The Big Questions

Every once in a while I think of something that I really want to teach my nephew- some sort of life lesson or amazing fact. Usually it leads to him thinking deeply about it for a moment and then asking follow up questions, none of which I know the answer to, making my knowledge of the world less and less credible in his eyes. So I have learned to deliver the information confidently and as if I have read a whole book about it. And sometimes I have - like the infamous "Armenian Genocide" incident of 2006. I was enrolled in the Politics of Naming, one of the few courses I will actually remember, and really into that week's reading. Also, I thought it would be funny to hear a four year-old say "Armenian Genocide." And so he did. And then he wouldn't stop talking about it. And then he started drawing pictures of what he thought it looked like- black clouds mostly.

But I did learn something from it!

Each time I deliver one of these impromptu lessons, especially the scienc-y ones, I end with, "that makes sense, right?" to get out of the way any lingering confusion that could later be translated into drawings. The question encourages him to agree with me and accept the gift of useless knowledge I am trying to impart.
And sometimes I really do need to ask myself if I am using the right terminology for a four year-old, or making it more complicated than it has to be. The thing about little kids is that their brains are like sponges. They can, and will, quote you at a later date.

Up until last year we mostly talked about outer space, but once he turned six he became much more concerned with his Aqida, and he asks me all of the questions he has about Allah, the prophets and comparative religion. The younger one also asks about the "Christmas people," but the older one will sit thoughtfully for a while and then ask an impossible question that is poking holes through his story; the one where everything is right with the world, and everything is black and white.

I hate that I will be the one to have to break it to him.
There is a lot that we have to take on faith, without intellectually understanding it.
But providence was rooting for him when he was born into a Sufi family. Inshallah, he will be taught the appropriate vocabulary to articulate the black and white, and then he will teach it to his own children some day, without the least bit of uncertainty and using all the right words.



　

　

　

　


　 

Hello, out there!

At the end of each prayer, we turn our head one time to the right and one time to the left to say our salaams. They say: "this is not exclusive to those who are actually present: it encompasses everyone on one's right side [when giving salaams to the right, and everyone on one's left side when giving salaams to the left], even if far, all the way to the furthest point of the world."

Hello, out there!
They say that it’s okay to cut out just one hand waving because it is only one small part of the body and cannot sustain life on its own.

So there is a paper chain of different colored hands taped on the walls of my classroom. They are stuck there by way of a tack in the middle of two of the hands.
There are big ones and little ones and brown ones. They are all saying salaams to every one of each thing on their right side, and salams to each thing and everyone on their left side.

They say we’re all connected, like a paper chain of male and female figures holding hands strung up as a decoration crossing continents.
The whole world is having a party.
The women are wearing dresses. Nobody has eyes.

Are we connected? Are you thinking about me?

Oh, it’s you again! Asalaamalaikum.

Yes, it's me. Oh- yikes. Sorry-
I can't shake hands with you. But woah, look! - you know what I just noticed? Your pants are connected to your boots. And your pants are connected to your shirt. Are you the janitor here? Are you here to clean up my mess?

BIRD HEAD

According to Al-Tuhfa, it is unlawful to wear clothes that have pictures of animals, even if the picture is of an imaginary creature, such as horses with wings. The condition for the unlawfulness is that the pictures include what the creature cannot live without, such as the top half of the body. However, if the picture is of some part of the body that does not normally support life, such as the picture of a head, a head and chest with no abdomen, a hand, a foot or the lower part of the body, then it is not unlawful to wear. This is according to the relied upon position of the great scholar Ibn Hajar, in disagreement with the great scholar Al-Ramli.

So II’ve been trying to figure out how to dismantle all the heads from the bodies of my bird things. As the years go by I seem to have less of them. Soon stuff like this won’t be a problem.

We are back in Amman and still in a temporary space while they finish the new apartment. It is across a dirt path from the school where I teach and the shop where I buy my vegetables and milk. The masjid will be under construction for the next couple of years, across the street diagonally backwards, if you are facing the Qibla. From my bedroom on the roof I can see the whole city, or what I imagine to be all of it. It’s all there somewhere, just some of it blurry.

My nephew likes to stop by and watch the progress as things start to neatly fall into place to resemble a future home. Hinsists that he wants to marry a construction worker, because “they’re so important.” My sister reminded him that he has to marry a girl, and so he’s changed his tune to “No, I meant I want to BE a construction worker when I grow up.”
Then the younger one said, "I want to be a doctor like mama."
Then the littlest one chimed in, "I want to be a tissue." Then he poked me.

I’m not teaching math this year and so I’m officially just an English teacher, now that I’m grown up. I usually tell my Kindergarten class that they aren't allowed to draw animals, but yesterday during art time I told them it's okay to draw just the heads. The children did not respond well to this unfamiliar position on the matter. Hands shot up to tell me what baba says. Then looking back into the horrified eyes of little six-year olds, I recanted. No bird heads allowed, I said. But you know what I love more than anything in the world?  ... SHIPS! Let's all draw ships!

So we did. World order was restored, and they are slowly starting to trust me again...

Locals

I visited the local tailor and he gave me a present even though I told him his rate was too expensive for me and that my abaya cost me less than he was charging to shorten it. He didn't believe me but did decide to become friends and asked if I had seen much of Amman and then offered to "take me anywhere I want to go." I declined but did get permission to take photos of the walls of his shop, now with one less framed verse of the Quran tacked up in the spaces between pictures of him when he was a young man.

Smuggling

The first time I came to Jordan I was twelve and wearing my brother's old wide leg jeans and long sleeved Nirvana t-shirts- of my own volition.

We kept coming back through here by bus so as to get to the other surrounding countries one by one, and each time we passed back through we would stop at "Mat3am Alia" for dinner. I couldn't believe that there was a restaurant named after my sister, just like I couldn't believe they were charging us for water.

The waiter for our table had a crush on my sister and kept us entertained with his advances throughout dinner. I wondered why this random waiter was so obsessed with her and decided it must have been because he thought his workplace was named after her. He brought her extra helpings of colorful, glistening vegetables and eyed her from the corner where he was huddled with the other waiters.
As we were leaving to board the bus he casually whispered, "I love you."  My mother laughed but I was completely traumatized. 

After a couple of healthy years of living in the Middle East and being proposed to in-passing by a few cafe waiters myself, I think I get it now. It's all part of the social contract. Nothing comes without a price. Travel to a faraway land, eat the shiny food- get propositioned by the cafe waiters. It's the social order.

And always a potential last resort to keep in your back pocket in case it becomes increasingly clear that you will have to marry a man whose first language is not English so you don't have to feel bad when he doesn't laugh at your jokes.

Another reason to make sure your abaya has pockets- along with concealing masbahas, pretzels, and other general types of smuggling.

Snickerdoodle

I'm back  to my baking self.

I'm going to try to bake myself into a cooking self. Or bake a new self and keep the old one just in case life, in a general way, doesn't work out for me.

But first, I'm tinkering with egg/dairy/nut free recipes for my nephew, who has been plagued with all the allergies in the family. We often put effort into making him think he is eating the same thing as his brother and sister, strategically giving them tall, opaque cups so he can't see what's inside, or preparing foods that are the same shade of orange. Today, while his siblings were dipping warm chocolate chip cookies in fresh milk, he sat with them, pretty sure he was eating the same thing but still somewhat suspicious, taking bites of barley bread dipped in water. 

I was searching for a vegan snickerdoodle recipe in the hopes of cutting down on some of my trickery, and found the recipe collection of a girl who named her website something like the verbal equivalent of her haircut. As her picture loads alongside the list of various forms of deliciousness that go into a snickerdoodle, we find her wearing an apron and with big black framed glasses.

Well, yeah, Su. Of course that's what you look like. 

Then my niece beside me asked, 

-Shifu Khala- is that your picture? Why is your picture on there?"

Get off my case, kid! Can't you see I'm a new woman?!

-That's not me. Why would there be a picture of me on the internet?

Note to baking self- for real this time, get all pictures of former self off the internet. 

Or at least run them through the photo editor "hardened woman" filter, then "soften edges," then "softer."

Shopping

In my fifth (and Ya Allah hopefully my final!) trip to the tile store where I get to be a little black cloud shooting videos of different shades of wood, an Arab woman approached me. She immediately spoke English because she probably heard me narrating the descriptions of textures and colors of the wood into the camera.

She got right to the point.

Excuse me, do you have a sister here in Jordan?

Since I do, in fact, have a sister in Jordan I assumed she must know her and started to describe her.

But then she kept going.

Is she married? 
Do you have any unmarried sisters? 

Since I do, in fact, have an unmarried sister, I started to describe her too.

Does she look like you?

A curious thing to say to a girl who is 96% shrouded in layers of black. 

But this woman was not interested in me, but a girl who resembled the 4% of me that was showing. As if to say- almost, but not quite. I don't wear a ring, but she assumed I was a claimed woman. Maybe my eyes "look married." Or maybe she wanted a girl whose hands looked only kind of like mine.

Although I recognized this as an opportunity for adventure and ridiculous conversation, I shut her down with a simple no because she spoke perfect English (YAWN). I know not every encounter has to be an Arabic lesson, but I need to focus on finding situations where I can practice saying the important things:

How much are the apples?

My ____ is broken and I don't know how to fix it.

Do you have this in black?

From the Backseat

Halfway to Marj al Hammam, the taxi driver with the cigarette dangling out of his mouth suddenly got friendly and was asking me all kinds of things that I didn't understand and so I did my usual thing and answered yes and said "inshallah" and "alhamdullilah" at random intervals. It took a few minutes before I figured out that he was actually on the phone, wearing a headset, probably talking to his wife or his kid, judging from the occasional "baba! what's wrong with you!"

I think this is a thing. The mother of the kids I tutor calls her husband every half hour so he can yell at the kids for refusing to do their reading. The older one has taken to saying he "just want to die" when I show up to teach them.

So this guy was probably also yelling at his kid. I think he assumed I was talking to myself. Safe assumption- how can I resist? After so many years of doing it on the nyc subway with my Arabic flashcards in my lap as if to say- don't worry- I'm just studying. Although, the occasional passenger would get even more concerned with my presence once they saw what I was studying. 

The taxi drivers are my only communication with ordinary people in Amman, and they get really happy when I answer the usual question "are you a new Muslim or were you Muslim 'from the start.'" The driver on the way home from Marj al Hamman nodded his head in approval and said "Subhanallah." And then I said "Subhanallah." And then he asked if I was married and I ignored him and continued trying to casually eat a banana under my niqab. In Morocco I would have said "shame on you!" but I'm not sure if that's a thing here.

The route across the city is so beautiful and I have plans to ask the next driver to drop me off near that spot where there are randomly a bunch of camels, plus some nearby sheep. It would be too expensive to have the driver wait around, but I have faith that some woman will feel bad for me and pick me up like they do when it's raining, and like the drivers in Morocco do for the elderly. I can't resist the camels. I can hear them calling to me.

"C'mon! Take our picture! You know you want to. Look how random we are!"

Or maybe it's an echo from some other corner of the city. But I'll probably give in anyway.
I know me. Even if the city hasn't met me yet.

The Voiced and the Voiceless

I saw a little girl and an older girl throwing pebbles at each other from adjacent balconies. It didn't look like it was happening in jest or merriment- they really wanted to hit each other. The little girl was winning and the older one was getting frustrated. She couldn't have been more than twenty, but was definitely old enough to know not to throw stones at helpless children.But I didn't judge her for it because that little girl looked like a real terror, and on her side it appeared to be a hate crime against the foreigner. Plus, that other girl was wearing the best boots.

Okay, it was me. That little monster needed to learn that just because the other person is bigger doesn't mean they will be the bigger person.

After she threw her final fistful I yelled "I'm going to tell your mother!" but later I saw her mother, and she was terrifying.

I've been saving up my Arabic for the elderly couples at Cafe Paris that like to talk politics because I tell them I'm Jordanian. But I know better than to talk to strangers and so more often, I keep my thoughts to myself and see if I can translate it into Arabic in my head. Knowing that I can do it is enough of a comfort for me, like a warm blanket of guttural and emphatic cross-woven threads. Mint green ones. The voiced and the voiceless, holding hands.

If I can't come up with the whole translation I take the advice of my Arabic teachers for "whenever you are not sure about (obscure grammatical rule or vocabulary word) - ask someone who speaks Arabic." So every couple of minutes I ask whoever is sitting next to me, how would I say (monster, tornado, etc.) in derija? and reserve all cases of casual conversation for when I get to use the fun words that deserve practicing out loud, namely "I'm confused / I was confused," where the K, guttural Kh and hard Q all combine side by side into one magical mess of sounds. And if I put it in the future tense I get to add a "gh." It's a party in my mouth, like bastilla and plum tagine- my celebratory dinner for my second last night in Tangier.

You had me at Smehli Ukhtee

 I met an enchantress today. A real siren. She gave me directions when I lost my way home from the tailor after I promised him I knew how to get back home. The neighborhood boys tried to help me and I tried to shoo them away, and then the seas parted and there she was. She looked like Tinkerbell. Her hijab was up in a bun and tied in the back the way the local girls do but something about it made her look dangerous. The crowd of boys clearly had respect for her. When she smiled she had four silver fillings on the right side. Or maybe they were teeth. Both possibilities seem unlikely for a Moroccan girl from the medina, so it could have been something else. Maybe she ate glitter.

Whatever it was, it was magical. 

I can't stop thinking about her and wishing I had asked if I could take her picture. I think about going back to find her tomorrow but I know I won't, and that is how I know I am not a photographer at heart. Not really. I saw her, you didn't - finders keepers.

I have not used any of the instant film I went to great lengths (and several fake-crying incidents at customs) to bring without passing through a security scanner.

It's not that I am no longer enchanted by Tangier, but that I have already taken all of the pictures, and now it is just the same pictures with a different camera.

I believe Allah inspired me with this sentiment as a blessing. The Islamic permissibility of photographs of people is disputed territory, and I am better off safe than sorry.