The Divide Between Them, and Me

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the long lapse again, I'm getting really lame about this. After today, I'm going to try just writing shorter entries in the hope that will keep me writing.

Anyway, there's no way I can recap everything so I guess I'll start with the major issue that takes up most of my thought these days, and that is how do I want to interact with Syrian culture in conjunction with my aspirations for learning the Arabic language at a high fluency level. It's a more difficult question than it seems.

I met an old friend in Amman a few weeks ago, and he was eager to offer insights. He is one of the few people I know who has reached an admirable language level. I know this might sound surprising but really it's unfortunate and disappointing how few of us Arabic students truly obtain impressive linguistic abilities, in my opinion. This friend says that more than his amazing tutor, who I'm using, it was his complete rejection of ex-pat culture that allowed him to improve. He moved to a poor neighborhood, literally without a single foreigner, he "lost" his phone with his international friends' numbers, and struggled to befriend his neighbors.This is essentially comparable to a few other people's experience and the resulting language fluency.

But there's a problem with this pattern I've noticed--without exception, they are always guys. That also means that in my entire experience here I've met two women who I can personally attest have truly impressive linguistic abilities. One of them is Kristen Brustad, an Arabic professor who helps head the CASA program I'm in, and who wrote the leading Arabic textbook in the U.S. She's married to another leading Arabic professor who is Lebanese. Ok, and the second one is an American girl I met last year in Cairo, and I sort of disclude her because she studied Arabic for such a long long long time...

And there's the rub--everyone who tells me to abandon all traces of Western culture and enjoyments is a guy. I don't think it's just coincidence. It's much easier for a guy to "abandon Western culture". Because for him, it just means changing friends and not bringing girls home late at night. For me, it means changing my dress, restricting my movements, and never ever bringing male friends over at any time. A guy can come home whenever he wants and no one asks questions, but if I did the same, people would notice--they already do now. I'm amazed all the things my family notices and feels the need to comment on when they are supposedly asleep. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's a taboo that would dampen the good will needed to find the kind of friends I'm after. It's easy for a guy to "de-Westernize" his relationships because that doesn't correlate with as severe a restriction on his freedoms.

And when it comes to freedoms, I realized that I'd also found the inner core of Erika that is 100% American. I'd always prided myself on being flexible and open to other cultures, but I have to admit how wrong I was. Now that I'm truly facing the opportunities to hang out with "normal Syrians", i.e., who are not upper class/Westernized, I'm starting to realize that I have my limits... And they are control over my time and person. The other aspect of hanging out with Syrians who don't speak English and are therefore not upper class/Westernized is that you are totally at the mercy of their cultural norms. What tortures me isn't hijabs, or conservative religious views, or patriarchal households. Vast political differences? No problem.

No, for me, it's the almost unfathomable difference in conceptualization of time and personal space...That means that on a weeknight, when I have an average 4 hours of homework or more, if I go to a Syrian girl's house at 6, leaving at 10 is "so early!" and that's after extricating myself from countless attempts by her mother at getting me to spend the night. I know, it's very sweet and generous, but there's a really good phrase for this in Arabic in my opinion: "ghamartny bilutfak" which means, "you have inundated/overwhelmed me with your kindness." It's a compliment here, but I relate to the more literal meaning myself.

The girl whose family has taken a liking to me is named "Fufu" which is a nickname for Fatima here. She is the secretary for my tutor, and she's 20. Her friends kind of annoy me and her family is sweet but they overwhelm me. I also suspect Fufu isn't totally into me either, but is just trying to be polite. When my tutor, Hussein, confronted me about the very few times I'd hung out with Fufu, I tried to skirt the issue, muttering about being busy. But Hussein was on to me. "Erika," he said, "If you want to learn Arabic in the way I know you want to learn it, you're going to have to get used to the fact it means hanging out with people whose schedules and lifestyles you are not used to, who maybe you won't even find interesting or maybe even like very much at first. You'll have to hang out with people who are actually different if this is important to you."

I realized how right he was. I've already met some "really cool" Syrian girls who remind me (but of course could never replace) Maram. They are so amazing to talk to, and are really funny. And they also don't expect me to hang out with them for more than two hours at a time if I'm busy and they don't ask a million questions about what I'm going to go do. But, they also use a lot of English, even when talking to each other. Hussein was right--they're not "actually" different. They have some contrasting world views maybe, perhaps a different sense of personal style. But there is really very little about them that forces me to conform to the norms of the average Syrian person's way of life. And I realized that I could meet tons and tons of Syrians and never really have done immersion. In some sense, or for me anyway, it really is class, and not nationality, that matters.


When I meet Ola and Noor, the two middle class girls I know, we go to cutesy restaurants in the best part of town with sparkling full glass windows and froofy chairs. Fufu lives on the outskirts of Damascus in a cinder block apartment building, where household doors are adorned with stickers of Hassan Nasrallah and al-Asad. At dinner, her family and I share a single water glass, and even the exciting occasion of a Western guest doesn't put something extravagant, like meat, on the table.

I've found myself in a position, in some ways for the first time, where I feel unsure of how successfully I can let go, or loosen up. This might not be so much a culture clash as much as one with my personal values: 1) obsessive compulsion over school work and time scheduling and the more relaxed and, let's say, "flexible" sense of time. Ask my roommates--my dorm room was always littered with old daily time schedules I would write up for myself obsessively,by the half-hour that is, almost every day. 2) What is "interesting"? I realized how arrogant I have been. Because I know another reason people like Fufu didn't compel me was that I never knew what to talk about. I felt unsure about asking deeper questions about religion or politics. She certainly never brought that up herself...What on earth do we have in common? And how on earth do I find that out? I've really come up against something I'm a little baffled at how to approach. It's one thing to approach a poor Syrian or Iraqi as a journalist and ask their opinion on jobs or war or the economy, . But the art of entertaining small chat, the kind for developing real lasting relationships and not getting desired information, with people who are so different from me--I'm at a loss.

A new adventure? I hope so...and hopefully I can prove to Hussein, and myself, that I can confront the real divide between myself and this culture.