Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 6/30

Speaking of writing things about the Middle East, a paper of mine was selected for the Middle East Studies Association Undergraduate Research Workshop in Denver this November, so inshallah I can find a way to get funding to actually go! I've been researching Tunisian women's political involvement in the context of the Arab Spring, and will hopefully have the opportunity to clean up and revise what I've done so far.

In other news, there's a lot happening in the world, as per usual. I enjoyed this article by the Washington Post because of its graphics and humanizing of Syrian refugees, though the user interface is sort of annoying, and I feel like they could have included a little more detail and research. It stuck out to me because I followed a very similar route over winter break, when I traveled from Austria to Turkey by land. Reading this article reminded me of the privileges that I have, an American passport and a little disposable income sent me to the same places that these people went through, but I have the luxury of doing it for fun. It also reminds me that I got my passport very thoroughly checked on a train between Hungary and Austria, which normally doesn't happen because it's all Schengen - I wondered about it at the time, and I still do. Maybe they thought I was an illegal immigrant or asylum seeker too... It wouldn't be the first time. 

It has also been a sad week, with a fair few terrorist attacks all over the world. I don't even know if people in the U.S. read about these, so here's a link if you hadn't. The New York Times headlines online right now are all about gay pride and parades and marriage. I'm happy that the Supreme Court made the correct decision, but I don't think marriage is quite as important as dozens of people dying. As a side note, it was a little uncomfortable to read about gunmen killing foreigners at a beach resort before heading off to go be a tourist at a beach resort here. 

Finally, a side note related to the above but also not. Just FYI.

Week Four Updates

Ibri lifestyle

I'm now in week four of the Ibri experience, which means that it's ~midterms,~ always a fun season in the life of Katharine. I've been very busy and have been failing to update this as regularly as I had hoped (a two-month long program means that once a month doesn't work so well), but maybe I'll get better. Maybe I won't.

My host family's women's sitting room

Last weekend I stayed with my host family for a night, and got to experience Ramadan for the first time (it started on the 18th). My language partner, Noof, is a lovely Omani woman that I meet with three times a week to practice speaking Arabic and to learn more about Omani culture. I also will stay with her three times over the course of the program, and I'm looking forward to the next weekend already.

She lives with her husband's family, which means that there are always lots of people around, and it's not as gender segregated at some houses are, so we (Rachel, another CLS student, is also there) see pretty much everyone (other students do not have this luxury). There are a range of children, ranging from born in the last year to my age, as well as a large number of pet birds. The Omani lifestyle seems very relaxed, especially for women during Ramadan. We took naps, cooked food, slept a lot, walked around the neighborhood at night and visited a bunch of other women's' houses, and ate a lot at every one. I got a nose bleed for the first time in years (ever??) because the desert is slowly desiccating my body. Then we slept some more. I fasted for the day that I was with my family, but fasting all day isn't too hard if you wake up at 11 am and then take a 2 hour long midday nap. I did space out and drink some water, but apparently Allah mostly cares about intent, so I'm probably good.

There's work to be done. Also, I sometimes start writing English words backwards now, which is an interesting return to how I wrote in preschool.

Aside from that, we've done a fair few things lately, and I'm rather exhausted, but enjoying (almost) every bit of it. We visited a little castle in Ibri one evening, and explored and then broke our non-fast with falafel sandwiches; we went up to the top of a hill near the center to watch the sunset across a valley, and then had Iftar at our bus driver Mahmoud's house; and then had a calligraphy class. Helpful advice: don't bother going grocery shopping during Ramadan, there's always an Iftar somewhere that someone wants to feed you.

A glorious Muscat hotel Iftar, featuring Indian food and also a lot of other stuff.

Some hill in Ibri, plus Anthony

Finally, this weekend, four girls from the program and I went to Muscat. I think like twelve other girls also went, but we stayed in a different hotel and only ran into them briefly in the souk. We took the bus from Ibri, which was practically empty and air conditioned, so very unlike Moroccan buses, but not nearly as cheap (3.7 rials!). We stayed at the Ramee Guestline Hotel Qurum, since it was relatively cheap online and Oman doesn't appear to have hostels. Also, we have to send in travel request forms 48 hours before we go anywhere, so I can't do what I normally do and just show up and look for places too sketchy and cheap to have websites :(. It was a lovely hotel though, with a pool that we didn't manage to see, but that was ok because we were five minutes from the ocean and just went for a nice, modestly-attired (read "fully-clothed") swim there. We took the outside stairs to get back in because we didn't want the receptionist to judge us, which was a good choice because a. no judgement, and b. there were cool murals on the stair walls depicting jungles and Hindu gods that I somehow forgot to document. At night we went to the souk, because it's the only place in Oman to buy souvenirs, but I have a shockingly low tolerance (and high standards) for souks after Morocco.

Yup.

On the next day, we went snorkeling with the Oman Dive Center, which was located in the Yiti area of Muscat. It was shockingly expensive after snorkeling in Thailand, but it was beautiful, and nice to be able to wear a bikini and drink water during the day and whatnot. I saw sea turtles!

The crew: Yousef, Ahmed, Madeline, and Charlotte

After the snorkeling, we began a transit odyssey to get back to Ibri. We eventually got a cab to the place where we got another cab to Ibri, which turned out to be lots of fun. Our driver, Yousef, was kind of everything you don't want your taxi driver to be - 24 years old, on the internet on his phone, sitting with one of his legs up by the window, sleep-deprived, and hungry (fasting) - but he was very nice and didn't overcharge us, and we seem to have survived. Three of us sat in the back seat (all five of us could have gotten in, but that was unappealing to some members of our group for some reason), so the other seat was occupied by a 19 year old Pakistani guy named Ahmed who works at a barbershop with his family in Ibri. They spent a substantial portion of the ride arguing about why their respective country was better (mostly Ahmed explaining why Pakistan is great, and Yousef being like "...no"), and then Ahmed showed us all a lot of pictures on his phone. He specializes in very pointy looking haircuts, and there are apparently a lot of guns in Pakistan. Yousef stopped to buy Iftar snacks and forced us to eat dates even though he was still fasting, and then stopped again so he could actually eat, at which point we were encouraged to try Ahmed's Pakistani sweets, which we a bit too milky/buttery for me to enjoy, but I ate them anyway. Apparently in Oman it is safest to just always carry snacks with you, so when offered everyone else's, you have something to offer in return. Now I know.

Links Links Links (Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 19/6)

I try really hard not to spam Facebook with tons of links to things that are mostly relevant to my studies and not my life (because Facebook is ~all about me~), but sometimes I still want other people to read them, so here goes this week's vaguely Middle Eastern news contemplation:

Firstly, I saw these two articles right next to each other on my newsfeed, and I thought the juxtaposition was interesting. I feel like we're told so often that Israel is an oasis of acceptance in a Middle East full of hate that it's important to note these things too.

I thought the pictures in this article, though not from a particularly reputable news source, were a nice glimpse of hope from Syria, something we don't see too often.

This New York Times editorial (sorry for my future overrepresentation of this source, I have to tell myself it's worth paying for a subscription) caught my attention for the comments on the United States. We're such a large, wealthy country that it's hard to believe we take so few refugees and leave it to Europe and other countries to deal with the problem. Props to the State Department for trying though!

I enjoyed this video because it's in Arabic (woo, practice all the time!) and also because it's about women's involvement in politics in Yemen during the Arab Spring. I'm working on a paper on the same thing in Tunisia, and it's interesting to compare the two. I also recently started following Alex Potter, an American photographer in Yemen, on Instagram. I find her inspiring because she's only five or so years older than me and doing war photography in the Middle East, speaks Arabic, and is bringing attention to a situation that the American media tends to overlook. However, I also think I should try harder to find more people to follow and read that are actually from the regions in question. I speak and read (basic) Arabic, and am capable of reading local news sources, the only thing stopping me is laziness - it's so much easier (faster) to just follow Americans and Brits, and read English captions - but it's important to look beyond the Western point of view, especially since I have the capability to do so. I'm sure there are equally good Yemeni photographers, I just have to find them.

Finally, though not really ~Middle Eastern~, in the U.S. some activists are trying to do Ramadan in a more environmentally friendly way, and that makes me happy. The food waste part especially stood out to me, because in Oman it seems like tons of food goes to waste after normal meals, so I can't imagine after Ramadan meals (though I won't have to imagine in like three hours!).