Today I explored the depths of my virus-infested computer and what do I find but an old journal assignment from Jordan...perfectooo.
February 3, 2008
I can’t remember what was going through my head as our captain told us to fasten our seat belts; we were making our descent into Amman. I was probably too tired to think. I was sitting with twenty or so college students that I’d met at JFK the day before, people who had a lot in common but were at the moment too exhausted for small-talk. Bonding could wait. Right then we were at least together in our uncertainty; no one knew who would pick us up, where we would stay that night, or what to do if something went wrong. I decided to forgo worry, finding that faith and fatigue went hand and hand; my Middle East experience was scheduled to start when I woke up the next morning, and until then I was on auto-pilot.
This plan was interrupted when I woke up a few minutes later to see Jordan’s capital for the first time. At first nothing special registered, but I began to notice that this city was unlike any city I’d seen before. It seemed that we were descending onto a sea of buried treasure. The streets of Amman flowed like golden rivers, their lights like strings of pearls, running every which way and bringing no semblance of order to the accumulation of gemstones that scattered and clumped in greens, reds and blues. I could feel the life radiating below, confident in its disarray, and suddenly I was part of the history books, a modern-day Marco Polo who had taken off from the microchip of New York and found the Orient. It looked exotic and shiny, and I wondered what place (if any) it held for me. As I wiped the fog from my window, I thought about my goal to help “bridge the gap between East and West.” I pledged it on my program application, as had probably most of my other classmates-to-be. But now it seemed so vague, so cliché. What made us think we were equipped for this? Of all the things I saw from my window, I did not see a city waiting with open arms for our Western intellect, our textbook knowledge. But I couldn’t keep that image from my mind.
Since my arrival to Jordan I’ve been thinking about my initial reaction to that bird’s eye view of Amman. My first response was that of a child looking at something pretty and appealing, then of a traveler, about to embark on an adventure. It then shifted into the response of a poet or writer, trying to immortalize what I saw. Then I began to question my place in the world below. On one hand, my studies of Orientalism had prepared me to travel with knowledge of historical context and an open mind. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but see myself as a pirate to the buried treasure I saw, as if my identity as a Westerner gave me an advantage, a reason to feel confident in a new place. In my Race and Ethnic Studies major it was an exhausting topic, wondering if continual dialogue only perpetuates hierarchy, if knowing my place in history has further inoculated me with a subconscious feeling of superiority. Then again, this dialogue has trained me to question my assumptions and find new ways of seeing and measuring the world, and new ways of bridging gaps in human understanding. As we descended into Amman, I was aware of this conflict between appreciation, entitlement, determination and guilt. The feeling was short-lived.
The day after we arrived in Amman, my group mates and I were finishing our first session of orientation (I later found that word really amusing, Orient-ation) and packing up our laptops when I heard the call to prayer for the first time. I left my things, ignored the director calling out names for our taxi stipend, and found myself on the front steps of our school, trying to comprehend the sound. Words like “creepy” and “fundamentalist” and quotes from Team America ran through the back of my conditioned mind, but I just smiled.
It was beautiful. One of my professors told me that it was considered offensive to liken Quranic recitation to singing, but it was music to my ears, skilled and melodic and wonderful. I didn’t know what the words meant, but I knew they were summoning the city to remember their faith, as they had four times already that day. Now it reminds me of something my great-grandfather wrote:
"God is not a dimension of existence for a perfunctory hour of worship in church, but that we live in and from and for Him all the time, also in toil and fun, alone and in the crowd."
My mind wandered back to Sunday school: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And this I forgot by Monday. I watched my first Jordanian sunset and thought, these people have got it down. These people. Them. Us. Us vs. Them. These thoughts dissolved as I stood there feeling cleansed, safe, and wholeheartedly welcomed. I was an ajnabia, a foreigner, and I understood for the first time how Islam meant peace.
That was when I learned to stop questioning my intentions. It’s hard to lay down your worries and recognize that you are, in fact, in the right place, at the right time. It was disorienting. It was humbling. Twenty-four hours in the Holy Land had taught me that as a child, a traveler, a poet, a writer, and an ajnabia I was already what I had set out to be: a builder of bridges, one by one.
February 3, 2008
I can’t remember what was going through my head as our captain told us to fasten our seat belts; we were making our descent into Amman. I was probably too tired to think. I was sitting with twenty or so college students that I’d met at JFK the day before, people who had a lot in common but were at the moment too exhausted for small-talk. Bonding could wait. Right then we were at least together in our uncertainty; no one knew who would pick us up, where we would stay that night, or what to do if something went wrong. I decided to forgo worry, finding that faith and fatigue went hand and hand; my Middle East experience was scheduled to start when I woke up the next morning, and until then I was on auto-pilot.
This plan was interrupted when I woke up a few minutes later to see Jordan’s capital for the first time. At first nothing special registered, but I began to notice that this city was unlike any city I’d seen before. It seemed that we were descending onto a sea of buried treasure. The streets of Amman flowed like golden rivers, their lights like strings of pearls, running every which way and bringing no semblance of order to the accumulation of gemstones that scattered and clumped in greens, reds and blues. I could feel the life radiating below, confident in its disarray, and suddenly I was part of the history books, a modern-day Marco Polo who had taken off from the microchip of New York and found the Orient. It looked exotic and shiny, and I wondered what place (if any) it held for me. As I wiped the fog from my window, I thought about my goal to help “bridge the gap between East and West.” I pledged it on my program application, as had probably most of my other classmates-to-be. But now it seemed so vague, so cliché. What made us think we were equipped for this? Of all the things I saw from my window, I did not see a city waiting with open arms for our Western intellect, our textbook knowledge. But I couldn’t keep that image from my mind.
Since my arrival to Jordan I’ve been thinking about my initial reaction to that bird’s eye view of Amman. My first response was that of a child looking at something pretty and appealing, then of a traveler, about to embark on an adventure. It then shifted into the response of a poet or writer, trying to immortalize what I saw. Then I began to question my place in the world below. On one hand, my studies of Orientalism had prepared me to travel with knowledge of historical context and an open mind. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but see myself as a pirate to the buried treasure I saw, as if my identity as a Westerner gave me an advantage, a reason to feel confident in a new place. In my Race and Ethnic Studies major it was an exhausting topic, wondering if continual dialogue only perpetuates hierarchy, if knowing my place in history has further inoculated me with a subconscious feeling of superiority. Then again, this dialogue has trained me to question my assumptions and find new ways of seeing and measuring the world, and new ways of bridging gaps in human understanding. As we descended into Amman, I was aware of this conflict between appreciation, entitlement, determination and guilt. The feeling was short-lived.
The day after we arrived in Amman, my group mates and I were finishing our first session of orientation (I later found that word really amusing, Orient-ation) and packing up our laptops when I heard the call to prayer for the first time. I left my things, ignored the director calling out names for our taxi stipend, and found myself on the front steps of our school, trying to comprehend the sound. Words like “creepy” and “fundamentalist” and quotes from Team America ran through the back of my conditioned mind, but I just smiled.
It was beautiful. One of my professors told me that it was considered offensive to liken Quranic recitation to singing, but it was music to my ears, skilled and melodic and wonderful. I didn’t know what the words meant, but I knew they were summoning the city to remember their faith, as they had four times already that day. Now it reminds me of something my great-grandfather wrote:
"God is not a dimension of existence for a perfunctory hour of worship in church, but that we live in and from and for Him all the time, also in toil and fun, alone and in the crowd."
My mind wandered back to Sunday school: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And this I forgot by Monday. I watched my first Jordanian sunset and thought, these people have got it down. These people. Them. Us. Us vs. Them. These thoughts dissolved as I stood there feeling cleansed, safe, and wholeheartedly welcomed. I was an ajnabia, a foreigner, and I understood for the first time how Islam meant peace.
That was when I learned to stop questioning my intentions. It’s hard to lay down your worries and recognize that you are, in fact, in the right place, at the right time. It was disorienting. It was humbling. Twenty-four hours in the Holy Land had taught me that as a child, a traveler, a poet, a writer, and an ajnabia I was already what I had set out to be: a builder of bridges, one by one.
