The Good and the Bad

As my days in Amman are coming to a close, I thought that I would make up for the lack of blog posts by starting on a list of things I love and don't love about life in the Hashemite Kingdom.

Loves: 

- Evenings of sun and fresh summer breezes

- Throwing around words like Yalla! and Haram! to sound like an authentic Arab. 

- Making fun of America

- 80s music at Books@Cafe

- Palestinian art

- Talking politics with the locals 

- Sunsets at the Wadi Rum desert 

- Sudanese kitchen staff that teach you Arabic and dance 

- Taxi drivers that sing old Bollywood songs when you tell them you're Indian

- Shawerma/Falafel shops run by Arabic families 

- The amazing/brilliant/kind-hearted expatriate community
- Potluck dinners on old-Ammani rooftops 

- Crazy land ladies that ask you how your legs are so hairless

- Turkish coffee and Nescafe 

- Talking to women MPs as new election laws were being passed right under me

- Little boys riding donkeys at Petra 

- Colleagues that call you "Habibti" 

- Still being able to bully Dhruv from half way across the world

- The other interns (especially the British ones)

- Ranting about feminism/Republicans/Steven Harper/general human stupidity with Akunne 

- The ready availability of high-waisted khaki pants

- The best roommate in the world: Anushka

- Working in the castle that is CUMERC (Told ya I would help promote it Noor!)

- Mint Lemonades 

- Free time

- Late night car rides with Diala 

- Smiling at the adventures of my fellow travellers (Loran-ers, thats you!) 

- Open air markets with Bedouin jewelry

- Dinners at Shawermize It! with the Columbia crew 

- (Almost) Daily Facebook chats with Steven and Greg and Amy

I don't have a hate list - or at least, they seem too insignificant to write down. It is not until you start to consciously appreciate the little things that you realize not only what an amazing summer you've had but also how much you've grown. 

Yalla to Canada and new adventures! Ma Salama Jordan. Insha'allah, we will meet again.   

Growing Pains

I haven't written here in almost a month. Several people have been asking me why.. I'm not too sure why I have been avoiding this blog but I think it is because I am afraid to confront my own feelings about my experiences here over the last month.


Over the past year, I have been experiencing growing pains. All the difficult questions of life have been hitting be one by one and I feel as though I don't have any of the answers. Coming here and experiencing this lifestyle has only heightened my anxiety. These are just first-world problems - I know that, but in the context of my life, they are definitive. 


I was born in India to a middle class family with rural and traditional roots. My parents walked 3-4 km through farms just to get to school, my dad studied under streetlights...you get the idea. Imagine the paradigm shift when that same family ends up living in a Canadian suburb. This has had several implications. 


First, it has put me in this perpetual in-between state. I am not at ease with my cousins in India or am I at ease singing to Avril Lavigne songs in a bar. Sometimes I wish I was more connected to my past and at times, I want to forget it entirely. My roots teach me humility but also breed ignorance. Maintaining this constant balance is just exhausting and sends me on emotional roller coasters that no one quite understands. 


When I chose to study Political Science at Western, I swayed towards my Canadian upbringing. I am still working to regain balance by stretching my comfort zone to accomodate my new lifestyle. Here I am now, conducting research in the Middle East, where my background makes me even more of a black sheep. I am left to reconcile with this worldly community of international students, all raised among families of diplomats or doctors for whom the expatriate life is not only natural but fulfilling. I, however, feel like a simpleton among these people, one that cannot even make the switch from sanitary napkins to tampons without leaving blood all over the bathroom floor. 


I am passionate about the issues, but not this lifestyle. I wonder when I will be able to reconcile this relationship. Is there even a community out there that I can fit into? 


I fear that my ambitions are costing me my relationship with my family. My parents have left behind everything to give me a lifestyle in which I have the luxury to care about the world, to be independent and void of social pressures that might confine me to marriage or beauty. So how do I appreciate this sacrifice and live it out fully without alienating them or leaving them behind? How do I travel the world but still give them company at the dinner table? Am I being a feminist by focusing on my career or am I being selfish? If only they knew how much I worried about them and how much I question whether I am making them proud of their little girl.

It feels as though I am motioning modernity when I have been destined for tradition since my very birth.

How do I make my mother, my professor, my friends, and myself happy? How do I pick up all the little pieces of my childhood without disturbing the puzzle I worked so hard to put together?


No one told me that growing up was this hard. Everyday, we try to reconcile our past with our future and something important always gets left behind, something always gets lost. 



Where is home for me?

A male perspective

A few days ago, I interviewed my first male candidate. He is considered to be a progressive in the Middle East, travelling all over the region to conduct workshops on civil society development and election monitoring. As the interview unfolded, it certainly felt as though I was seeing the light.

I noticed in the interviews I conducted so far that the women would be at a loss of words to explain why their strategies had failed; a dejected, frustrated, and sometimes resigned look that suggested the explanation was right there but they couldn't quite grab it. I finally understood why.

There seems to be a disparity in understanding the status of women in the country between men and women. This gender dynamic, when coupled with toxic relationships with the West, completely undermines the women cause.

Women activists see their female counterparts as unequal citizens that are oppressed by a dominantly patriarchal society. There is certainly ample evidence to back this up: blatantly discriminatory legislation, low participation rates, and violence just to name a few. The case seems clear, as it did when I spoke to each of my women candidates.

However, when I put this before my most recent participant, it all became jumbled. He managed to effectively dismiss these differences as trivial matters. Then, he would slowly play up the idea that these activists, NGOs, and concepts of women's rights in fact, were just slaves to Western (see American) organizations. He would divert the entire issue of women's movement, into a critique of American hypocrisy and imperialism.

This puts women's organizations in a dilemma. Their financial resource pool must rely on 'Western' organizations to operate - there is a near consensus on this matter. However, what enables their work unfairly delegitimizes their cause at the same time. They are so caught up in defending their funding and operational work that the real issues are pushed under the carpet.

He particularly brought forth the example of CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women), as if saying, if the Americans don't sign it, then why should we? Since when was American policy the framework for morality in the Middle East? Did he ever think it might be a stance against 'American imperialism' by signing a document that the States did not ratify?

Then there is the matter of discourse. This has come up several times. The word gender was slandered by the media and certain religious leaders to mean 'homosexual'. A newspaper even suggested that the CEDAW document itself 'homosexual' in nature. This destroyed the campaign to ratify this convention and make constitutional amendments that would include women.

My male candidate seemed extremely angry at this, as if to say, "Serves you right for using such blasphemous language!" Ha ha, you used taboo word number 1234332. You don't get your rights this time around!

Do you see the theme? The most trivial issues, nuances in language or funding sources or a single article in a 40 page document, are used to delegitimize the entire cause itself. These organizations are left cleaning up the mess and scandals, while policy decisions are made under their noses. By the time they look back, it's all over and crucial political openings (which are hard to come by in this region in the first place) are missed.

It happened to me too. I was so busy digesting the irrelevance and moving the discussion back to the issues that I missed important openings to ask critical questions...

This is pretty much what goes on again and again and again and again. No wonder these women are exhausted.

Insha'Allah

I get a roommate today! She's getting in at 4 pm today. A short description: she is an Indian-American intern that is working with a UN relief agency in the region. I'm very excited to meet her and move to the top floor apartment.

In other news, Eygpt's first election is complete, with Mohammed Mourssa and Shafiq emerging as the top two candidates. As neither got a 50% majority, they will run again to decide the final winner. Foreign policy withe Egypt will be very interesting if the favourite candidate, Mourssa, ends up as the president. What this spells for women in the region, I'm not sure. How he decides to rule will determine everything.

I can't stress enough the amount of emotion that is occupying political space in the Arab World right now. There is excitement and a sense of nervousness about the times ahead. People point to different historical examples - Algeria, Turkey, Iran - to prove their points. But really, no one knows how this will turn out.

The woman I met today runs an NGO in Jordan that works on lifting discriminatory laws against women in the region. After our interview, she looked at me with the most piercing stare and said,

You know Rishita, this revolution is all for the young people. I am so proud of them. For hundreds of years, we have lived with these governments that constantly oppress us. These young people, they are not like us. They are brave and alive. They are fighting. I am so so so proud to be Arab.

Then she said this:

They [the West] should believe in our case first, as Arab people. We are for freedom and democracy and we are not terrorists. This needs to be believed first. We don’t know what they want from the Arab Spring. We did not have this revolution to live up to their hopes. We are talking about us, as a very strong society and one that deserves our freedom and democracy, like others. 

It reminded me of an experience recounted by the U.S. State Department's ambassador at large for Global Women's Issues. On a trip to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, she stopped for dinner with a group of Afghan women activists in Kabul. One woman opened the conversation with a plea:

 "Please don't see us as victims, but look to us as the leaders we are."

We have to believe. We have to recognize the strength and good intensions embedded in this revolution. I do believe, as I am sure many others do. I believe so wholeheartedly that I travelled half way across the world to be here.

History is about to be written in the next few years and the people are finally holding the pen. We can only hope for the best and believe. Or as they say in the Middle East, Insha'Allah.

A pyramid, a story, and more turkish coffee

This weekend I visited a UN gender expert that has been working on women's rights in the Arab region for over 30 years. I knew this would be an interesting meeting when the taxi driver - through an exchange of broken Arabic (me) and broken English (him) - managed to explain to me that taxis do not go into this neighbourhood. I need to write a post here dedicated to the taxi drivers of Jordan. They are the most interesting personalities in the country.

Anyways, I plugged in my iPod to avoid the comments and horn honking that usually resulted in my walking down the street. However, I heard none. This neighbourhood was silent. Looking around, I could finally understand why. The houses around me would put the elaborate ones used in Bollywood to share. They were extravagant, to say the least. When I found my house number (88), I found it to be designed like a pyramid. No jokes, it was a pyramid, a giant one, with a stream of glass windows running down each triangular wall, with a garden filled with hundreds of lovely flowers.

My host greeted me at the door and took me inside to a beautiful home full of Arabic artwork, books and music. We immediately began talking about the Egyptian elections, rooting for Amr Moussa to win and knowing that it was hopeless to wish for this. That definitely broke the ice. Over a strong cup of turkish coffee, she began telling me about her time with the UN.

She heavily criticized my research approach and preyed on my obvious lack of experience in the field. While I was originally mortified, I realized that these comments came from a place of passion and frustration.

I found out that she was originally from Saudi Arabia. So gender equality was not just a social justice issue for her, they defined her story. Girls could no longer be educated beyond the grade level in the country, so she left behind everything she knew at such a young age to travel to Lebanon. She could have chose to do anything in the world, travel far and wide, settle anywhere. However, she has dedicated her entire life to women's issues and the welfare of her country, despite all the persecution and negativity attached to it. It made me reflect on my own situation.

I am 15 000 km away from India, a place plagued with social inequity issues. It's time for me to remember the important things: leave behind all the ambitions of heavy titles and global organizations and focus on the change itself and where I want to work towards it. Not a day goes by when I don't remember India. Perhaps it's time to go back, if not now, very soon and work in a small NGO, one that works directly with the people it's trying to help. It feels like unfinished business. There's something magnetic about it, calling me back. It's a feeling I have to explore for myself.

Caught amidst History in the Making

As I sit here and type this, Egyptians are out voting for their first president. I so badly want to be right beside them: watching the election booths, hearing the discussions over voting choices, and share in the experience of people feeling political freedom for the first time. I’m glued to my computer screen in Jordan, watching Al-Jazeera’s live blog as it documents citizens’ feelings at some of the voting booths.

Here is a particularly good post: 

Mounira Fawaz, quoted on this blog earlier, was shaking with excitement after casting her vote. With the pinky finger on her right hand dyed with purple ink she told Al Jazeera, "I feel freedom and for the first time my voice and opinion really counts".

The country has recently been filled with candidates’ posters and flyers. The main ones are also visiting cities, meeting citizens and promising to address their grievances. There are even televised debates, both among the candidates and regular citizens. The open discussion and rampant disagreement in the country is a sign that a form of democracy, albeit shaky one, has finally resulted. To hear citizens demanding budgets for healthcare, education, employment, human rights; you can hear that the silence has been broken. I am not an idealist and I am not suggesting that all is well. However, moving aside the reservations regarding their decision, I think it’s important to step back and recognize that they have taken a huge first step. 

The whole Arab world is holding its breath. As I am conducting interviews with women in the region, they are all weary, eagerly awaiting a decision that will have a tangible impact on their fate. The Islamist movement is sweeping the region. As the decision comes out the day after tomorrow, people’s fears will be confirmed or dismissed. Egypt is repeatedly hailed as a leader in the region. Therefore, its decisions will have resounding repercussions for its neighbors and followers. The women in Jordan hope they choose a Muslim moderate, or even the secular candidate, even if he was a part of the previous regime. He has the experience, one says, to focus on the real issues within the country.

It is probably one of the first times in my life that I feel close to a place where history is about to be written. 

Pictures!

I visited the Souk Jara this weekend, which is an open flea market put on by residents in Jordan, every Friday till Ramadan season. The following pictures are from this trip.