Rude Americans

We're starting to get some rain, "the Rain of Olives," one of my instructors called it. We'd mentioned before that many of the streets here are lined with olive trees. The olives are harvested in the fall, but ideally not until after the early autumn rains have fallen. It is said that olives harvested prior to these rains produce an oil that is inferior in quality and quantity than those olives picked afterward. Already we've seen some families out filling buckets with olives from the trees on the sidewalks.

Arabic studies continue in earnest while Arabic usage continues to be a source of constant mortification. Usually it's a case of confusing past and present tenses or mixing up gender. There is no "it" in Arabic. Everything is male or female. A table is feminine, a chair masculine. We bungle these things all the time making it very obvious that we are foreigners.

These faux pas can make for very awkward moments. We'd just finished having dinner with wife's uncle and his family. We were relaxing in his sitting room when wife thought it might be a good time to change 10m's diaper. She laid her in a corner of the room and commenced with the proceedings. 10m has been having some minor digestive problems, so I was curious to know how things were going. I asked wife in Arabic, "Is there anything (Fee shay)?" My So Cal inflections betrayed me and before you know it "Fee shay" was heard by our hosts as "Fee shy (Is there any tea?)," and one of wife's cousins pops up to prepare some tea for me. I realized what had happened and, feeling every bit the heel for coming off like a demanding brute, I apologized repeatedly explaining that I didn't want tea, that I was so sorry to come off as a rude guest and to please sit down because I really don't want any tea right now, I just wanted to know what was in 10m's diaper. When all had begun to understand what had happened, it was even worse. Now it sounded like I was asking wife if there was tea in 10m's diaper. The jokes went on forever about how 10m was capable of dispensing tea from her nether regions.

The hospitality here is truly amazing. The Arabs pride themselves on their hospitality and generosity. Wife mentioned in a previous post something about our harris, the door/watchman of the building. He collects around 12 JDs (Jordanian Dinars- the currency here) from each tenant every month. I estimate there are around 20 apartments in our building. That puts his monthly income at around 240 JDs (around $340/month). He's got a wife, a little boy, and a very colicky infant daughter. They live in one room with a curtain that sections off their sleeping area from their sitting area. They have a bathroom, but no kitchen. They have some burners set up in a spare room a few doors down from their apartment. It can only be accessed by walking outside. Tough times come winter, to be sure.

Imagine that. Now imagine that they are the ones to invite us to dinner. We go and sit in their little room and eat roasted meat and soup and seasoned macaroni. We sip sugary tea and struggle with our broken Arabic. Afterward, we return to our sprawling three bedroom palace amazed that people with so little would give so much.

It's like that everywhere. 5y tried to buy candy from the local market. She plunked her goodies down on the counter and started to count out her change. The shopkeeper refused to take her money, and then actually put more candy in her pile.

Walking home one evening by myself, three children approached me to offer me sweets. I refused, but they insisted. I took one. They continued to insist that I take more. I took another and excused myself, thanking them repeatedly. The oldest was maybe seven. I was in a daze all the rest of the way home. Back in the States, would I stop a complete stranger to offer him sweets? A foreigner? Would I bother to stop if a stranger back home offered me sweets? When I was seven, would I give up my sweets?

May God protect these people and their families.