al-Kheema al-Ahmar (The Red Tent)

Just a few days ago, I returned from a week-long rural home stay in the Badia region, in a quiet Bedouin village adjacent to the Syrian border known as Der al-Kha'if. While I have been in Jordan for the past month or so, the majority of the host families in my program, as well as the majority of the population of the capital, is all Palestinian, so this week was an opportunity for me to become acquainted with the minority Bedouin community that constitutes the native Jordanian population. In many ways, my program continues to surprise me with their high expecations for their students--we barely discussed the trip until the day before departure, during which each student was handed a slip of paper with three pieces of information: the name of their host family, the name of their village, and the name of the bus station in downtown Amman from where we were to depart from. While we were expected to travel in groups and check in with our director once safely arrived, I, as well as many others, were still feeling a bit flung into oblivion--while we have grown familiar with the streets, taxi routes, and general social customs and expectations of Amman, going into the Badia is a completely different ball park. Needless to say, while it wasn't absolutely mandatory, I had no reservations about donning the hijab our teachers suggested might be a cultural overture (post-trip, I couldn't stand wearing it, it was incredibly hot and annoying!). While sitting on the side of a small, rinkety bus, the 10 or so Bedouin men having squeezed themselves into the front section so as to make room for the inexplicable group of 6 American students in the back of the bus, I saw a sign reading "50 km to Iraq", and began to question exactly which life decisions had brought me to the edge of this godforsaken desert, and how exactly to function in my new surroundings. As a newcomer to tribal society, it was a bit hard for me to grasp that if I told the bus  driver the name of my host father, he would know exactly which house to take me to, but nevertheless, after a few hours, we pulled up to a small clustering of houses by the side of a sandy road, and a tiny, ancient Bedouin woman with faded green barbed wire tattoos emanating from the sides of her mouth appeared from behind a tin gate, and gestured for the three of us--myself and the two other girls in my village--to follow her. Once inside, we were ushered into a long, narrow sitting room with an iron stove in its center, and brightly colored cushions lining the floor--no furniture to speak of, and thus began the multiple founds of bitter shots of coffee contrasted with large glasses of disgustingly sweet tea. Wanting to ingratiate myself with my hosts, I accepted their suggestions and began downing the cups of hot liquid, only to  become nauseous after about half an hour due to the severe sugar crash combined with the heat of the radiating furnace--clearly I was going to have to learn to set some dietary boundaries while staying within the realm of politeness. Definitely easier said than done in the Badia.

Though I had the opportunity to visit the few points of interest of the village--the boys and girls schools, the Roman ruins, etc., most of my time was spent in the company of the women of my family, whose lives revolve, more or less, around raising their children and serving their husbands. While a devoted parent is certainly better than a negligent one, the prominence of children as the sole purpose of their lives often manifested itself in negative ways, as their eagerness to fulfill their child's wants and needs came at the expense of discipline. In America, even most stay-at-home mothers have other priorities or responsibilities, and so they may be a situation in which the child's desires cannot always take precedence over everything else--not so in the Badia. Aside from the responsibilities of cooking, which was almost always a group activity, the mothers would often sit idly in the house, waiting for the next child to start crying so they could begin accommodating their needs. On top of the noxious tea, multiple forms of candy and junk food was served throughout the day--whenever a child started causing trouble, the reaction was usually either a showering of chocolate or a slap on the face. Not surprisingly, the kids had tons of cavities--my first reaction was that this was just irresponsible parenting, but upon discussing this with my host family in Amman, I acknowledged that they may not have been exposed to the same level of education as I had had, especially by way of nutrition (though to be fair, this may apply to the entire country as far as I'm concerned.) I tend not to be too big of a fan of my Amman host father, Ra'ed, but he occasionally has spurts of wisdom, the latest of which was: 

"Alysha, you can't blame them if they don't know; that is lesson number two. You know what lesson number one is? They don't want to know. Now you see what the real Jordan is really like"

Despite the apparent infrastructure for the assimilation of new ideas into their lifestyles--schooling until the age of marriage, television, cell phones with internet access, etc., Ra'ed's last comment resonated with me because it did seem, in many ways, as though this small community was resisting many forms of change, and many of its residents seemed to be from another time altogether. The elderly patriarch of the doctor's family, husband to the grandmother  who had greeted me the first day, was known throughout the village as the Hajji, due to his multiple trips to the Ka'aba. During one day, the women had all congregated in a hut adjacent to the main house, where they were all drinking tea and chopping vegetables in preparation for the midday meal. While all the women were very insistent about modesty--I was once chastised for revealing a few inches of leg while I put on my tennis shoes under my long skirt (ankle socks appear not to be done there)--they were also always asking me to take off my hijab among the women so they could see my hair. This occurred at the very same moment that the Hajji opened the door of the hut, and upon seeing my locks of hair, immediately got a scandalized look on his face and quickly shut the door. A mere bit of hair, something that would raise no attention in most places, takes on an entirely different connotation. 

While the older generations were aesthetically different, many of the younger generation looked like they could easily be walking the streets of any Western city, yet their attitudes remained similar to those of their elders. Given his access to a vehicle and retired army status, an uncle of the family, Zeid, was recruited to escort us on all our out-of-the-house excursions. Though I think he meant well, the immense favoritism that is given to male children throughout their upbringing was clear  in his misogynistic comments and behavior--he treated all the women in his family like servants, snapping and yelling at them to do his bidding, including his 8 year old daughter, who was at the beck and call of not only her father, but three year old brother, the apple of Zeid's eye, who also accompanied us on all our outings. At one point, the three of us were in his car, and Zeid stepped out to pick up something from the post office, leaving the son behind. With a snide grin, he turned around while getting out of the car, saying, "ok, he's in charge." Alhamdulillah, we were ever so glad to have this brave strong three year old looking after us helpless women!

Zeid developed a routine for introducing the three Americans in his tow, which he used when he brought us to his father's home, which went something along the lines of: "This is Kristen, she grew up in Saudi Arabia, this is Alysha, she's Armenian, this is Becca--she's all white and speaks horrible Arabic" (poor Becca, who was staying in his house, become very discouraged very quickly). After many of the women commenting that I had an "Arab nose", Zeid has asked me about my ethnic background, but only after verifying that it was my father and not my mother who was Armenian, did he go on to include that tid bit of information in his introductions--in Jordan, women are not allowed to pass on their citizenship to their children, so if a Jordanian woman has a child with a man of another nationality, she cannot pass on her citizenship to him or her child, often forcing her to leave the country, or worse, to stay in an abusive relationship abroad for fear of  being unable to b ring her child from that union into Jordan. I suspect if I had said my mother was Armenian, he would have continued to just introduce me as American. There does exist somewhat of a double standard regarding how foreign, especially American, women are treated--after three days of watching Zeid treat all his female family members like servants, he confided in me that he thinks Hillary is far better than Obama, and he hopes that she wins. On the other hand, I'm unsure if his favoring of Hillary had anything to do with the latent racism (to be fair, the Badia is not exactly the height of education/cultural sensitivity) towards those of a darker skin color--in another student's house, the movie "US Marshals" was playing one night, and apparently the entire family was screaming "Get the black face! Get the black face!" I suppose the concept of civil rights and race equality has never been fully embraced in such an ethnically homogenous country, Palestinian and Bedouin differences aside. Regardless, Zeid's father was another man who seemed to be stranded in the wrong century--dressed in simple gray robes, the bright red and white checks of his kafiyeh contrasting deeply with his dark, leathery skin the color of tree sap, the patriarch sat in a raised chair in a parlor room surrounded by other men all in lower chairs around the perimeter of the room--he seemed to be holding court. After Zeid made his usual round of introductions, I was gestured to sit next to the old Bedouin, who after ponder the information Zeid had presented, turned towards me, and in a stern tone, asked:

"Anti muslimeen?" (Are you a Muslim?)

"La, Ana Massreehiyah" (No, I'm Christian)

"Taslahee?" (Do you pray?)

While not wanting to create a fictional representation of myself, I realized at that moment that to explain my wayward observance of Christianity (Christmas Eve services, once a year, sometimes) and my enthusiasm for religion as an academic subject rather than a spiritual practice, would perhaps not go over so well. I quickly answered that yes, I did pray, sometimes--an answer that appeared to not be good enough for him. After discovering that my two other fellow students were also not Muslim, he more or less dismissed us, and that was that.

One thing I found particularly troubling within the household dynamics was the complete acceptability and self-perpetuating cycle of  violence in the family--within my first few hours of being in the village, the youngest girl, Sajida, was viciously sticking her mother in the back with a hair pin, merely because she had ceased to become the center of attention. Despite the pain she was clearly feeling, the mother did nothing to discipline the girl, just looking at me with a resigned smile in between winces. Her eldest brother, however, saddled over to her, grabbed the pin, and proceeded to slap her in the face, 5 times, hard. When her screams became deafening, the mother finally pulled the brother off. Similarly, on the last day, Sajida was engaging me in hand slap game, completely harmlessly albeit relentlessly, as company was over to meet me before I left the next morning. While I couldn't get her to stop altogether, it was easy to hold her off, but her father looked over and told me to just hit her to get her to stop altogether, it was easy to hold her off, but her father looked over and told me to just hit her to get her to stop--I told him absolutely not, because if I hit her, that would send the message that hitting was an appropriate way for her to try to get others' to change their behavior. It seemed that rationale wasn't registering with him, or anyone else in the family. Not only was everyone hitting each other all the time, but they had all become so desensitized to that kind of behavior that it held no real significance anymore.

On our last day, Zeid decided to take us out into the desert to see a great uncle's sheep farm. However misplaced I may have felt in the village, the farther our Jeep crept off-road over the cracked brown earth riddled with rocks, the more I felt as though I was going back in time. For anyone who has read "The Red Tent", the scene that  greeted me twenty minutes later seemed as though it could have come straight from that book. Truly in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but empty space on every horizon line, no electricity or running water, sat two huge tents about a quarter mile apart, each surrounded by multiple sheep corrals. The animals were hastily tied together at the neck in long lines and were being milked, one by one, by the daughters and wives of the family while the men continued to shepherd the new animals into the service line. We entered one of the tents to find an ancient blind woman, her eyes sealed shut, who talked in a law,raspy voice, and seemed as though she must be over 100. Naturally, we were invited in both campus to sit down for tea and coffee, and while sitting on a ragged, dirt stained carpet, it struck how small these peoples' world was--their entire existence was geographically confined to the walls of this tent and the herds of animals outside of it. I tried to fathom the tiny amount of people they have been, and will ever be, exposed to, especially the women, as the men typically drive the thirty minutes into the village for whatever supplies they may need. It was truly humbling to see the simplicity of their lives contrasted with the complexity of my own--traveling places, interacting with so many people, seeking and digesting so much information and knowledge on a daily basis--I forget that for many people in the world, their way of life has not changed so much over the past hundred years.

Now, back in Amman, I am relishing in my newfound appreciation for indoor plumbing, and am preparing for another week of classes before our trip to Egypt. We celebrated our return from the Badia with a wonderful afternoon at the Dead Sea, but were greeted with rising political tensions when we returned to the capital that evening. As I assume/hope that are reporting in America as well, IDF operations in Gaza over the past week took the lives of around 130 civilians, which is causing significant resentment and anger among Amman's Palestinian population, to the point that our program directors forbid us from attending any political demonstrations that were to happen yesterday after the Juma'a prayers, and recommended we lay low in general. If the demonstrations occurred without the consent of the King, I would not put it past the police to use excessive force to quell the protests. Of course, the news of the Jerusalem seminary shooting came late Thursday night--I felt as though I was living through one of Shai's lectures about violence derailing the peace process (shout out to the CPME crowd). Nonetheless, I am hoping things smooth out over the next week, and I continue to go about my business as usual, albeit cautiously.