Good afternoon, dear friends!
I write you all from Amman, Jordan, where the weather in the
past few days has been positively infernal. I think today’s temperature is 100
degrees Fahrenheit. Two days ago my sister Rana and I went out to run errands
in the afternoon – a terrible time of the day -- and the sky so full of dirt was
an ominous yellow-orange. The cars in the streets were coated with a film of grainy
dust! All flights were delayed or re-routed, including Samer’s, the
bridegroom’s. His plane couldn’t land and flew on to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt
before finally returning and touching ground close to midnight.
This evening the wedding will take place, at Le Meridien
Hotel. The wedding plan has suffered a slight (literal) twist: i.e. my sister
Dima injured her foot. She hobbles about, face contorted. All the women in my
family love to dance, but Dima is especially passionate and skilled at Arabic
dance. She had put together a long list of the most “danceable” Arabic songs and
had been volubly excited about taking the lead in the ring of female relatives
on the dance floor. Yesterday, she went to the doctor; he gave some pain
killers and forbade her from dancing tonight, but I don’t think she’ll listen.
More lastingly, my sister Dima is undergoing a personal
crisis. She’s seeking a divorce from her husband, Rajai. I found out that after
a series of especially angry and offensive exchanges with Rajai, the gist of which
is that he has falsely accused her of cheating on him and neglecting family
duties, she left the house and stayed with my parents for nearly a month. She
was deeply hurt and shocked by his accusations and expected that he would,
during that time, reach out to apologize and ask her to come home. But he did
not. My parents did not discourage her from staying with them but they are
distraught. It wasn’t until the end of her stay that Dima decided there was no
going back to the marriage. For years she has been miserable and alienated from
Rajai, but had been resigned to pursuing a parallel life in which she traveled,
took Spanish lessons, made new friends, and generally cultivated independence
and curiosity about the world. But all this has threatened Rajai and their
differences have sharpened. The elders in my family wish Dima would avoid
divorce and settle for a separate life because in their opinion the social and
financial costs are too high. There is no doubt that Rajai will resist Dima’s
wishes and if and when he submits he will be vengeful. He is hurt, infuriated,
and shamed. What property and other wealth she would get from the marriage are yet
to be determined legally; Rajai will not want to relinquish the apartment so
that she remains in it with the children, and the fight will be dirty and
protracted.
I had been away from Amman for almost a year but the
environment feels very familiar. Concerns amongst people about the economy,
politics, and social rightness persist. One issue that receives a lot of
attention in my family is language and its relation to social, religious
identity. My two sisters and my cousin Lana complain about all their children’s
great reliance on English to communicate amongst themselves. For instance, we
went swimming on Saturday and, while the children splashed and played games in
the water, they used English words almost exclusively. The women in my family
chide them, but being lenient and inconsistent in encouraging or forcing the
use of Arabic, they will answer to communication by the children in English,
affirming implicitly its dominance. But these children are not exceptional;
rather, they exemplify a general trend amongst the privileged and upwardly
mobile. Arabic – its language and culture – is associated with
authoritarianism, regression, suppression of personal expression, and general
stultification.
Despite her obvious impairment, Dima remains the
characteristically diligent and enthusiastic student in Spanish classes. She’s
been taking lessons at the Cervantes Center in Amman three times a week with a
group of fellow professionals from diverse backgrounds and professions. She
signed up for lessons because she wanted to understand directions by
instructors of flamenco in Granada, where she had planned to study the dance
until Rajai had a fit and the idea was axed. But it’s obvious that making new
and interesting friends and learning a language and culture(s) have opened
doors onto a new way of inhabiting her life. She compares herself to a seed
that had lain dormant for so long until the right conditions, and she won’t allow
her life to shrivel simply to appease her husband’s jealousy and sense of
threat. And Spanish at the Cervantes Center sounds like a whole lot of fun too!
Two days ago in class she took out a hand fan to cool herself down it was so
stuffily hot, and Senor Hamdi, the teacher, asked, “How do we say “fan” in
Spanish?” She didn’t know, so he wrote it on the board: “abanico.” This made
the male students snigger loudly: in Arabic “abanico” sounds just like, “ I
want to fuck him.” “I’ll never forget the word for fan now, Senor Hamdi,”
avowed Dima with solemnity.
Signing off for now. The wedding rituals start in just a few
hours!
Rima
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