Dear habebeen(yeah I figured the plural out),
The last few days have flown by for me. I always feel as if I have so much I want to reflect on, but have so little time. I have an Imte7an (exam(oh and the 7 is Arabeezee which I learned from Huda the other day)) tomorrow morning at 9am, but instead of studying more I’m going to reflect. If there is anything I am learning from studying in a foreign country so far, it is that your experiences with the locals make up your education. Classes are important yes, and for me very hard and time consuming, but it doesn’t even come close to the thrill of human interaction.
Today I met my peer tutor, his name is Abdullah (like the king). Abdullah is a big guy, 5th year student, studying to be an electrical engineer. His parents are Palestinian refugees, and he was born in England where he spent the first 7 months of baby-hood. He spent no time getting down to busy with me about politics. After exchanging names and some friendly remarks he quickly jumped to the question, “how do you feel about Israel and Palestine?” I’ve had this conversation a few times with Arab friends, but it was never put so boldly and by such a huge intimidating guy. I quickly realized that I was having my first experience as an American diplomat. Being a diplomat, I responded to his question with a question. “What do you think?” I asked. He seemed slightly taken aback and quickly went into a spiel about how Palestinians had been living in Palestine for thousands of years before the Israelis and that what was done was wrong. I agreed.
Keep in mind I am no expert on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In the past when my studies have veered in this direction I have kept my mouth shut and my hand down (very irregular for me). The reason is this. There are two (to generalize, in actually there are millions) stories of this conflict. These two stories tend to contradict each other in every fact, and from what I’ve learned they are both true. So how can a boy from Vermont come to decide who is right, who is wrong, and who he will support. This in mind, Abdullah and I continued.
I told him that what happened to the Palestinian people was wrong. I explained that both “Palestinians” and the Jews had inhabited Jerusalem and other parts of modern day Israel for thousands of years, both living autonomously. I told him that as I understood it, both groups of people have been victims of each other and of the rest of the world. Jews, had have been persecuted by the Arabs and fled to Europe, then persecuted by the Europeans and fled to the Middle East. Arabs living in the region of Palestine had also been wronged by having their land unfairly taken away. As I’m learning from my professor Dr. Zubi Al’Zubi (yes best name ever I know, I call him Zubs..not to his face) the British made many alliances during World War I that contradicted themselves; they promised land to the Zionists that they simultaneously offered to the Jews. My argument went on as thus, trying to play “mediator” for a young man who was obviously very biased. I’m skipping the Zionist conspiracy theories, because honestly I can’t bear to verbally combat another conspiracy, or try to explain how to in this blog; let’s just say that Arabs love their conspiracies about the Jews.
A few quick examples:
- · There’s a secret tunnel below the US and Israeli embassy in Amman
- · PEPSI stands for Pay Every Penny for the Sake of Israel.
- · The Coca-Cola brand text upside down spells something like death to Muhammad.
The list goes on….I’ll save more for comedic breaks in future blogs. Anyways, eventually he asked: “What is the solution?” This time I replied with an answer: this is the million dollar question I said. If I were in charge of this (inshallah I never will be) I told him I would have Jordan and Israel begin with a shared resource slash economic bond. I would also have Israel halt its continued resettlements and fund organizations which help resettle Palestinian refugee in Jordan and assist the Jordanian economy in compensating all the refugees. I told him my hope would be that one day Jordan and Israel could come to lift the border control between countries and allow free movement and sharing of goods. That hopefully in hundreds of years the grandchildren’s grandchildren could move back to “Palestine” and live within Israel. HA HA aren’t I funny. This was my response, I do know it is Idealist and I honestly don’t have an answer. No one does. But this is what I spit out when put on the spot, so after emberassing my starry-eyed self I asked him the same question and got the predictable response:
“Kick all the Jews out and return all Palestinians to their rightful home.” God to I wish I had a Dinar every time I heard this “solution.” By no means do I wish to belittle his solution or say he is wrong in believing this. He is a child of Palestinian parents, he has been robbed of the beautiful land of Palestine. However, his answer was about as realistic as mine. I tried explaining to him that the first removal of Palestinians from the holy land was the worst solution to a Zionist problem, and that to repeat history would be to make the same mistake again. I tried making the terrible simile of there being another “Abdullah” (but with a Jewish name) who would be wronged by being uprooted and removed from his home…this explanation didn’t take hold or do any convincing. Eventually a friend of his walked over and distracted him and then he had to go to lab. Phwew, I have time to reformulate my ideas and opinions and tomorrow try to refine them, but in Arabic. Oh lovely day.
Although I do cherish experiences like this they bring me down a little. They show me how hard it is to get people to think unemotionally, and objectively. Of course I was not persecuted or uprooted from my home, was never moved to a country with a lack of jobs, resources, and undemocratic government, so I will not judge, I will only listen, and then of course, blog.
Later today after my peer tutor meeting I got a pretty awesome cab ride back from the gym. Did I mention that I’m training to run a marathon already? I thought it was only a 5k leg, but turns out I’ll have to do five, 5k legs…so yeah, I need to stop smoking argila and get my ass in shape. Anyways, this cab driver named Samir had a nice ol’ time correcting the way I said Al’Jame3 (3 is an aiyn) the entire ride. He told me I had asked him to go to the Mosque not university (this would explain oh so many confusing cab rides home). I asked him to correct me and thus proceeded the most frustrating Arabic lesson so far. First he would say Al’jame3 and say it meant mosque and then say the exact same thing and say it meant university. Yet every time I tried to say Al’jame3 he would say LA! (NO!) I eventually got it, but it was a nice reminder that the language I’m learning has words that have a difference in one vowel and this vowel means EVERYTHING. I wonder if learning English is this hard? I know French isn’t…
Love,
Wylie of Arabia
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