The End of One Adventure, The Start of Another

adventure, n.

a. That which comes to us, or happens without design; chance, hap, fortune, luck.

adventure, v.

I. To commit to chance.

1. trans. To take the chance of; to commit to fortune; to undertake a thing of doubtful issue; to try, to chance, to venture upon. (Oxford English Dictionary Online)

Tomorrow is my last full day in Jordan. By Monday afternoon I will be gazing upon the Bosporus in Istanbul, and I will meet my dear friends Dave and Matt for an unforgettable journey across Europe. There is not much that I can post about our travel itinerary as we have agreed to not agree on a travel plan. One could say that Dave, Matt, and I love the unknown. However, I can report that I will l be flying home to beautiful Seattle, Washington from London on the 14th of June. After a semester bopping around the Eastern Mediterranean and since I already have a rail pass (a thousand thank you's Aunty Bernie) I am remarkable unconcerned about not having firm plans. It shall be a truly incredible adventure.

_____________________

In light of the fore-mentioned travels, it has been difficult for me to feel like I am reaching a significant bookend. However, since getting out of my last exam on Wednesday I have been saying a lot of goodbyes to very good friends. It has been a strange process to say goodbye to folks without any guarantee that our paths will cross again. I can't wait to return to my friends and family in the Pacific Northwest, yet I have met some amazing people here and it is a little odd to leave folks with whom I shared so many unique experiences over the last 4 months. Thus, in an attempt to leave no friend unhugged (except for my Jordanian friends I am not allowed to hug because of my Y chromosome), the last few days have been filled with a flurry of meals out, last minute traveling around Jordan, and hours spent wandering the now very hot streets of downtown Amman. Not to mention catching my last couple episodes of my favorite Turkish soap opera with my host mom and Thursday WWE wrestling with my host dad. So yeah, what I am trying to say is that it is a little weird to leave.

Overall, studying abroad in Jordan has been a great experience. I have been frustrated at times, but generally I have found Jordan's abundant idiosyncrasies immensely humorous. I have learned a great deal both inside and outside the classroom. I liked a great number of my peers and I was continually impressed by the hospitality and kindness of Jordanians. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to study here.

To close let me share an excerpt from my gournal from my second day in Amman: "Oh man this is strange. I could so easily be sitting in a pub in Scotland, Ireland, or New Zealand... Fucking Hubris!"

Well, it may have been hubris that brought me to Jordan, and I did choose the Middle East because I was more scared of it than anywhere else in the world, but I am immensely happy with my experience. I feel liberated from the inherited fear which is so well-documented in my early gournal entries and if I could go back in time I would definitely pick Jordan again.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Edward Said, and Explaining My Travels

First off a few successes to report:

1) I successfully finished my colloquial Arabic dia

lect exam on Sunday and my formal fussha Arabic exam today. I studied very hard for both and was very satisfied with the outcome. I am now done with half my academic classes and the other two are PolSci courses, which means blue book exams are in English (Al-hum-du-lila).

2) I successfully woke up at 3 AM this morning

and conference-called into a meeting I was asked to attend about summer employment taking place at 5 to 7 PM PST in Seattle. This summer is going to be great. I then took a nap this afternoon.

3) I had a Skype conference call this evening with my buddies Dave and Matt. We exchanged flight info, booked a hostel in the old city of Istanbul, and made a rough rendezvous plan. In 13 days I will meet them at the edge of Europe. SO EXCITED!!!

Now for the meat of this post (interestingly: Jordanians differentiate between meat and chicken. Meat is meat (basically lamb) and chicken is something else entirely. I don’t know what they think it is):

I want to try in this post to provide a reflection on the forces, which influence the way I represent my experiences abroad. I am keenly aware that I run the risk of being wholly incoherent in my summary of political theory. But heck, I crudely paraphrased Gandhi’s The Practice of Satyagraha to try complicate extra-judicial killings in my last post… so I am just going to run with it. That said, let me at least clearly state my operating thesis and if my argument seems like complete rubbish without the proper citations then you can at least now what I was trying to argue.

So here goes, as I type these words onto a uniquely self-centered media platform, it is tempting to believe that I am in control of the system of representation I have constructed to explain my experiences abroad. However, Orientalism exerts subtle control over my use of social media while abroad. The production of my travel narrative is confined by my subjectivity, and that includes the legacy of orientalist representation that I inherited as part of my occidental intellectual heritage. Or to put it slightly less precisely, considerably more simply, and a whole lot less pretentiously, my upbringing causes me to inaccurately portray my experiences most notably in my facebook albums, but also in this blog.

Edward Said wrote a lot of smart things over his career, but one notable observation was to point out in his seminal work Orientalism that 18^th and 19^th century travel narratives in the Middle East reproduced the same Orientalist troupes. Early travelers to Egypt for example elevated certain stereotypes (such as the Harem of oppressed women). These tropes became so ingrained in the form of travel writing that one couldn’t write about a cruise down the Nile without writing in orientalist stereotypes. Said convincingly argues that this trend is part of a larger phenomenon, by which the context in which a work is created limits the form in which that work can ultimately take. Whether a 18^th century travel story, a French painting of 19^th century Arabs, a 1946 National Geographic article comparing the western Israeli settlers to their eastern Palestinian neighbors, or a 2011 facebook album, context functions in the same manner. The pre-existing assumptions about a place or people limit what can be created, and more subtly what Spivak call the subjectivity of the speaker limits what questions can be asked and what is said.

In thinking about this blog it is clear to me that the same forces confine me in my production of social media. When I choose pictures to upload I feel compelled to select images that prove I am in the Middle East. Much as the 18^th century writer had to talk about a harem I had to put up a picture of the Dome of the Rock. The Temple Mount is particularly good picture because people instantly attach meaning to the image. The Dome of the Rock functions as a signifier. It is not just a beautiful monument in a disputed site, but a placeholder for all the mystical, exotic, and dangerous things Americans assume the Middle East to be. If I didn’t put up pictures that fit our orientalist assumptions (say if I chose images of me drinking slushies on campus with my friends twice a week) my experience would somehow be less authentic. Or at the very least, people would be less impressed by my travels. What alarms me about being confined by this Orientalist tendency is that to at least to some degree I know that I have exhibited the differences of the places I been, at the expense of accurately representing the similarities. My context and subjectivity, which include a desire to demonstrate the uniqueness of my study abroad experience, leads me to play into expectations of the region.

A more honorable use of social media would contest my society’s assumptions and inherited biases about the Middle East. It would show the similarities between the people here and back home. It would prove that there is nothing particularly wrong, exotic, or scary about a mosque or a woman who chooses to wear a hijab, and it would not lead people to believe that I see camels frequently. Yet, by my own assessment I seem to be failing to transcend my context and convey that through my use of social media.

Therefore, please all me to state a few thing I have perhaps failed to express adequately due to my reliance of the iconography of Orientalism.

1) Jordan is thoroughly modern. It is poor and culturally different from the United States but is also very similar in unexpected ways. People watch Glee everywhere.

2) To think of Jordan and the whole holy land by extension as an ancient or mystical place is to unfairly freeze the people who live here in time. It is unreasonable and inaccurate to see the region through this sort of ossified lens.

3) Prejudiced media coverage in the United States led me to be very scared when I arrived in Amman. This initial discomfort has proven completely unfounded.

4) I feel safer walking the streets here than I did in New York or the Bay Area (Though I attribute the vast majority of the minor discomfort I felt in those cities to my own racism).

5) Jordanians are the nicest people I have ever met. No one has ever linked me as a person to the foreign policy decisions made by my government. I wish that I could say the same thing about Americans blaming Muslims for the acts of a tiny percentage of adherents to Islam.

With Love, Michael

A Fascinating Day

So I awoke this morning to the sound of a television reporter talking about a large crowd gathering on the streets. Since I am studying abroad in the Eastern Mediterranean during a period of time known as the Arab Spring in which brave Arabs continue to protest and demand reform I have grown pretty used to this kind of reporting. I rolled over and went back to sleep not knowing that the crowds were not in the Middle East, but outside the gates of the White House.

Coincidently (as I had gone back to sleep), I was running late when I entered the living room and said good morning (sabha al-khair) to my host grandpa as I do everyday. My host grandpa is a remarkable 83 year old man, who is chalk full of wisdom and sayings some of which his grandmother taught him when they lived in Jerusalem prior to leaving in 1948. Yet this morning he just calmly motioned to the TV behind me asked me if I had seen the news. I turned and saw my buddy Obama walk to the podium. He calmly informed me that the United States had killed Osama Bin Laden. I was taken aback... So, I did what any logical young man who has spent nearly half a lifetime expecting the death of Osama... I grabed some bread and heated up some rice and put a healthy bit of salt on both (A typical breakfast, but better when there is cheese and meat to be had). Then I returned to the living room and talked to my grandpa some more before going to school.

As I walked to school, I thought about growing up in the shadow of the World Trade Center towers. I can say with certainty that I would never have found myself on the streets of Jordan were it not for the actions of Bin Laden. The repercussions of that day have effected world events and our individual lives in innumerable ways. It was all very weird.

It was particularly strange to walk across the University of Jordan campus surrounded by thousands of Jordanians and know that none of those around me were experiencing the day in the same manner that I was. As I approached the Faculty of Foreign Languages to attend my arabic class, I passed an American peer of mine. For whatever reason (probably due to a self-centered desire to gloat over my possession of the latest news), I called out to her, "Did you hear the news?" She yelled back "Yes! I did" and smiled. That encounter perhaps encapsulated the day. Most Americans I saw today participated in a strange collective celebration. In that encounter I hollered "Did you hear the news" because even though I was speaking in English I didn't want all the Arabs around me to hear me say the name Osama Bin Laden. For they would all know what I was talking about. I wanted to be discreet, but also had a strange desire to celebrate.

Although, people and governments all around the world voiced approval for the death of Osama Bin Laden, Americans experienced the day differently. In DC and New York and thousand other places, people brought out their collections of outrageously large American flag, college students partied in the streets, and the uniquely uncompromising chant of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" rang through the air. In Amman, Americans patted each other on the back, wished one another "Happy America Day", and some covertly drank hard alcohol. Despite the airs of moral confusion I hope to portray in this post, I went out for a burger. I celebrated the death of Osama with the refreshingly consistent taste of a McDonalds BigMac, Fries, and a Coke (the first time I have yielded to MickyD's in the 3 months I have been here).

It is difficult for me to process exactly what occurred today and, though I know plenty of Americans dissented from the celebrations I have just described, I believe that celebrating the death of Osama is a uniquely American reaction to a targeted assassination.

In the days that followed 9/11, Americans greatly simplified the conflict in which they were engaged. The American public generally demonized a few extremists without trying to understand the conditions that created them. Americans transformed Osama from a hateful, intolerant, and violent anti-imperialist into a symbol of evil itself. In short, we did a lot of flag waving and not very much self-reflection.

Yesterday, American power finally managed to kill that long-enduring symbol, and because our common imagination had transformed Osama into a signifier for all terrorism his death granted many Americans a great emotional catharsis.

Ultimately, I believe this emotional release is misplaced but as the Freedom Fries I ate today show I participated in the celebrations just like the majority of my peers.

Ultimately, I am glad that Osama is dead. I am glad that President Obama won some political points, but today was also pretty messed up... and here is why:

"You cannot cross an ocean with a cart"

Gandhi said that if you want to cross an ocean you cannot use a cart. You will need a boat, and if you want peace you cannot rely on violence (Try to stay with me, I know this post in nonlinear). According to Gandhi, the means one uses to enact an end determine the end product. If you shoot a robber breaking into your house you have a dead thief on your hands, and a continued cycle of violence. However, if you explain how being robbed hurts you while allowing zim to take your things you have a very confused robber who likely feels bad about stealing from you.

The point Gandhi was making is that if you confront problems with violence, you end up in a totally different place than if you choose nonviolence. Now, I am not saying that we should allow the United States to be attacked, (and I believe both my yelling "Did you hear the news?" and eating a BigMac were personally significant as they show my unintentional approval for violene), but the point remains that today was really weird.

No matter how many times I am patted on the back, we are never going to be able to shoot our way out of a conflict with terrorism because it is not a nation-state or a ideologue. Terrorism is a strategy favored by weak groups facing more powerful opponents, and no matter how prominent and hated the dead terrorist lying on the floor, we are never going to be able to drive our all-powerful, violent, often flagrantly unconstitutional, War on Terror-cart across the ocean to peace. If we really wanted peace the best thing we could do is fight and contain the supply of Islamist terrorists while reducing the demand by confronting the forces of economic and social injustices which create violent radicals in the first place.

Finally, I would like to briefly touch on Jordanians response to the news of Bin Laden's death. If anything I found their views more interesting than the forces which propelled triumphant Americans into the streets. The Jordanians I talked to stated one of three perspectives.

1) Osama's death doesn't matter.

It has been years since he has done anything anyway. One women told me, "we have not talked about hims in years."

2) Osama is not really dead.

I was told today that Osama Bin Laden was not really killed. If he has gone this long without being located than he couldn't possibly have been found so easily. According to her, he has look-alikes. The United States has been fooled.

However, the third response was the most common and most interesting to me.

3) I was told that Osama Bin Laden's death doesn't matter because he wasn't actually responsible for Sept. 11th anyway. It is actually quite common to hear Jordanians say, "Well, I don't actually believe in Osama Bin Laden". This might be shocking as it makes Bin Laden sound like the tooth fairy, but many many people here believe that 9/11 was planned in an elaborate conspiracy. The logic goes like this. One small group of people could never cause that much harm to the United States. The U.S. benefited from the attack because it was able to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, thus it must have been behind the attacks. Also, Osama Bin Laden was once paid by the CIA. When I pushed one Jordanian who doesn't believe Osama to be a real person today, he calmly told me that he believed Sept. 11th to have been the work of Zionists. A claim supposedly proven by the tangible benefits Israel has in fact gained from America's botched wars (I obviously reject all three of these responses, but I find them incredibly fascinating, especially in the context of my BigMac consumption).

Love you all,

Please remember that I am safe, happy, and learning a lot.

For more concise and better reflections on today's events consider looking at the following blogs entries of Americans I know in Amman.

http://betsyinjordan.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama.html#comments

http://midwestmeetsmiddleeast.blogspot.com/2011/05/returning-hate-for-hate-multiplies-hate.html

End of April Adventures

Two wonderful adventures to report this week:

On Wednesday, my friends David, Wylie, and I went across town to Abdoun to watch the Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Barcelona (pronounced by Jordanians as Bar-she-lona) with one of our professors and his friends, and about 1/3 of the people living in Amman. It was great. I have never seen the city so alive. The game itself was beautiful. I will spare you the full play be play here, but I will say that Messi scored two goals late in the game to give Barcelona a 2-0 victory and prevent the whole city of Amman from going to sleep until late into the night.

The taxi ride home was one of the crazier things I have experienced in the last three months. The whole town rang with car horns, teenagers waving flags sat out the windows of speeding cars, and I smiled from ear to ear. It was great! Contrary to my fears, the World Cup in 2022 in Qatar will be just fine.

The second lovely adventure was my trip this weekend to Dana Nature Reserve. I can be kind of a snob when it comes to wilderness but I came to really appreciate Dana. At first, I wasn't entirely sold on the place. The reserve is run by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature and is therefore expensive. It takes a long time to get there, and one is required to hire a guide for most of the really cool hiking routes (a prohibitively expensive requirement). But once I got over the fact that Jordanians HATE walking and cannot begin to understand 6 American college students who wish to forego the shuttle and walk half a mile downhill to the campsite, let alone hike for several hours, then I started to appreciate Dana for what is is. A truly beautiful canyon land, filled with Joshua-tree-like rock formations to play on.

Highlights of the trip:

-Having a great time in Nature with cool people

-Sleeping outside

-Nothing going wrong even when my friend Greg and I did some reckless rock climbing

-Watching storm clouds roll by from atop incredible rock formations

-Laughing at the silliness of Jordan

-Riding home in the back of a minibus to the sounds of Radio Lab, This American Life, and The Tallest Man on Earth and feeling like I was in a really great montage.

-Taking the time to be thankful for what I am experiencing