Encounters with the modern hijab

This morning I experienced the full range of Jordanian morning noises. I had moved into my new apartment late last night and took some time settling in (including 40 minutes spent dueling it out with mutant Jordanian stealth mosquitos who were camped out in my room) which, all in all, kept me up later that I would have liked. Of course, that’s not the greatest thing when you live a block away from the mosque and sleep with your windows wide open.

Yup, that’s right! At about 4 a.m, I tossed and turned through the longest call to prayer of my life. Usually I would wake up and just pray, but out of fear for the mutant mosquitos and out of my exhaustion from the night before, I couldn’t get to unwrapping myself from the sheets (mosquito forcefield) and getting out of bed.

Then there were the trucks. Oh yes, the infamous Jordanian ice cream trucks that never were. They circulate through neighborhoods throughout each day, weaving through every street while continuously playing that almost-familiar music-box-like tune (which suddenly stops and reloops every 30 seconds or so). It would be pretty neat, except for the fact that no, they’re not ice cream trucks. They’re propane trucks.

For some reason these gas trucks seem to find frequent business by zooming through the streets with ice cream truck music through all hours of the day. I guess it makes sense, as homes here don’t have direct gas lines and therefore use these refillable gas tanks. But still, as an American, yeah, the gas man’s music does seem a little out of place, especially since when I look out the window I expect to see kids rushing toward the music for ice cream, not a sketchy truck full of gas tanks rumbling through the streets.

But no, that’s not the only truck. There’s also the formerly unknown truck that speeds through neighborhoods yelling Arabic out of loudspeakers. We’ve had no idea what this truck was saying and Jafer had been under the impression that it was some kind of propaganda mobile dispatched by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Finally, I asked Alain (our director) last week and he told us that it was actually the junk man. These guys roll through neighborhoods in their trucks and ask to collect any junk or unwanted furniture that they could find use for. I guess it’s a decent idea, but yes, definitely unfamiliar, confusing and noisy, especially when combined with the gas man.

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Yesterday was pretty relaxing until after Friday prayers, when I decided that I wanted to return the janky dustbuster and Jafer decided that he wanted to go shoe shopping (which was probably a good idea since most things are closed on Fridays except for malls and we had nothing better to do until the evening). We decided to hit up Meca Mall and City Mall/Carrefour (the Carrefour is in the city mall, which is very close to Meca Mall).

We were hungry and we decided that we couldn’t be caught eating at Kabob Express for the sixth time in seven days, so we went to Meca Mall to get food. It was kind of empty, as prayers had finished only an hour ago and people were still likely with their families, but we did waltz through to the food court and, after eating non-stop shawerma and kabobs for the last week, we decided to go American (since about eight of eleven restaurants there were American anyway). Burger King and Subway were the choices of the hour, then we spent some time exploring the mall and looking for Jafer’s shoes.

This is when I began to confirm a notion that’s been developing in my mind over the last few days: hijabis in Jordan seem to be more stylish and attractive than non-hijabis. If that’s wrong, or seems like a weird thing to say, I apologize, but I do have to say that wow, I have seen some really really pretty hijabis here. And that’s an understatement. Fine, I’ll just come out with it: Jordanian hijabis are hot.

All right! All right! I’m sorry, I know that I’m not supposed to be checking out hijabis, but I’m sure some of my Arab friends will acknowledge that being a hijabi is kind of the norm out here and that for some reason, there is some pretty serious hajabi fashion going on. Flashy hijabs are ubiquitous, with sparkling pinks, greens, yellows and blues that tend to draw your eye. Also prevalent on hijabis are trendy clothes and jewelry. Not specific to hijabis, but to upper class Jordanian women in general, are the snazzy and stylish mobile phones.

I’ve seen some of the most creative hijabi clothing here, some of which is also visible in the states, and that, for lack of a better word, I must describe as “cute.” A lot of them wear slender-cut clothes, to put it midly (yes, I guess that means they’re pretty fitted) and the girls here get pretty clever with their skimpy tank tops and skirts worn over long sleeves and pants.

If this description has seemed drawn out and excessive to some, please excuse me, but I can’t help but be intrigued by this trend with hijabs here. Many girls that I’ve seen before have been able to dress smartly with their hijabs and in a way that is not unattractive by any means, but here it seems to be the norm to add the hijab as a modest accessory to an overall creative and carefully pieced outfit that seems to qualify as conservative and modest (which might be a stretch) while being alluring at the same time. I mean, I know a lot of non-hijabis who dress skillfully, but I guess I didn’t expect the same care and style to be taken by Jordanian hijabis here. It’s fascinating, to say the least.

We checked out the fourth floor of Meca Mall (really the fifth floor) where we found a movie theater and decided to text some of our friends, inviting them to see bourne ultimatum with us at 5 p.m. We then tried to return the dustbuster.

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So we headed out of the mall, intending to grab a taxi to take us to City Mall, which couldn’t have been more than a half-mile away, but we weren’t exactly sure how to walk there, plus it was extremely hot and we thought it’d be worth the small far for the cab ride. We were refused by two cab drivers, who insisted that we could walk there, so we got some directions and decided to suck it up.

Ten minutes later we found ourselves on the side of a steep and rocky hill, trying to traverse our way down to a road below that would lead us to City Mall. We had followed the directions of a military officer to the top of this hill, from which we could see the mall directly in front of us, no more than 400 meters, except that between us and the mall was this 80 foot hill. Below the hill was the road to the mall, so the question was how to get to the road to get to the mall. We shrugged and started hiking with the dustbuster in hand.

I can imagine, if I had passed by in a car, that I might have thought of us as two hoodlums, up to no good and hiking on this hill for absolutely no reason. It was a little absurd. There were rocks, and cacti (which poked us both more than once) as well as sections of white dust (I believe it was limestone) that was getting kicked up in clouds around us as we made our way down the hill. We made about three different approaches toward the road and kept running into dead ends (we would have had to jump 10 feet onto the road below to make it). When we finally found a safe route to the bottom my shoes were white and I dusted them off, brushing clouds of white into the air.

We made the rest of the trek to the mall and then I began the unnecessarily long process of returning the dustbuster. Patience is a necessary virtue in this country where the simplest of tasks can involve the same amount of processes as a nuclear missile launch, involving sequences of procedures and multiple approvals just to get a refund.

Observe: I approached the customer service counter and explained that I wanted a refund (this store is like an enormous Target or Kmart, so there are customer service desks, and bag checks, etc). The dustbuster didn’t work, I said. The woman passed me on to a desk called “After-sale service” or something like that. I had to explain my situation to two different people. The first person listened, then tapped another guy and he listened as well. I told him that it hadn’t come with a charger, then they gave me a crappy charger when I had complained a couple days prior. I wanted my money back. The second guy said OK and got on the phone to call a series of superiors to get approval. When he hung up he told me OK. He picked up the dustbuster box and put it behind the counter, then pulled out a transaction slip to detail the product model, price and reason for return. Then he put a post-it on the dustbuster box. He asked for my signature. He stapled my receipt to the slip. He walked away and got it stamped three times by some security guard somewhere else. He came back. He stapled everything together and held it out to me. Done? Nope.

Go back to the customer service desk and give them this slip, he said. OK, I said. Waiting at the customer service desk. Some lady takes this stapled packet that I’ve now collected. She asks me what I want. I tell her I want a refund. She asks me if I want store credit or money back on my credit card. I tell her that I want money back on my credit card. She says OK and asks for my card. Done? Nope.

She then gets on a Nextel phone and “chirps” some other supervisor. The supervisor soon appears and places my card in one of those old-school credit card imprint machines that you use for manually imprinting transactions on. He asks me to sign the form where it says “manufacturer signature.” I point that out, but he says it’s OK. Done? Nope.

He gives my old packet of approvals and receipts to this other girl, who goes and double checks it with the man in the After-sale service department. She returns a minute later. Then the superior guy leaves with my that credit slip that I signed with the credit card imprint on it and takes my credit card as well. He goes to the After-sale booth and returns a minute later. He has a photocopy of all the documents as well as my card. Finally, he hands me the credit receipt and my card and tells me I’ve been credited 22 JDs.

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We decided to buy some groceries, etc. while we were there. It was already 4 p.m. and no one had really responded to my mass invite for Bourne Ultimatum so we figured we’d just go home afterwards and I decided to stock up on yogurt and bread while we were there. I was purchasing seven of those individual serving yogurt containers when I got a call from Unaza, another Fulbrighter. She said that her, Sarah and Monica were going to join us for the movie at Meca Mall. “Great!” I said, not realizing that I had just bought seven containers of yogurt and had nowhere to put it. I looked to Jafer, who had bought three containers. He didn’t know what to do either and resolved to just shovel down as much as he could before the movie started. I figured that they might let us bring the groceries into the theater and thought that two hours of the yogurt being away from the fridge couldn’t be that bad for it.

We got to the mall and everything ended up being all right. We got to bring the groceries into the theater, although Jafer was busy devouring yogurt out of fear that it might go bad. Bourne Ultimatum was awesome though, and we couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards, while rushing back to get the yogurt into the fridge at home.

Sidenote: before the movie I had my second glass of mint lemonade since being here. It’s a pretty awesome drink that is popular in the region. Basically, it’s lemonade with mint blended into it that gives the drink a green color and a pulpish texture (because of the ground mint that’s mixed into the drink). It’s delicious!