During these past few months my time in Jordan has turned from an adventure worthy of regular updates to a daily life like any other. I go to class, run errands, and study and rarely does anything notable happen. I have gotten so accustomed to living here that it does not seem like this experience will be over in six months. My frustrations with Jordan peaked a few weeks ago. Even though I still think Amman is such an easy place to live, there are basic struggles that can pile up and make a day unbearable. There are no gutters or storm drains, so when it rains the city becomes a muddy mess with water flooding parts of the road, making it impossible to walk or even drive in some spots. There is no insulation in buildings, so there is little difference between the outside and inside temperatures. Heating mechanisms are either expensive (electric) or dangerous (diesel). These are mostly problems for this season.
Unfortunately, what has proven to be the most aggravating part of daily life here continues year round. On any given day, a woman who dares to leave her house and walk down the street while not accompanied by a man, will likely be sexually harassed. There is always aggressive staring (which is way worse than it sounds, especially when coming from a whole group of men at the same time), creepy kissy-faces, whistling, and sexual comments. Women are also grabbed in the street. A seemingly popular replacement for this is men walking unnecessarily close, so if you move at all you will brush against them. If you’re waiting for a cab, which is how Jordanians seems to spend half their lives, then guys will walk past you a few times, staring at you and getting close so they can whisper comments about your body. Again, this is not something that happens every once in a while. If I’m standing on the street alone or with other women, then it’s almost guaranteed to happen.
If you are wondering, “does this happen to women who wear the hijab? What about women that cover themselves in black from head to toe?” The answer is yes, it does. Of course, as an obvious foreigner with questionable clothing decisions, I am probably seen as more available and therefore more of a target. It is incorrect to think that clothing has absolutely no bearing on the level of harassment, but it is also incorrect to think that there is any outfit that will eliminate harassment. In fact, my professor told us that the shabaab (young men) will adjust their harassment depending on how pious their targets are. If it is a woman wearing a niqab, they’ll pepper their comments with references to Allah and Muhammad.
With all the frustration and resentment that builds from dealing with this, I feel like I need to react in some way and that brings me to the most irritating part of street harassment. There is very little you can do to shame the harassers, or even get the message across that you are not interested. Ignore them and they continue, insult them and they laugh, stare back at them and they think you’re flirting. I honestly think that even if I slapped them they would be excited by that. Like everyone else, they just see what they want to, and in their case it is a city full of women craving their attention.
On the topic of delusional beliefs, these last few weeks I’ve been studying Jordanian superstitions. Also children's stories and folk tales in general. Here are some of the most interesting since many of the rest overlap with Western beliefs:
-Crows and owls are considered bad luck and when you see or hear one, someone you love will soon die.
-If you ever have a guest over and, for whatever reason, do not want them to return then you should break a glass when they leave.
The children’s stories are pretty creepy. There’s ‘The Man With the Burnt Leg’ (ابو رجل مسلوخة), the Bagman (ابو كيس), The Needle Man, Half Man (ابو نص انصيص), the list goes on, but they are all meant to terrify children who talk back to their parents, take too long in the shower, leave the house too late at night, etc.
Then there are stories that were believed to be true even by some adults and probably still are in some rural areas. My favorite one is about hyenas. It is said that hyenas will hide near houses and when someone walks by, the hyena pees on them. Their pee causes the person to go insane and think that the hyena is their father. The person follows the hyena back to its den, only to realize too late that they are about to be devoured. I would really like to know how a folktale like this gets started, but my impression is that it’s been around for a while.
I was also told stories about real people who were so notorious that they became fictionalized. For some reason, all of them lived in the Jordanian city of Zarqa. There’s Abdullah Tojj, who was a huge man with face tattoos who ran the city, beating people up and robbing stores in the middle of the day without any fear of being stopped by the police. No one could win a fight with him and most people would not even try. People considered him immortal until one day when a bus drove past him and its side mirror hit him in the head and killed him. Then there’s Lubna the ‘Gypsy’ girl (the term Gypsy here just means that she was a bad person). She was a tomboy, something not generally accepted here especially for girls in their late teens, and she gained such a horrible reputation on the streets that no one would say no to her when she demanded money from them. Anyone that sold things on the side of the road or worked at bus stations were required to pay her a daily tax or else the group of 50 men who were in her gang would beat them up or kill them. Even the police would not mess with her because she threatened their families. Of course, she grew up under horrible circumstances. Her mother was imprisoned when she was eight and she never had a real home after that. She was raped as a teen and gave birth to a son who was immediately put in an orphanage. All of this may explain why she turned out the way she did, but it does not explain why so many men were completely loyal to her, working for her and following orders at the risk of imprisonment or even death.
In 2009, one of the impoverished workers that made daily payments to Lubna stood up to her and was brutally beaten by her and her gang. He survived the attack, tracked her down the next day and slit her throat. She died quickly and he was arrested. While in prison he told an incredible story about dealing with Lubna and explaining why he did the right thing by murdering her. If anyone wants to read it in Arabic his name is جهاد بني خالد and the title is قاع المدينة.
Also, here is a video of Lubna dancing, the only image of her that I could find:
