I'm So Sorry, I Don't Think I Fully Caught Your Racial Slur.

Overnighting in Aqaba to provide support for the Ambassador's trip, I tried out my Arabic on the fellow at the hotel front desk. After about two sentences ("I'd like to pay for my room." "Do you take credit cards?") he expressed a desire to use his English. Being the consummate diplomat, I assented.

"Your Arabic is good."

"Thank you." ...for your kind lie, I added silently. "It's hard to find a chance to practice, since so many people I meet speak English." This last bit I had to say twice, since my attempt in Arabic didn't come across the first time.

"Yes, I try to always practice my English." He shot me a smile which could only be termed as 'beaming'. "I like to learn from the niggers."

"Oh?" I tried to sound nonchalant, but ended up somewhere closer to 'horrifically caught off guard'. Perhaps I had misheard..? "Oh?" I repeated hopefully.

"You know, Tupac, Fifty Cent." He began humming a refrain I could not identify and made some motions I could only assume were dance moves; a picture of my face at that moment would have made an excellent Stuff White People Like entry. "I know it's not good English, but..." he shrugged, still beaming.

"Well, it's not standard." I considered how best to let him know that the 'n-word' wasn't exactly standard, either. He was clearly very proud to have formed this insight into American culture. I shifted from one foot to the other and gave a bit of a throat-clearing cough. "You know..."

"Oh, here's your credit card back!"

Another fine diplomatic moment goes down in the annals of history.

America and Her Magical Powers

"Sir, I'm sorry, but we can't frame that."

"What?! Isn't this the US Frame Shop? Didn't you see my US passport?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"But what?! Just what are my tax dollars going towards, anyways? Do I need to write my congressman just to get you to fill a simple request?"

"But Sir, it's... jello."

"So?"

"You really can't frame jello."

"Why not? Don't tell me you've never had this request before. What good are you people, anyway? I want to speak to the consul! You're telling me the US government can't handle jello?"

"Well, it's not exactly standard. I mean... I'm not really sure how you'd attach it to the mat. And then there's the problem of leakage. Jello is awfully runny. Oh, and I am the consul."

"Look, you know how the frame shops are in this country: no respect for framing laws and practices; no appreciation of basic framing standards. That's why I came here -- I thought the US Frame Shop could help me. But now you're telling me you can't help me. What am I supposed to do with this jello? Just leave it unframed? Do you know what a bind that puts me and my family in? Are you really sure you can't just do something?"

"Well. I suppose, maybe, we could build a custom box from plexi-glass. We could design the box to be shallow, to go against the wall, then build the frame around it. We'd have to order the plexi pre-cut since we don't have any in stock, but we could put it together with caulking to make it watertight. Of course, we'd have to order the caulking, too, and buy a caulking gun. If we ran the airvac non-stop for a week it would clear the dust out of the warehouse enough that the caulking and plexi should stay clean while they were drying. We'd probably have to build some special vice grips as well, to hold it square without scratching it while it dried. Then, once that was all done, if you put the jello in the plexi-glass box, theoretically, I suppose, you might be able to frame it..."

"Great. I need it an an hour. Oh, and I don't want to pay for it. That's not a problem, is it?"

"Sorry, Sir, I just noticed -- is the person in line behind you carrying a human head?"

"Yeah, but he's just a greencard holder. I don't think he'll want it framed with conservation glass or anything."

Tea in the صحراء

Having made my first (of I'm sure many) trips to Petra and Wadi Rum, I now feel highly confident that I could live completely unassisted in the desert -- surviving on merely my wits and instincts -- for two, maybe even three hours. One and a half without chapstick.


It was beautiful, though; the closest thing I can imagine to walking on the bottom of the ocean. Everything was suspended and still and lulling. I didn't expect the desert to feel so maternal.

At one point, our Bedouin guide turned back and asked "انت مبسوطة؟": Are you happy?

"Yes," I told him. "Very much."

The God of Small (Freshly Laundered) Things

Picking up my drycleaning from the corner store after work, I was all business as I flipped through my bag to find my ticket. "I think you have some pants for me," I said to the man in Arabic. Pausing a moment to look up from his ledger, he half-closed his eyes and placidly folded one hand over the other: "Insha'allah." The clearly tongue-in-cheek, vaguely Berkeley-esque notion that God's concentrated will would be required to guarantee the presence of my work trousers led to a somewhat irreligious snort of amusement on my part. "Yes," I nodded, handing him the ticket. "Indeed. Insha'allah."

"Presbyterian."

"Are you Catholic or Orthodox?"

Hmm. I had been told this would happen. I'm American, therefore I must be Christian, but Christian here can only mean one of two options. A friend with experience in Jordan had warned me back in the States, "When they ask your religion, you'd better be one of those two, because if you're not then you must be one of 'those weird ones'."

My friend Heather thinks of these as Mary Tyler Moore moments. We'd already gone through my age and whether or not I was single, so I suppose religion was next in the logical progression. My typing skills, however, did not come up.*

I had decided before arrival that I would opt for Catholic. Having seen the movie Sister Act (once, I think on a plane...), I figure I'm moderately more qualified to fake Catholic than Orthodox. Plus, if I say it with a small 'c', that's not an outright lie. Right? Bad enough to be thirty and single. One hates to be labeled a religious fanatic on top of everything else.

But in this case the person I was talking to was savvy to foreigners and their erratic ways. Plus, we were going to spend the day together, and I didn't think I could keep up the pretense of a Catholic background, even with Whoopi Goldberg to guide me. I gambled she could take the truth.

"Neither."

Yeah, this was NOT the right answer.



*Kind of a shame. I don't like to brag, but that is the one area of my personal life in which I shine.

Concentrate! On Everything! And Tread Lightly.

Collecting my thoughts about this new job and place has been more difficult than I anticipated. Collecting my thoughts in general, in fact, is proving a challenge. Multi-tasking has never been something I particularly enjoyed; if a thing is worth working on, then I feel it's worth my full attention. ACS has a lot of things going on all at once, all of them needing my full attention... all at once. Or at least it seems that way now. When I get to be more of an expert, my hope is that assessing priorities will become more natural. Knowing how to triage seems like the key skill for this branch of consular work. Maybe for any type of service work.

Normally when I want to collect myself I'll seek out some alone time. Unfortunately, there's nowhere quiet or private to go in or around the embassy -- no tucked-away benches to sit on outside, no spare rooms, no little coffee shops within easy there-and-back-again-over-a-lunch-break walking distance. Not that I've found, at any rate. Space is at a premium, so this is understandable. Right now they're doing construction in the office area behind the client windows; today, the staff had a party with cake, also right behind the windows. It takes all my willpower not to turn around and say "Shhhh!" every five minutes. I must look more distressed than I had realized, as the Consular Chief this morning kindly offered me the use of her office should I need it. Part of me cringed. I have to remember to smile more when I'm trying to focus.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping a running list of 'Areas for Potential ACS Improvement'. I haven't really shared this with anyone; at this point, it's more like a hobby. It seems wise to figure out the logic behind current office priorities and systems first before making potentially disruptive observations -- more of that triaging skill I'm hoping to better develop. I don't want to throw off the established feng shui before I fully understand the consequences.

You are never qualified for the job you're going into, only for the job you just left. It's not exactly a comforting thought, but it's a true one. I want to be completely competent -- right now! -- so that I can quit bothering my colleagues, so that I can gain the confidence of the staff, so that I can help those people on the other side of the glass... but of course it takes time.

To give myself something else to fuss about, I bought a geranium:


We'll see if it fares better than the ones in Osaka.

!يااللّه

Friday morning is the start of our weekend, and thus the start of my exploration. The sky is shockingly blue and clear above the pale stone buildings. Every structure from here to the horizon is the same height and shape, repeated in soft undulation over the hills. Occasional empty plots, populated with cats and bits of candy wrappers, make breaks in the view.


The tinkling sound I couldn't identify turns out to be a herd of goats being driven through the neighborhood. Their bells ring like windchimes, though the animals themselves are quiet. The goatherd dismounts his donkey, adjusts his red and white headwrap, and enters the corner convenience store just ahead of me, leaving his flock to meander about outside in a cross-eyed, woolly fashion. To emphasize: There are goats in front of my apartment. And a donkey. Perhaps it's only a misguided love of culturally biased stereotypes, but witnessing this scene made me profoundly happy.

Inside the convenience store, a couple buying groceries is producing a more familiar sound. "Excuse me..." This is high folly given my Arabic aspirations, but I press on regardless. "Are you Japanese?" Why, of course you are. And of course you live in the building behind mine. And of course you know my friend Sara. The store clerk and goatherd both look seriously weirded out by all the bowing and non-English. I am not as weirded out as I should be, though the goats were honestly less of a surprise. There is no escaping Japan.

Having poured over various city maps, I am prepared enough to know that I have no real idea where I'm going. My normal way of exploration is to picture a taut string connecting me to my house; just so long as I have an idea of what direction the string is pulling from, I can usually find my way back. Usually. Eventually I'm going to need a car, at which point I suspect my string method will begin to fail me.

The people out on the street are mostly male and mostly idle. I say good morning, though maybe this isn't culturally appropriate. Responses are reserved, but not unfriendly. More goats. More cats. More houses. What I'm looking for is a maqhan -- a coffee shop. The goal is to find a place to sit and read.

No maqhan that I can see, though I've been ducking in and out of stores and wandering side streets for an hour. Settling for what seems the next best thing, I try my luck at a little falafel shop tucked between a butcher and a vegetable stand. My stomach is actually growling. The younger of the two men behind the counter looks at my expectantly.

"Uh." Performance time; ten months of training has come down to this. "Salaam wa alikum." So far so good! "[In Arabic, of a sorts:] I only speak Arabic a little. I'm sorry. But I'd like some food."

'Incredulous' is not too strong a term to describe the look he gave me. 'Peeved annoyance' might also be a good description.

"[From what I could make out:] What do you want? Falafel? Hummus?" He's ladling up different things out of various containers and showing them to me impatiently. "You want a 'saanduwish'?" A sandwich? Seriously? Is he making fun of me? I can feel my already low confidence crumbling. "Anything is fine," is my rather lame response. Heck, I don't know what I want. I want someone to pat me on the back for even trying to order lunch.

"Give her a sandwich." The older man intercedes. "Do you want to sit?" He's waving towards a table and spouting a stream of Arabic from which I'm picking up only every fifth word, but the context is clear enough. "Do you want tea?" Soon a falafel sandwich, a plate of pickles, and a glass of mint tea materializes in front of me. "Here, have the paper." He thrusts The Jordan Times in my hands. Locals drift in and out, some bringing their own bowls to be filled with hummus or fuul. The propane man stops by.

When I'm done eating, I ask if I can sit and read. Nods, waves of hands, a few questions about where I'm from ("Are you with the Americans, or the British?")... The younger man still looks annoyed. Another foreigner comes in and orders a sandwich completely in English, speaking loudly and rapping the counter glass with his knuckles when his order isn't understood. I forgive the younger man's peeved attitude immediately.

"This was delicious. How much is it?" The older man shakes his head, "No need. Welcome to Jordan." "No, really, I want to pay." He had given me far more than I'd asked for, and I hadn't been able to finish. The old man slaps me on the back as he hands me the half-read paper off the table. "Welcome. Good luck to you."

Next door at the vegetable stand, I ask for some nanaa, partially because the tea really was quite delicious, and partially because 'mint' is a word I know. I suppose by that same principle, I might also have ordered some 'pollution' or 'globalization'. I will figure all this out. .إن شاء الله