well-adjusted (ha)

so you know what we haven't had up here in a while?

a rant. and today, i think, it is about time. samira, once again you have inspired my fingers to their angry typing. what would i do without you?

in a particular class of mine, we are discussing the implications of islam and its doctrines on modern issues. or, at least, we pretend to. mostly we talk about fantasy marshmallow worlds where everything is perfect and everyone lives in peace and harmony in an islamic state. but for the sake of argument (and my course credit) we're going to pretend that the class is generally informative.

well, today was informative at least. 

we have been discussing the islamic point of view with regards to human life and reproduction- birth control, abortion, genetic engineering, euthanasia, artificial insemination, etc. and our professor explained that in islam, it is absolutely imperative that a child be produced by a married couple, with no "3rd parties" involved. Thus, in vitro fertilization is acceptable as long as all components of the baby are from the husband and wife. surrogate mothers are not permitted, and neither are sperm banks. so. me being me, the natural question is what about adoption?

can of worms, my friends. can of worms.

i mean i guess she wasn't quite as offensive as she could have been. she is entitled to her opinion, and her culture is entitled to their opinion, and her religion is entitled to its opinion. that's as diplomatic as i can be. she explained that adoption was seen in islam as a great deed of charity, "to take in an orphan" is seen as a great sacrifice and makes you a great person and katha katha katha. but, of course, those "adopted" children cannot take their (adopted) father's name, and do not receive inheritance. also, women must veil in front of their adopted children and/or siblings, because since they are not actually blood relations, they are probably going to have an illicit sexual affair if you dont keep that hair under wraps. 

and again, fine, have your opinion, samira. you and everyone who thinks like you can keep your  obsession with blood and lineage. but dont talk to me about how everyone wants to have a real son or daughter (but probably not daughter), dont talk to me about how "real children" can be trusted to take care of their parents in their old age, unlike adopted children, dont talk to me about the "complicated issues" that arise because parents couldn't possibly bond with a child that wasn't theirs, and don't you dare say the word "illegitimate" to me ever, ever again. my cultural assimilation switches are strong, but they're not that strong.

i dont think anyone has ever used the term "illegitimate child" to my face before. well, check it off the list, it officially infuriates me.

and i dont usually play the walking-identity-crisis, sensitive adopted girl. i really don't. i consider myself well-adusted (ha), i'm happy to have met my birthparents several times, and my parents have always been really good about it. they told me early, i have no recollection of ever not knowing where i came from. i mean, i had baby books about adoption. this is not a complicated thing.

class, is a family people who look the same?

(the class shakes their collective kindergarten head): nooooo

is a family people who have the same blood, and hair, and noses, and stuff?

(another head shake): nooo

oh. than maybe a family is people who love each other and live with each other and annoy the hell out of each other?

(the class cheers wildly).

thank you, class. like i said, not complicated. and usually i dont get so offended by things like this; i mean people have been asking about my "real parents" and "the orphanage" since i've been talking. but maybe it was the awful, awful word choice, or maybe it was the fact that it was coming from a professor, or maybe the fact that she at least made it seem like an entire culture that would disapprove of my existence, but today was a day of sitting quietly in my chair, hands folded, burning holes in my professor's head with my brain.

i swear im going to send samira my baby books. or i would, if i didnt think it would be such a waste of time.

"but how can a father truly love his adopted son the same? of, course, it is impossible. strangers in the house only complicate things."

i. am thinking it's a sign.

 that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images.

and when we kiss

they're perfectly aligned.

i am currently avoiding work. granted, it's my own laura-assigned work, i.e. making a massive master list of every vocab word i have learned this semester in both my arabic classes. wow, i must really want to learn arabic.

everyone always asks me why i want to study arabic, and i didn't realize until this semester that i have no idea. i mean now i study it because i love it, because it's beautiful, because i love the middle east, because i think maybe arabic is the language of my heart-- works translated from arabic into english sound much more the way i write than english texts. the metaphors are so much deeper than english. every word means something, every noun is also attached necessarily to a dozen verbs and adjectives, and everything means more. 

and i think maybe arabic and i get on well, and maybe we're meant for each other. but thinking back, i have no no no idea why i thought this was a good idea in the first place. i mean what was i thinking? i can't remember ever having a reason to study it in the first place- i didn't know anything about arabic, or arab culture. and here we are, 3 years later, and i am in jordan studying arabic like it'll save my life, a middle east studies major with no recollection of life before i knew what "assalaamu a'laykum" meant. it makes me wonder what i knew about it at the time, what i thought it would be like. 

so they always ask, and i always say that i have no idea. i just did. and i just do. and i had to, and i have to. i'll never escape this language for the rest of my life. if i believed in fate, or something like it, i'd say we were meant for each other. 

but i wish i knew how to say that in arabic. and i wish i had a reason that made any sense to people. then again, the things that are most important to me are the things i have no words for. so maybe it's better this way.

do you know what i love, in arabic? the dual. if you want 2 books, you ask for kitaabayn. not itnayn kutub (literally, 2 books, the english way), but kitaabayn. i dont know if that makes any sense if you dont speak arabic, but it's really, really cool. like today my argileh flavor is 2 apples, tofehtayn. it's gorgeous.

there also isnt a word for is, really. i mean there is a verb "to be", but it's not used in the sense it is in english. like if you want to say "i am happy", you say ana sa3ida. literally, i happy. so every time you say i, ana, you say "i am". and i dont know why i think that is so beautiful, but it really, really is.

alright enough rambling about the language i should be studying. none of this makes any sense in english anyway.

bitter lemon and two apples

i really think that dress looks nice on you. i can see a lot of life in you.

bitter lemon and two apples argileh today. that's a change.

today i am a pirate again, but only because i never went home to change my clothes. and i really like the way i dress, but i wear such strange and conspicuous things that everyone i see knows i haven't changed my clothes since yesterday morning. that's what i get for tying massive gray scarves to my head. 

i was thinking, the other day, walking around on campus, that me in jordan is like that weird quirky girl in junior high. the one you read about in books but never knew anyone like her, never knew anyone who would actually 

wear big neon green and rainbow headphones over the scarf tied around her head like a pirate 

(and everyone else wears trendy tight jeans and hijabs and lots of makeup and black eyebrow liner), or 

sing to herself all the time in a language no one else is speaking 

(and everyone else twitters in a language she doesn't speak), or

dance a little bit when she's feeling particularly awake

(and everyone else stalks around like robots, afraid of moving their body in the slightest unnecessary way), or

smile at strangers

(and everyone else's eyes are on the ground or on their friends, or on that weird girl with the headphones), or

walk around alone just to think about things

(and everyone else is divided into clubs and posses, why would you want to go anywhere alone?)

i was always a little different, even in isla vista a little different. but here i am an alien, content to be an outsider. i dont try to fit in because i dont want to fit in, because i dont have to fit in, because this place isn't real life for me. and again, that has always been true-- my head has always spent more time in the clouds or deep underground than it ever spent on the surface. i'm not interested in dry land. but here, here they think i am absolutely, batshit effing crazy, because this isn't a place that likes differences. and everywhere i walk i am the center of attention, twittering girls and staring boys, whispering confused questions in quick succession-- she must be crazy. not even the other americans so what she does. and i just smile to myself, which confuses them even more, and hold my chin a little higher and walk a little more purposefully. 

if nothing else (and really, it is everything else too), jordan has banished any doubts i ever had that i like myself. haha.

2 days ago i decided to wear a skirt. and a KNEELENGTH skirt at that. oh my goodness, i have never in my life scandalized so many people at once. but i kept catching my reflection in the mirror, a long baggy sweater and a kneelength skirt, scarf tied around my head, and i just couldn't bring myself to think i was anything but respectable; not all the glaring college girls in the world could convince me otherwise. 

it's interesting living here, necessarily disconnected from social scenes and social norms, too far outside the bell curve to even see it in the distance. 

and some people might not think that is a positive thing, but i didnt come here to fit in-- i couldnt if i tried. i came to collide with the bell curve, and i am every day succeeding. and, regardless, i dont think there's a single jordanian, not even the skydiving, palace-living-in, blog-commenting, bubbling jordanian king, who has as much fun here as i do.

they dont like acoustic anything here, and i am acoustic everything. they like glitter paint on their hookahs, and rhinestones on their cell phones, and plastic things, and poetry with abab rhyme schemes, and high heels to make them taller, and lots of makeup, and synthesizers and many singers in every song, and shiny cars with stickers on them of the king, and big ipods, and zebra print chairs, and-- 

ok pause i think the waiter just tried to kiss me, cool. dear god this country, haha. it doesnt even surprise me anymore.

 anyway they like shiny plastic, things made in factories and glittering vases. i think this is a place full of high school kids, boys who can't get enough of their cars and girls who just discovered that everything comes in hot pink. 

it is a strange existence i have here. 

also, the waiter just came back to ask if we were friends. would it be weird for me to get a guard dog?

jerusalem- day 1: my heart, where are you?

oh, jerusalem, jerusalem, why do you pull my heart out through my throat in heaving gasps? how are you in one moment so beautiful and so tragic?

shy boys with ringlets and old women in hijab, teenagers in tshirts carrying m-16s, blocking off tiny streets at random intervals. they don't let the old women pass by. what are they so afraid of, with their guns and suspicious eyes?

i dont even know what to write about our trip. we went to palestine and israel- jerusalem, tel aviv, jaffa, and the west bank. it is, like damascus, too big to write about. but i will attempt to narrate it in a semi-comprehensible fashion.

since when have i ever managed to narrate anything in a semi-comprehensible fashion?

this is day 1.

we started off as usual: insane. having spent 7jd on a bus from amman to the israeli border, we had to meet the bus at 6am to leave. my host grandfather (he's far too old to be my father and far too sweet to be my landlord) kindly drove us to the bus station, so as it turned out we were right on time at the wrong bus station. oh, traveling. no matter, we were herded by no less than 15 men onto a bus which, they assured us, was the right bus, and was going to jerusalem.

it was not the right bus.

but, really, we were doing well-- we were on a bus at the time we were supposed to be on a bus, going to the destination we were supposed to be traveling to. all's well with the world? well for most of us haha.

we did in fact get there, where our extremely unhelpful bus driver directed us to the jordanian arrivals building. no matter that were clearly not arriving in jordan, since he had driven us to the border... from jordan? the man was confused. so we went inside and pointlessly put our bags through the scanny thing and then were directed right back out to the departures side. elhamdelileh someone knew what they were doing.

the border was ridiculous, as, i have discovered, are all borders in the so-called "middle east"
(a term i have grown to despise, really, for its utter inadequacy). but it was ridiculous in a different and possibly opposite way than the syrian border. we got off the bus to see, first thing, a man-- no, definitely a boy-- maybe in his 20s, maybe, in a pastel yellow polo with tiny blue stripes, aviator sunglasses, and cargo pants, carrying the biggest gun i've ever seen in real life.

set the tone for the trip, i must say.

we made it through the border in 40 minutes (WITH NO PASSPORT STAMPS ELHAMDELILEH), although they did pull daylily aside and question her because her name is "arabic". in real life, her name is hebrew too, as well as very very very american. they told her she couldn't go through, then later changed their minds. just being jerks, in my opinion. we then waited 3 HOURS for our other friends, who were detained and questioned for the entire time because one of them wears a hijab and her family is iranian. i was thoroughly annoyed by the time we finally got out of there. 

i can't even explain what we did in jerusalem. walking, looking, feeling overwhelmed, damascus gate to jaffa gate, the old city. stone corridors and so, so, so many different kinds of people. orthodox jewish scholars, with their giant hats and ringlets, americans in shorts and tshirts, palestinian boys running in packs, chasing bikes. shopkeepers calling, welcome to my shop. beautiful girl, welcome to my shop. welcome to jerusalem. take this dress for free, come have coffee with me. do you like coffee? welcome, beautiful girl.

women in hijab, with them i feel more comfortable. tank tops and shorts confuse me, scandalize me. corridors, covered, inside outside in the same place. hallways full of millions and millions of things,  scarves and shirts and dresses and dried fruit and spices and sandals and toys and necklaces and bracelets and pottery and plastic dolls and flashing mini helicopters. welcome, beautiful girl. please come in, do you like tea? everything free for you, beautiful girl.

we walk down the corridor, never even so much as looking at them. that's when they think they've got you, when you look at them. eye contact here is very meaningful, very sensual. looking at a man means he thinks he has possessed you, in some small way. so it depends on the day, some days i refuse their black and white terms of combat, and stare right back. what are you looking at? what right do you think you have to even look at me? and whisper like that to your friend? but other days, many days, i accept the terms and look straight ahead. sometimes it is a bigger victory to let them think what they will. 

we walk the whole of the old city, stumbling into armenian chapels and gaping more at the girls in tank tops than at the ancient walls. tired of carrying our bags, we make our way to our first home in this new city. dani's house.

dani is pronounced "donnie". he is our first couchsurfing experience, and already now feels like an old friend. couchsurfing, first of all, is exactly what it sounds. there is a website (couchsurfing.com, go figure), and you go on it and find people in the area you're going to who are willing to lend you a couch for a night or 2. be sure to pick someone who has had several references, and good ones, in order to avoid the natural sketchiness that comes with staying with people you've never met. it sounds a little dangerous, but there were 3 of us, and we made sure to pick people who had previously had girls stay with them, and all given them good references. i'm telling you all, im never staying in a hostel again. couchsurfing is awesome, and dani was the first.

he lives in the german quarter of west jerusalem, which looks very much like downtown saratoga. really, israel proper looks like california. and the sun was shining and i was wearing flip flops and jeans and a tank top, and utterly, utterly confused as to who i was and where.

we met our host, who cooked us spaghetti and gave us blankets and couches, and let us use his internet.  we then went out to a bar in city central, which is now my favorite in the world. if any of you ever go to jerusalem, i will direct you to the coolest backdoor bar in the world. 

parked on the sidewalk (oh, amman, some things are universal) and hung out there for quite a while, talking to dani's actor friends and drinking goldstar, a very good and cheap israeli beer. this was our first experience with israelis we knew, so it was an interesting night. by interesting, i mean weird.

"what are you doing in israel?"

"well, we're on a break- we study in jordan, in amman, and this is our spring break".

"wait you study in jordan? why would you ever want to do that?"

and so it goes. wait you study arabic? why dont you study hebrew? wait do i speak arabic, no why would i? i live in israel. i speak hebrew and english. why would you ever want to study arabic? i mean i guess it's a good tool if you wanted to work for the american government. they do need help catching the terrorists.

dear god. where where where AM i?

and that was day 1. 

another, slightly more relevant, confession.

jerusalem blog + pics will be up in the future, i promise. but until then, i have a confession to make:

i love the yin yang twins far more than is healthy. 

and, all of you UJ students? when you see me walking around campus with my headphones in, head high and eyes straight ahead, the way a girl has to walk around here, you should know that, in my heart of hearts, 

i am secretly breakin it down.

الأمومة

this is a poem i wrote for arabic class. it is called motherhood, أمومة; it is about my mother. and i can't translate it because when you translate it it sounds stupid. but it is beautiful, and probably thoroughly confusing for my arabic professor.

الأمومة

أمي

هي من تطبخ الطعم الذي آكل

من تغسل الملابس التي ألبس

من تصلٌي لصوني كل أسبوع فالكنيسة

هي مرتبطة معي بدون الدم

 أقوى من الدم 

هي أمي

ولكن عندي أم أخرى، أم سرٌية

أم عظامي و دمي

أم ولادتي، مستتر من يوم يومي

هي في شعري، في عيوني، في مكان عميق في قلبي

وأنا إبنتها سرٌية

مع اسم سرٌي

اسم ما سمحت في كل حياتي

اسم سرٌي، هي فقط تعرفه

و يسألونني، من، أين أمك حقيقية؟

لا يفهمون، ولااحد يفهم،

أمومة ليس الدم، ليس لون الشعر

أمومة حب

أمي، هي من تطبخ الطعم الذي آكل

من تغسل الملابس التي ألبس

من تصلٌي لصوني كل أسبوع فالكنيسة

هي من سعدني أن أخذ خطواتي أولى

و أتمنى أن تعرف

أن في قلبي، ليس هناك سؤال، أبدا

أتمنى أن لا تتعجٌب

هي أمي، مرتبطة معي بدون الدم

أقوى من الدم، من العظام

ستكون داءما أمي. 

for the first time in a long while,

i feel like i have nothing to write.

and i feel like that's worth writing.

confession

this is a poem. i wrote it many places, on the grass in isla vista and on the train from normandy and on a bridge over the seine. 

it is about everything.

confession

if i only watched my life
through cherry blossom windows,
my breath fogging up the glass,
my love notes burned to piles of ash,
i'd tear the walls down
[burn them to nothing]
just to get some air
never have been good with fences
i need my space, my lettercase
i see in purple-
purple flowers, purple mazes,
purple skyscrapers' foundations
come sit with with me in the fountain,
and we'll write our own revelation
our own new [people's] gospel
scrawled in the margins of our pages
love letters soaked in lemon juice
we paste to the walls of our cages
because it matters.
because we think, and therefore, are
because we're nothing without all the things we'll never know for sure
and if the life without
ever broke in
to our elaborate caricature
we'd fall apart
without our art
because it matters

-now it matters.
we'll start a roses' revolution-
forget the sun, we''ll build our own
we're the sum of everything we do,
so let's do SOMETHING
while there's still chrysanthemums in your hair
the clouds are rushing to your rescue
but they'll never take you back
and the flowers are calling
and the walls are falling
and the wind and the whispers are calling my name
-but tell me, what's in a name, juliet,
whats in a name?
to name is to remember
to remember is to love
and to love is to exist
all we can ever hope to be
the looking glasss through which we see
our center and our deity
our highest of philosophies
our shot at immortality
that's why it matters- it matters
maybe nothing else matters
but the secret life of flowers that will be burned into your grave
my grave
our chrysallis
where heart beat meets wing beat
and the bones of what was become to cornerstones
of what will be,
where every day is the first day of our lives.

we are freed by our grief,
by the constant process of
resurrection, dust collection,
inevitable insurrection
that we need to survive
maybe we're only really alive
if we're collecting shattered pieces
that made up who we [thought we] were.
and that matters. it matters.

because i was never blind in love,
only brave, which is maybe worse
and i never saw they sun the way i saw it in your eyes
and i dont believe in secrets
but i do believe in lies
and what the flowers symbolize
the secrets of the butterflies
and the gasoline on my fingertips
gives away my guilt
and im still reeling from the recoil
and i cant run from them now
but the windows just werent big enough
and i had to get out

now its falling all around us
and im glad to see it burn
watch the memories, destinies
erupt in a nuclear burst
and i am laying in the middle
of a busy downtown street
watching the ashes fall around me
in a storm of burning leaves.
an ember falls upon my lips,
and i am freed by this confession
my obsession with resurrection
drowning in this, my clearest vision
of a secret i'll never tell
a masterpiece ill never sell
a tolling bell
a twilight's unknown spell
a fortune powerless to tell
its own destiny
and this ecstacy
of antipoetic testimony
will someday set me free
if i have to tell it a hundred thousand times
in every rhythm, every rhyme,
you'll hear the truth pour
from every rolling stone
and whispering firefly

because it matters.

peach, plum, pear and watery thoughts

i am writing again. about what, i dont know.

but the passsion of this voice overwhelms me, and i have to have to write again.

i am, now, watermelon smoke, and bitter coffee, and lined yellow notebooks, and rain. and broken sidewalks, and old stories, and quiet voices, and remnants of thoughts. and i am firdaus, and slow guitar, and fingers intertwined, silver rings interlocking.

like puzzle pieces.

and spiderwebs, silver strands of almost nothing. and i feel myself, my heart, my words, connected to the others—all the others—are there others? we are each other. i feel our connections, all our iner beings that speak to each other through our spiderstrands, like telegraph wires. whispered messages. one to another. and walking down the sidewalk, i feel myself wading through them, through all the strands that connect me to every pair of eyes and hands and feet i pass, as they break to let me through and then, invincible, reconnect in the wake of my heart’s little boat.

silver strands, like sugar. little crystals of memories remembered in a wordless language we don't understand. and i wonder if they feel them, too, and if when they see my eyes, they wonder how i know them. how they know me. and imagine, just imagine, all the strands on the freeway, connecting and straining with the speed and pulling and breaking and reconnecting.

and consciousness, like goosebumps, awake and alive and unexpected, like waking from a dream. and our feeling, erupting from years of bitter coffee and silence, and all of a sudden we are seized with the fear that where we are going is nowhere we want to be, and a desire to do somersaults in the sand.

and it is unfinished. there is more. always more. spilling. too much apple juice in a child’s cup.


if we didn’t have voices, we’d speak with our hands, and if we didn’t have hands, we’d speak with our eyelashes. just cats without a cradle and words too old to speak.

sidewalks

sidewalks

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=15258

as my ears tell my brain her story
my head is light
my breath is thick
my blood is quick
my fingers tight
if you kill her, she will die
if you kill her, i will die
and so she will die. and all the little pieces of us that lived in her, that still are her,
will die as well.
and her blood, and her bruises, are mine
frozen in time
and in our fear, and our purple skin, we are one.
but if she was a martyr, she was a martyr to her makeup
so sitting on the sidewalk
to living as she liked
and if we’re making martyrs to sidewalks,
tell me what have we become
tell me what in us is numb
tell me what we’re running from—
girls wearing makeup?
are the monsters in our closets so ordinary?
and so ridiculous?
i swear to god, if we feared the female any more in this place,
and if we knew what we feared,
that with all the contempt and all the rage
we are like children, afraid
of female monsters in our bedrooms
wearing lipstick and black lace,
we’d kill ourselves, if no one else
and drip our own blood
on the sidewalks
where the girls used to sit.

and for the record, samira, it didn’t “get out of their hands”. the 3 of them beat her with hoses for 2 hours, didn’t stop until she stopped breathing. don’t tell me they didn’t mean for anything to happen to her.

22 of us, in a circle, in a beautiful and utterly meaningless hour of cultural understanding

and we feel so closed. and so enlightened.

it was as if we were holding candles in a cave.

and, drunk with our harmony, our understanding, and the climax of our knowledge

of each other

of our letters

of our true colors and our cobwebs.

we were, for once, one: in language and in spirit and in desire to know the other.

but we were, here, alone and futile,

our 22 nothing to the world.

and though the windows remained open,

the clouds refused our words

we were singing birds

up in the trees too high to hear,

too high to care,

and our tiny fires burned together

in a bonfire's melody

our thoughts harmonizing, humming

in silent, rushing wind

and we were one.

but in that moment, in that room,

i knew our words were doomed--

we were too far, too high, too real

they'll see our reflections in a thousand years

like stars, old light

that died out

years and centuries ago,

and then they'll know.

but here, and now, we are so closed.