Explicit

He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn. – Jeremy Bentham

A lovely sunset picture of the Dead Sea and Israel (or Palestine?) in the distance, for your enjoyment. More on that later.

Wow, so Gaddafi’s dead. Movers informed me just as we got home from Arabic classes on Thursday, settling into our daily afternoon ritual of slumping into the living room sofa and losing ourselves in the Internet for a good hour. We both looked at each other in shock and then started speed-googling for any related news until I remembered that we had to pay the electric bill. So I took out nine dinars (about $13) and Movers followed me to our landlord’s house, since it would be somewhat awkward for me as a young, single, and unrelated woman to visit his place alone.

Of course, our landlord happily invited us in to watch the news on Al-Jazeera with him and his family. His wife served us bubbly orange soda on a gorgeously adorned tray, his sons shyly sat with us, and we stared in horror at the images we saw spread across the television screen. A blown up, somewhat blurry photo of Gaddafi with a gash in his left temple and a pathetic expression full of pain on his face. A video of Gaddafi’s second-in-command collapsed in the back of a pick-up, his face an eerie shade of blue, his eyes frozen in the horror of his death, a rugged gash torn deep into his neck. Would any of these images ever be publicly broadcast by a widely recognized news source in the states?

In broken Arabic, I explain to my landlord that we’d never see this kind of images on American news channels. They would be seen as too inappropriate, too gory.

My landlord raised his eyebrows in surprise and said in Arabic, “Really? Here, people need to see these images to know that what they are hearing is actually true. They need to see evidence.” Understandable.

I couldn’t help but continue to compare between cultures. I thought about all the gory violence in fictional movies that spring from Hollywood. There’s no less violence that’s publicly accessible. But, with the exception of what you can find on the internet, it’s mostly fictional. So, if America is already very violence-oriented, if any 11-year-old could youtube Saddam Hussein’s hanging and if Americans flood the movie theatres to see Saw 8, why is real violence so taboo in the news? Food for thought.

Speaking of explicit, my Arabic teachers love nothing more but to have us dissect and study the most controversial topics. My “Arabic in the Media” professor loves to give us fiery articles to translate, and then asks us to debate the topic. I squirmed when we debated whether domestic violence should be stopped, and whether the government has any right to step in. I felt even worse when I had to debate whether the hijab is wrong, especially when my teacher herself covers her head. My “Arabic in Literature” professor asked us this week about our opinions on the death penalty. All the students from Western countries were against the death penalty while all the students from so-called Eastern countries were for it. The conversation got messy fast, and ended with one student, an older man from Turkey, claiming in Arabic that, “You don’t understand because you don’t have children.” I was waiting for about half the class to start ripping open their shirts and throwing chairs. “So, next topic,” my teacher eagerly interjected.

Controversy is everywhere in this country, and people love it. From women’s rights to human rights to immigration to religion, I observe something that would incite hours of debate if I brought it up among a group of Jordanians. Or a group of expats, for that matter. Because the type of foreigners who are attracted to the Middle East love drama. I’ll probably go into the different types of expats (and Americans, specifically) that find themselves enamored by the Middle East. It’s quite a funny phenomenon. But that’s for a later post.

Little Mac

"No matter how much cats fight, there always seems to be plenty of kittens." - Abraham Lincoln

Our friends invited us to come visit a bird park near their apartment. We wandered through crowds of families, past children who were excitedly stretching out their arms as far as they could through the double bars to reach the animals that frantically scrambled for any morsel they could snatch. The kids seemed especially keen on feeding the monkeys, which were in their own section of the park. Mothers stoically watched their sons climb up the bars. The monkeys eagerly mirrored the boys’ actions, climbing up their own cage’s bars. Reaching the top of the gate, the boys would then carefully balance their weight as they tipped themselves over, leaning forward to offer their fruit roll-up or cheese curl. We enjoyed the sight, little monkeys feeding other little monkeys.

Suddenly, destiny stared us in the eye, and destiny came in the shape of an emaciated, barely-able-to-mew kitten. Mover, one of my flatmates, first spotted the kitten, shivering and looking pathetically alone, by the park’s bathrooms. A man smiled at Mover’s attention and, perhaps as a kind gesture, kicked the kitten towards her. The little guy toppled over himself and began mewing desperately. Mover gasped, took him up in her arms, and ran over to us to show us what she found.

Once little children saw us holding and petting the kitten, they shyly came over to watch. We carefully held out the little fuzz ball and asked if they’d like to pet. Some tentatively reached out their fingers and giggled when the kitten looked at them with as much curiosity for them as they had for him. Bird, my other flatmate, noticed how the way one person changes her treatment of an animal changes the way everyone treats the animal. All it takes is one person.

Mover had already introduced the idea to Bird and I of adopting a cat while we were here. We welcomed the idea, and when this tiny possibility looked up in our eyes, we couldn’t say no. We tried to logically examine the pros and cons of the decision, but within five minutes, Bird settled the debate by determinedly walking out of the park with the little one wrapped up in her scarf.

Now in our friends’ apartment, searching the Internet for instructions on how to care for a feral kitten, we watch as the small bundle of fuzz and ribs transforms into a death machine as he attacks and devours spoonfuls of wet cat food. His aquamarine eyes are frozen in an incredibly sad expression. They look like giant pools of depression, the epitome of sadness. I think I hear violins playing whenever he looks up at me. His tangerine orange fur and white belly will look nicer once we give him a bath. He’ll be a cute kitten once he starts eating. I notice that we keep using the future tense with him.

Our friends speculated on a name. One guy suggested that we name the kitten after a dinosaur. “Pterodactyl,” I suggested jokingly. For some reason, that name caught on like wildfire among the guys, and they started calling the little guy “Pterry,” complete with the silent P. Mover gave us one of her looks and sternly shook her head. Nope, we’re finding a new name.

Back at Balconyland, we watched as the kitten unsteadily walked around the living room, never straying too far away from us. Pet care stores are in short supply in Amman, so we decided to pilfer sand from one of the many adjacent construction sites as litter. We asked our landlord about the kitten, and all he said on the subject was, “I had a tenant that had a cat here once, and the cat destroyed all the furniture.” But he said it with a smile, so we’re interpreting his words as a tentative yes.

Within a week, the kitten has gotten incredibly fat. We admire his bulging belly as it almost touches the ground. Suddenly, the little guy has a growth spurt so that his body frame matches his growing stomach. He’s now a feisty ball of energy. Soon he’s teaching himself the art of pouncing. As we do homework, he cleverly disguises himself behind a leg of the dining room table as he plans his next attack on our ankles.

One day, I come up with a name. “Alain McNamara,” I offer to my flatmates. McNamara is the name of our program coordinator. We all love it. Now we’re all keen to say, “Ah, Alain bit my finger!” and “I think Alain is hiding under the table,” and we find ourselves thoroughly entertained by the complimentary imagery of our coordinator mirroring the kitten’s actions. Soon we adopt the nickname “Little Mac,” and we look forward to the day when we can introduce the Big Mac to the Little Mac.

Little Mac started attacking everything to the point where I jokingly speculated on whether he was rabid. I imagine a horror film where a little zombie kitten infects three innocent, unknowing flatmates and causes a zombie epidemic throughout Amman. But we’re all still healthy (I think) and Little Mac is now the vision of health.

He’s a daredevil, jumping off of heights that are several stories to him. He enjoys Kamikaze missions. He will jump off of my bed, land on the window curtain, and hang there until his mewing attracts someone’s attention. He finds that the shaky covers of the drain lids are fun to surf on. He’s getting better about getting lost in a dark room and mewing until someone comes to rescue him. He enjoys watching Glee. Anything and everything is interesting, and absolutely everything is a chew toy.

Like most parents, Mover, Bird, and I find that our child takes up a huge chunk of our everyday conversations. Notice that this post is about twice the size of all the other ones, and it has pretty much nothing to do with my experience in Jordan. I promise I won’t indulge in my obsession with Little Mac too much via this blog, and that I will actually tell you more about my life in Jordan. Next time. J