Learn From This

Dearest friends,
 
My apologies for making you wait for the final Jordan novella for so long.  I returned to the States on August 26th, unpacked, repacked, drove up to Monterey on the 1st, then came down with an infection so intense that I missed my first week of classes.  Essentially the diagnosis was that I was dehydrated and exhausted so my immune system shut down. The trip to the ER was fun waited 4+ hours with my dear friends Ash and Silke by my side shivering one minute sweating the next. Had to deal with a woman who acted as if she had just come back from hunting in the backwoods or from Walmart take your pick.  I was visibly shaking in front of her and rather than ask how I was doing she focused on how ethnic I looked and how ethnic my name was.  Of course when it came to my religion I was like I’d rather not cuz how do you explain non-practicing Muslim or as my friend Adam likes to call me “heathen” to someone like that?  It took 2 1/2 hours to get lab results to tell me I had an infection - duh - and that it was a kidney infection which my friend Silke diagnosed upon arrival at the hospital…go figure.
 
So let’s see what I can remember at the moment of my last weeks in Jordan .  Well let’s see I’ll go back to the end of July and speed through August for ya.  Silke left on July 31st and then my roommie Johanna and I packed up that night to move out of the whorehouse/apartment and into the home of a friend of a friend for about a week.  Johanna and I arrived back to the apartment a bit late after a first full day of the conference on Eliminating All Forms of Violence Against Women.  We started packing and picking things up.  Dropped our shitload of stuff off at our new place in Al Rabia and then it back to the brothel to finish cleaning up.  So Sayeed our beloved doorman and defacto pimp of the building was aware that we were moving out and for some reason in all his brilliance he assumed that we must be taking our time to move out in order to slowly smuggle furniture and take it to our new place.  It appears that furnished apartments are there in that building particularly for prostitutes to rent or unknowing foreigners…  Sayeed had seen Silke walking out of the apartment with a surge protector and he confronted her in Arabic - which she of course completely understood - about stealing things from the apartment.  So our friends from downstairs Hani and Jamal came up to help us throw trash out and just gather the remaining crap we had.  Sayeed came banging on the door @ one point.  I opened the door knowing it had to be him and looked at him.  He started of course with his ‘ahlan wa sahlan’ (which is meant to be a warm welcome but now that its forever associated with Sayeed will proceed to freak me out when I hear it…) and blabbed on about what I learned later was his assumptions of us stealing furniture.  I took great pleasure in just staring at him, replying ‘ahlan wa sahlan’ and closing the door in his face.  I returned to cleaning and chatting with our pals and eventually we all took a break to take in the view from our balcony one last time and have a drink.  It turns out that Sayeed, bright man that he is, returned to knocking and when we couldn’t hear this from our balcony freaked out about the invisible furniture we were sneaking out and thus decided to shut our electricity off.  Well that was the last straw for both Johanna and myself.  Oh you should have seen me I was like Jamal Hani “hold me BACK!!” I was ready to open up a can of whoopass the likes of which Sayeed has never seen but I hope he sees henceforth…ass.  So I told him he wasn’t allowed into our apartment til we left…gave Hani the keys…Johanna and I ceased cleaning..and when I learned that he turned off the electricity to hamper our efforts to steal the crap in the apartment I said, “You may do that in Egypt but we don’t do that in the States!” and told Hani to translate in jest yet I think he might have actually done so.  Whateva once we moved out I was like peace out and only came across him when I came to visit my guy friends in our apt. building…I’m attaching a photo Hani made me take in exchange for him hugging Sayeed in a pic…Sayee had a screwdriver in hand and I said ‘PERFECT!!” so the pic is of my happily holding it above his head.
 
So the next week was Johanna’s last week and we got used to our living situation in our new friend Heidi’s house.  She had a boyfriend so she wanted me out of her house after Johanna left thus I had a week to stay…she dangled the fact that she really liked having me around over my head and said a few times I want you to stay but in the end she wanted her huge house so that she could do the deed with her boyfriend (hey I say it like it is :P) in peace, can’t blame her I guess as pda is kinda taboo in Jordan being comfy in your house is ultra important.  So Johanna and I went out with our peeps from the conference on Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women.  The conference itself was superb - well organized with great participants and wonderful speakers - many of which became dear friends in particular speakers Saadia and Kashif (both from Pakistan ) whom I first met when I moderated their presentations on Honor Killings.  Saadia stayed an extra week so met up with her a bit more and just cemented a lifelong friendship with her.  Sufficed to say the topic of this conference wasn’t my area of expertise but as a woman of course I was passionate about the subject areas and I ended up getting commendations/compliments from speakers and participants alike calling me one of the star students through the week so that was cool.
 
The internship continued as before.  I was unmotivated but researched now and again and just tried to wrap my mind around packing up and leaving in 2 weeks.  In Johanna’s last week we went out to this great pub named Amigo (the only one in Amman ) where she met up with this cute Jordanian soccer player that flirted with her the previous week @ our fave lounge/club Kanabaye.  I ended up chatting with a cool bartender named Rami who asked me out on a date - met with him for drinks a week later cool to hang out and dance with nothing else happened so stop saying ooh :P.  Then Johanna left me and then eventually I lugged my TON of crap out of Heidi’s into Abeer’s car and then to her parent’s house. 
 
 So I was like the 4th daughter in the al Helou’s lovely home.  They had one extra bed and no extra room with their 4 children but @ the same time they were so hospitable and welcoming it was just a great way to end my time in Jordan . We celebrated Abeer’s father’s 33rd (add 20 years…still young!) birthday while I was there and he was so funny while I was there cuz he tried to converse with me in Turkish time and time again - he went to college in Istanbul and his Turkish was really impressive.  I loved Abeer’s parents and her siblings were awesome - her 16 year old sister Hanin was so adorable she reminded me of my li’l sis Peri and made me miss her that much more.  My last 2 weeks in Jordan were busy busy busy.  I decided to officially end my intership about half a week early so that eased my packing and saying goodbye to my dear friends a bit.  My dear friend Dave from school returned to Jordan for a week after spending most of the summer interning in Jenin. So it was the last week for both of us and we spent it together with my dearest buddies from my apt. building (and no not Sayeed! :P) Hani, Saad, Maher, Yousef, and Jamal.  Fun last week activities include a trip to the Dead Sea with Dave and Maher (I’m attaching a photo of Maher and I covered in Dead Sea mud, good for the skin!), bar outings, a viewing of Rush Hour 3 with Abeer & Dave, lots of hookah and card games called Tricks and Complex (I won once and then failed horribly the remainder of the time ).  I made some wonderful new friends that I wish I could have met earlier and spent more time with named Eymen, Anas, and Sahar.  Eymen is like my brother now, a dear friend, and a Turk who is fluent in both Arabic and English - just brilliant brilliant guy and fun to hang out with, he’s Mr. Social.  The night I met Anas at Sahar’s going away party (sweet, beautiful girl who’s finishing up her Masters program in Public Policy at University of Chicago) the first thing he said with a great big grin on his face was that he was the future Prime Minister of Jordan.  That’s something that either takes an immense ego or a great background and I’m happy to say with Anas it’s the latter.  He has important government officials in his family and he’s a born diplomat/publicist/activities coordinator all rolled in one.  I added him as a friend on Facebook and I swear every other day I get an invitation to some fabulous event he’s hosting.  Mark my words he’s going to be a big name in Jordan in the near future and I will happily accept invitations to the royal palace etc. when they come in the mail ;). 
 
So remember Mahmoud the taxi driver/defacto tour guide/crazy ass? Well I made a simple request to visit a few places in Amman to take pics before leaving.  So my 2nd to last day he’s supposed to pick me up and take me the Abu Darwish mosque, Al-Hussein mosque, and drive by (operative words here!) the Ministry of Agriculture so I can take a pic of the glorious picture depicting Abdullah watering a tree in full military regalia and with a traditional headress (kafiyeh) on his head - trust me it’s classic! Mahmoud arrives in his OWN PERSONAL CAR instead of the taxi and I can tell from that moment that it’s going to be a bad day.  Well I’m right on track with that assessment because it all goes awry when Mahmoud STOPS his car in front of the Ministry so I can get a better shot.  Yeah so 2 hours later I find myself talking to the military police who determine that I must delete the pictures I’ve taken of Abdullah because parts of the Ministry are also depicted.  Let me rewind back to the start of the debaucle and how it erupted into a 2 hour affair.  Silke and Johanna know from personal experience that when Mahmoud says, “I’ll handle it” or “Trust me,” he cannot be trusted and he will only make matters worse.  This proved yet again the case on this day as after security guards came out to ask what we were doing the men (including Mahmoud) argued in 30 minutes in Arabic - bits and pieces of which I could make out meant that we were in deep shit for some reason.  So I got upset with Mahmoud for leaving me out of the loop and I told him that I don’t know of his experience with women, but as an American woman of Turkish descent he did not want to tell me to sit back or keep me uninformed, as it would be to his own detriment.  So he explains - and mind you Mahmoud’s translation is not always (a) correct and (b) unbiased/objective - that one soldier was fine with the picture but that another asshole security guard was concerned that I was CIA and wanted to know why I was taking pics.  So I told Mahmoud to tell the gentlemen that I would GLADLY delete the pics and be on my way.  But Mahmoud always taking things into his own hands (believe you me I ripped him a new one when I found this out..) tells the soldiers that that’s not necessary and to call the police as he knows some people in the local station who will argue that I have a right to keep the pics.  Yup so they call the police and we wait and Mahmoud realizes during this time that all his “contacts” at the police station have their cell phones shut off so he can’t get in touch with them and now he’s in deep shit as he’s a taxi driver squiring a foreiger in his personal car (umm…dee da dumm, I could have told him that was a bad idea!!).  Long story short after I get completely frustrated and asked repeatedly to prove that I am not a CIA agent (my student id card came in handy along with my speech that had I been a CIA agent I might have had a grasp on the Arabic language, not been travelling around Amman with dumbass, and would probably not get caught taking pictures of Abdullah in front of the Ministry…).  So when the police arrived they had a nice time flirting with me - I swear if you’re a woman, a foreign woman you can’t escape it - and as I expected they asked me to delete the pics and go merrily on my way.  My two last nights were spent hanging out with my favorite guys in my apartment building (Hani, Jamal, Saad, Maher, Yousef) and at a hookah cafe with a view of the herculean temple and citadel downtown with my fave guys, dearest Abeer, and new lifelong friends I acquired in my last weeks.  That’s it for my Jordan adventures of the summer…I truly experienced 3 life-changing months while in Jordan and Israel/Palestine and despite craziness and hilarity that ensued quite frequently I wouldn’t change a thing were I given the chance.  Thank you for patiently reading my lengthy emails detailing crazy stories I lived throughout this summer.  I am truly honored to have such wonderful friends who provide such supportive comments and are as excited as I am about my experiences abroad.  Sorry SORRY SORRY again for the long wait.  Hope it was worth it!
 
 
Link for an excellent article written by a friend and organizer of the conference I attended on “Promoting Peace Through Dialogue.”  You may recall from my first or second novella my description of the conference, my disappointment in the participants, and my standing up to the panelists tasked with discussing prevention of use of nuclear weapons.  Well this article without naming names refers to a young woman who changed the direction of the conference with her commentary - that would be me :).  Nick, the author, pulled me aside the other day and said I inspired the article with my brave comments so I thought I’d share the article with you.  Hope you enjoy it :) 

 

Dearest friends, My apologies for making you wait for the final Jordan novella for so long. I returned to the States on August 26th, unpacked, repacked, drove up to Monterey on the 1st, then came down with an infection so intense that I missed my first week of classes. Essentially the diagnosis was that I was dehydrated and exhausted so my immune system shut down. The trip to the ER was fun waited 4+ hours with my dear friends Ash and Silke by my side shivering one minute sweating the next. Had to deal with a woman who acted as if she had just come back from hunting in the backwoods or from Walmart take your pick. I was visibly shaking in front of her and rather than ask how I was doing she focused on how ethnic I looked and how ethnic my name was. Of course when it came to my religion I was like I’d rather not cuz how do you explain non-practicing Muslim or as my friend Adam likes to call me “heathen” to someone like that? It took 2 1/2 hours to get lab results to tell me I had an infection - duh - and that it was a kidney infection which my friend Silke diagnosed upon arrival at the hospital…go figure. So let’s see what I can remember at the moment of my last weeks in Jordan. Well let’s see I’ll go back to the end of July and speed through August for ya. Silke left on July 31st and then my roommie Johanna and I packed up that night to move out of the whorehouse/apartment and into the home of a friend of a friend for about a week. Johanna and I arrived back to the apartment a bit late after a first full day of the conference on Eliminating All Forms of Violence Against Women. We started packing and picking things up. Dropped our shitload of stuff off at our new place in Al Rabia and then it back to the brothel to finish cleaning up. So Sayeed our beloved doorman and defacto pimp of the building was aware that we were moving out and for some reason in all his brilliance he assumed that we must be taking our time to move out in order to slowly smuggle furniture and take it to our new place. It appears that furnished apartments are there in that building particularly for prostitutes to rent or unknowing foreigners… Sayeed had seen Silke walking out of the apartment with a surge protector and he confronted her in Arabic - which she of course completely understood - about stealing things from the apartment. So our friends from downstairs Hani and Jamal came up to help us throw trash out and just gather the remaining crap we had. Sayeed came banging on the door @ one point. I opened the door knowing it had to be him and looked at him. He started of course with his ‘ahlan wa sahlan’ (which is meant to be a warm welcome but now that its forever associated with Sayeed will proceed to freak me out when I hear it…) and blabbed on about what I learned later was his assumptions of us stealing furniture. I took great pleasure in just staring at him, replying ‘ahlan wa sahlan’ and closing the door in his face. I returned to cleaning and chatting with our pals and eventually we all took a break to take in the view from our balcony one last time and have a drink. It turns out that Sayeed, bright man that he is, returned to knocking and when we couldn’t hear this from our balcony freaked out about the invisible furniture we were sneaking out and thus decided to shut our electricity off. Well that was the last straw for both Johanna and myself. Oh you should have seen me I was like Jamal Hani “hold me BACK!!” I was ready to open up a can of whoopass the likes of which Sayeed has never seen but I hope he sees henceforth…ass. So I told him he wasn’t allowed into our apartment til we left…gave Hani the keys…Johanna and I ceased cleaning..and when I learned that he turned off the electricity to hamper our efforts to steal the crap in the apartment I said, “You may do that in Egypt but we don’t do that in the States!” and told Hani to translate in jest yet I think he might have actually done so. Whateva once we moved out I was like peace out and only came across him when I came to visit my guy friends in our apt. building…I’m attaching a photo Hani made me take in exchange for him hugging Sayeed in a pic…Sayee had a screwdriver in hand and I said ‘PERFECT!!” so the pic is of my happily holding it above his head. So the next week was Johanna’s last week and we got used to our living situation in our new friend Heidi’s house. She had a boyfriend so she wanted me out of her house after Johanna left thus I had a week to stay…she dangled the fact that she really liked having me around over my head and said a few times I want you to stay but in the end she wanted her huge house so that she could do the deed with her boyfriend (hey I say it like it is :P) in peace, can’t blame her I guess as pda is kinda taboo in Jordan being comfy in your house is ultra important. So Johanna and I went out with our peeps from the conference on Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women. The conference itself was superb - well organized with great participants and wonderful speakers - many of which became dear friends in particular speakers Saadia and Kashif (both from Pakistan) whom I first met when I moderated their presentations on Honor Killings. Saadia stayed an extra week so met up with her a bit more and just cemented a lifelong friendship with her. Sufficed to say the topic of this conference wasn’t my area of expertise but as a woman of course I was passionate about the subject areas and I ended up getting commendations/compliments from speakers and participants alike calling me one of the star students through the week so that was cool. The internship continued as before. I was unmotivated but researched now and again and just tried to wrap my mind around packing up and leaving in 2 weeks. In Johanna’s last week we went out to this great pub named Amigo (the only one in Amman) where she met up with this cute Jordanian soccer player that flirted with her the previous week @ our fave lounge/club Kanabaye. I ended up chatting with a cool bartender named Rami who asked me out on a date - met with him for drinks a week later cool to hang out and dance with nothing else happened so stop saying ooh :P. Then Johanna left me and then eventually I lugged my TON of crap out of Heidi’s into Abeer’s car and then to her parent’s house. So I was like the 4th daughter in the al Helou’s lovely home. They had one extra bed and no extra room with their 4 children but @ the same time they were so hospitable and welcoming it was just a great way to end my time in Jordan. We celebrated Abeer’s father’s 33rd (add 20 years…still young!) birthday while I was there and he was so funny while I was there cuz he tried to converse with me in Turkish time and time again - he went to college in Istanbul and his Turkish was really impressive. I loved Abeer’s parents and her siblings were awesome - her 16 year old sister Hanin was so adorable she reminded me of my li’l sis Peri and made me miss her that much more. My last 2 weeks in Jordan were busy busy busy. I decided to officially end my intership about half a week early so that eased my packing and saying goodbye to my dear friends a bit. My dear friend Dave from school returned to Jordan for a week after spending most of the summer interning in Jenin. So it was the last week for both of us and we spent it together with my dearest buddies from my apt. building (and no not Sayeed! :P) Hani, Saad, Maher, Yousef, and Jamal. Fun last week activities include a trip to the Dead Sea with Dave and Maher (I’m attaching a photo of Maher and I covered in Dead Sea mud, good for the skin!), bar outings, a viewing of Rush Hour 3 with Abeer & Dave, lots of hookah and card games called Tricks and Complex (I won once and then failed horribly the remainder of the time :P). I made some wonderful new friends that I wish I could have met earlier and spent more time with named Eymen, Anas, and Sahar. Eymen is like my brother now, a dear friend, and a Turk who is fluent in both Arabic and English - just brilliant brilliant guy and fun to hang out with, he’s Mr. Social. The night I met Anas at Sahar’s going away party (sweet, beautiful girl who’s finishing up her Masters program in Public Policy at University of Chicago) the first thing he said with a great big grin on his face was that he was the future Prime Minister of Jordan. That’s something that either takes an immense ego or a great background and I’m happy to say with Anas it’s the latter. He has important government officials in his family and he’s a born diplomat/publicist/activities coordinator all rolled in one. I added him as a friend on Facebook and I swear every other day I get an invitation to some fabulous event he’s hosting. Mark my words he’s going to be a big name in Jordan in the near future and I will happily accept invitations to the royal palace etc. when they come in the mail ;). So remember Mahmoud the taxi driver/defacto tour guide/crazy ass? Well I made a simple request to visit a few places in Amman to take pics before leaving. So my 2nd to last day he’s supposed to pick me up and take me the Abu Darwish mosque, Al-Hussein mosque, and drive by (operative words here!) the Ministry of Agriculture so I can take a pic of the glorious picture depicting Abdullah watering a tree in full military regalia and with a traditional headress (kafiyeh) on his head - trust me it’s classic! Mahmoud arrives in his OWN PERSONAL CAR instead of the taxi and I can tell from that moment that it’s going to be a bad day. Well I’m right on track with that assessment because it all goes awry when Mahmoud STOPS his car in front of the Ministry so I can get a better shot. Yeah so 2 hours later I find myself talking to the military police who determine that I must delete the pictures I’ve taken of Abdullah because parts of the Ministry are also depicted. Let me rewind back to the start of the debaucle and how it erupted into a 2 hour affair. Silke and Johanna know from personal experience that when Mahmoud says, “I’ll handle it” or “Trust me,” he cannot be trusted and he will only make matters worse. This proved yet again the case on this day as after security guards came out to ask what we were doing the men (including Mahmoud) argued in 30 minutes in Arabic - bits and pieces of which I could make out meant that we were in deep shit for some reason. So I got upset with Mahmoud for leaving me out of the loop and I told him that I don’t know of his experience with women, but as an American woman of Turkish descent he did not want to tell me to sit back or keep me uninformed, as it would be to his own detriment. So he explains - and mind you Mahmoud’s translation is not always (a) correct and (b) unbiased/objective - that one soldier was fine with the picture but that another asshole security guard was concerned that I was CIA and wanted to know why I was taking pics. So I told Mahmoud to tell the gentlemen that I would GLADLY delete the pics and be on my way. But Mahmoud always taking things into his own hands (believe you me I ripped him a new one when I found this out..) tells the soldiers that that’s not necessary and to call the police as he knows some people in the local station who will argue that I have a right to keep the pics. Yup so they call the police and we wait and Mahmoud realizes during this time that all his “contacts” at the police station have their cell phones shut off so he can’t get in touch with them and now he’s in deep shit as he’s a taxi driver squiring a foreiger in his personal car (umm…dee da dumm, I could have told him that was a bad idea!!). Long story short after I get completely frustrated and asked repeatedly to prove that I am not a CIA agent (my student id card came in handy along with my speech that had I been a CIA agent I might have had a grasp on the Arabic language, not been travelling around Amman with dumbass, and would probably not get caught taking pictures of Abdullah in front of the Ministry…). So when the police arrived they had a nice time flirting with me - I swear if you’re a woman, a foreign woman you can’t escape it - and as I expected they asked me to delete the pics and go merrily on my way. My two last nights were spent hanging out with my favorite guys in my apartment building (Hani, Jamal, Saad, Maher, Yousef) and at a hookah cafe with a view of the herculean temple and citadel downtown with my fave guys, dearest Abeer, and new lifelong friends I acquired in my last weeks. That’s it for my Jordan adventures of the summer…I truly experienced 3 life-changing months while in Jordan and Israel/Palestine and despite craziness and hilarity that ensued quite frequently I wouldn’t change a thing were I given the chance. Thank you for patiently reading my lengthy emails detailing crazy stories I lived throughout this summer. I am truly honored to have such wonderful friends who provide such supportive comments and are as excited as I am about my experiences abroad. Sorry SORRY SORRY again for the long wait. Hope it was worth it! Link for an excellent article written by a friend and organizer of the conference I attended on “Promoting Peace Through Dialogue.” You may recall from my first or second novella my description of the conference, my disappointment in the participants, and my standing up to the panelists tasked with discussing prevention of use of nuclear weapons. Well this article without naming names refers to a young woman who changed the direction of the conference with her commentary - that would be me :). Nick, the author, pulled me aside the other day and said I inspired the article with my brave comments so I thought I’d share the article with you. Hope you enjoy it