We kept the windows open to let in the air. In the morning our pale pink curtains would glow a bright orange and puff up with the wind, slowly moving back and forth to a silent rhythm. I can still see them calmly dancing, pushed forward by a gentle breeze, back by the rotating fan. This is how I remember Jordan. Orange.
I would watch the curtains every morning and every afternoon. Those were the times I would lie on my bed, waiting for motivation to work, or resting after being out in the hot sun. In between these lazy spells I would go to class or do homework: learn the Arabic language. It was, after all, what I had come to Jordan to do.
My 22 classmates traveled to the Middle East last summer with the same objective in mind. We conjugated our verbs and practiced our vocabulary together, braved the crowds of men on Thursday nights and ventured onto the streets of Amman, Petra and Madaba as a group. But I feel that my experience was very much different from theirs. I could not visit Jordan to study it as an outsider. I was not fascinated by the veiled women who do not laugh in public, the ever present argeileh (hooka) smoking, the falafel, the humus and the amazing hospitality that comes with it, because I knew it all. It was what I grew up with. It was my Auntie Hala's cooking, the kisses on the cheek from Issam and Yesmeen, and the language of my father. The Middle East has always been a part of me, and it was this part that was not surprised by what I encountered this summer. Yet I was not at home. I didn't quite fit.
"Abbee philisteenee." The shopkeepers always smiled when I said that. It was the simple phrase I knew would bring me a warm reception. My father is Palestinian. The men behind the counter would light up and ask me from which city my family came. "Yaffa" I would say. They would tell me where they came from -- the village whose harsh life they had chosen to leave behind, or the place from which their family had fled in 1948, or maybe 1967. This common past united us, even though I was a young American girl who grew up so very far away, while they had lived, and continue to live, amid the pain.
My roots made me closer to the people I met in Jordan, yet practically everything I knew and know about myself created a huge divide. I was at an unhappy middle -- an insider and outsider at the same time, close enough to feel a connection, but far enough away to know that it was a tenuous one.
My identity as an American among the shopkeepers never caused me any harm. This is the one thing that surprised me during the trip. The fact that the place I call home is the same country whose embassy stands in the most elite part of Jordan's capital with a tank in its driveway made no difference.
"I know you are not your government," said the owner of the nearby fruit stand. Even in a place, where so many innocents suffer and die because of the power and prejudices of influential others -- others such as those who run my country, people still interact as people.
This may seem like a basic idea, but so many times I have been labeled an abstraction, a "crazy leftist," for my political and moral stances. I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to protest the International Monetary Fund. When I tried to explain my position to heckling frat boys, I could not get a word in between their intellectually challenging exclamations of "capitalism rules." Three pro-Israel students then confronted me. After yelling their objections, one of the boys looked me straight in the eye. He raised his arm high and pointed behind me. "Palestinians that way." That was my cue to leave.
Encounters like these breed hopelessness. If I cannot interact with someone who is pro-Israel, someone who cannot respect my opinion as a Palestinian, then how will peace ever be achieved?
What I learned from those I met in Jordan, who accepted me despite my American citizenship and before they knew of our common Arab background, is that there is hope, because people still interact on an individual level. People are not just representatives of an ideal or a nation. They are not empty faces that carry out demands of powerful minds. A person is so much more, and if we accept that, if we make it personal, we can understand each other.
The hospitality I was shown in Jordan made me feel welcome, even if I did not feel at home. No, I did not have a ready answer for their common question "You are Muslim, correct?" I could not speak with them in the language I am supposed to know. But I was treated as a person rather than an abstraction. This reminds me of what the mother of a friend of mine told me before I left, deep concern in her voice. "Our prayers will be with you." While I know that her words show that she cares, they only remind me that so many Americans live in fear of the stereotypical hostile Middle Easterner. Thank you, but I do not need your prayers. I am safe with these people precisely because they are people, not a dangerous abstraction to be feared.
When I think back on Jordan, I remember that I always felt safe. Granted, I was not walking the streets of Jerusalem or visiting the West Bank, but as an American Palestinian, both insider and outsider, I was made comfortable. I remember calm, orange curtains.
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