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.