Abraham and Herpatology

Standing in front of a Canaanite-era mud brick gate that Abraham probably walked through, our class was listening with more or less focused attention to our professor: "...and you can see the etchings over the archway that were preserved by the--"

"I CAUGHT HIM!!!!! I CAUGHT HIM!!!!!!" Canaanites were no longer important as the instance focus of everyone's attention became Jeff Smith, running toward us with his most recent herpatological victory: a full-sized, terrified, beautiful chameleon. Jeff has been looking for a chameleon all summer, never found one in Jordan, and now, finally, our second day in Israel, he had one in his hands.

He gradually calmed down (the chameleon, that is, not Jeff) as he realized we weren't out to hurt him, and everyone crowded in wanting to get their picture taken with the special guest star.

I'm not saying that 3200-year-old Canaanite ruins aren't important to college students; merely that some things are more important.

The Mormon University

Having played at the Church of the Anunciation in Nazareth last week, my fingers have been twitching for action on a pipe organ. Once we got to Jerusalem, the Church of the Redeemer in the center of the Old City seemed like a likely candidate.

The doorkeeper at the church told me to ask in the office. The lady in the office looked at me and asked, in her most unimpressable voice, "Are you a professional organist?"

"No, definitely not a professional. I'm just an amateur, one that loves the organ."

"What are your qualifications?"

Racking my brain for the best way to impress her, I said that I've played the organ for five years, and that I volunteer as an organist for my Church in the US. 11:00 tomorrow AM. I can't wait.

She continued staring me down, face unchanged, obviously not convinced that five years of volunteering at an unnamed church merited any opportunity to play the beautiful organ in a massive Lutheran church.

Then I remembered an important detail that I had almost forgotten: "I've played the organ at the Mormon University several times."

"Really? Under whose direction? Bob Galbraith? In that case, the church opens at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Come on over."

Those Mormons and the Mormon University on Mount Scopus are better-known than I thought.

Traffic School

Three twenty-somethings* stood on the side of the road, wanting to get to the taxi waiting on the other side, but afraid of 4 crowded lanes of speeding rush-hour traffic.

75-year-old Suleiman strolled confidently across the road and the twenty-somethings followed in his slipstream.

Gosh, I love this country.

*Of which I may or may not have been one

Alive, Well and Sunburned

I just realized that it's been a long time since I wrote anything. I promise that I'm alive and well, even if I have dropped off the face of the earth.

Saturday, our branch went to the Cave of Christ, a cave in northwest Jordan, right on the border with Israel, on the hills above the Sea of Galilee, where Jordanian tradition holds that the Savior would retreat to teach his disciples away from the multitudes.

We went to clean the cave up. The Middle East doesn't generally share the same aversion to litter that we hold dear in America. Sometimes when I get up to walk to a garbage can to throw my garbage away, my friends will look at me strangely, take my garbage from me offering to take care of it for me, and then throw it over their shoulder. So you can imagine that a tourist site, even a slightly out-of-the-way one, would have a good build-up of garbage over a period of a few months. We spent time cleaning up garbage from in and around the cave, then ate lunch in front of the cave, overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

It's a beautiful area, and it was beautiful to imagine what might have happened there. It was less beautiful to think about the reality--the contention that continues over who's going to end up with these lands--but sitting there in the bright sun, with a gentle breeze, looking out over a beautiful lake in a lush valley, it was hard to remember that we were looking at some of the most violently contested land in the world.

And I got a sunburn.

Simple Gifts

Disclaimer: In writing, I frequently aspire to express the profound. You'll be relieved to hear that this post is different. I promise that this post is completely free from any taint of profundity.

Since the University came back into session last week, it's been harder for us to get time on the University soccer field. We've innovated.

Underneath our 6-story apartment building, there's a garage/workshop where the building manager stores stuff, and where all the air conditioning equipment lives. Most recently, it's become a soccer field.

It's not the most conventional soccer field I've ever played on. The open space is only the size of an extra-wide volleyball court. There are two large concrete pillars breaking up the space, and each of the pillars has four air-conditioning units attached to it. The ceiling is low enough that I can touch the ceiling almost flat-footed. Hanging from the ceiling are the sewer pipes coming down from 20 apartments. I can touch those flat-footed. There's a stairway taking up one corner of the open space, and a pile of old couches and desks stacked up in the opposite corner.

The goal is a foot-long section of 4-inch PVC pipe next to the wall, standing on end. Rules are pretty much non-existent.

The seven of us played for an hour yesterday. An hour later, another eight students were down there playing, this time with the building manager joining in.

The American soccer team may have made it to the Confederations' Cup Finals last week, but I can promise that our version of soccer is a lot more fun.

4-Cycle Engines

Me: "What do you call the thing that goes between the engine and the axle?"

Salah the Taxi Driver: "That's called the drive shaft, and it goes from the transmission (which takes the motion from the engine and converts it into the different gears that you choose using the gear shift) to the differential, where the spinning motion parallel to the motion of the car is turned into motion perpendicular to the direction of the car, thus making the wheels turn and the car move forward. The motion in the engine is produced by the pistons moving in their cycle: intake, compression, power and exhaust. The speed of the engine is determined by the amount that you push on the gas pedal, and, of course, if you hit the brake, you stop the car. The clutch is used to help you in shifting gears; it works when you push the clutch and the linking mechanisms compress the flywheel, thus disengaging the drive shaft from the input shaft, allowing you to shift gears, and then when you release the clutch, the flywheel comes back into contact with itself and the car is in the new gear that you've put it in, and all the forward energy..."

I didn't understand all of this by virtue of his extremely spirited, extremely fast Arabic explanation. I followed his explanation by virtue of the fact that my Dad knows cars inside and out, and taught me how they work.

But because I was able to follow what he was saying, I learned a lot of good words. Crankshaft, piston, and perpendicular come to mind.

I've repeated this experiment with other taxi drivers, and I've discovered that they're more likely to get excited about an American learning Arabic car parts than an American talking about politics.

So if you're ever in the market for conversation with your Arabic-speaking cab driver, and normal topics of conversation just don't seem to be cutting it, try for the drive train. It might work.

Josephus=Cool

Josephus was a Roman/Jewish historian who historied (I know that isn't a real verb) in the first century AD. He's a household name in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and all of my ANES friends joke about their geeky relationship with him. You hear about him often enough, and he becomes...well, a friend.

Yesterday, 8 of us went to visit some caves west of Amman. They were pretty cool. We saw some bats, some ancient Hebrew inscriptions, some goat droppings, and even sang a bit of Mozart in one of the more resonant caves.

Just down the hill from these caves, there's a 2nd-century BC palace that's lying mostly in ruins. It had lots of scurrying reptiles and plenty of photo-ops, so we managed to keep ourselves busy for a while. One wall was even graced with a relief of a baboon. In ancient Egypt, the baboon symbolized eternal life. I have no idea what it meant in 2nd-century BC Transjordan.

But the best part of the day came last night while I was reading up on the castle, and found out that Josephus mentioned it in one of his histories. I concluded that if Josephus knew about this castle and thought it worth mentioning it, it had definitely been worth going to.

Some people might think that Josephus isn't the final authority to turn to on things regarding coolness. But they're wrong.

Just Don't Make Cupcakes!

Walking down the trail to the Jordan River at Bethabara yesterday, I met Karim. At seven years old, he's fluent in both Arabic and English; his parents are both Jordanian, his dad is a Baptist minister, his mom studied in the States, and he goes to an English-speaking school. We were speaking English, but his Mom said "Karim! This boy is learning Arabic. Help him! Speak Arabic with him!" We ended up averaging half and half.

When I asked Karim how old he was, he grinned "Seven--but I'll be eight tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow's my birthday too! I'll be 24!"

When we got down to the river, my Jordanian birthday buddy and I took a picture together. I asked him what he was going to do for his birthday. He kind of shrugged his shoulders, like he hadn't really thought that far ahead. His mom helped him out: "His friend George is coming over, and then tomorrow night he gets to pick a restaurant for us to go to for dinner. I'm making a cake tonight, and--"

"But Mom, my birthday is tomorrow, not tonight!" She explained to him that she was making the cake tonight and they would eat it tomorrow. That seemed to satisfy him, but he had one more point to emphasize before he ran off to find his dad, almost whispering the last word, as if he didn't want anyone to even hear him saying it: "Just don't make cupcakes!"

Happy birthday, Karim!

"I don't like that man. I really must get to know him better."

So said Abraham Lincoln. He was right.

The first day of my writing class, I made a decision. I decided not to like my teacher. I had every reason in the world to dislike her. She was mean, she spoke formally and expected us to do the same, I was bored to tears all the way through every class, and it was hot in her classroom.

My eight classmates, with an unspoken consensus, seemed to agree with me. We went to class only because we were required to, we dreaded handing in our homework, and it was all any of us could do to make it through to the end of the hour awake.

Then two weeks ago, I made a mistake. I missed class. It was an honest mistake. Thinking that class started at two o'clock, I was sitting outside in the hall at 1:55, ready to go in as soon as the previous class got out. To my surprise my classmates filed out of the room, asking me where I had been for the last hour.

Feeling bad that I had missed class, and knowing that our group of nine was small enough that she could not have failed to notice my absence, I went in and volunteered to make the absence up by staying for the next section of the same class. She said I was welcome to join her next class, and I, regretting my offer, sat down for a long hour of torture.

What I saw in that hour amazed me.

The two o'clock section had liked the teacher from the very beginning. They had every reason to like her. She's a very good Arabic writer, and expects a lot of her students. She is very willing to help her students learn the complicated ins and outs of Arabic grammar, and the niceties of Arabic personal and business correspondance. She's lived in Jordan all her life and is anxious to see her students learn all they can about Jordanian customs. She likes laughing when someone jokes, and she is always ready to answer questions.

I discovered that I had a friend I didn't know about it. I realized that I liked liking her better than I liked disliking her, and since then she has become a valuable ally to me in my sometimes-impossible battle against the sheer vastness known as Arabic. She's brought her husband and son with her to class a couple of times, and I've discovered that they are just as anxious and willing to help as she is.

I'm glad that I went to the wrong class and discovered that I had made the wrong judgment.

Next time I meet a man I don't like, I hope I remember to waste a lot less time getting to know him better.

Christians and Muslims

We were trying to find a kite (long story), and we found Samira instead. She invited us in to meet her family and to drink coffee, settling with serving us juice when we declined the coffee.

Three sips into my orange juice, I watched Samira's neighbor walk in the front door, without knocking, and sit down in the living room with us. Obviously they were close friends. Susanna was so comfortable at Samira's house that she almost forgot to introduce herself.

As we talked, I noticed a cross around Susanna's neck and asked "Are you Christian?" She smiled and nodded. I turned to our hostess and asked if she was Muslim or Christian.

Smiling broadly and throwing her arms in the air, she exclaimed "Praise God, I'm Muslim!" Susanna nodded, acknowledging the difference in religion with a supressed grin on her face, as if she and her good friend had been the rounds over religion before.

The conversation drifted away from religion and all that I saw left in the room were two neighbors, sisters, who respected each other's religion and sincerely desired the best for each other.

Stairs, Counting, and OCD

Or CDO (in alphabetical order).

I seem to be the only BYU student here that's noticed that every flight of stairs in Jordan has a different number of stairs. From one flight to the next, the number of stairs ranges anywhere from 8 to 12. It drives me nuts!

That's one thing I can say for the Soviets--they knew how to keep their stair counts consistent (10, every flight)! Armenian buildings had unlit stairwells, which made it exciting to traverse stairs at night, but at least you could count the stairs and know when you were coming to the end of the flight. The Jordanian version really keeps you on your toes (or knocks you off you're feet).

"No. It's Smaller Than Me."

His mother sent him into the kitchen to get drinks, and 4-year-old Abdu Rahman ("Abadi" for short) came back into the living room carrying a 3-liter bottle of 7-Up. Watching him proudly carrying in that massive bottle, I said "It's bigger than you are!" With righteous indignation and a tone that brooked no misunderstanding as to his size relative to a 7-Up bottle, he declared "No. It's smaller than me."

Abadi is the most adorable 4-year-old Bedouin I've ever met. In fact, he's the only 4-year-old Bedouin I've ever met.

His parents, Daif Allah ("Guest of God") and Hamida ("Praised") are the parents of 4 sons and 3 daughters. They are from a Bedouin clan, and they live outside of a small town southeast of Amman. Their oldest son, Badr, is going to school at the University of Jordan (where we're studying). My fellow BYU student Joe Nielsen met their second son, Bander, when he came to the University to visit his older brother. Bander invited us to spend Jordan's Independence Day with his family, and his parents welcomed us with open arms.

Nobody in the family speaks English, which gave us a really good reason to step well beyond our comfort zone in Arabic. They were all really helpful and excited to teach us. As the boys showed us their chicken coops and garden, our agricultural vocabulary expanded from "chicken" to include roosters, hens, chicks, goats, snakes, figs, unripe, and onion.

Abadi, still a little shy and suspicious of these strangers, was excited to discover that he had an attentive audience while he showed us how he could write his name on cinder block with black rocks from the garden.

An hour after we got their, Hamida called everyone in for lunch. She had spread a mat on the living room floor, and we all sat down on the floor around it. We watched as she brought in round tray the size of a small table and set it down in the middle of our circle. She started scooping chicken and yellow rice onto our plates, along with carrots, peppers, peanuts and lemons, all steaming hot. Joe and I were about to start eating when we noticed that we were the only ones that had been given forks.

Joe turned to Daif Allah and said "We don't know how to eat Bedouin-style. Teach us!" Daif Allah grinned. "Get rid of the forks!"

So we looked at the enormous steaming platter and followed his lead, digging in with our hands. As if the food itself wasn't incredibly delicious enough, Hamida had also made bowls of sauces and salads to mix in with the chicken and rice. Yoghurt makes finger food messy. They offered us towels to drape over our knees while we were eating; I guess they could tell that we're not as practiced at keeping our knees out of the food.

While we ate dessert--watermelon--I looked at Abadi and said "Do you like this mish-mish (apricot)?" He nodded. His mom looked at him and prompted reconsideration: "Is this apricot?" He thought for a minute, then lit up and said "No! It's watermelon!" I laughed and said "Mish mish-mish!" There it was. The punchline I had been baiting for. "Mish" means "It's not." "Mish-mish" means "apricot." "Mish mish-mish." AND THEY LAUGHED! I've successfully executed a joke in Arabic.

After dessert--watermelon--Zaid (the third son) brought in bowls of roasted watermelon seeds. I popped a couple in my mouth and started chewing. Hamida saw me chewing, stopped in the middle of her sentence, laughed, and said "Hold on! I've got to teach you how to eat these!" Apparently you eat them like sunflower seeds, not like nuts. When she had finished her demonstration, she laughed again and said "You eat them just like Abadi!"

After dinner, and after talking for a long time afterwards, they drove us to the bus stop in town so that we could catch the bus back to Amman. They left us with an invitation to come to their oldest daughter's engagement party on Friday, and with an open invitation to consider them as family.

This is the best Jordanian Independence Day I've ever celebrated. Here's to the wonderful people of Jordan.

The People of God

Walking home from school today, I happened upon a Palestinian man who was, as Arabs say, "in the autumn of his age." As we neared each other, he smiled and said, politely struggling to use English, "You...where from?" I responded that I was from America, and we began conversing in Arabic (I can only hope that if he tells anyone about me, he'll be generous regarding my Arabic).

He grew up in Jerusalem--Silwan--but he had to leave his home and flee to Jordan during the 1967 war. His eyes lit up when I told him that I had lived in Jerusalem for three months--on the Mount of Olives, I told him. By Augusta Victoria. "By the hospital?" he asked. Yes, by the hospital.

"Do you like Palestine or Jordan better?" With a sad smile, he answered his own question: "I like Palestine better."

Half of his family lives here in Jordan; the other half lives in the West Bank. He has 3 sons and 4 daughters (a family size that I'm vaguely familiar with). He spoke of Palestine and of his family there not with anger or hatred toward the powers keeping him away from them, but rather with an intense longing, a painful void, a yearning hope.

We parted, and I paused to look back at him as he walked away. "That man," I thought, "is of the people of God, too!"

Everyone is the Same

I got to eat dinner with the Cummings family last night. They invited us (me, a member of the branch named Emil, another BYU student named Mike, and a UofU student named Miranda) over for steak and ice cream (and other stuff, but "steak and ice cream" just has a good ring to it).

After dinner, we sat for a long time talking. You know how nice it is to talk on a pleasant Saturday evening after a good meal--you can do it for hours. We did. As the sun went down, Todd called his neighbor, Fares, and invited him over for the brownies and ice cream. He showed up a while later and we enjoyed the rest of the evening with him.

At one point, Fares said "You know what? Everybody all over the world is the same--it's just the language that's different." Three things instantly jumped out of our evening together that give a lot of support to his point:

1-Catherine made dinner, except for the steaks. Guess who cooked the steaks? Todd. I don't know what it is, but I swear that in every culture I've ever interacted with, men do the grilling. Men grill the hamburgers, men grill the hot dogs, men grill the khorovats, men grill the steaks, men grill the kabobs. I think it's an inescapable fact of human nature that men like to grill things.

2-We got up to leave after a couple hours of talking. And instead of leaving, we stood there talking. Todd kept talking with Mike and Emil, I kept talking with Catherine, and Miranda kept talking with Clara. Fares got my attention and said, with a smile, "You see? It's the same for everybody. It takes an hour to actually leave!"

3-Fares offered us a ride home. As we went to get into his car, he apologized for the mess in the back, and moved several stacks of paper from the back seat into the trunk. "Sorry--this is my car and my office," he said. Who doesn't apologize for their messy car when they offer someone a ride?

Over the past week, I've seen in a dozen other ways that "everybody is the same--only the language is different!" You may be surprised, for example, to find out that Arabs have personalities, and not only personalities, but precisely the same personalities that Americans have. There are the really nice quiet people who will talk to you if you talk to them. There are people who are really loud, people who are really quiet, people who are really smart, people who are really obnoxious, people who like to help other people.

Just walking around on campus, I see men and women on crutches, with splints on their hand, with a walking cast on their leg. Everything I've seen in the last week suggests, in fact, that the problems that Arabs face are precisely the same as the problems Americans face.

Fares is right--we really are all the same!

E-Mail From Our Professor:

Dear Students,

The plumber came to the building today and fixed leaks and plug ups in a few apartments, and then we were given the good/bad news depending on your point of view. This building (and the huge majority ofbuildings in Jordan), and in fact the whole sewer system here, was simply not designed to handle toilet paper, and using it plugs up the building and the system. We now have two choices:

1. You can stick to your tree-destroying American ways and continue to use toilet paper, but you must not put it into the toilets. Rather,you should get a waste basket, line it with a plastic garbage bag, and deposit your toilet paper there. You can change the basket (and put the old stuff out of your door for [the garbage man] to take away) as often as you like.

2. You can adapt to local custom and learn to use the bidet or the bidet sprayer, depending on how your bathroom is equipped.

Either way, we need to make this adjustment in our culture so that we don't have to have the plumber in the building every other day.

Think of what a great opportunity this is in what it will allow you to tell the folks back home, and particularly what you will be abel to tell your grandkids. You guys are really lucky.

Thanks,
Dil

Women in Jordan: Observations

In an effort to contradict some of the negative stereotypes of Islam that I've heard perpetuated across my sphere of acquaintences, some of my posts will be dedicated to observations about life in an Islamic country. Jordan is, admittedly, one of the most moderate among the Islamic nations of the world; I don't dismiss the reality of serious problems with human rights, religious freedom, etc. that exist in the Islamic world. However, I hope that by sharing some simple observations about life here in Jordan, I can show that real people live here: real people, people with real friends, problems, personalities, and genuine dedication to their religion and their God. Just as not every Christian in the world is defined by the actions of the KKK, and just as Latter-day Saints hope that others will not think of them synonymously with Dan Lafferty, it is important to see Muslims as people and as Muslims; as the generous and god-fearing people that they are.

Veiling and Modesty:
Veiling is a common practice in Islam, considered a sign of modesty. In Jordan, women's dress can be divided into four main groups:
1-Completely covered from head to toe, leaving only the eyes and the hands uncovered
2-Head covered with hijab (veil), wearing a long, flowing dress, leaving the hands uncovered
3-Head covered with hijab wearing Western-style clothing (with long pants, and long or short sleeves)
4.Head uncovered, wearing Western-style clothing

I have taken a (very unscientific) survey over the past few days, counting the number of women that fall in each category.

On my trip from my apartment to the bus stop, about a 20-minute walk, I saw 93 women:
Completely covered: 5 (one even had her eyes covered with an extra piece of fabric)
Hijab, with traditional clothing: 34
Hijab, with Western-style clothing: 40
Western-style clothing: 14

Sitting on the campus of the University of Jordan, I saw 174 women in the 15 minutes that I was counting:
Completely covered: 3
Hijab, with traditional clothin: 43
Hijab, with Western-style clothing: 76
Western-style clothing: 52

You can see that veiling is not something that women are forced to do here, because a very substantial minority of women choose not to veil.

I once asked an Egyptian friend why she didn't veil. She said "The veil isn't something that you're forced to wear; it's between you and God whether you will wear it or not." I'm beginning to see the veil as a way that women choose to express their faith, a choice that they make to show their dedication to God. It shouldn't be hard for us to accept their modesty and their dedication to their religion, expressed by an outward sign such as a hijab.

Apartment Fun

Broken Items (the list will probably grow):

Toilet (in the west bathroom): doesn't fill up.

Toilet (in the east bathroom): floods the floor every time we flush it (we learned that lesson pretty quick!

Toilet (in the west bathroom): got repaired. Now fills up. Doesn't flush.

Bidet (in the east bathroom): exists.

Sink (in the kitchen): has no hot water. Actually, it's backward. The hot water is on the right.

Refrigerator: freezes.

Light switches (in all rooms): are upside down. When the switch is down, the light is on.

Washer: doesn't agitate (which is pretty agitating). Solution: Cyrus left his clothes sitting in motionless water for 45 minutes. David plugged it in. Greg laughed.

Welcome to Jordan!

From Salt Lake to Amman

I'm really glad that it's not Passover this week, and that I was headed to Amman instead of Jerusalem. Because my can of baking powder exploded all over my bag on the way. Even getting into Amman I wondered if they were going to arrest me at customs for suspicious white powder I was trying to smuggle into the country. Fortunatey, they didn't seem to care. Unfortunately, it still takes a long time to clean half a can of baking powder out of a suitcase full of clothes and books.

I'm discovering--again--that when you ask a question, people tend to answer whether you're prepared to understand their question or not. But if I pretend (hypothetically, of course) that I understand the man's instructions as he's telling me which sign to turn left after to get to the meat shop, then he's none the wiser and I can go find the meat shop on my own. And then (hypothetically, of course) there's one more Arab who thinks I might have some clue what I'm talking about.

As I got to Amman, I had to take a taxi from the airport to the opposite side of the city, where our group of students are living in an apartment complex. In my 30-minute ride with Mahmoud, I discovered a lot of things about my Arabic. The first is that I didn't know the word for Pope. Now I do. The Pope is coming to Jordan and Israel this week, so we talked about his visit. "The head of the church in Rome" worked well enough for him to figure out what I was saying and teach me the Arabic word for it. Between his bit of English and my bit of Arabic, we managed to have a fairly decent conversation. I guess learning has to start somewhere, and Mahmoud's taxi is just as good a place as any.

On my way to the internet cafe tonight, I heard the prayer call--the first time I've heard it in many, many months. After living in an Islamic country, going without the prayer call causes some withdrawals. Five times every day, a reminder to pray--a call to set aside the world for a moment and worship God. It isn't quite as loud and dramatic here as it was in Jerusalem (where we had three minarets broadcasting the call within half a mile of us), but it's there and it's beautiful and it's inspiring.

So here I am in Jordan, jet-lagged, disoriented (ha--what an ironic pun!), and ready to jump into a summer of Arabic.