This week I realized that I am learning two languages here, not one. I'm learning Modern Standard Arabic as well as the colloquial Jordanian Arabic. They're pretty similar, but often very, very different. Sometimes the difference between the two is just a matter of dropping a letter (Coffee in MSA is "qawha," while in colloquial it's "ahwa"). Sometimes, however, they're two different languages entirely. It can get frustrating, especially since for the first couple of weeks of Arabic classes, there wasn't a great distinction between which vocab words were MSA and which were colloquial. Until today, I thought the colloquial way of saying "beautiful" was "jameel," but no, that's MSA. Colloquial is "helu" (sort of, it's kind of hard to transliterate).
Other than the fact that I'm learning two languages, Arabic is... well, it's hard. Also my Arabic professor, Muna, is a cannibal. She said so herself ("I put you in my stomach and you can say 'bye bye America'!"). Today we were supposed to write sentences in Arabic using new vocab-- my question was "Why did Muna eat the student?" (لمذا منى اكلت الطالب) Her answer: "Mmm... Zaki" (Zaki=delicious). So, yeah--if I don't come back to the States in December, it's because I failed Arabic and Muna ate me. I'm doing fine for now, but I've never been very good at languages... it kind of feels like math. I'm definitely using the same part of my brain for Arabic as I do for math in any case, and it's a very underused part of my brain, so I'm pretty exhausted. Can I just write a research paper on immigration in the Middle East or something? Or a project, a presentation, anything?
The answer to that question is sadly, no. *sigh* My Arabic classes may be difficult, but that's in a (mostly) good way. Muna is tough, and I'm learning a lot in her class, which is great. Unfortunately, not really the case in my Area Studies classes. I mean, I'm learning about what Jordanian professors think about conspiracy theories, Saddam Hussein, and Saudis... that's something, right? But I'm learning about their opinions, and while that's very interesting from an "I am observing this culture" standpoint, it's frustrating from an academic standpoint. Also, these are the opinions of highly educated, fairly liberal university professors. Not exactly an adequate representation of the average Jordanian. It means that neither of my Area Studies classes are particularly challenging--each only requires one paper. We also have two tests per class, and I do hate tests, but still.
Let me elaborate a little bit by discussing each class separately. Besides MSA five times a week and colloquial twice a week, I also have two "Area Studies," classes. Both are Political Science courses, although I'm pretty sure that Political Islam would be classified as a Religious Studies course at Beloit. My first PoliSci class is Conflicts on the Middle East. I've mentioned before that this class did not seem promising. It's difficult to take the professor seriously, because he frequently goes off on tangents and he likes to talk about conspiracy theories. It's difficult to interpret whether or not he likes to talk about them because he thinks they're legitimate ideas, or because he thinks they're funny. Also, on Monday he told us he thought Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrible leader, just a bad guy. He also genuinely did not seem to think that Iraq invading Kuwait was such a big deal, and didn't think that it made sense for the U.S. to get involved during the first* Gulf War.
My second class is Political Islam. At first, this class seemed like it was going to be a good one. The syllabus included a lot of good readings, the professor seemed to be interested in what we had to say... then classes really started and I was proven very, very wrong. Yes, the readings on the syllabus are good, but when we get to class, the professor lectures about the readings due that day and frequently quotes them verbatim. At the end of the lecture he asks us if we have any questions or comments. That's it. It's not nearly as discussion-based as I'm used to, and that's difficult for me. Also, this professor is aggressively secular. Yeah, you read that right. He's an aggressive atheist. I have never gotten a more pro-democracy, pro-Western, pro-capitalism vibe off of a professor. It took studying abroad in the Middle East to find a professor that thinks democracy is the obvious answer to the world's problems and secularism is the bees knees. To be fair to this guy, he is clearly embarrassed by the world's perception of Arabs as crazy "fundamentalist" Muslims that hate all things Western. He seems to want to set the record straight that most Arabs are "normal" people that like America and drink and watch television. However, yesterday he made fun of Saudi Muslims that drank wine with him in the States, only to return to Saudi Arabia and revert back to calling drinking alcohol haram (un-Islamic. Which it is). It kinda made my skin crawl. It's really difficult to describe, but this professor is discussing Islam and "Islamic fundamentalism" in a way that Natalie made me feel really uncomfortable with last year in Secularism and Fundamentalism. It's a difficult subject. I feel ishy when a professor laughs at the seemingly backwards and hypocritical ways of Saudi Muslims (I specify Saudi here because his opinion of these men has as much to do with politics and the way Jordanians feel about Saudis as it has to do with religion and how secularists view Muslims), but I also feel ishy about women not being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Where do we draw the line between cultural understanding** and just being wrong?
... Okay. That got serious in a hurry. Here, have another adorable camel picture!
Habibi Shilou.
*Here in the Middle East, what the United States calls the first Gulf War (1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) is actually referred to as the second Gulf War. The first was the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. The third is the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
**By cultural understanding, I do not mean cultural relativism. Cultural relativism also makes me feel kinda ishy. I just mean having an appreciation that we, the relatively secular West are not always "right" and "secularism" is not always synonymous with "progress." Similar to cultural relativism, but different.
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