Year: 2017

Although there are many challenges for a student living in Jordan, I have been consistently impressed with the Qasid Institute’s approach to language instruction.

My typical day at Qasid is divided in two.

In the morning, I have to wake up bright and early to go to my skill class, which typically focuses on speaking, listening and writing in Arabic. My instructor, Huda al-Bayoumi, is an extremely kind woman who is very understanding of the struggles that students go through here in Jordan. In times when I have been sick or unwell and missed a class, I have found that she is very understanding and always ready to help me catch up.

Still, just because she is kind does not by any means mean that the class is easy. Our teacher encourages us to talk about the places we come from and even have debates in Arabic. Though it is quite challenging, in this class I have had the opportunity to give presentations on my country, and talk about my beliefs, values and religion. By making things interesting, the skills class has made it possible for me to learn in a supportive environment and I think I have improved my language and expanded my vocabulary vastly over the last few weeks.

After a long lunch break, which I typically spend by going back to my home in order to have lunch and then either do some homework or take a badly-needed nap, I return to Qasid where I have my ‘sciences’, which focuses on Arabic syntax and morphology. By far the more difficult of my classes, the science class is taught by Faraz Malik and is quite intense. It focuses on the complex ways in which Arabic words can have different meanings depending on their conjugation and paradigms. There are tests in almost every single day and an enormous amount of homework, but the course does a very good job of hammering home the fundamental lessons of Arabic.

It is this class in particular that causes me to often spend the better part of my evenings at my desk, memorizing rules of syntax and morphological patterns of the words. Classical Arabic is well-known as one of the most complex languages in the world, and mastering its nuances in the space of eleven weeks is not easy, but I do enjoy the challenge and take particular satisfaction in acing Malik’s tests after staying up late the night before.

The student body at Qasid is quite diverse. You have many students who are like me, PhD students from America, who need to learn Arabic. These students, who come from places like Harvard and Georgetown, tend to be a bit competitive, but are nevertheless determined to get the most out of their stay at Qasid as they can in order to advance their careers.

But there are also students who have come here for non-Academic purposes. These students, hailing from places like the Zeytouna Institute in California, have made the trip to Jordan in order to learn Arabic for no other reason than to enhance their personal understanding of the Qu’ran. For them, it is not their careers that cause them to be here, but rather their desire to achieve a higher level of religious piety. Sure enough, however, these religiously-motivated learners can be just as competitive as their academic brethren.

Still, this competitive atmosphere tends to push everyone to work harder and make the most of our time here in Jordan. The two groups mingle together in Qasid in a friendly way. Everyone wants to be at the top of the class, but we still support each other and keep our spirits up even as the demands of Qasid and the pressure of living in Jordan weigh down.

There are often weekly excursions out into the desert, including hiking trips to live with a Bedouin tribe for a night, eat their food and hike through the desert. It is these excursions out away from the insanity of Amman that I like to focus on, for here one gains insight into what Arab culture was like in days before colonization and westernization took hold.

Thus, in spite of all the challenges that I have faced in Jordan, I do think that my learning experience here has been very positive and would like to thank Qasid for being of such great help to me with my Arabic.

“Excuse me, but where is your lady?”

These are words I have rapidly become accustomed to during my stay in Jordan, and it has taught me much of the racial nature of inequality in this country.

Typically speaking, when one sees an Indonesian (or Southeast Asian in general) woman in Jordan, she is there because she is employed as a maid or helper for a well-off Jordanian family. I began to see many of these women once I was settled in Jordan. In malls, these domestic workers can often be seen walking just behind their employers, holding their bags and pushing their strollers for their wealthy patrons. I remember watching one such of these ‘classy’ women trying on a variety of designer shoes, asking her maids for their opinions as she modeled her expensive shoes for them.

The assumption then when Jordanians see me in public places is not that I am a PhD student from Notre Dame pursuing a study of Classical Arabic at the Qasid Institute, but rather that I am also one of the maids brought from Indonesia to change diapers and scrub floors. The career I have spent so many years building is invisible to the people here, for apparently Jordanian culture has written the word ‘maid’ on my face. I have often experienced Islamophobia or other forms of racism while living in the States, but these were a new set of micro-aggressions.

This is a prejudice that does not trouble every foreigner, but rather is specifically aimed at women from Southeast Asia (a female friend from Thailand at the Qasid Institute also experienced the same case of racism). At restaurants, I often dine with my two housemates and find that waitresses will often hand menus to my Japanese and British-Pakistani peers, leaving me with nothing until I am forced to ask. Apparently, the idea of an Indonesian being able to eat in a restaurant is quite unusual for Jordanians and they thus assume that I have no need for one. And even when I pay with my own credit card, the card will usually be handed back to my peers instead of me, showing once again that Jordanians think I am simply there as a helper for other students.

By far, these acts of racism have been my greatest difficulty throughout my stay in Jordan, for it has permeated every aspect of my life here. Even when I am going for groceries, I am often bombarded with ridiculous questions from random strangers about “where is my master?”. And even a few days ago, a middle-aged man literally rammed me with his shopping cart for not getting out of his way quickly enough. Combined with the sexual-street harassment I face, it is abundantly clear that Jordanian culture sees people that look like me as inferiors who are not worthy of even the most basic level of courtesy.

It seems that I am constantly being reminded of my place in the racial hierarchy here and it is very clear that Indonesians (and Southeast Asians in general) are not welcome here unless they want to work in kitchens or carry bags.

When my significant other visited, this prejudice took on new forms. Refusing to kowtow to Jordanian prejudices, my SO (who is a Pakistani-Canadian that could potentially pass as an Arab) would hold my hand in public and insisted on carrying every bag we happened to get while shopping. Still, while it was amusing to not conform to these racial expectations and flaunt our interracial match, Jordanian racism still followed us.  For the sight of an Arab-looking man carrying bags for an Indonesian woman attracted stares and giggles no matter where we went.

If this is my experience being an international student in this country, then I cannot begin to imagine what life must be like for actual domestic workers living here. To be at the beck and call of a culture that clearly and unashamedly regards one as an inferior is incredibly demeaning, and it would take the patience of Job to endure it. Thus, now more than ever, do I have more admiration for those women who have stood up and spoken out in the media against the rampant physical and sexual abuse that inevitably occurs as a result of the pernicious racism against them.

But it is these women we must look to for inspiration. For every time they speak out against this systematic discrimination is another step towards ending it forever.

One of the highlights of my journey to Jordan was my trip to Petra.

Petra is a ruined city hidden away in a valley just three hours away from Amman. Much like the Citadel of Amman, this ruin has a rich history encompassing Arab, Roman and Ottoman periods and is quite literally a city of the dead.

The ruins of Petra are composed firstly of graves and tombs carved into the sandstone mountains of Petra. These ornate tombs were meant to be the springboard for rich individuals so they could arrive in the afterlife with style. The graves range from simple hollowed out caves to ornate mini-palaces with statues carved into the rock. Thousands of slaves had to have been employed to build these house-sized graves over the course of centuries.

It is amazing to me that these ancient Nabateans spent so much of their wealth and energy in preparation for their death. Seeing an entire city that the people of Petra made to forge their tombs and glorify their dead is simply awe-inspiring. In a way, this belief system is not entirely dissimilar to that of Islam, for Muslims are also taught to spend their life here preparing for the life that comes after (although of course Muslims are told to do that preparing by doing good deeds, rather than constructing elaborate tombs).

In any case, the largest structure that seems to be intact is the Treasury (Al-Khazneh) in the heart of Petra. It is a massive structure in the heart of a huge valley in the middle of the dead city. We traveled there when we first arrived and it is absolutely huge building with Greek gods and goddesses depicted alongside it. On the way there, aqueducts were carved into the mountainside, which the ancient inhabitants of this land used to keep themselves supplied with water constantly. This treasury was the entry point into this mysterious city and showed how the people that lived here wanted everyone who visited to know of their opulence and might of their city.

Later, we climbed up a mountain path called the ‘thousand steps’ to reach the Monastery top of Petra (El-Deir). This name turned out to be somewhat inaccurate, as the ‘steps’ were so badly eroded and cracked that they were hardly steps at all, and I am pretty certain that there were far more than a thousand.  Exhausted, we eventually had to ask some Bedouins for a donkey ride in order to get all the way up the towering mountain. The Monks that once maintained the monastery up there must have been quite reclusive indeed if this was the only way for a visitor to reach them.

Atop the mountain, we found that unfortunately most of the Monastery was either ruined or closed off to the public. In this case, the journey became more important than the destination. A reminder that our focus in life is supposed to be on the ‘learning process’ and not on the ‘result’.

Still, climbing this historical marvel and looking down at this vast city of the dead (and Petra truly is huge – a real city of tombs and graves) was magnificent, though afterwards my legs felt like blocks of wood. Hiking in a desert is much more difficult than hiking in Indonesia or out in America. The oppressive heat rapidly drains your energy and even if you have a constant supply of water you will soon feel quite exhausted.

A visitor like me thus can’t but feel a sense of wonder when seeing the Bedouin, who live in makeshift tents throughout the path going up the hill underneath the sweltering heat. Like their ancestors from Petra, these Bedouin live in the desert with a certain joy and seem to take pleasure in galloping back and forth across the desert paths that mark the dead city, sometimes even happily living and sleeping inside of the looted tomes.

My trip to Petra was thus one of my most memorable moments in Jordan, for it showed me a unique window into how religions and traditions can shape entire civilizations.