…make a mistake

Oh the differences between the West and Mid East…It’s Kansas and Oz. If you’ve been following along down the yellow bricks I’ve been laying, you may have already noticed and experienced many of them yourself. Yesterday I was thinking more intentionally about them as I walked hand-in-hand with my friend, Saleh, around town. Shwarma and taxis and heat—oh my! We had been meaning to go to a coffee shop and enjoy each other’s company for some time and it worked out that we finally both had time. Now—and I am sure you’ve guessed it since unmarried men and women don’t spend time together in public here—Saleh is male. Yes, Saleh is twenty-two years old, has finished university as an accountant, works in a bakery-sweetshop, and likes to slip his hand into mine as we meander and ambulate between falafel vendors and fashion shops.

Now, I knew that Arab men were more physically expressive before I got here, but I found out to what degree when I started to get to know them. If I enter a room, I find the seat not safely distanced from my host but right alongside of him. If I’m beckoned to the stoop I find myself snuggled between relatives, and if I am indeed sitting next to someone, we are inevitably making contact. Perhaps my hand has become the play-thing of an absent minded cousin or we’ve linked arms, me and my seatmate. Most of the time an arm rests on my thigh instead of its owner’s own.

But I have gotten used to it, I noticed, as I walked through town, interdigitating with a well-dressed young Arab. It used to be that every time I held hands my mind would vacate my head and swim down to my phalanges. I would have a hard time focusing on anything else except the fact that a man is holding my arm and we are waltzing down main street—oh my goodness, now he’s holding my hand—ah! we’ve slid our fingers around one another’s! Seriously, its hard to navigate through a crowd with so much mental noise.

And as I reflect, I think about the many cultural chasms I’ve stumbled across and all the faux pas that I’ve made, or barely avoided, as an ajnabi (foreigner). Indeed, I’ve yet to fully correct this wicked glitch from the west.

Some of the blips come from the difference in our ways of communicating…

There is a favorite treat of mine I’ve so creatively named ‘two-shekel ice cream.’ Not only is it cheap, but it’s also really tasty, especially while walking in the heat. And I’ve been adopting a greater sense of hospitality here too, so a few times, while walking with a Khalili (local), I’ve offered to purchase a couple for us. Biduk means (Do) you want and booza means ice cream. Biduk booza? I was confused when people not only denied my offer, but also looked at me quite strangely. What? It’s just two shekels? Really, it’s no problem…It never worked. Why? Well, I received quite the surprise when I realized that I was mispronouncing booza as boosa…Boosa means kiss.

Tim and I both have stories of the next lingual flop. We like to speak as much Arabic as we can in our classrooms, especially when congratulating students on good work. We’ve developed a vocabulary of classroom-words, and one of those words is smart. Easy, right? Inta zeki. Well, not really, because a slight vowel shift in the word changes zeki to zaki, which is the difference between smart and delicious. No, it’s never been considered good form to tell students how tasty they are.

The Palestinians have quite the collection of gestural vocabulary, too. This is something I didn’t know, and I am learning many of them. A scoop of the hand from palm-down to palm-up stands in for the most pertinent question at the time. Perhaps it is why, what’s up, or where were you…but the most frequently used gesture is a quick jump of the eyebrows. Sometimes it is accompanied with a click of the tongue, but it always means no. In the States we tick our head and flick our eyebrows as a kind of silent hello to passerbys. So, now that I think about it, there are scads of Palestinians who are at home now, wondering why that ajnabi walked passed them and “said” NO! How rude.

But cultural differences aren’t just found in communication styles. Social relationships, as you know, are also vastly different. I have learned to keep my eyes steady as I walk past any number of women. Though it isn’t as strict here as in other Arab countries, I still avoid eye-contact as we pass. Children are my only exception, that is, if the mother hasn’t pulled them in close and tight. And I am used to hijabs, the head coverings of the women here. They frame the face, close and tight, while safely covering every strand of hair from unwanted sight. This is the norm. One thing that tells me I am becoming like the Khalili is how I stare when a women doesn’t have a hijab on. Oh, it was just hair when I first arrived, but now it is something so foreign, so strange. I have to correct myself as I ogle with a dropped jaw.

And while these differenced are so obvious, some are not. I observed one instance of this in a recent and unfortunate incident. Safety is a surprisingly low priority here. Every construction site I walk past is lacking in hardhats and overflowing with casts. Every family, it seems, has a story of a relative who passed away unnaturally or who has brain damage from an accident later in life. I know people who lost their fathers when they were teenagers or younger. One of my students at the Excellence Center came into class, heavily bandaged because of a recent bike accident. And everybody has a noticeable amount of scars all over their body from something. This is very different than the US.

Last week a nine-year-old Himony was climbing up the side of something—a building, maybe—when he lost his hold and fell. I wasn’t there to witness the event but I heard about it. It was as bad as you wouldn’t want it to be. And the second thing people asked me when they talked to me about the boy, whose name is Mohammed, was did you go see him yet? I was slightly confused, for I was just hearing about the incident. But apparently the family rallies around events like this. It seems to be expected that everyone visits the hospital and sees the patient, no matter how distant the relative. But I don’t know where the hospital is, and across the language divide, the details were hazy anyways.

Besides, I’ve been told many times about the death of someone I know, only to find out later that it was a complete exaggeration or just outright lie. Not funny to me, though somehow so to them.

Last week I was offered the opportunity to join the father at the hospital. Great, of course, I’ll be there. So Tim and I got up early and hopped into a taxi with him. This was actually the second time I was going. Two days prior I caught a ride with my brother, but we weren’t able to actually see Mohammed. I gather that seeing in important, so I went again.

This time Tim and I got to witness Mohammed as he came out of surgery and was transported to get a cat scan. He was asleep, bandaged and swollen. His eyes were plums, and his cheeks were no longer clinging to his bones as they usually do. Where his skull was put back together there was a large bandage. But his chest rose and fell with the promise of life and the monitor that traveled with him displayed a steady heart rate. As we went with him to the cat scan we found ourselves being ordered, in a foreign language, to help with some medical procedures. I mean, it was only helping transfer the small body from one bed to another, but with the tubes and wires and chords everywhere, it was a bit stressful. This would never happen in the States, I thought.

Mohammed is still in the hospital but we hear good reports. And I can now join in the conversation. When someone asks, I can tell them I saw the young boy and then offer up a blessing on him or a praise to God. We agree: it is up to God. But however different and sad it was, I was happy to visit and see Mohammed after his operation. I fulfilled my familial duty and was able to keep the waiting family company. And in my great capacity for sentiment I offered a worried cousin a kiss. And this time I meant it: Biduk booza?

Oh, shoot. That means ice cream.