All in a Wednesday

For better or worse, London is no longer an English city. There are many Anglophiles who would find such a claim contentious, even contemptible, but I don't think its such a bold assertion. London is a global city, and thats what I like about it. Everyday one is destined to encounter people from an assortment of far-flung places with a variety of far-out opinions. Today was no different.

When I jumped into the Tube at Holloway Road this morning, I sat near the most impressively elegant French woman and her adorable yet annoying daughter. The little girl, who was probably seven or eight years old, was fidgety on the train. She fussed with the purple bow in her hair and clicked together the heels of her silver ballet flats while whining about dying of hunger. Lately my usage of French has been limited to reading newspapers over people's shoulders on the train (un peu "creepy," I know) and trying to understand eight year olds, but this restless girl's mother inspired me to keep up my French. An integral concept in philosophy and social science is that one understands and defines oneself only in relation to others (or The Other, if you prefer excessive capitalization and are prone to quoting Hegel). Equipped with this intellectual framework and a year of living in London, I think I am beginning to understand the infamous interminable French and English rivalry! This French woman was amazing: amazingly chic in her black and white striped dress, onyx-colored blazer, and Greek-style sandals that exposed her painted toenails; and amazingly patient without being subservient as she handed her daughter napkins. I SO admire women who dress up despite having to feed querulous eight year olds on the underground.

Later this evening, I went to dinner at a Persian restaurant on Edgeware Road with two people in my International Relations program. Inevitably, we started discussing what we were writing our dissertations about. (A digression: the English higher education system refers to what is basically a short Master's degree thesis as a "dissertation," and to a long Ph.D. dissertation as a "thesis." I haven't quite gotten used to this, though I have taken to calling my roommates flatmates and my apartment a flat. It is a shorter word, afterall. But I don't think I'll ever in seriousness say "jumper," "loo," or "lorry," and I'm still not entirely sure if I should interpret "cheeky sod" as an insult or a term of endearment. Anyway, telling people that I'm writing a dissertation throughout the summer makes it seem a lot more difficult and important than it actually is). Nevertheless, I rather like my dissertation topic and I'm excited about the project, so I was enthusiastically describing it to my friends. (A disclaimer: the following sentence is extremely nerdy. Of course, if you're reading this blog, So Are You!) I explained how I was hoping to examine how Jordanian foreign policy is affected by the conflicting dynamics of regime security for the Hashemite monarchy, long-term national economic interest, the maintenance of Jordan's international reputation, and popular opinion and demands for democracy--especially by the 70% of the country's residents of Palestinian origin, who are frequently discriminated against in favor of the powerful Beduoin families close to the monarchy.

As it so happens, as I was describing "the King's dilemma" (How can a Malik modernize a monarchy, gradually liberalize a country in order to gain national and international legitimacy in the year 2009, and not make himself redundant, the victim of his own success?) to my captive audience over kebab, I realized that we had sat next to a table of Jordanians. I had first noticed the three of them when one man was extremely rude to the Chinese waiter when he didn't understand Arabic (at a Persian restaurant...), and then I overhead them conversing with curiosity about how we were chattering about Jordan. Since the guy kept looking at me, or, as I realize in retrospect, more probably at my V-neck shirt, I decided to engage them in a little polite restaurant conversation. I was thinking this was a good opportunity to practice my Arabic, but it was a decision that I came to regret. I asked him where he was from; predictably he said Jordan but when pressed as to where, he suggested that his family was 40,000 members strong throughout four powerful towns. He demanded to know how I spoke Arabic, exclaiming incredulously, "Surely you have Arab blood!" "No..." (I never know how to answer people's questions about why I've studied Arabic or am interested in the Middle East without sounding like an orientalist or a teenager or a spy). I asked him what he did in London and he evasively told me that he worked on "this and that, bits and pieces, yanni..." I quickly concluded that he didn't need to work and to the extent that he did it probably involved something sketchy, quite possibly with government money. Maybe that was an unfair assumption but nonetheless after swapping these pleasantries the conversation began to make me uncomfortable.

I tend to try to avoid unsubtle discussion regarding religion or politics with people about whose backgrounds I know nothing, but my Canadian friend shared none of my hesitation in this regard, nor any of my insight into this guy's likely loyalties. Instead, he saw an opportunity to elaborate on what we had just been talking about, and he enthusiastically lauched a barrage of overwhelmingly forthright questions at the group.

My jaw dropped when he nonchalantly asked them, "So, what do you think about the King?" and I felt really secure in my choice of research question when one man answered, "Of course, we love the King! I mean...Jordanians do not love him as much as they love his father, but he follows his father in all policies, or he tries to. We don't like that he married a Palestinian woman though. He should have married a Jordanian lady, or an English lady, like his father did." (A clarification: Queen Noor is actually American of Syrian and English descent, in that she grew up in the United States, but I guess if you're privileged as a result of your status as an "original" Jordanian whose family controls the army and the national institutions you don't grow up with a paradigm for thinking about people's heritage in such terms).

As if to illustrate this point, he proudly mentioned that he once "beat up a policeman and didn't even go to jail!" He added [ironically] that, "In Jordan, what matters is manners. It doesn't matter if you pray to God or to a stone, as long as you have manners. In this way it is the families of Jordan that matter, not the law." My Canadian friend couldn't get enough. He eagerly leaned in to ask, "Isn't that a problem?" I couldn't help to wonder how our new friend would manage to whitewash this answer, and I too leaned in as he continued, "No, its not a problem. We don't have any problems in Jordan. This is because the families [tribes] take care of things. For example, manners, we all know that there is only one reason that a man wants to know a woman, and when a man makes a relationship with a woman in a bad way, not in a respectable way, the families will make sure they are both finished. Halas."

Halas I was finished with my rice at this point, and while part of me wanted to record them and write down everything they were saying in defense of honor killings, a bigger part of me wanted to pay the bill and get out of there. My other friend, an Iranian, looked repulsed and receded from the conversation. I tried to hit his feet under the table in solidarity before he jumped up to get the check. Having grown up inundated with his fair share of repugnant political opinions, he had heard enough. He had just been telling us how his parents in Iran have to call his Canadian cell phone because the Iranian cell is blocked. He's pissed off because it costs $4/minute, but he doesn't have much choice. Apparently, calls from Iran to English mobiles have recently been blocked as well. Are English-Iranian relations still so bad after all of these decades? Or, like me, does he just never keep enough credit on his phone?