Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Amman Five: 17 September 2009

Today we depart on our first, and I believe well-deserved, vacation. We fly to Lebanon. Why do I say “well-deserved”? After all, we haven’t had a hard time here. We’re not suffering. Our transition has been smooth and relatively effortless. People are good to us. We have plenty to eat and are beginning to vary our meals from mezza to rice and beans to rice and stir-fried vegetables. We enjoy tea and baklawa in the evenings after we’ve done our remaining chores or homework. We’ve begun playing flute duets together.

I say well deserved because I am finding that transition is taxing. It’s a hidden tax on the soul and emotions that I was lucky enough to get in touch with last night at the mosque.

I went to the other mosque for isha and taraweeh prayers last night. I knew it was my last chance for that this Ramadan so tucked in my hair and took a left out of the door. I followed two young women into the entrance they chose – downstairs in the back. The upstairs looked promising: large, arched windows, warmly lit. The building is bigger and more weighty looking a mosque that the one I went to last time. More classically mosque-like – ‘though with none of the ornamentation of Iraq’s mosques nor that of Al Andalus or Morocco. After all, these are neighbhorhood masjids where just the folks come and pray.

The girls quickly disappeared into the space. There were chairs on the left of the first room, and on the left of the second room. Apparently a second room (which is the first room you enter) was added because of need. That’s a good sign. Shelves in the back had Qur’ans. There were about 20 women there when I got there, early. To me it seemed I didn’t have a clue. A woman approached me and kindly led me back out – I thought she was bringing me to another spot within the mosque to pray – how thoughtful, but she was bringing me to see if I’d buy another kind of outfit to put on for prayer. I said I thought mine was fine, gesturing with just a bit of pride to how well I’d done my scarf. And she agreed it was “helwa,” pretty. So I said maybe I’d get something from her next time and she was fine with that.

Back inside looking for my clues, I found a seat in the inner room and watched women come in for a while. I got one of those Qur’ans and set about reading what I could. The Fatiha is easy to find. It’s the first sura. Then I looked for Al Ikhlas. A shorter one toward the end. I found it just by reading the Arabic. A small triumph. Then I started reading a list I found toward the back and realized it was the chapter index and I read “Younes” and “Yousef” and “Maryam” and “Imran” and “Nisaa’” and others, feeling like a first grader getting “run, Spot, run” all on her own. Small victories for a clueless American.

Yet not entirely clueless, it dawned on me as I sounded out the names of the suras. I’ve been to Mecca, I’ve made umrah four times, I’ve reported Hajj twice, I’ve stood and cried at Arafat, I’ve tawwaf-ed. I have my Islamic credentials … I’m just an inconsistent Muslim who needs to learn the local customs, here, where everyone who’s looking is just as close to God as anyone looking in Mecca.

No one approached me or seemed to notice I was there. They, too, were focused. The call came and we lined up. I was between a woman voluminously covered in what looked like a top and skirt made from sheets and one in a black abaya. So far so good.

But after the first four rakats a woman behind me tapped at my back and in her obvious complaint (tone of voice, facial expression, finger pointing) I deduced she said this is a place for Muslims and she didn’t like my feet. She kept gesturing to her socks. I was barefoot. I pointed to other barefoot women – like the one so abundantly covered next to me -- but the lady behind was not deterred. I communicated as best I could that I was from the USA and there didn’t seem to be a problem with the way I was dressed back there but next time I would wear socks here. You simply can’t prepare for life’s quirks. I fully anticipated some nice women tucking in errant strands of hair – God forbid God see my hair! But this was a new one.

Then the miracle.

The barefoot woman next to me smiled gently and said “Don’t worry about her. I like to pray barefoot, too. You’re new here, aren’t you?” “Yes, I’m from the USA and this is my first time here. I’ve lived in Amman two weeks and I don’t speak much Arabic yet.” It was easy to forget how amazing it is to find an English-speaker in Jordan. “I guess she is offended because my feet show under my trousers.” “Yes,” the reply. “That’s why I wear all this. It coveres my feet in prostration. But don’t mind her.” It dawned on me. “How do you speak such effortless English?” “I lived in the States for 14 years.” “Where?” “In the Chicago area.”

It was time to pray again. Unbidden the tears that teased me this morning in Alain’s office when I told him I was writing every day here for the first time since I was 11 years old, came welling. At first it was an expression of shame and sadness about the feet, but shortly my tears were in overwhelming gratitude for the blessing: of all the women in the masjid – and by then there were easily over 100, possibly 200 – I stood next to the one who’d lived in Chicago and was there to assist me.

She disappeared briefly after the next to rakat and came back with a box of tissues. “Tafaddali.” Here. I guess I hadn’t kept my sobs quite quiet enough. A short while later she disappeared again and returned with a long white skirt elastic at the waist. “Put this on an pull it low. That’s how I wear mine.”

A gentle hand on either wing of the flustered bird

Further tears during taraweeh brought me in touch with how much stress has been under the surface, how much I’ve been dominating my uncertainty and shyness, how lonely it can be when Katie’s at school; and I wondered how Katie is holding up deep inside.

It all seems easy: the comforts, the English-speakers, the Internet, the supermarket. At the same time it is all new. Some new struggle every day, small ones, but constant. Adventure, yes. Fun, yes. Character building? Yes.

But alhamdulillah, the chemical relief of shedding tears is real.

Katie and I talked about all this when I got back from the mosque two hours after I’d left. We sat (this time at the kitchen table) for our evening baklawa and tea. We need a vacation, we agreed. We need the warmth of a familiar friend, someone we know deeply who links us to the other lives we lived somewhere, some time in a parallel universe. We need Samia.


And today we’re getting on the plane to Beirut to spend five days with her and her family.

The bird, now steady, flies into the unknown, to land on branches known.

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