Student embraces Jordanian culture

I hate being asked about my summer.

Not because I don't want to talk about it. I could talk about it for hours.

But people seem to expect me to describe in one word the six weeks I spent studying abroad in Amman, Jordan's capital, as part of a UNC Summer Abroad program. It's impossible to do, but I have 22 inches of text, so here goes:

A giant 'No Smoking' sign - naturally adjacent to a picture of the benevolent King Abdullah II - glared at me as I exited the plane after a 12 hour flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

At exactly that point, most of the passengers lit up. My lesson in Jordanian regard for signs finished, I moved onto Jordanian traffic.

That night, our group decided to look for a restaurant around our apartment complex. Enter the Jordanian traffic system. With crosswalks virtually nonexistent, there we were, 14 severely culture shocked UNC students frantically Frogger-ing across four lanes of speeding traffic as amused Jordanians calmly crossed the street, calculating perfectly the speed and stopping distance for each whizzing car.

Excited and intrigued, I slept soundly that night. Well, that is, at least until the 4 a.m. call to prayer - one of five each day.

Appropriately, the morning call to prayer includes an addendum to the usual call: "Prayer is better than sleep." Observing our weary eyes the next morning, our tour guide predicted that we would soon sleep through the morning call.

He was right. Adjusting to morning prayer mirrored my gradual acclimation to Jordanian society. "Asif" and "shukran," Arabic for "I'm sorry" and "thank you," became bedrocks of everyone's vocabulary.

The predominance of Arabic so permeated my existence that I found myself muttering "asalaam alekum" to a bewildered customs officer at JFK when I returned.

Once past these superficialities, the real learning and appreciation of Jordanian culture began.

Entering the program, I tried to maintain an open mind, void of bias. But I quickly realized the futility of my efforts: molded for 19 years by American culture and media, whatever semblance of global citizenship I naively thought I possessed was debunked in Amman.

Nothing could have prepared me for the relentless hospitality I received. Walking past the rows of pirated videos, CDs, the open air restaurants and shops, strangers offered me Arabic language lessons and invited me to tea. Imagine that happening in America.

Despite a general animosity toward U.S. foreign policy in the region throughout the last half century, my Jordanian friends treated me as one of their own.

In fact, this kindness even manifested itself recently when a Jordanian friend e-mailed the group regarding his concern about the "tornado" hitting North Carolina he saw on the news - Hurricane Ophelia.

Perceived American injustices in the region were also treated with humor.

As some other UNC students and I prepared to play soccer with our Palestinian friends, one jokingly suggested that the UNC team should be called the "Bulldozers," in reference to the United States' support of Israel and its policy of demolishing the homes of alleged Palestinian terrorists.

These experiences humanized the people that are often demonized in the U.S. media.

Arabs aren't people who train for jihad on monkey bars all day. Arabs aren't people who burn U.S. flags constantly. And they're certainly not people who should be humiliated simply because of their skin color.

I didn't need to go halfway around the world to learn that, but after living in the Middle East for six weeks, that concept takes on new meaning.

My time in Jordan was also a lesson in ethnocentrism, the arrogant refusal to consider other cultures within their own unique contexts.

As Americans, our group tended to question the Jordanian monarchy in relation to our representative government, Arab women's rights in relation to American women's rights, and, for some, Jordanian toilet models versus American ones.

These comparisons impressed upon me the complexities of the Middle East and, indeed, the world. There are no one-size-fits-all panaceas for the world's problems nor are there an infinite number of solutions.

Somewhere in the ambiguous gray area between absolutism and relativism - where an Islamic minaret and McDonald's arches share the skyline - lies the complex value judgments we make everyday.

The amalgamation of these concepts and the idiosyncrasies of Jordanian culture taught me more than any course at UNC ever could have.

So that's why I have trouble summing up my experience in one word.

And for all you people out there looking for one-word answers, I can only offer you a one-word suggestion: travel.

 

Contact Sam Dolbee at dolbee@email.unc.edu.