Saturday 12/6: Hefla kabeera!

Hey guys,

Sorry about my lack of posting. I realised two things in the past two weeks:

*1. I'm not interesting enough to post a blog for everyday
*2. It's hard enough trying to keep up with posting consistently, but insha'allah, things will go better.

I spoke about Abu Hazeem (my peer mentor) in one of my previous blogs but if you don't want to go back to check it out, here's the summary. He's a boss. See below:

Like I said, Boss.

So during the first week he actually invited me to come to one of his cousin's graduation party out of military college in his home in As Salt.

I leave around 4:45 on a Taxi to meet up with him by a bus station in a region called Swaylieh. Swaylieh is pretty much transportation central in Amman. There are buses to anywhere in Jordan there (one of Abu Hazeem's friends joked: "If you want to get to America, come to Swaylieh). I picked up Abu Hazeem and he directed him to this small shop in a small building on a decent sized street. We then went up a sketchy elevator and bought some blanks for his gun.

Yes it really was that sketchy haha.

We then went back to Swaylieh and took a bus to As Salt (Abu Hazeem's [going to shorten it to AH, no offense Abu Hazeem, your name just takes a long time to type :-P] friend gets off here, he told me I was welcome to have dinner at his family's house sometime, I'm telling you these Jordanians are absolutely excellent hosts). It was my first experience on one of the local buses that travel to destinations across Jordan. They weren't bad at all. The buses are a lot like the old school buses in Doha, except no air condition. This isn't too much of a problem because these drivers are booking it down the highways. Best part about them though is that it cost 50 cents to get to As Salt, nearly a 30 minute drive.

So we get to As Salt, AH grabs me a felafel from his favorite felafel place (score, <3 felafel), and then we go pick up the gun he's going to use for the hefla (party) that night. Arabs love firing guns at their parties (video to show soon).

We walked all the way to his cousin's place. In true arabic fashion (yet again), his cousin invites us into his house, serves us coffee, soda, and melon and they talk about the news. I follow shwai (little) of the conversation, but turns out he killed a nearly six foot long snake that got into his backyard with a rock. Looks like boss translates into Abu Hazeem in Arabic. After begging us to stay for dinner with them (something so simple as picking something up can turn into a multiple hour affair, it's absolutely amazing how this happens in Arabic culture), we left the house to catch a taxi to the hefla.

View on the way back from his cousin's place

Another view

We arrive at the hefla as it's about to get dark. I meet AH's relatives from his uncle's side. His uncle is dressed up in traditional arabic garb (see man dressed in white below) and bears a hefty beard. AH had to go leave quickly to change into his military style clothing, so he sat me down with his relatives.

I'm not going to lie, for the first few minutes I was actually a little scared. As I was walking over towards the family, I was sure to take off my American flag pin off my backpack; I didn't know what to expect really. I've been in situations like this plenty of times before, but never have I felt so alien. It was me, the only white American guy, in company of maybe 15, 20 middle aged men I have never met.

I began to talk in my best Arabic with one of AH's cousins close to me. I told them I was American, lived in Qatar for five years, studying engineering, and studying Arabic @ UJ. After that there wasn't much else I could talk about. One of his relatives came over (he was a bit more boisterous than the others) and started talking to me very quickly in Arabic. I got the gist of it replied the best I could, and then he began pointing at his uncle, the traditionally dressed, bearded man. He said in broken English "Bin Laden in Jordan! Tell Obama!". Everyone laughed, I laughed too, more out of nervousness more than anything. I'm sure he meant no harm or discomfort, but he kept going on after that in Arabic into something that I didn't really understand. I didn't really know what was going on, but no one was threatening or angered at anything, just really really happy. I felt a little bit better after that, was served some more coffee and some tea. The uncle joked around with me saying the tea was too sweet, he couldn't drink it, which did wonders to ease the nervousness.

Beginnings of the hefla

AH came back soon after, and the hefla began to fill up with scores of people in military garb. It really was cool to see. There wasn't much structure to it (like most of Arab culture), just a lot of dancing, gun firing, and fireworks. Best thing was, is this all happened in the middle of a busy street; cars were driving through debke (traditional Arabic dancing).

A debke line

The guys in military apparel dancing while a taxi passes by

The party went crazy, people yelling, dancing, speaking so much Arabic I couldn't understand, but it was fun. People always introduced themselves to me just like everyone else at the party and tried to make me feel at home. I sat next to a middle aged cousin of AH who spoke to me in English, practising his language while I practised mine. He spoke with me for much of the party, AH introduced me to a bunch of his other cousins, one of them studied French in university, they were all pretty amazed I was able to speak quite fluently! Only issue with speaking french now is that I would consistently mix up prepositions and smaller phrases with Arabic. My mind was swirling with intense concentration of me trying to separate the two.

After a bit of hanging out with AH's cousins, he brought me over to try dancing (which thanks to my previous debke knowledge from my Lebanese dance party in Pittsburgh wasn't too bad!). I did try some of the more traditional Jordanian dances (one of them is kind of like slap the bag, but instead of slapping the bag when you say something you dislike, you "stomp it to the ground" with a series of dance moves). Also, you might be able to hear the guy in the videos but a really high pitched voice usually making a weird noise, but that guy is one of AH's cousin's (surprise). He kept saying "Bryan Spencer! You are a brother among us! Ahlan wa sahlan!" (except in perfect Arabic). That really was one of the best things to hear. I really did feel welcomed after that. In addition, everyone started to call me "America" which was kind of fun. Videos after the jump.



Well that's pretty much my experience with the hefla kabeera. After that, I stayed over at AH's house, which has a beautiful view towards Amman. There I took some boss pictures with the gun (there's the explanation Mom!!!) and took a taxi to UJ in the morning.

Like a boss