Getting over a stolen laptop

so, the below entry I wrote about a month ago about a week after I lost my laptop. i didn't want to publish it because I wanted to give it some time to make sure I still thought it was honest after the anger passed (which it has)...

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Hello all,

I'm sorry for not writing sooner. There are many practical reasons why I haven't written for a few weeks now, but they are all only proximate causes. The real reason why I haven't written is because I have been angry. I don't like when I'm angry and I'm constantly worried that I'll give a biased point of view of a culture that 1) has no shortage of biased points of view, and 2) feels victimized and paranoid about these biased points of view, thus perpetuating the circle of misunderstanding.

I don't by any means consider myself an angry person, and I've been more angry the last week than I can remember being in a long time. I'll get to the specific reasons in a moment, but the reason is basically unrealistic expectations and the wrong approach to the Middle East.

I came to the Middle East thinking of it as an situation where I would learn the language, learn the culture, interact with the people, grow as a person, and come out of it with a greater ability to communicate with a different culture--essentially as an academic exercise. Recently, at a moment of particular frustration, I was talking to a British friend who has lived in the Arab world for about a year and a half. He told me "The Middle East is hard. Not long after I was first arrived in Morocco, I just broke down and cried." If you prepare emotionally, for that sort of experience you can expect it, deal with it and move on. When you come a idealistic greenhorn, it feels like the whole culture is undermining your attempts to learn from it and help it grow.

You can't approach the Middle East like that. If you want, you can do the tourist thing, and go about in the world insulated by money, but that is not what I wanted and still not what I want. Nothing in the West really prepared me for it, and because people here are 1)used to dealing with it and 2) very proud of their culture and don't want to say anything that reflects poorly on it they haven't really prepared me for it. The tendency to repress seems a strong one, and quite honestly the thing I am most grateful for since I've been here has been a piece of advice to never leave my passport and money anywhere--not a locked apartment, not a hotel room, not anywhere. If it hadn't been for that I probably would be without a passport and down a few hundred dollars more than I am. If someone had said to me before the trip, "If you think someone is cheating you, don't trust them for a minute" and "Don't ever leave anything unlocked anywhere, no matter how trusted you think it is" I'd probably still have a laptop, an ipod and a whole lot more compassion. But there has been only one person that has cautioned me about it, and even him only after a hundred conversations emphasizing the generosity of people.

As a liberal, there is the strong tendency to fight categories and to try to expect the best of everyone. Those aren't good assumptions in the Middle East. Not that you should expect that everyone is bad or anything of the sort, but know that you will get ripped off because you are vulnerable. After it happened to me a few times, I tried to do everything I could to prevent it. After failing time and time again due to the magnitude of things I didn't know, I try my best and accept that it is going to happen. The male social situations which are the majority of my interactions form a sort of model around which to build a more realistic approach to the Middle East. In them, you get the very male energy and attitude that is built around cleverly insulting each other and the assertion of dominance over each other. It is a culture that I definitely recognize from the US, but one that is marginalized to frat houses and high schools. It is a culture where pride and dominance are the natural approach. It is a culture that I've occasionally had to deal with, but never one I've been comfortable with or liked. When you stack all the cultural and linguistic barriers against one, it has been that much harder.

The anger comes as a reaction to feeling taken advantage of. It was there when my ipod was stolen. It was quite a bit worse, when I loaned money to a person who disappeared before he could return it to me. It was subtly reignited each time a person would give me grossly incorrect change. It started to burn when I was charged about $35 for a load of laundry, and when my laptop was stolen, along with my wallet, all the books I had bought to learn about the region, and about 15 pages I had been working on writing to trying to express my sense for the culture, different experiences I had that illuminated the differences, and how to grow closer. Finally, reporting the incident to the police who are now using as an opportunity to extort greater bribes from the hotel is not exactly doing anything to restore my confidence.

I think my approach is often similar to the western tendency of grafting our thought patterns onto the rest of the world with atrocious results, and I see that in myself more than anything. I'm not quite over the anger, but I'm starting to get to the other side of it.

I'll try to recreate my conceptions of how my experiences reflect different parts of the middle east, I hope they will be helpful to both cultures. That's really my only purpose here.

However, for those that would like to categorize and write off the middle east, I still do run into ubiquitous acts of kindness and generosity.

On Impressions

I was at the home of Mohammed this weekend (the weekend in the Islamic world is Friday and Saturday because Friday is their day of prayer) where an episode of “Cops” was on. He mentioned that if anyone was planning to go to the United States, their mothers would beg them not to go. Without fail the mother would believe that her son would get shot in the street by an African American.

In Washington DC, before I left, when I first mentioned to the teenagers and African-Americans who regularly hung out on my block that I was going to the Middle East, the first reaction for a few of them was “Shit, you think it’s dangerous in DC, over there everyone’s packing.” They were definitely joking, and another soon spoke up and said he thought I would be fine because as long as a person greets people with respect and interest you make friends easily and are welcomed.

For all the reasons you might imagine, my mom didn’t want me to go to the Middle East. The specters that some Americans (especially worried mothers) might imagine in the US are easily laughed off here. The likelihood that someone would get kidnapped or seriously hurt are extremely slim unless you consciously put yourself into a dangerous situation (by that I mean Gaza or non-Kurdish parts of Iraq. There really isn’t any place in Jordan that I wouldn’t feel safe). I sometimes joke with her that I do whatever I can imagine that would worry her the most.

My fitful Arabic

I'm only starting to become comfortable enough with Arabic that I'm not intimidated by casual experiences. The process, which has been extremely fun and has made me lots of new friends, has been one of humility and been I think most valuable in understanding how hard it is to learn a language and how hard it is to be an immigrant. A day or two after I arrived, I looked out the window, and my first thought was "Holy shit. What have I gotten myself into?" Progressing fitfully, the last three weeks have also made me eternally grateful for the overwhelming effort that strangers have put into making sure I was comfortable. Everyone immediately tries to speak in whatever English they can manage, wants to relate to me any connection they might have to the US, and wants to be friends.

Yes, of course, there are other, mostly benign, motivations besides a warm hospitality, but for the most part it comes with a pure heart. There is sometimes the unrealistic or subconscious hope that the friendship might somehow help get them a visa to the US. There is the subtle prestige that comes with having a Western friend. There is the rare opportunity to practice English with a native speaker. However, it is very rare that a Jordanian will exploit the relationship for any sort of monetary gain.

More than anything it makes me want to go out of my way to help the innumerable immigrants in the US when I get back. To see American in the idyllic light of opportunity where democracy is real and the only thing holding you back is your will, while only relatively accurate, still makes me want to work harder to help us to live up to that dream for Americans and immigrants. Of course I recognize that it is not to the benefit of the country to open wide the gates of immigration. So, the goal is not only to live up to that dream domestically, btu to support the developing world in meeting this dream themselves.

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.

Didn't take long

I woke up this morning in Marka, Jordan at the house of my friend thinking I might listen to Regina Spektor or something. Marka is somewhere between a suburb and a slum on the outskirts of Amman, a place with ubiquitous 7 to 11 year olds constantly embarking on imaginative adventures. It is definitey not on any tourist map, and has all the charm of cities in the third world where community still plays a greater role than productivity. My host has a small place there, at which he shares with Suleiman and his wife, the friend that I mentioned in my last post.

So, I woke up and went to my bag, and well my ipod's not there. After shuffling around for a minute, I notice that all my books are out of order and one of them actually has a huge tear in the cover.

Flashback to last night. We get home about in the late evening, and there are four guys in the living room hanging out. It doesn't take long for Suleiman (with Raed translating) to ask me again about meditation and Buddhism. It is basically in the form of a challenge. They are questions like "What do you get out of meditation?" "If you found out that your path was wrong, and another was right would you be willing to convert?" And leading questions to suggest that there could not be any other explanation for existence than God as interpreted by the Prophet Muhammad. So, I answer as asked and explain that I have gained a tremendous amount from my path of meditation, and it has lead me to be a stronger, better, more peaceful person. But, I am seeking truth in any form, and I am happy to accept anything that builds on my experience. At this point my part in the discussion was done. For the next 20-30 minutes one of the guests took up the ecumenical argument, while Suleiman took the "one true path" argument. I listened intently trying to pick up any words I knew and absorb as much Arabic as I could.

It eventually ended with the guest saying, calling Suleiman a word that I inquired the meaning of. He said, it means "a person with no sense."

So, eventually everyone went home and we went to sleep.

Back to this morning: Now there is a little part of me that would like to have my ipod back, but anyone that has had anything stolen knows that it is the sense of betrayal that is the much more bothersome. It makes you feel stupid for trusting a person, and besides making you less likely to trust, makes you less likely to care.

Once when I was in Nicaragua speaking to an uncle of mine who was a businessman related what he thoguht was the biggest thing keeping the country from growing. He believed that it was centrally a culture of corruption. From the rich to the poor, if there was an opportunity to steal it is universally taken. From a meal to trinkets to investment. Any effort at social improvement was inevitable undermined by everyone taking a piece.

Depending on the person, I can see how it wouldn't take long before a person integrated this into their worldview, and simply gave up on acting for social betterment.

However, that is the only way we have ever moved forward. Fighting crime, but at the same time fighting the tendency to view society through the lens of our own disappointment. To see the world for its reality and its possibiilty at the same time.

In Jordan

I've been in Jordan for a few days now. The first night I stayed at the hotel of a friend of a friend. It was a nice night. I talked with some french travelers that were on their way to Thailand and Myanmar, and spent a lot of time the next morning trying to communicate with some Arab teenagers that spoke virtually no English (called Ingileeze in Arabic).

The person that I've been staying with since then, Raed, has been awsome in a "The Godfather" like way. He is obviously tremendously well connected, and while is a business man by profession, spends a large part of his daily life getting favors done for people. Got your car repossessed? Have a GPA that is not to your liking? Need a visa? Have awful credit? Trouble with the law? Raed's your man. His English is very good since he lived in Canada for a number of years which is where his brothers live. He is the sort of man that puts a lot of pride and dignity into the way he carries himself. He has been in a suit the entire time we've been here.

He has been tremendous to me. I wish I knew more Arabic so I could beat him to the taxi fare or check once in a while.

We stayed with a friend of his the last couple nights. It wasn't till the next morning that Raed told me that his wife is currently in the hospital after having had a newborn baby. It struck me as especially strange, just because his friend, Suleiman seemed like the consummate bachelor, loud and boisterous, welcoming in an informal and a manner that conveyed a freedom from responsibility.

I have gathered that the distinction between male and female society is a very distinct one.

I'll write more later...
ps the hummus and falafel is very good.

further on the approach to the trip

Before I left for this trip and part of the reason it was prompted, was that I had noticed that I had been primarily surrounding myself with people similar to myself. Throughout my life I’ve been driven more by pursuits of understanding and wisdom than anything else. Social skills aren’t really all that relevant to understanding of transcendent truth, so I never really developed them fully. I had always wanted to make systematic and enduring change in the world, but my approach was similarly academic and detached.

Over the last year a variety realizations have made clear to me that you can’t really help anyone without understanding them. The trip around the country, the learning of Arabic in the Middle East and Chinese in China is designed around that effort to respect and be able to listen with compassion to people from completely different cultures. But since I’ve left DC it has been more than just an effort to learn about people, it has been a shift in the emphasis of how I frame each conversation.

This conscious openness to the experiences of others has yielded at least two huge benefits. The first is that people are more interested in what you have to say when they know that they have been heard and understood. The second is that it greatly increases the ability to see the potential in people. In everyone there is the tendency to judge. It is necessary to decide what to prioritize, how to manage our time, and whom to associate with. But the tendency to judge also limits perspective. It tries to categorize people as their current predominant characteristics instead of see them for what they can be. The nature of conscious inquisitiveness allows you to the aspects of whoever you are communicating with not only for the qualities that they are currently manifesting, but also lets you see the aspects about them that are not manifested and what may be holding them back from nurturing them. My aspirations all have to do with the improvement of society, and I am already appreciating how valuable it is to be able to see that potential.