Al Badia

October has been a whirlwind of traveling inside Jordan and out, on top of a sudden bombardment of Arabic tests and projects within our program. The last few days of Ramadan, we were sent off to the rural Bedouin villages north of Amman, to live three days with a family and “experience Bedouin life”. I had an incredible experience in a little village called Umm Al-Qtayn. My family was amazingly welcoming and generous, including me in their daily life and showing me around the village. I had four host-siblings, the youngest being a little girl of only six months, and the oldest an eight-year-old boy. After a couple of days back in Amman to celebrate Eid, all of us (in my program) left for a week-long excursion to Cairo, Egypt, where I was able to add a whole new dimension to my thoughts and feelings about the Arab world. Now I am back for a week, scrambling to complete a research project dealing with water consumption and water conservation here in Amman. This Sunday we are off to travel around southern Jordan and visit the long-awaited sights of Petra, Wadi Rum, Aqaba, etc. I feel like I have experienced and grown disproportionally more during these past few weeks than during the entire previous month in Amman. I have so many new insights and reflections whirring through my mind, that it is virtually impossible to express them here in this blog. As part of our program, however, we were required to write a reflection paper of our stay in the Badia, and in an attempt to start somewhere, I will include it in this post in order for you to understand a small piece of what my Badia experience was like.

Egypt (hopefully) is next…

 

I came into this experience with clear images, expectations, and thoughts about what a Badia homestay would be like. At the same time, I realized that it is hard, and even dangerous, to make generalizations about lifestyle and culture of both the Badia and Amman with only two families to compare. Especially after talking to my fellow SIT classmates about their experiences when we arrived back in Amman, I realized that everyone had a completely different experience, and that there really is no such thing as a ‘typical Badia experience’. As I walked up to my house after getting dropped off by the bus, various stories, pictures, and explanations of the Bedouin culture and lifestyle that I had constructed before leaving whirred around my head. Yet, what immediately struck me where the incredible similarities, rather than the differences, between my homestay in Um Al-Qtayen and that of Amman. And even many of the differences were completely unexpected. Little things first struck me, such as the fact that there was no furniture, but cushions lining the main living room. Life centered more on the floor. Yet, the same culture of watching TV pervaded family life in the Badia as it did in Amman. I saw the same slow and relaxed sense of time and idleness in the Badia that has struck me about my family in Amman.

Similarly, the culture around meals and foods had such surprising similarities. The first night I arrived, my host mother and I cooked dinner – magloba and mluchil – both dishes my home-stay mother in Amman has cooked on numerous occasions. I recognized ingredients, cooking methods and utensils, thinking for sure that these dishes must be typical of broader Jordan. Yet, what struck me the most was the enthusiasm my host mother in the Badia had for including me in the cooking process and letting me truly participate from beginning to end. It was a truly collaborative process, which to my surprise, included preparing food while sitting on the floor! We made Qtaif, which I had helped with in Amman as well, and despite the language barrier, we were able to really connect during this collaborative activity. I was so accepted and integrated into the family, and within these three days, I felt closer to the family than one whole month with my family in Amman.

Despite this close connection that developed over the course of only three days, my major alienation and adjustment with life in the Badia was the pervasive gender separation and distinction. I had hardly arrived wearing my western clothes that covered my entire body and wearing a hijab, which I had put on that morning, when my host mother ushered me into the bedroom and made it clear that what I was wearing was not acceptable. She pointed to a baggy and enormous jeans outfit of hers that I should wear, but I politely offered to wear the Thob that I had bought only a couple days earlier, specifically for the Badia. For the rest of the weekend, I had to wear the Thob all the time, and always be covered when any man was in the house, even in front of my host father. At one point, I was reading in the main room uncovered when my host father walked in, returning from work. I hastily gathered my things, and we both avoided any recognition of each other, as I slipped out of the room to put on my scarf. Only after I returned with the hijab in place, did my host father acknowledge my presence and ask how I was. This clear denial of my existence without the hijab took me aback, and was a defining moment in understanding women’s role within this culture.

All this I accepted with intrigue, even enjoying experiencing and reflecting on such a different approach to gender and the subsequent lifestyle. On the last evening of my Badia homestay, however, I experienced something that evoked a very strong criticism and frustration with this gender separation. The entire afternoon on that Sunday was spent at my host mother’s family’s house, spending time with all her female relatives and their children. It was the day before Eid, so all the women were sharing stories about shopping for clothes, displaying them to each other, while the children played and entertained themselves all around us. I felt part of a great communal social gathering that seemed eerily universal. Women chatting, sharing their lives, and laughing like they could finally let go and just be themselves in their comfort zone. When we began cooking the Iftar meal for Ramadan, almost three hours before sunset, this atmosphere continued. Again I helped cook, all of us sitting on the floor chopping, pounding, or preparing the food. Although I didn’t understand anything, I felt that communal and comfortable solidarity of these women working together in a shared space. I did not see a single male relative that entire afternoon. At one point, the overhead light bulb went out in the kitchen, but I did not think much of it, because I knew we’d be done cooking at sunset. As Iftar moved closer, we began putting the food on platters, and I realized half the food was being reserved for the men. These we carried out of the kitchen into the fancy salon of the house and set upon a plastic sheet on the carpeted floor. This room was decorated with red and gold cushions, drapes and filled with luxurious decorations and mirrors. As I walked back into the kitchen, I saw one of the women lining the same type of plastic sheet on the kitchen floor. My suspicions were realized when we began placing the food reserved for us, right there on the floor of the dark kitchen, fully knowing that the men were sitting comfortably on cushions and carpet in the fanciest and most honored room of the house. We ended up eating in the dark, and though I understood and tried to accept this gender separation, I could not help realizing this went past a mere separation to a symbolic subordination of Badia women. It was the first time I became frustrated and almost upset with the placement I had within this society. I had been integrated, and with that came the way women were seen and treated in this culture. Although in Amman I often feel sexualized and stereotyped, this experience in the Badia gave a whole new dimension to this self-reflection of myself as a woman. I realized and appreciated the way males and females in urban society have a much closer connection than those in the rural Badia.

This experience further allowed me to explore my role as an American visitor in this society. I was able to meet relatives and friends of my host-family, and get a sense of how they approached me as an American. The first afternoon my host father, who spoke English relatively well, asked me questions about me and my life. The first ones involved my schooling and my family, followed directly by a discussion regarding American politics. His first question in this area was one I have been hearing over and over again, both by the locals and by our lecturers: Who do we think is going to win the upcoming presidential elections – McCain or Obama? And of course, which candidate we support. My host father, and everyone else I have talked to is pleasantly surprised that I too support Obama, though this doesn’t stop them from emphasizing the reasons why Obama is the better candidate. They mostly point to his more peaceful approach, and the hope that he will rectify and better the United States’s relationship with the Middle East. In my interactions in the Badia, the other question and issue that kept surfacing was the frustration and desperate desire to come to the United States. They kept asking how they could come, and if I could personally help them in this process. I felt helpless and frustrated myself that I had no answer for them, and kept emphasizing I was powerless in this respect. I have not come across this strong desire in Amman, nor the repeated questions regarding politics and my own role in bringing Jordanians to the United States. It was definitely an eye-opening experience, and one that I had trouble confronting.

Living in the Badia with this particular family was an incredibly positive experience, despite the difficulties and occasional critical reflections on their values and lifestyle. My three days in the Badia were an amazing opportunity not only to explore the differences and similarities between two societies within the same framework of the Jordanian experience, but also as a new dimension to my own personal self reflection of my role and placement here and how these clash, mesh, and shape my own values, attitudes and beliefs.