a remembering people

authenticity

in this place, is different. from anywhere i've ever been.

here, our identities are fierce, and fluid, and we fear them and we need them and we wish they would stay the same for just one minute.

and they fear, they always fear, that they are imported. because their borders, their fast food restaurants, their place in the world, their tv, their music, their history is imported. so it's no wonder that here we are so fiercely, defensively islamic, and it's no wonder that we are so rigid, that the social structures we live in are so defined, so static. we are trying to draw our own lines, separate from and antithetical to the ones that have been drawn for us. how else can we carve out an identity from a past we didn't control?

so the question is authenticity. and the culture of brotherhood-- not sisterhood-- and of men, and walls, and honor, is a rebellion. it's no wonder that sexuality, and feminism, and all the suitcases that feminism threatens to unpack as soon as it gets comfortable, are so feared, and so rejected. feminism is seen as western. and it is so intertwined with imperialism, with control, with imposed values, that we cannot, we CANNOT accept it. it's too soon, and too close, and too much at once. it has been said for centuries in western circles, and from western mouths, that this culture oppresses women-- it's not as if the seven white men who owned the bank in mary poppins (my most trusted villains) really cared how women were treated here, or in their country, or anywhere. it was just another dehumanizing tool  used to justify their so-called "civilization" of this place, and of this people. and they tried, with their money and their guns and their letters, to destroy it, and its religion and its values and its culture. so the question of women has become a question of culture--

it is our culture to build these walls. it is our culture to enforce these rules. it is our culture, and we will not abandon it.

and culture, and tradition, are unquestioned deities-- we are what we are because of what we have been. and what we have been is not mcdonald's, and it is not suits and ties, and it is not individualism, and it is not bikinis, and it is not, it is not what you are, or what you wanted us to be.

we are not what you wanted us to be, they say. first and foremost, we are ourselves.

and there are things unforgivable to me, deemed acceptable sacrifices in this desperate attempt to recreate a self we don't know how to express. there are honor killings, and forced marriages, and ownership, and the total objectification, alienation of the female. and i can't say i condone them, and i can't say i don't blame them, but it really, really, really is no wonder.

this people is a mirror to me, of trauma and self-reconstruction and life afterwards. after, after, after words. there are no longer any words. this is a people without a bubble, without an excuse. there is no such thing as suburbia, as distance. everywhere i have ever lived before, there was a bubble: of rich, middle-class suburban families, people who if they wanted to could deny that anything but their comfortable lives ever existed or will. but here, in a land of a million refugees and violence far too close to forget, there is no bubble to burst. even the very wealthy can only pretend to be unaffected-- their history is their country, is their religion, is their past entwined with ours.

and maybe that is why i love this place, and maybe it is why i love this people. we are confused, and short-sighted, and wrong on so many counts, but we are making what we can with what we have been. it gives me hope that there is a making at all, even if it objectifies me and my people. there are some things that can't come from outsiders, some things that can't be taught. first and foremost, we are ourselves.

i think maybe i find strange things hopeful. but like this place, i am what i am because of what i have been, and because of what i am distinctly not anymore.

we are a remembering people, full of screeching and fire and finding our way.

samson

burn it down, she says.
burn it to the ground.

because we are a remembering people, and a broken one. and if we’d ever really tried to leave the cave, we’d have been long gone the first time.

that’s why we don’t make maps; it is an excuse to never go anywhere? because how would we ever find our way back, and how would we ever want to?

we are are we at all we are imported. and authenticity is our curse, our tortured desire and our crescendo. we are nothing,
nothing,
nothing if we are not ourselves—but what are selves? collections of fragmented memories and blurry visions of what we hope will be our future? we are nothing of the present, only moments past and future, and right now is only a tiny void, a little gap in between.

but we must be something in this moment, even if only a gap in time—after all, we think, and therefore are. and if i am only a singing, exhaling, blood-pumping, writing mass of muscle and tissue and tangled veins and bone marrow, that is enough for me. if we are anything in the present, it is certainly nothing we would ever recognize. our mirrors are liars—we are their makers and their gods, how could they ever pretend to be honest with us?

and we are little baby blackbirds, trying to walk for the first time—pretending, as if we didn’t know from the beginning that we could fly. we walk, because it’s safer, cutting up our feet with our own eggshells, with our past.

there’s nothing new under the sun except history you don’t know.

this is an essay of colors and musical notes.

Coming home again
to see a girl that's prettier than a diamond in the sun
oh what fun!
I wonder if she's been naked in her room since I've been gone
I wonder if she said to them as she said to me before

However much you use me baby, come on use me more
However much you use me baby, come on use me more

feeling less philosophical today, and more full of  coke and laughing bubbles. today the smoke only makes me smile. which means that i should be using this time when i dont have to be writing to study for my 3 massive midterms this week. but really, 500 new words in a language i don't speak? no big deal. i love tests. but they're no fun unless they're impossible.

and effing paolo nutini has me all over the floor. god that boy can sing. 

Getting off the train
to see a girl that's sweeter than an apple picked from Adam's tree
oh glory be!
and I wonder if she's been pressed against an unfamiliar wall
and said to all those men as she has said to me before

However much you want me, I swear I'll make you want me more
However much you want me, I swear I'll make you want me more
and more and more and more

la-la-la, la la la la

i've resolved that i need to document garden street and its ridiculous. in shah allah there will be a photo blog in the near future full of just the hilarity that is the store fronts of sharia wasfi-tel. the signs are so great. i mean, "freddy for music", "diplomat car rental", and "k.mart"? i think i want to take a picture of every store front on each side so that in my future home i can recreate garden street in my hallway. a thousand apologies to whoever i live with in the future- but really, im not desolee at all.

do you know what's funny, too? since we're talking about ridiculous. the phrase "in shah allah". we say it after EVERYTHING- it's "see you tomorrow, in shah allah". it means "god willing." so everyone here says it, and we say it- i dont think i've even thought of the word "hopefully" in months. however, with our haram ways, "in shah allah" becomes hilariously great. because our activities generally consist of things that are maybe not optimal from a traditional muslim standpoint? like last night, for example, i said: "yeah if we get there during happy hour drinks won't be ridiculously expensive, in shah allah".

whatever shah literally means, i am pretty sure allah does not "shah" us going to bars. we are maybe asking for bad karma on that one. i think from now on we should possibly not inform him.

i think it may also be time for me to relay some things that i miss about the states, because with the way i talk you all probably think i am dreading going back. so here are a few things:

hot showers that last me more than 4 minutes.

being able to flush toilet paper IN THE TOILET. elhamdelileh.

guacamole i dont have to make myself.

THE INTERNET. IN GENERAL.

similarly, being able to google random things. my knowledge of random facts has gone seriously downhill.

seatbelts. my most used phrase in this country is "we're going to die. right now."

walking.

the ocean.

my skateboard.

working out. i am way out of shape. like WAY.

not being as white as a fish.

tank tops, non-floor-length skirts- basically, my real clothes.

eye contact.

not being glared at by every female everywhere.

tap water that does not contain some sort of bird species.

understanding what my waiter is saying at a cafe.

nachos. dear god, freebirds, come back to me.

the beach. the beach. the beach.

sidewalks.

running.

normal-shaped soda cans.

not wearing the same pair of jeans every day for months.

24-hour anything.

clean socks. clean ANYTHING.

washing machines that i dont have to fill or drain myself.

and you all, or course, i miss my mom and my dad and my friends and my wonderfully obnoxious siblings more than anything else.

but i'll miss jordan so much. i'll miss water that comes in jello containers, and cold showers, and our washing machine that is named friendship, and bathrooms that are really just stalls with holes in them, and demolished/never really built sidewalks, and uneven stairs, and being honked at on the street (literally) about once every 22 seconds (we counted). and argeelah everywhere, and turkish coffee, and this pair of jeans, and the call to prayer, and 25 cent sandwiches, and notebooks that open the opposite way, and the smell of cigarettes, and not understanding what anyone's saying. 

and i'll miss the 237569834765 people who judge me every minute- they make me sure of who i am. 

and i'll miss sauntering across a 3lane road full of oncoming traffic that may or may not stop- it makes me sure of what i have to lose.

and i'll miss not understanding what anyone says- it makes me sure that there are ways in which we are the same, regardless.

and i'll miss not being able to go outside with my hair wet, and doing it anyway, and joking about the "chastity scarf" that i am tying around my head.

and i'll miss missing things- and making do- it makes me see what i can live without and happy with everything i ever had.

and regina spektor will never be the same, and every time a car honks at me, i will now and forever think, "aww... jordan".

this blog is going nowhere. i really should go study. meaning i will be posting something else in 20 minutes once i've given up on knowing all the words relating to women in the workplace and child abuse and the importance of language.

see you then, i guess.

Arriving at the door

just to be told that the girl I'm missing has been in London for a while
no more northern skies for her
they say she's left a letter up the stairs for everyone
it's pinned against her bedroom door for all the world to see and she says

However much I love you, you will always love me more
However much I love you, you will always love me more
and i guess i's true
however much she loves me i will always love her more

la-la-la, la la la la

I'll love you more and more, I'll love you more
I'll love you more and more, I'll love you more
I'll love you more and more, I'll love you more
I'll love you more and more, and more and more...

i'll love you more.

so this one time? in jordan?

this is a story i haven't told yet. it is of a ridiculous weekend.

i watched 5 movies, wrote a poem about my ghosts, kicked 30 strangers out of my house, and hitchhiked to the dead sea and back using 2 vans, a bus, and an open trailer full of cabbage and sugar cane. i rode a bedouin’s donkey down the dead sea beach, sunk into the salty mud so deep that my boots will always have healing powers, took bets on the GDP of bhutan, and carved a heart into a placemat at a jordanian pizza parlor. i learned that guinea is the world’s largest exporter of boxite, was picked up by 2 palestinians who kept saying “i love you bush?” (i think they were confused), had my first snow day, and when the call to prayer sounded at 4:30am i was definitely awake to hear it.

last thursday we had kind of a sketch party, there were a lot of weird jordanians i didnt know. so sketch and ridiculousness was had, i was told that i look like a movie star, and i had to kick a bunch of strangers out of my house. sweet.

so friday, we didnt feel like doing much. we went to the spaceship for popeyes chicken and very tired pepsi. we then had to make the trek through the icy wind up the stairs of doom, which had become a waterfall in the ice flood. while my roommates were smart and went inside to get warm, i borrowed a camera and went outside to take pictures of the flood. it was beautiful. i am putting them in an album. it is called “water shortage”. this is ironic, because we in jordan are apparently in the middle of a drought, but school was cancelled today because it snowed and the streets turned into lakes. tij?


my friend called me while i was on the stairs trying to capture the ridiculous that they are when it rains, and asked if we wanted to come over and watch a movie. this was around 3 pm. so i came home and we got ready to go and i brushed my hair (so rare an occasion it is worth putting in the blog) and we put on our boots and our whatnots again, and we went over to watch a movie.

we didnt come back for 3 days.

they had just bought a bunch of movies, so we had a few to choose from. sunflower was forced to pick the first one, which was “rachel getting married”. intense movie, let me tell you. after that we went out for pizza, and i carved a heart into a paper placemat because i felt bad carving into the table... but i wanted to leave a heart. so i did. and we got mushroom pizza because one of them likes mushrooms and combo pizza because it was the specialty of the pizzeria and margherita because two of them cant eat meat for lent, but only on fridays. and fish doesnt count as meat. in summary, catholics fast in strange ways.

so we went back home to the home that isn’t technically ours but really secretly is, and we watched pineapple express and then the curious case of benjamin button. and we had a blanket over us and it was very cozy.

phone call the next day said we were going to the dead sea. and why not? so we took a bus to the general area, were dropped off on the side of a highway, adopted a japanese tourist who spoke no arabic, and made our way to the water. there was a "bathroom" whose ceiling was explosed and tiles covered the floor, and there were also giant loose tires, like treads or something? ma3lish. it was warm and the sky was white and hazy, and we sunk into the mud. and we rode a bedouin's donkey on the water and the water was so salty it felt like oil and the salt stung our hands.

we hitchhiked to amman beach, trying to maybe get to a beach where people were?

ended up in a trailer bed full of cabbage and sugar cane, and then made our way back to amman in a van with no seats (which would be more unsafe than usual IF THE SEATS EVEN HAD SEATBELTS). our drivers congratulated us very enthusiastically on obama. spent the rest of the weekend taking bets of the gdp of various african countries, and playing "who knows the most countries in the world by order of continent". we're really, really cool kids. not nerdy at all. ohhh jordan.

also, had my FIRST SNOW DAY EVER. and it was in the desert. ridiculous. and awesome.

what will i do when i live in places where i can't always rest assured that i will laugh out loud on a minute-by-minute basis because life is so insane?

probably move, i guess.

i. love. jordan.

can i just say that the other day in ameiya class we spontaneously sang + performed actions to "i'm a little teapot", including the lambchop "oh darn i'm a teapot" version, and then translated it on the spot? i now have an extremely ridiculous vocab list, which goes chronologically:

teapot

fat

handle

spout (??? there is no word?? i doubt that, professor alia)

shout

pour me out (there is a word for THAT but not for SPOUT? come on, alia).

we live in strange ways.

and my roommate is a sunflower, and she and i spend our time charming all the fahim boys (waiters who bring coal for argeelah) of amman- with our sweet smiles, our generous tips, and the fact that with our magnificent arabic we consistently ask for, instead of the check, either one moment or breakfast.

it is a good afternoon activity. yom yomna shway sakhifa (since the day we were born we were a little ridiculous.)

needless to say they love us.

every day they ask me if i want an english menu, anxious eyebrows if they don't have one, and every day i answer the same:

لا. بسكن هن. لازم اقدر اقراة يسماء الطعم إلي بآكل كل يوم. 

and by how horribly wrong i'm sure that is, you can tell i need to do more studying and less blogging. (it says (badly) "no. i live here, and i need to be able to read the names of the food i eat every day.").

we spend our afternoons in second floor windows, collecting our thoughts and breathing in coals until we're so full of smoke we can't feel it anymore.

and i'm always here trying to memorize all the words i can in this new language, but sometimes the smoke overwhelms me, brings my biggest thoughts to the surface and breathes them out for me unwilling, in swirls and storms and dragons.

i think maybe i think too much. but i think maybe i like it? and i dont think, really, that it could be any other way. haha.

my recent life in pictures

yes, mom, i finally managed it :). this is a collection of highlights from my photographic life. it's in backwards order chronologically and it's beautiful and it's overwhelming and i love everything about it. enjoy. love from jordan. <3<3<3

view from the reins.

mountains on every side.

camels in the parking lot.

our caravan.

my roommate riding a camel. she's such a bamf.

so there were 4 people waiting for camels when i got there, but they grabbed me out of line and brought me to this one- screaming, rolling on the ground, trying to kill our bedouin friend here. my camel was a rock star; he had quite an attitude. so this is my screaming camel.

my beloved muhammed. we were bffs.

the desert is just so big. it's like an ocean... but with sand. (my metaphors give away my history, haha).

morning

even after the sunrise, we watched the morning for awhile. when you're up at 6am, why not? below is our camp and in the distance someone is practicing his high kick and fighting the wind.

i'm always on mountains these days.

hazy mornings, watching the sky.

too pretty not to post another one.

sunset to sunrise, and i'm always on a mountain.

i didn't take this one (obvi since i'm in it)- it's the 3 of us watching the sunset on the mountain.

love these kids. how did i ever live without them?

sunset from the mountain

the haze gathers in pockets, between sand dunes and mountains

evening in the desert, wind and sand and 80 miles an hour

sand dune races

shadows like marks, proof that we were there.

afraid of heights? no way. these are days of fear-conquering.

oh we are so cute. taken by our yalla-man friend.

after the stampede.

hazy in the desert

i found a flower in the desert. here we're sitting in the arch below and talking.

the arch. we climbed down from the mountain and stood inside.

desert wind

hearts and alleyways

dangerous? psshh. we drove this way for a ways, into an alley where our sketch taxi driver here (on the left holding the door "closed"? yeah that's him) took our passports and sprinted away with them... to photocopy them, of course. wow my life is ridiculous.

the moon has risen over this building every night for 800 years.

newer damascus

mosque + alien

ohm qassoum, looking over the city. it was overwhelming, i have never felt so full of... everything.

old city in damascus

beautiful.

the omawayyeeeeefhagkjdshiiin mosque (aka ummayad).

and they write love on the walls.

i have never seen anything more beautiful. damascus has my heart.

breakfast in syria

nutella picnic at the syrian border. get it, girrrl.

her first nutella experience IN LIFE... quite a memorable moment.

also on the menu were sheep testicles and other similarly appetizing items.

i'm sure we're not the ONLY people to ever have been pringle ducks on the syrian border, but we were definitely the best.

welcome to syria

me, about to burn my wad of syrian cash. ladies and gentlemen, i am shway gangsta.

my beloved propane truck. i hear ice cream music just looking at it.

take from my garden. see the funnel? it's our landmark.

god, amman is beautiful.

and it is so big. i can't get over it. 

view from the garden

i then picked and ate this lemon, i will have you know. beautiful day.

we were "studying" in the garden

the stairs of doom... doomlike, no?

view from the walk home

the wheelbarrow hasn't been rightside up since i moved in

this picture is in my house. we don't know why. it's kind of creepy.

our unnecessary 2 living rooms

one of the first pictures i took of amman

untitled

crescent

our train being "attacked" by bedouins (who let me ride their horses)

the sunrise over heathrow airport, london. no idea what time it was for me.

sunrise in a box

rainy garden, rainy camera lens

my garden

offroading

in case you didnt believe me that it snows here

water shortage?

our own personal waterfall

raindrop

everything about this picture is so standard.