mistranslation

 I was sitting next to the new French teacher and the Geography teacher while the principal of the school was going over the packet of information that all the teachers received that morning : a black plastic bag with a yellow “planning” book, all in Arabic, a stapled packet of information which was titled something something , the word that I knew for “homework” in Arabic (turns out it said the “teacher’s duties”) and a list of tasks, and responsibilities all in Arabic, so I couldn’t do much with it, and a calendar that had the holiday dates for this school year.  Except the sheet of paper in my bag was dated 2009.  So I couldn’t do much with that either. 

The meeting started about a half hour late and began in Arabic.  I had done this before, not just in meeting format, but through parent teacher meetings as well, when things would ocmpletley be in Arabic, I’d try my very very best to understand (it’s funny how much a lack of the right vocab can really throw you off when you’re trying to understand things, and you won't even know what you misunderstand)  I always actually enjoy full on Arabic real life scenarios, because believe it or not, in Ramallah I always find myself in half Arabic immersion at best, so it’s always a nice challenge for my ears to try to pick up mannerisms, the language and understand my linguistic limitations.  The new French teacher I met made me think of the turnover of teachers, with several old faces missing, and also the fresh start that this year is supposed to bring.  Her enthusiasm and sweetness made me feel so at ease that I started a conversation with her that lasted about an hour and a half.  She’d be talking to the other new French teacher, and I’d catch a few phrases here and there now and then (flashback to the 4 years of high school French that I had totally blocked out).

Interestingly enough, as I was sitting there, with my ears perked and alert ready to pounce on any familiar Arabic phrases from the meeting, (from which I caught many many times that students should never wear jeans, their shirts should always be white, their pants always ‘kohli’, no hair gel, and no chocolates or junk food either (when I would translate my limited understanding to the French teacher, she’d look at me confused as well asking “does that mean that we can’t eat chocolates either??” I had no idea.  Also there are new rules that some of the teachers were irritated with)  The mannerisms of anger is so interesting when you don’t know the language.  Hard to explain, but anyone who has been in this position definitely understands what I’m talking about. So this is what ended up happening.  The French teacher started talking to the other French teacher who was sitting two chairs over.  And as the Arabic was coming from the principal’s mouth, the two French teachers would lean in as I would have to lean back, since they weren’t sitting next to each other and they’d translate the Arabic to French.  My brain was doing sommersaults.   I don’t even know at that point which language I was registering in, Bengali or English? I’d start thinking in spasms.  “oo! Travailer is ’to work’”  “ooo mamnuya! Forbidden! All that stuff she just said is not allowed! What smoking isn’t allowed?? That can’t be right.  This palce is a chimney..all the time, that’s not gonna go over well with the teachers lemme tellya" is what I was thinking (then I understood that there was a separate non smoking teachers room (missed that part!)

The list of the students wasn’t ready.  There was no schedule.  Each day we find out our schedule on a whim.  Back to Palestine :) Back to work :) where the bell doesn't ring and it's my fault for not being in a class that I didn't know I was supposed to be in, and when you do show up on time sometimes, the kids or another teacher tells you that you are not supposed to be there.  Patience is a virtue :)

It’s absolutely wonderful to see the same students again.  It’s strange to think of the little 3^rd grader munchkins in 4^th grade, and the 4^th graders in 5 grade now.   I somehow feel maternalistic about it thinking “aww they’re growing up!”….and then several years from now I wonder who’s going to be where and if they’ll remember me. I did get attacked by hugs by one of the sections, to the point where one of my students had to scream out “khallas!” to the rest of the kids and peel them off of me.  

The schedule looks like a morse code written out lab report with boxes and scribbles in indecipherable writing with gray charts with white printed out arabic print that makes my brain hurt when I look at it, and I have to wait until I catch one of the teachers writing their schedules so that I can quietly stand next to them, wait for them to be done, and meekly ask them if they can help me out in trying to figure out my schedule.  

After the first day of work, yesterday, I was exhilarated, completely in love with what I do here, and after today, I was absolutely exhausted, thinking about how the teaching clock never stops, where I'm always thinking about making posters or more rules or thinking about what to do in class, realizing that there's no structure or framework that I was ever given, so I have to continuously come up with things as needed and just figure it out.  Trying to get feedback is always more frustrating than just having to deal with things, without the proper resources, so often times it feels like a one man (woman) game.  

Sidenotes  :  

-I forgot about that one student who always dances and runs up to class, takes my cell phone and turns on the radio.  

-I also forgot about the kid that rips the papers you give him. 

-I also forgot about the trio best friend, in grade four now, who always greet me with a giant hug and a kiss when I come to class. 

-and that kid that literally understands no direction, no word that comes out of my mouth, and draws every single thing that I put on the board

-and that other kid who does nothing but draw on every piece of paper he can find. 

- and most importantly : The copy machine. Which can make or break a teacher's day.  When that machine is malfunctioning, you can bet that I am malfunctioning as well. 

American Filtered Coffee

I love teaching, i love the classroom, i love the students, and i hate to admit it but a part of me loves the chaos and the  noise (though there’s been many times i’ve done silent and loud prayers alike wishing and craving peace and quiet from the sheer volume of ..kids, many many many many kids, each outshouting each other simultaneously drowning out your personal sanity) and i always fumble with words trying to articulate what it is about the teacher/student/classroom dynamic that i find so enthralling and so incredibly and powerfully amazing.  it is such human to human connection, on an indescribable level.  Teaching is almost an excuse for me to connect with people, with kids, with families.  

I was humbled to receive some endearing emails from parents of students while i was at Jordan, wondering where I was, how I was doing and when I was coming back.  I was even more humbled last Wednesday when a family that I am particularly fond of invited me and my roommate to join them for an Iftaar dinner.  “The kids missed you so much.  Please Ms. Fahmida won’t you join us on Friday for Iftaar with the family?”  It was simply gracious.  Sidenote : I love the slightly awkard but really heart warming formality that seeps into the English that second language English speakers speak with.

I think of this family as the “Gaza Brady Bunch Family”.  There are six kids.  The very first time I had met them, I was sandwiched in between the 11 year old daughter and the 14 year old son in the backseat with Maggie in the front, and the 8 year old twin brothers in the back back of the car going to their house to tutor them for the first time (I’d be tutoring the 11 year old, and later the 14 year old, on a biweekly pattern).  Entering their home, I was surprised at the number of bedrooms and realized that there were 2 more children in the house, one 14 year old daughter and another 17 year old son.  After getting used to the routine of going to their house every Tuesday and Thursday evening, pretty soon Maggie and I would find ourselves sitting on their couch, with the whole family watching Spongebob in Arabic (or some other cartoon).

They moved to Ramallah after the massacre in Gaza a couple of years ago.  One of the very very few lucky ones to have even been able to move out.  And what is extremely interesting to me is each of the kids respective views on Gaza.  They all miss it terribly, and as one of the kids described, she said that she saw Gaza turn from heaven to hell.  

A quirk about being a part of a Brady bunch family is also seeing the respective talents of each kid.  They’ve got scientists, phenomenal singing writing and fashion designing talents all under one roof.  

Seeing them after a whole summer was a treat in and of itself.  A homemade iftaar on top of that? man.  It’s hard to understand a culture without understanding the deliciousness of home cooking sitting at the dining table with a family.  My roommate and I devoured a deliciously whole baked fish stuffed with garlic after a bowl of warm soup with a side of bread and muttabl (like baba ghanouj, an egglplant dish) and we gulped down Kharoub, a special Ramadan drink (kind of like Tamar Hindi, except the taste of this sweet drink is something that i have never tasted before so i couldnt even describe to you the unique crisp and sweet taste buds it hit on my taste pallete, which the dad had made, homemade).  And of course, after the full course meal, came a giant dish of homemade..qatayef :)

We were joined by two of their other family members, who had just arrived from Gaza to Ramallah just a couple of days ago. They were able to come on a medical exempt.  It was the dad’s cousin, an elderly-ish woman, who didn’t speak any English (whiich was good for me, the summer of Arabic learning spent in Jordan, was being put to the test as I tried to understand her conversation).  My roommate and I  listened to her and her daughter, talking about a variety of things in regards to Gaza.  About how awful it was to fast with electricity cuts in this heat for example, amongst other things.

It took some time, (maybe an hour or so) to warm up to them and them to us, but pretty soon the elderly-ish cousin of the father was exchanging smiles, smirks and jokes and laughs with us.  My problem with Arabic is that I know a giant collection of words that float around in my head, and they always hang loose because I am never quick enough to string them together in a coherent sentence to have fluent conversations.  So during dinner, I don’t know how many times I said “ zaki! zakkiii! zakii iktheer!!” (translation : tasty! tastyyy! really tastyyy!) until the cousin looked at me with a motherly smile on her face and finally said “Inti zaki!” (inti = you, zaki = good..tasty lol) She told me that she had lived in Libya for 17 years and her neighbors were, lo and behold, Bangladeshi (we are indeed everywhere) and she asked why I don’t wear that thing that they wrap around.  Saris..I told her no, I don’t wear saris in ramallah.  And I thought to myself the comical scene of me rolling up to work in a sari, as the parents had already had an issue with me being an English teacher looking “Indian”, sort of apprehensive that I’d be teaching their kids the Indian accent.  

In the very short time that we had known each other, these two family members from Gaza, showed me the kind of love that I get when I go back to Bangladesh, how an elderly distant relative treats you endearingly with a smile and a hug, whe they cup their hands around your face in a very loving way.  She flipped through a small picture wallet and showed me a picture of her husband, her three daughters and her son and a younger picture of herself.  When I would say “helu iktheer!” (really nice/ really beautiful!/ how nice!) she would reply back with a laugh saying “inti helu!”.  We joked around for a bit before taking a group picture and she jokingly and lovingly hugged me tight as we posed with the cheesy smiles.  

I took one helping of qatayef because I was already stuffed.  And when I only took one, she (the elderly-ish cousin) looked at me with displeasure and said “don’t you know it’s sunnah to eat two? of course you have to eat another one”.  that’s how they get you I swear, to be so overly stuffed that you can’t move. They tell you it’s Sunnah lol (sunnah = ways of the Prophet). You can’t argue with that somehow.  “Well if it’s sunnah, i guess i HAVE to eat another one!” is what you end up thinking and doing.  A tray of coffee came along after that.  And it smelled awesome.  And I was so happy to drink coffee finally to get rid of the overpowering sweetness on my tongue.  My roommate and I smelled the coffee, and as I was drinking it, I personally couldn’t spot why it tasted so good but different, until my roomate was like “..I think this is American coffee”.  THAT was a treat, which made me think “whoaa...hey there! haven’t tasted this stuff in over 8 months!”.  The dad, not knowing that my roommate and I had this exchange of dialogue, told us that this is an American brand of coffee and brought out a bag of Kroger’s Brand 100% Columbian bean coffee bag.  Filtered American black coffee...never thought that I’d actually enjoy drinking black coffee.  But when I can drink black coffee (something that I could never stand doing before, not even half a sip) and think that it’s absolutely fine without sugar, I know that my taste pallate has definitely re-adjusted to the strenght of espresso shot style Arab coffee.  I guess I can thank Umm Rami for that adjustment, having to drink her coffee twice a day, every day for a month :)

Mangoes and Pomegranates on the Market!

Simple Ramadan traditions in the "A: household is what i miss the most.  when i was a kid i always made the lemonade, or did most times, and somehow that task got switched over to my brother, who despite fasting, mastered a perfectly balanced sugar and lemon portion in jar of cold iced water as my mom would be frying last minute iftaar food (piyaju, aluri, beguni, a bit of bangali food sampler for you).  the last ten minutes before the evening prayer call to break the day long fast was always the most climactic.  either your hunger suffering self was watching each second pass by as if it was an eternity sucked into sixty seconds or you were running around like a headless chicken trying to set the table in time.  But no matter what, when it was time, and because we live in America we didnt hear the prayer call, we just itnently looked at our watches for the time to tick to the right second, everyone HAD to be sitting down a the dining table.  You broke fast by holding a juicy date in one hand, saying a little prayer before breaking your fast with sweetness in your mouth, ate the date and had a cool refreshing taste of lemonade.

"A" household sharbat (lemonde) has been replaced in Ramallah by Tamar Hindi.  This is a delicious delicious drink that I can’t get enough of.  Tamar I realized after playing around with the word in my mind,  is the Arabic word for Tamarind, which is this : 

        

which in Bangladesh you eat as a mouth puckering sour chutney, sometimes sprinkled with salt if its eaten raw.  Samosa chutney is also often made with Tamarind.  What we South Asians never did with Tamarind is make a sweet juice out of it flavored with rose water.  And that’s what Tamar Hindi is, here in the Arab world.  And during Ramadan  you see clear plastic bottles filled with Tamar Hindi in every shop almost.  My roommate and I dilute it with water when we drink it because of how concentrated it is.  If you rinse your mouth out after you drink this, the rinse out mouth water is brownish red.  Either this stuff is really really natural or really really not.  My bet is on the former, and if it’s the latter I don’t want to know. 

Last week my roommate and I went grocery shopping. Man did I miss these small vegetable shops.  And lo and behold i saw something that made my heart leap and sommersault and grin with joy : POMEGRANATES!  they’re back! and right next to them were mangoes.  which of course has a special special place in my heart.  Looking at the mangoes I thought about a specific moment last year in Lucknow, India when a friend and I were going home on a rickshaw and saw a long strip of the street that stretched at least a mile or so cluttered with mango booths and vendors selling every size shape and kind of mango.  

The heat wave in Ramallah hit about 112 degrees Fahrenheit.  No humidity.  Just dry blazing skin scorching heat.  My lazy weeks in Ramallah so far, of waking up at 3 am for suhoor, having a disrupted sleep pattern on an already screwed up sleep schedule, results in oversleeping and starting the day absurdly late, sweating and wondering how the rest of the world is fasting as well in this heat.  Not gonna lie, took some days off of fasting, especially when I was realizing that I was getting severely dehydrated at times.  One specific morning, the power had gone out, so the clicks and clatter of the fan in my room stopped, leaving me in the house with pressed simmering heat.  Georgette our landlord, along with the rest of the Middle east, is unpleasantly surprised at this heat wave that is suddenly hitting this region completely unprecedented.  These past several weeks, I’ve become even more fond of Georgette.  If I live to be 82, I want to be like her.  Her mannerisms are something that I wish I could capture and keep secured somewhere.  Every night or afternoon when I come back to my apartment, I hear an obnoxiously loud television booming out of her window, some game show or some soap opera.  Late at night (not that late, maybe 9ish) when my roommate and I go to visit her sometimes, she complains about how stupid the tv shows are and how she doesnt even like them, and she gladly turns it off and chats with us.  She never fails to ask me if I’m fasting, and the couple of days when I wasn’t she replied back with “what kind of Muslim are you??” “uhhh...gotta go Gerogette!” is how I’d seek refuge from that awkward conversation.   One evening we had rung her doorbell to ask if she needed anything.  She opened her giant doors, greeted us with her 4 feet something hunched over self and asked for bananas (slightly green) and a 10 pack case of bottled water.  The next day when we lugged the water back to her doorstep, the first thing she asked us was to read the label on the water.  My roommate and I were confused and we looked at each other and then fumbled to read the label and where the water came from.  She told us she couldn’t accept the water becuase it was Israeli water and she only drank Jordanian water. That’s Georgette for you. lol no filtered screen of hiding any of her thoughts or emotions or raw feelings.  Thank God she liked the bananas.

The close family time, and praying together is also something I miss about the "A" household.  That has been replaced in Ramallah with hearing the neighbors eating their meals outside, sometimes just them, a family of about five or six or their large..large large extended family.  They turn on their Ramadan lights which are draped over the fence that separates our house from theirs, and they sit outside, and the sounds of the evening, sometimes just a harmony of family members talking or a cacophonous sort of shouting, or sometimes a man in the distance singing whose voice sounds like a peaceful Oud, as my roommate and I fix ourselves a relaxing session of argileh, has taken a special place in my heart.

Enjoying cutting open another pomegranate after months and months and thinking about how comforting this was when I had initially gotten here, makes me realize why I’ve been weaving in and out of a tug of war sort of emotional rollercoaster.  I’m back in Palestine after a summer of not being here, and I realize that this is like coming back to Palestine for the second time, it’s a ‘coming back’.  Coming back with fresh eyes perhaps.  Coming back and realizing that my time here will conclude, that I had actually gotten accustomed to thinking of this place as my residence.  When you think of a place as your residence, you don’t think about how long you stayed, every day becomes normal.  If you go vacationing, you remember going in that it’s only a summer long thing or a seasonal outing.  I realize that perhaps I need to redefine my goals and  embrace each day knowing that I will one day look back craving to have what is now my present.  

Sweet Pancakes

my students were legitimately distressed and frustrated not yet having enough english words in their vocab to explain what they wanted to say to a teacher who was completely oblivious to what it was that they were talking about.  It must have been the second to the last day of class in Amman, and I was wrapping things up with all 43 of my students, crammed in a sweaty classroom with a malfunctioning air conditioner and perpetually unreliable and malfunctioning classroom equipments which required a lot “wing it” back up lesson plans.  I started asking them questions about the rest of their summer plans beyond our class, both to satisfy my own curiosity and also to gauge and evaluate their progress in “Basic English Conversation”.  I had just taught them the word “fast” as someone in class brought up Ramadan, which at that time was just around the corner. One thing that I love doing, is being very upfront and clear to my students about who I am and where I’m from. Usually by the end of the first class period, they know my age, they know about my family, where I’ve traveled and about my enthusiasm to be experiencing a bit of their country, and a bit of their culture. I tell them about instances of experiencing something for the first time in a foreign country (their country) and what that felt like, just to watch their faces break into a smile, because most times they havent thought about how something that they’ve gotten accustomed to for their whole life could be completely brand new and foreign to someone else.   I make it very clear to them there’s just so much that I don’t know.  And I need their help to help me in figuring things out :)  

So I asked them about Ramadan.  And it turned into a fun question and answer session.  I asked them what does Amman look like during Ramadan? I’ve never been in a Muslim or Arab country during Ramadan before I told them. They were fascinated.  They told me how all the restaurants are closed, and you can’t eat in public and about the lights at night and the special foods that they love to eat,  foods that are only available during Ramadan.   I love food and I wanted to find out what these special foods were, one, and two, I wanted to make sure that I dont miss out on any of the unique Ramadan foods just because I’m oblivious and you know, becaues I'm not Arab.  So they told me about Qatayef.  And I had no idea what it was.  And that drove them crazy.  They were distressed and frustrated.  Someone shouted out “it’s a circle!”, and I played dumb and I said “that doesnt tell me anything, what do you mean?” “it’s small!” ‘sweet”  “cheese”..one frustrated kid hurried to the front of the class and asked for the whiteboard marker that I was playing with in my hand. I gave it to him, and he drew a circle.  and then he drew another picture.  he drew a triangle, but a semi circular triangle.  and he said “this, and then this!”.  I gave them the raised eye brow look, like whaaat are you doing kid.

I let this carry on for a long time, because (this might have been mean)  I was enjoying their frustration, not just because it was entertaining, but because they had to search in the corners of their brain to get out what they wanted to express and try their hardest to convey their thoughts about something they know like the back of their hand, but they had to switch gears and speak in English to get it out.  I wanted to see how much they had learned.

By the end of class, i got that it was some Ramadan dessert.  cool :) i’d have to try it.

After that first class was over, we had our 20 minute break and then I continued on to my second class.  2 hours later, my second class was over, and that was the end of the day.  As I was erasing the last bit of notes from the board after all the students were dismissed and I was getting ready to go, one of my 8 year old students from the morning sections, came in to say “Teacher! It’s like pancakes! sweet pacakes!”
“What’s like pancakes?” “QATAYEF!!”.  lol i had forgotten about this thing, but clearly this kid was overly enthused about finding the right word, right enough that I understand it. He drew the circle and the triangle again, and said, you take circle, you put cheese or nuts and you put inside, you make triangle ( I told him the word is "fold") and then you eat.  I was happy for him that he had the satisfaction of knowing that I now knew what he was talking about. Finally.

Ramadan started in Ramallah.  I saw these pancakes being poured on giant skillets in street corners and people lining up to buy them.  I knew what it was and I was excited! My roommate bought a bag of those pancakes, and we thought it would be a fantastic idea to go up to our landlord and give her some of this “qatayef”. With a bag full of these pancakes we went up, and the fierce, crouched over, 80 year old Georgette opened the door.  We told her “we have qatayef for you Georgette!”.  Not a crack of smile or expression, she looked at us and said “it’s way too early for Qatayef, I dont want them now” we were  bit dissapointed, we showed her the bag and showed her how much we had and told her we didnt know how to eat them.  she took one quick look at the bag of pancakes and said “WHAT’S THIS??” and we looked at her to say naively “..qatayef”.  irritated, she said “this is not qatayef! it’s not filled, where’s the cheese and the nuts and the syrup?”.  we looked at her quite dumbly and brought home the bag of pancakes and ate them with a bottle of syrup.  As we were eating, i couldn’t understand why this thing was so special.  I mean one name for it could be “Qatayef” but another could be...Bisquick pancake mix. which you could..eat...all year..long.

qatayef

?

A week into fasting, my roommate and I decided to go to a cafe to break our fasts (life of internationals and expats without families) and saw a tray of sweets.  “QATAYEF!”.  we had gone during iftaar time, ...at which time i expected all restaurants and cafes to be packed, but nope, my roommate and i were the only customers there at that hour. Everyone else was probably enjoying their iftaars at home :) feasting on a giant ramadan meal.  the staff themselves were eating, so to compensate for our wait, we got Qatayef.  I ate one.  and understood why Georgette had freaked out.  A couple of days later, our friendly neighbor and his family, saw my roommate and I sitting out on our porch just like we do every evening.  The oldest son jumped the stone wall that separates our house from theirs, more like our laundry space from their backyard, and came over with a hot hot hot plate, with 4 pieces of Qatayef.  Hot, steaming, and drenched in sweet syrup. two stuffed with delicious sweet cheese and the other two stuffed with scrumptious pecans and nuts, they crunched and dripped with sweetness of the special Ramadan sesason and the hospitality of our neighbors :)

Qatayef

(could not ever be compared to Bisquick my friends, a foolish comparison)

I realized, that what we did to Georgette, showing up with a bag of flat pancakes (merely the outer shell of the qatayef) would be like if somoene went to an American’s house, showed up with a bowl of liquid batter and said “look! we’ve got waffles for you!”.  

Bethlehem : This Ramadan : World’s Largest Qatayef - check it out :)
http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=309386

back from a hiatus! :)

i admit, i completely checked out for the last month.  in fact i arguably checked out completely from my ownself, just took a month long break and forgot about everything. perhaps i didn't realize how burnt out i was. i apologize for not keeping the blog updated , and for being really awful with emails, and just disappearing.  i've been getting random spurts of messages from friends wondering where i am and what in the world i'm doing.

so here goes!

roughly a couple of months ago, i had sent out a long detailed personalized email to close friends explaining my trek from ramallah to eilat to egypt to aqaba to amman and then that switched to a dreadful trek from ramallah to jerusalem to tel aviv to fly out of Ben Guirion Airport, where I was classified as a threat level 6, a potentially friendly brown and petite terrorist :) it was nerve wracking and uncertainty was the only guarantee.  i was leaving palestine, dreadfully not knowing if i'd be coming back to that apartment or if i'd be  back to see my lovely students, or to see palestine again, and not knowing what would happen in jordan.  at all.  had absolutely no idea where i'd be living, or what i'd be doing.  all i wanted to do was come to jordan for a couple of days, and then go to syria to learn arabic in arguably the best place to learn arabic : Damascus.
I was turned away at the Syrian border, which was not the most pleasant experience and i realized that i'd be in jordan for some indefinite amount of time.  why indefinite? the process started in April, when we started writing fake letters to I'm not even sure who, some Israeli admin of the Catholic Church to grant us, myself an international who'd like to work here, to work in "israel".  the process was started, and it's quite rare, extremely rare that i was even able to start this process to seek out 'legal" permission to work in "israel", and the only reason I was able to do this is because I'm affiliated with the Church and not any Muslim organization.  Feels really funny to say that but thats the truth of the matter.  The final step of the process was for me to leave Palestine, as my tourist visa was going to expire, and wait for the Israeli authority to approve of all of my information and grant me a visa.  Basically, in joe shmoe language, what I/we were tryign to do is seek out legal permission to work illegally :)   i'm basically asking the Israelis to give me permission and with their permission work in Palestine.  It's quite twisted and quite awesome.  I'm gonna be applying to grad school soon, and I wonder if I can put that on my resume and my application : i legally worked illegally.  ? The Israelis gave me permission to work in a land they illegally occupy where they don't want internationals.  but here's the catch, they didnt even realize what kind of permission they were giving me.  :)

it was a lot of holding a long breath.  Alhumdullilah, thankfully, and I feel immensely blessed and humbled, that I found a job.  I found an amazing Arabic class. Most importantly I found incredible friends, and for the first time in about 6 months I had an active social life, and I was able to let go of stress, Palestine stress.  It was in the back of my mind at all times of course, but somehow I found a daily routine in Amman, and what felt like an uncomfortable displaced encounter with Amman, suddenly felt like a cozy escape.  Like I said, I checked out completely.

about three weeks into being in Jordan, I got an email from my boss from Ramallah saying that my visa was approved!!

what???? all i had to do now was go to the embassy to pick up this piece of paper that me and my roommate have been dreaming about for months.

I stalled for a week.  why? i'm not sure but subconsciously I think i was trying really hard to grab on to this cozy escape that crept up on me and gave me a nice sense of comfort, in a non occupied land, where there are no soldiers or checkpoints and no paranoia about international passports. I delayed and stalled, foolishly.  And finally when I went to the Israeli embassy one really hot afternoon to pick up my visa, i was turned away by very unfriendly soldiers.  Suddenly I felt myself getting furiously outraged at the pointless waiting and arguing and being a subservient being to those with guns and authority.  I realized that I had forgotten about my Palestinian lifestyle and that this is so normal and interaction with soldiers that I've had plenty of before, never had made me mad, it was something I adjusted to.  Somehow I forgot what that felt like?  I talked to my boss here, and she told me that I need to set aside a whole day to go to the embassy.  she said to get there at 5:30 in the morning and expect to be there until late afternoon , waiting in the hot sun.  I remember thinking to myself, why of course, how did i forget the ludicrousness of Israeli authority.  My boss also told me that I couldn't go until my summer teaching session was over, or I'd get fired.  So i stalled for another week.

A good friend of mine was leaving that day when I went to the embassy.  I had gotten plenty of warning emails from my boss saying that, this visa that was approved, if I didn't pick it up "soon" it would expire, and it would make this month long wait futile.  And I'd have to wait in Jordan for potentially another month.  If all failed, I'd have to go back to the States I suppose.  So that day that i went to the embassy for the secnod time, i was thinking of my friend who was leaving and thinking about what i'd do for another month in jordan if my visa really did expire.  i was mentally preparing myself for another month of uncertainty.  I got there at the embassy and several hours later, several pointless queues later, I was standing in front of a small window on a white telephone speaking to an Israeli authority on the other side of the window, lying out of my teeth about where I live, what I do, and why I want this visa.  He didn't seem to think anything suspicious,  and he even went as far as to ask me if I'm living comfortably in Israel, and I replied with an enthusiastic "of course!".  he asked if i live in a suite in the church, and i told him, no just a cozy single room.

he told me to come back three hours later in the afternoon after taking my passport.  my paranoia built up again, because I didnt want them to catch the fact that on that passport there is no entry to Jordan stamp.  so...its kind of suspicious that here I am in Jordan, for a month, and there's no entry stamp?  yikes.

i got there later in the afternoon and waited another 45 minutes before my passport was returned to me, officially stamped with a legitimate visa from the Israeli ministry of education.

i realized holding my passport in my hands that I could leave Jordan that night if i wanted to.  I could leave! I could work in Palestine!

You know what it felt like? You know when you are playing a fierce game of tug of war, and suddenly out of nowhere the other teams lets go? thats what it felt like.  I couldnt believe that i had this visa in my hand.  i just could not believe it.

what  i also couldnt believe was that now i'd have to say goodbye.  i was prepared to say goodbyes to my friends who have slowly started leaving one by one as this summer is coming to a close, but i certainly was not expecting to say MY goodbyes.  I wasn't prepared to tell my Jordanian friends "hey I'm leaving".  The day before the embassy, i finished work, i finished my classes, i said goodbye to my students and to my arabic teacher, half expecting to see them again because i was half anticipating having to stay in jordan for a month more.   After I got a slew of facebook messages from my summer students telling me that they missed me, I realized that these students that I had seen, laughed, taught, yelled and joked around with for four hours every day for the past month, just kind of scattered away.    I'm not sure why this visa made me so emo.  Im ecstatic but at the same time I felt torn in a way that I really didn't see coming.  I guess this is how you learn about yourself, when you're made to deal with unexpected emotions and sentiments and you're forced to navigate through them.

I felt quite emotionally overwhelmed, especially with Ramadan coming up.  I am looking forward to it, as it is definitely going to be the most challenging.  I am happy that I'm going to have my first Ramadan in a Muslim majority place, in Palestine.  However, Ramadan essentially is family time.  You wake up at the crack of dawn to eat with your family and you get together during Maghrib to break fast, eat and pray together.  Experiencing Ramadan in isolation from my family will be very difficult.  But I am looking forward to the challenges that Ramadan will bring, there's nothing easy about it, but its the kind of hardship that chisels out a better self.   Looking forward to it :)

I've a couple of days left in Jordan which I'm trying to spend wisely, being very relaxed.  InshAllah on Monday, I will try my luck going to Palestine :)