide them with that moment of pain in the hopes that they will rewrite their narratives to incorporate a new bit of truth.

my other favorite presentation was by khaled al sabawi, a palestinian-canadian engineer and the father of geothermal energy in the middle east, who envisioned not a one- or two-state solution to the palestinian-israeli conflict, but a “green state solution.”

the palestinian territories are among the most densely populated in the entire world, and given their extremely high birth rates, growing denser by the minute. by 2050 they are projected to be more densely populated than bangladesh. palestinians also pay among the highest prices for energy in the entire middle east. so high that it has become unaffordable for many. but with the enormous population growth expected in the territories, new buildings will be needed, buildings that account for the largest segment of energy consumption in palestine (through heating/cooling). to make things worse, palestine is almost entirely (97%) dependent on israel for its energy.

and so al sabawi envisioned a solution that was not only extremely sustainable environmentally, but also would give the palestinian territories more energy independence. he titled his lecture: “keeping palestine cool: a different kind of underground movement.” his solution lay underneath the surface, 2 meters underneath to be exact.

the earth, solid ground, absorbs 50% of the sun’s energy and stores it under the surface. in the middle east, at 2 meters below the surface, the earth’s temperature remains constant throughout the year. in ramallah, it stays at a constant temperature of 17 degrees celsius/63 degrees farenheit. al sabawi’s geothermal system looks like this: a series of pipes pump water 2-plus meters below a house or other building. in the winter, the below-ground temp. of 63 degrees F is warmer than room temperature above ground. the water, when it is pumped below ground, absorbs this energy and carries it back up to heat the house. in the summer, it’s just the opposite: the 63 degrees F is cooler than the above-ground temp, and when water is pumped below-ground it loses heat and cools the house.

the only hitch in this ingenious plan is that the initial cost for installing this kind of system is very high, though it is a wise investment that more than pays for itself in the long run. in the US or canada, such a system would take 9-12 years to pay off. al sabawi recognized that this would never work in palestine, and so he took measures to make it more cost efficient and sustainable at the same time. for example, his system uses limestone powder as grout, which is a by-product of the limestone cutting industry already in place in palestine. a great recycling of materials, and a cost-cutter that helped reduce the payoff time from 9-12 years down to 3 or 4. so far, al sabawi’s company has installed 3 of these systems in buildings in ramallah, and it has cut their energy consumption by a whopping 75%!!

he spoke to the challenges of operating a business under occupation. one of the biggest challenges, he said, was making it a sustainable business in palestine; he finds it difficult to hire educated palestinians. this is not from lack of talent. on the contrary, palestinians are some of the most educated in the middle east. the problem is foreign aid: the amount of money being pumped into NGOs enables them to offer salaries 3-4 times higher than the rest of the private sector.

the TEDxRamallah event was long, sometimes frustrating due to technical difficulties, and was sometimes (literally) a pain in my butt (it was hard to sit for 12 hours!!). but it was at times extremely enlightening and indeed inspiring. the event is already up on the website (http://www.tedxramallah.com/eventday/) and i encourage all of you to check it out!

TED

on saturday i'm going to a TEDTalks event called TEDxRamallah. it was going to be held in ramallah but was moved to bethlehem, with participating events in beirut and here in amman. the bethlehem event will be streamed to beirut and amman (as well as over the internet to the WORLD), and speakers who cannot enter palestine due to travel restrictions will speak in beirut/amman and get streamed over to bethlehem. the talks address palestine-specific issues. i'm stoked!
here is more info about the event:
http://www.tedxramallah.com/en/home/index.php?

ana bohebik, khitam

my host mom is the cutest.
last night she came home from the gym feeling good. she asked me (in arabic, she speaks about 2 words of english) how she looked and did a little twirl. she looked great!

later she said she was going to the bank and asked if i wanted to come with her. i tagged along, and she hooked her arm in mine as we skipped down the stairs out of the apartment. we had a great conversation (the fact that i could understand her speaking so quickly and then respond in arabic was a huuuge confidence booster). she asked me if i drove at home. i said yes. she was very happy about that. she said she thinks it's important for women to be able to drive and to have independence. she said that the prophet mohammad (PBUH) thinks so too. he wants all things for women as well as men.

she asked me about my studies, when i'm going to graduate (spring 2012, "insha'allah"), and what i want to do after graduation. i said teach, partly because it's in my top 5 careers, and partly because i don't know how to say "map store owner/cupcake seller" in arabic. teacher ("mo3lima") is a little easier to explain.

she asked about my family. i said my sister is moving to china and i am very sad but also excited because maybe i can have christmas in china. the first thing she asked is if she's married (naturally). i said no, she's only 21 and she's not done with school yet. she asked what she was studying and i said chinese language, which she didn't like that much. she said chinese is not an attractive language. i think her opinion was also a bit colored by the fact that arabs here have very few interactions with pan-asians other than custodians or maids (jordan is not the most ethnically diverse of countries). we don't have a maid, but a lot of families have relationships with their maids that in america we would consider disrespectful; jordanian norms regarding service are much different than american.

anyway, after the bank we stopped for ice cream and happily nommed on it as we drove back home. ana bohebik (i love you), khitam.