Traffic in Amman and A Proposal

People drive crazy in Amman. I've seen this so far mostly from the back of taxis or trying to cross the street. Today though, I was walking home from Suq Sultan, near my apartment building and an accident. One car tried to make a quick left turn and got hit by oncoming traffic. His car veered off the road and hit a stone wall. Within 15 seconds every car on the street had stopped. All the men got out and, before even 30 seconds had passed the car was surrounded by at least 20 men. They helped the guy out of his car, someone brought him a big water bottle and helped him sit down on the curb.

Earlier today, I received my first proposal of the trip. I was in a bookstore, trying to buy flashcards, which was difficult because no dictionary that I can find includes the word for flashcard or even notecard. Although women aren't supposed to speak to strange men, generally, I figured it would be okay to try to explain to the shop owner what I wanted. He was very helpful and brought me some big index cards. I asked him if there were any smaller ones and he seemed surprised and asked me if I spoke Arabic. I told him I spoke a little and that I was studying more in Amman. Women aren't supposed to give any extra information about themselves, doing so is considered flirting, but he seemed genuinely, platonically interested and he was an older guy so I figured it wasn't a problem to offer up literally 4 or 5 extra words to practice my conversational skills. He went to the backroom to get smaller notecards and brought them out to me. He asked me how many packs I wanted and added, as a side note, that I was very pretty. I didn't really know what to say so I just said thank you and tried to ask how much the notecards were. The word for how much in Ammiya is Addish. I asked addish pointing to the cards, and he told me 2JD. Then he kept asking me addish? addish?. I didn't understand what he was asking I figured it was a language barrier and just tried to give him the money for the cards. He started saying, in Arabic, something that sounded like 20 or 200JD, I wasn't really sure which. He then got out a piece of paper and wrote down 250000. I was confused because I knew the notecards couldn't possibly cost that much, so I asked my friend Morgan to ask him if I could pay him with a twenty or needed smaller bills. She came over and had conversation with him in better Arabic than I understand. Apparently, he was trying to buy me from her, although I'm not sure why he thought she was the one in charge of me. We weren't really sure if he was trying to buy me as a wife or just asking how much it would cost to sleep with me, but we paid for the cards and left.

Here it's pretty common for men to sort of tease Western women, proposing or propositioning them, even if they're dressed as conservatively as I was in a floor length skirt and a loose, long sleeved, high necked shirt, that covered my wrists. I asked another friend about it, who spent a semester in Egypt, and he explained that it's a kind of joking but serious at the same time. It's roughly like the men are saying "do you want to sleep with me? Ha! Just kidding, but, you know, really, if you did there's a room in the back...just joking, of course...but it's there. If you're interested." Generally they don't really expected anyone to respond to their proposals or take them seriously.

I'm bothered much less by being hit on by men here than in the U.S. In the States, if someone is hitting on you on the subway you just put up with them or move your seat, you can't really scold them and get them to stop, it's like they think it's their right to make sexual jokes about you, tell you how nice your body is, or talk about how they'd like to take you on a date. Here though, men will offer to take you on a date or tell you you're pretty, but, as I learned after the fact from a friend of mine, if you click your tongue in a disapproving way or tsk tsk reminding them that "hadda haram," that's forbidden, they'll back off because they know that the way they're talking to you is inappropriate. It seems like some men like to test Western women, but, if they realize that you know what's acceptable behavior and what's not they'll apologize and leave you alone.

The vast majority of my interactions with men here have been very pleasant. Even the man who tried to buy me was very polite, only looking at my face, and avoiding eye contact, which is considered the respectful way to address a woman.

We have our first official day of classes at Qasid tomorrow! We catch our bus at 7:40AM. Ma salama.