Of Classism and Getting Boxes

So a few weeks ago, Talia asked me to help her pack up her books to go home after the really long time she's been in Jordan. As buying Arabic texts is considerably cheaper here than in the States, and as she'll use them for her own research and career, she had a ton to pack. Therefore before showing up I went to Mukhtar Mall near her house and went on a sturdy cardboard box hunt.

In Mukhtar Mall I managed to gather two or three boxes after going to five or six stores, before being told that to really get boxes i should go down to the parking lot level. I went down on the elevator, and behold, there was an entire dumping site for empty cardboard boxes that some men were busy flattening and organizing for disposal; it was really a cardboard box mountain that these guys were just slowly chipping away at. Boxes galore!

There was a security guard, and so i told him that i was there to get boxes and was that alright, and then proceeded to ask the box guys to hand me appropriate sized boxes over the metal fence surrounding the box mountain. I think i asked for three. "Three?" they said, "You can have twenty!" I pointed out the size that i thought would be good for boxes, and they very obligingly handed me several of them.

At this point, mission accomplished (or so i thought), i took out my cell phone to call Talia to let her know i was coming and make sure she was at home to let me in. Before I can get a hold of her, the security guard has come over to me and said, "What else do you want? Are you done? Do you have a car?"

"No," i said, "i don't have a car. I'm calling my friend."
"So you don't need anything else. Khalas. Go. Go away." He waved his hand at me as if swatting at a fly.

I wasn't aware enough to be offended. My mind was on getting to Talia's. So i picked up my boxes and walked toward the elevators. I found the rude guard in my way.

"No, you can't go up the elevators. Go out that way. Go." He pointed toward the back entrance, where he wanted me to leave.

I still wasn't quick enough to realize how rude he was being. I was confused. No, I needed the elevators to get to the level where i can go to the street to get a taxi. I wasn't about to walking around the parking garage to find the exit and then walk all the way around the building.

Then he changed his tune:
"Here, you need to wait here. Here, sit down." He offered me a chair since I am a woman and he was now deciding to make me wait. Into his radio, he said, "There's a girl here taking boxes. Do you want to come check her out?"

At this point I just stood up and made for the elevators. This was ridiculous. He stood in my way and told me I had to wait. Everything up to this point had been in Arabic. I decided to bust out the English. "I don't understand what the matter is," I said purposefuly and kind of angrily in a low voice." I am getting boxes for my friend to help her move, and I am going to go up the elevator." I walked calmly to the elevator in front of three or four other laborer guys who were just watching silently. I pushed the button, waited, and then took it up and left. The security guard said nothing else.

Believe me I got to Talia's fuming mad and had half a mind to call my old host dad and ask him to go with me back to the mall to get that guard in trouble. Or Mehdi. Or my arabic teacher. It's incredibly, incredibly rude that someone would wave their hand at me, send me out the back entrance, then decided to call his boss to come find out what i'm doing. GETTING EMPTY BOXES, you bored piece of shit. No one deserves to be treated like that. And when you're trying to go out of your way to help out your friend? And when you're a paying customer of the mall?

Besides the rudeness, it's what made him stop being rude that is telling of the way things work here. The moment I opened my mouth and yelled at him (I didn't even yell, actually, just spoke angrily in a low voice) in English, he had nothing else to say. It was when he thought I was either Arab, or maybe Russian or something that he was so rude to me. I think he thought I was Arab, I didn't say enough or make long enough sentences to give myself away to him. So he thinks no respectable Arab woman would go down the parking lot to dig through empty boxes by herself? Oh, I forgot, any respectable Arab woman would surely have her husband/brother/doorman/father/maid go and dig around for boxes. Anyone who does it themselves you have full authority to treat them like shit and tell them to go out the back entrance and detain them for using the elevator with boxes. Surely if they are getting their own boxes that means they have no status in life.

Then ENGLISH! Oh well holy shit, ENGLISH changes everything! I thought you were a completely unrespectable woman with no status who i could use to prove what a responsible guard i am by harrassing as you scrounge for leftover cardboard. ENGLISH changes EVERYTHING! I can't place you now! I'm not sure anymore where to put you in this hierarchy we've got going in our country, but it sure is higher than where I originally thought. I'd better hold my tongue and let you do as you wish. You want to go up the elevator like normal respectable customers? Well go right ahead. I don't know what i was thinking.

I should have gone right upstairs and asked to talk to the director of security. I wasn't gutsy enough or present-minded enough. Oh well. Maybe i'm a bigger person for walking away. But no one should be allowed to treat people like that!

The reason I'm posting this encounter, other than because it made me angry, is because I believe it is telling about classism in Jordan in general. Security in most institutions is rather arbitrary. As a woman, especially as a white woman, I get waved into many hotels without being properly checked for weapons. At the border, bureaucratic issues that the Jordanian soldiers get hung up on or question can often (well, the small ones, like Kamleh's transfered stamp) be taken care of by explaining to them assertively that everything is in order even if it's not readily apparent, and how. The same is true with police. I was once told that if I ever get into any trouble and the police are involved, do not, no matter how good i am at Arabic, try to show off my language with them; speak strictly English with law enforcement authority figures if i want to make things easier for myself. And it is true. I make things very easy for myself in this country by understanding a good deal of Arabic, but by speaking English when I need anything from authority. It is very arbitrarily easy for me to deal with police and security. I suspect, and the story above gives evidence to this, that things are just as arbitrarily difficult for people who are not in my shoes.

I suppose this post is really an extension of Kamleh's Dirty American tales, with a nod to the extremely annoying classism of Jordanian society. Part classism, part hospitality, and part colonial legacy means English gets me out of all kinds of trouble that bored security guards would otherwise impose.

And I won't elaborate here too much on this last point, but I would just like to point out that this is one major reason i find Palestine so refreshing: the classism junk that gets in the way of talking to nearly everyone in Jordan, I find to have disappeared in Palestine. It's so much easier to have real, honest, unpresumptuous conversations. And mostly, I think, because they live in a situation where everyone has to deal with the occupation. It doesn't matter whether you are the garbage man or the Minister of Information for the PA, the Israelis will stop you both at the checkpoint all day, and control whether you receive a permit to go into this or that area. Therefore, the minister greets the garbage man with respect, and the garbage man feels like he has something to say to the minister and expects him to listen.

Anyway, moral of the story is that respectable women DO go into parking garages to collect empty boxes sometimes. And they should be treated with respect, whether or not you think they have enough money to have a doorman do it for them.