Zain wishes you a pleasant stay

People had started thanking me for text messages that I clearly had not sent.

“Thanks for the text, Zain!” Mohammed Pervais was telling me one day outside of the mosque.

I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that when he had arrived in Istanbul for his vacation and turned on his phone, he got a message from me saying “Zain wishes you a wonderful stay in Turkey.”

Other people had asked me about similar texts, thinking that I was such a wonderful guy for taking the effort and time out of my day to write something like this and send it to them. I explained that they had the wrong Zain, even though I was clearly the only Zain in their phonebooks.

Also relevant here is that I’ve started to turn my head whenever I hear the word “Fastlink,” reacting as if someone is calling my name.

This is all because people have been calling me Fastlink, pretty much since I arrived in Jordan.

Fastlink was the name of a cell phone company that, for whatever reason, decided to change its name to Zain. Somehow this change also occurred within days of my arrival in Jordan, accompanied by an enormous advertising campaign, with billboards and and posters basically all over the city.

This has also affected me in my classes, where my teachers will refer to me as Fastlink, Orange, Umniah, Express, or any other cell phone carrier name that they can think of.

Zain is also typically a feminine name in Jordan, so whenever people meet me, they’re kind of confused that I’m named Zain. Then, to break the awkward moment, they’ll say “like Fastlink! Hahaha!”

Hilarious.

The cool thing is that I see my name plastered all over town. Also, according to the Zain mobile website, www.zain.com, Zain-to-Zain calls are a special rate, which was amusing to me.

Unfortunately for all of this, I’m actually an Orange mobile customer. However, many Arabs do end up getting two SIM cards, one of each of the two main brands, in order to call all of their Zain friends on one phone and all of their Orange ones on the other, saving significantly in the long run. As much as I’m trying to convince myself that that’s the reason I want another phone, it’s really just so that I can see Zain on the screen.