growing acclimation

I’m sorry I haven’t written more recently. Since I left Amman, I have established a nice existence in Irbid, a sizable town of maybe 800,000 near the Syrian Border. I haven’t written more recently for a few reasons. First and primarily it has been because I’ve felt that I needed to focus on learning Arabic and about the history of the region, which has monopolized my time so far. The second was that after I wrote my last entry, I realized that I wanted to not only be honest, but also try to give as complete and accurate a picture of the culture as I could. Finally, it was because I want this not to be just a chronicle of my series of experiences, but also give some insight into the culture, and I felt that I didn’t have enough experiences to start to extrapolate that insight.

So, I’ll begin very generally before going into specifics.

The first thing you notice is the tremendous generosity and excitement with which Jordanians, Palestinians, and pretty much all of the various immigrant groups greet foreigners. In fact, their generosity is only surpassed by their pride in their generosity. I’ve borne frequent witness to both.

It has been one of my small obstacles to try to go somewhere and learn how to interact with waiters. Either I’m alone and do the best I can or I am with someone and he insists on doing all the talking and paying. I’ve gotten many promises to let me do the talking ‘next time’ but as of yet none of them have been fulfilled. An Muslim friend of mine (originally from England) once relayed to me the almost perpetual fighting within his family anytime they would go out to eat over the right to pick up the check. I can definitely see that happening here. One of the common responses to “Thank you” is “No need for thanks. It’s my duty,” which is the general approach to the situation.

One of my students whom I went to dinner with recently (who of course bought me dinner) said that he was nowhere near as generous a person as he should be if he followed Islam strictly.

I will talk more about Islam later, but I still very much feel that I have only scratched the surface of it and how it affects the values and cultural norms in society. For now, I’ll just say that it is easy to see how the complete immersion in Islam could translate into both a tremendous generosity with concomitant pride.