From the start of my home-stay in Amman, I made it clear that I was a practicing and self identifying Jew. I felt that this was an important first step in building an open relationship with my host family, as well as in exploring how my sense of identity could co-exist within an Arab household. I have often wondered if the members of my massihi, or Christian, host family in Amman ever feel lost as the call to prayer echoes across their country. For them, my religion has been treated consistently as an acceptable attribute, despite continued confusion over the concept of my being both Jewish and American.
Yet I did not approach my three-day Bedouin home-stay in the town of Um Al-Qutain with a similar intent. In fact, I had naively not even considered the issue until my Bedouin home-stay father, Farhan, inquired about my religion within the first few minutes of our meeting. At ease, lounging on a faded yellow cushion across from me, he provided me with two options, Muslim or Missihi. I sat there confused in my too big dish-dasha and disorderly head scarf, stared into the old man’s still lively, brown eyes, and deliberately lied.
I had never before denied my religion; but, in that moment of panic, I barely contemplated the decision. I felt reassured by this purely instinctive choice about ten minutes later when I met the husband of Ruphaedel, one of my home-stay sisters. Abdullah, or Mr. Saudi Arabia as I prefer to call him, drove into the dirt driveway in his Mercedes and leisurely strolled through the curtained doorway of the simple, cement house sporting a white Lacoste t-shirt and western styled sports pants. He immediately engaged me in conversation, during which I learned that he was a proud Saudi business man who traveled six hundred kilometers in his Mercedes every week, splitting his time between his pregnant, Jordanian wife, Ruphaedel, and his first wife and child in Saudi.
“What do you know about Saudi Arabia?†Abdullah directly asked.
As I began to list names of Saudi cities, I was for once thankful that my beginner Arabic skills limited the potential complexity of my responses.
The next day, I sat in the heat of the house’s second story (which following tradition belonged to Zaid, the oldest son, and his wife) playing computer games with Ala’a and Muhammad, two of the family’s seven children. After exhausting their amusement with an aging version of Grand Theft Auto, Muhammad began to search through all the games stored in the memory of the computer. Suddenly a Jewish star flashed before my eyes, with English words such as malice and evil rotating through the six corners. We must hunt them at their origins, the bottom of the screen read in both English and Arabic. I felt a frozen disconnect as Muhammad exited the game, his reasoning remaining a mystery.
Before my arrival in Um Al-Qutain, a town of about five thousand on the border with Syria, I knew simply that the Bedouin were renowned widely for their hospitality, as well as for a cornucopia of tea and coffee. With reflection I can see that my choice to hide my voice was one of ease; I did not dispute the perception that only Muslims and Christians care to visit the semi-desert from which the Bedouin derive their name. Part of me was tired of feeling, as I often did in Amman, that I was the token Jewish woman whose actions and mannerisms were immediately true of every other. I wanted to immerse myself in the culture of the community and not feel the constraints of my distinction and the lack of words to describe my personal beliefs. I too was motivated by a fear of the stereotypes and myths that I may embody, and the mistrust from others that my admission might invite during those three days of unknown, alone in Um Al-Qutain.
Yet still I wonder if such was the true state of my situation. I lied to the family who invited me in, and for this I feel a great guilt. I judged them based on their head scarves and Bedouin dress, and I relied on preconceived notions regarding their beliefs. I did not give them the chance to express the individuality that I myself desired to embrace.
I felt a great conflict rage within as I spent three pleasant days removed from my previous sense of reality. The last night of my stay, sitting as I had the previous two nights on the yellow cushions brought out to the porch, I watched the distant sun set from beyond the village. My ill fitting dish-dasha had been graciously replaced the first day with a smaller, black one by Ala’a. I too felt at a greater ease among the family now, more experienced and comfortable with the long moments of silence that came with the constant sitting and tea drinking. In the stillness of the desert dusk, as the temperature finally began to descend amid the call to prayer, life felt gloriously effortless.
But this calm would not remain. A moment later tears began to gather as I contemplated the personal implications of my having claimed to be a Christian. I quickly excused myself for the bathroom, and there, in the small room consisting merely of an ancient light and a simple hole, I burst into tears, trying desperately to wipe them away with the flowing arms of my dish-dasha. I cried for my lie and for my sense that I needed to deny.
