In Amman

I've actually been here for about a week and a half already, but things have been so busy that I wasn't able to find the time before now to sit down and write a blog entry about it (and even now, I really should be reading my environmental science textbook for class tomorrow).

Thursday morning, we all arrived in Delhi and hung out at the AIIS "Scholars' Residence," and then Christine, Jameel, Alisha, Terah, and I all found a hotel with a swimming pool that we spent an enjoyable afternoon in. After that, we (minus Alisha and Terah, who had to leave in the early evening with the rest of the CLS group) tracked down Hasan (who had been busy exploring Humayun's Tomb and acquiring Mughal coins) and all had dinner, after which we also said goodbye to Jameel and headed back to AIIS, where we whiled away the night (my flight was at 5 am, so I had to leave for the airport around 3 am) chatting with Hindi people that we hadn't seen since the beginning of the summer and watching YouTube videos of everything from Persian poetry to Brecht songs.

My flight to Amman was pretty pleasant, all things considered (I can only imagine what people thought of me in the airport with my surgical mask on and my brain scans under my arm) and I got there around 9 in the morning, to be greeted by Abu Yazan, a driver employed by Amideast, who drove me to the very fancy hotel where they were putting us up for the first few days. I checked in and promptly crashed until that evening. Late that night, another student and Subhi, one of our program directors, went out for some food in the neighborhood around the hotel, and it was interesting to see whole families eating dinner at around 11:30 at night - truly a Mediterranean country, I suppose.

Saturday, I did nothing until I went downstairs to discover Matt and Claire in the lobby!!! It was wonderful to see them again and catch up on all the Carleton gossip we had missed over the summer and one another's doings. On Sunday, we met up with more of the Amideast staff, namely Hala and Subhi, and went on a city tour of Amman, including the Citadel, where the ruins of the Temple of Hercules stand nearby those of a Byzantine church and an Umayyad mosque from the 6th/7th century. From the top of the hill you could see the entire city spread out over the many hills that make up Amman (again, very Roman), the whiteness of the noon-time sun washing out the thousands of crowded, sand-colored buildings. We also visited a Roman theatre, and of course the archeological museums present at all the sites. At the museum near the Citadel, they even had fragments of the ORIGINAL Dead Sea Scrolls!

On Monday, we met the rest of our student group, including groups from UPenn and from the Air Force Academy. We also started our "orientation" with a crash course in "survival Arabic," namely how to say simple phrases in the local dialect. That night, we had iftar - the breaking of the fast - at dusk at a nice Arab-themed restaurant and got to know the Amideast staff. Dragging Arabic out of my brain and attempting to replace the Urdu words that automatically spring to my lips has been difficult - i.e., I'm still unconsciously wagging my head, saying phrases like "ji" or "thik hai" or "koi baat nahin" - but it's been good to get back into an Arabic-speaking milieu.

Tuesday was the scavenger hunt day. Myself, Jamie, and Andrew comprised "Team Traffic Jammin'," and after a long, hot trawl through Amman we managed to find all the places and take all the pictures we needed on our list and got back an hour after everyone else due to our taxi getting stuck in a huge traffic jam. It was a lot of fun, though, and I enjoyed getting to know some new people.

Wednesday, Claire and I (who were hotel roommates as well as home-stay roommates, turns out) got up early in nervous anticipation for our Arabic placement exam, which took up the next four hours or so after 8:30. It was a tough wake-up call to just how much vocabulary and grammar I had forgotten or had never been taught, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well my oral interview went. In the afternoon, we had a panel discussion with American ex-pats living in Amman, and in the evening we headed over to our academic coordinator's house for iftar. Her house was lovely, with a table and lamps out in the garden, and during dinner Matt and I wandered into the kitchen to ask if we could help out with anything and ended up making the dessert, a dish whose name I can't remember but consisted of either walnuts or cheese fried into dumplings whose shell was made of a pancake-like material that had been thoroughly saturated with sugar. :)

Thursday, we prepared to move in with our families. First, however, we visited ACOR, which is one of the best English-language research libraries in the Middle East and will definitely prove to be a great place to study and read as the program goes on. The director even had a Carleton connection, which once again made me proud of our little school. We checked out their collections as well as the amazing archeological collections they have preserved in the basement, with ongoing projects like burned parchment restoration (!). In the afternoon, Claire and I moved in with our host family, who turned out to be related to Alex and Sean's host family, and although they are somewhat quiet and shy they are very sweet and have four "children" who are more or less our age: 24-year-old Khalid, 22-year-old Rawan, 16-year-old Deena, and 12-year-old Hamza. We were expecting slightly younger children, but mish mushkila (koi baat nahin, yaani).

On Friday, after a nice sleep-in, Claire and I thought it would be fun to explore the city a little, so in the early afternoon we went out to Sweifieh, the swanky neighborhood where the Amideast office is, and walked around Al-Wakalat Street, where there are a lot of fancy shops and restaurants and in the evening families show up for a kind of passagiatta. However, we didn't factor in the whole Friday-during-Ramadan deal, which meant that the streets of Amman were like 28 Days Later - absolutely deserted and the vast majority of shops closed. So, change of plan; we went back to the Hotel Geneva and sat by the pool with some of the other girls who are going to be living in a shared apartment as opposed to a homestay. We went home after a little while and enjoyed a calm and relaxed iftar with the family. After a couple hours, we were rounded up to go relative-visiting, which was a little intimidating. Lots of rapid-fire colloquial Arabic all around us. Claire and I each have identifying characteristics, such as "This is Claire. She does not eat meat." or "This is Francesca. She studied in India." Poor Claire is alone in her vegetarianism in this meat-loving country (although after India, I welcome the change in cuisine!).

Saturday, we met up with Sean, Alex, and Matt, who is on his own with a Christian family, and went to the local Safeway (!) to get some school supplies, etc. We also bought food, but since it is very haraam to eat in public during Ramadan, we once again took refuge in the hotel to eat lunch. Another lazy afternoon and evening spent at home, which feels more comfortable by the day.

On Sunday, our week started (weekends here are Friday and Saturday) and I kicked off the academic section of the Amideast program with Modern Standard Arabic (fusha) at 8:30 in the morning (hai allah!), followed by a Jordanian 'amiyya, or dialect, class, then a break for lunch, then Environmental Issues of the Middle East from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. So - long days, and our Arabic ustadha is already putting us through our paces by beginning the class two chapters ahead of where Matt, Claire and I had left off in Al-Kitaab 2 at Carleton (thanks, Natalie). Both of our professors are from the Qasid Institute, and both are extremely personable and patient (especially 'Amil, the dialect prof, who is completely goofy). The Environmental Science class is interesting, but we have some concern about the lack of Jordan- or Middle East-specific material being covered as opposed to generic basic science concepts (i.e., we talked about what an atom is and photosynthesis today. Even for me, that's basic). Our professor, Zuhair Ali, is an internationalyl acclaimed scientist, however, and we got him talking about his personal snake collection and his work with mice and deer ticks in New England.

Long post! At least we're caught up with our first week here. I'll leave it to Matt and Claire, in our shared blog (3carls1carpet.blogspot.com) to fill in the blanks of this basic outline with fun anecdotes and to continue the saga that has been this past full week of classes.

Leaving Lucknow

So - fully recovered from my brush with death (not at all, to be honest, but sounds dramatic, doesn't it?), I returned to Lucknow and started working furiously on my final project, which seemed a lot easier when I first proposed it a few weeks before: translating English poetry into Urdu. I ended up choosing Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay," Langston Hughes' "Dreams" and the piece de resistance, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. I'm re-posting the sonnet below, and when I find my copies of the other two, I'll put those up as well.

Shakespeare ki ek nazm hai, arz karti hun...

روحانی تعلق کی سچائی میں مزاحمت نہیں ہوتی

جو تبدیلیوں سے بدل جائے وہ محبت نہیں ہوتی

سچی محبت کو زندگی کے نشیب و فراز کے آگے

گھٹنے ٹیکنے کی عادت نہیں ہوتی

نہیں! عشق نہیں پلٹتا اپنے دائمی نشان سے

اور نہیں ہوتا متزلزل شورش ِطوفان سے

یہ ہر بھٹکی ہوئی کشتی کا راہ نما

جس کا قد و قامت معلوم ہو قدر و قیمت نہیں

آ جاتے ہیں ٹیڑھے چکر میں گلابی لب و رخصار

محبت کا نہیں ہوتا وقت پر انحصار

گردش ِزمانہ محبت کو تبدیل نہیں کر پاتی

محبت تاقیامت نہ باقی ہوتی تو قیامت نہیں ہوتی

غلط ثابت ہو جائے یہ بات یا اس میں ہو کوئی غلطی

تو پھر نہ میں نے کچھ لکھا نہ کسی نے کبھی محبت کی

Ruhani ta'aliq ki sacchai men muzahimat nahin hoti
Jo tabdeelion se badal jaaye woh muhabbat nahin hoti
Sacchi muhabbat ko zindagi ke nasheb-o-firaz ke aage
Ghitne teekne ki aadat nahin hoti
Nahin! Ishq nahin pilatta apne daimi nishan se
Aur nahin hota mutazalzal shorish-e-tofan se
Yeh har bhatki hui kashti ka rah nama
Jis ka qad-o-qaamat ma'alum ho qadr-o-qimat nahin
Aa jaate hain teerhe chikar men gulabi lab-o-rukhsaar
Muhabbat ka nahin hota waqt par inhisaar
Gardish-e-zamana muhabbat ko tabdeel nahin kar pati
Muhabbat ta-qayamat na baqi hoti to qayamat nahin hoti
Ghalat saabit ho jaaye yeh baat ya is men ho koi ghalati
To phir na main ne kuch likha na kissi ne kabhi muhabbat ki

Literal translation:

In the truth of the soul-relationship there is not [or: would not have been] an impediment
What may change upon changes, that is not [or: would not have been] love
True love, in the face of the vicissitudes of life
Does not [or: would not have had] the habit of alteration
No! Love does not waver from its own fixed mark [sign]
And does not shake from the tumult of the storm
This is every wandering/lost vessel's signal [anyone have a better word for rah-nama?]
Whose height may be known [but] not their true worth
Rosy lips and cheeks come into the line of the wheel
Love does not turn away/deviate with time [Platts gives "apostatize" as one definition for "inhisaar," how interesting that would be...]
The turning of the age does not [or: would not have] found changes in love
If love were not remaining until judgement day then it is not [or: would not have been] judgement day
If this matter is proven to be wrong or if there may be error in it [in't!]
Then I never wrote anything nor did anyone ever love.

And the original:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Dard-e-dil, dard-e-jigar: The Indian Hospital Experience

As I type this post, I'm sitting comfortably at home in Lucknow, having returned more or less intact from a week of constant hospitalization. I can't express my gratitude to my friends, teachers, AIIS leaders, and doctors who helped me through this - if you read this, please know that your love and support made it all bearable.

This sorry state of things entire began last Sunday, when I woke up with a splitting headache that I assumed was a migraine brought on by a Saturday night spent at Zero Degrees, the hip Lucknow club where we had a good time watching young people our age awkwardly dance as they were accompanied by their parents or some aunties and uncles, who in their salwar kameez and kurta pyjamas looked to be having a much better time on the dance floor than everyone else! Anyway, I took some painkillers, went and saw Love Aaj Kal, the biggest new Saif Ali Khan-Deepika Padukone hit (which I actually enjoyed, especially Rishi Kapoor's role and his real wife's cameo appearance at the end - I always think of his and Neetu Singh's scenes in Amar Akbar Anthony when I see them together, since the chemistry was real enough for them to get married after shooting the movie). At this point it was evening and the "migraine" still hadn't abated, so I started to get mildly concerned and told myself I'd go to a doctor in the morning if it wasn't any better.

Middle of the night, I start vomiting uncontrollably, and by the morning it's clear that I need to go to the hospital. Sandeep-ji drives me to the Sahara Hospital, which is a gleaming edifice of sanitation and modernity, and I see a neurologist who also discovers that my neck is quite stiff and painful, and so they immediately admit me and run an MRI, CAT scan, and do a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) and put me on antibiotics for fear of bacterial meningitis. Side note: when they do lumbar punctures on House and you see the actors screaming in pain, it's actually because it's definitely one of the most painful experiences I've ever had. Absolutely excruciating, and then you have to lie perfectly flat for four hours afterward. I also found out later that the antibiotic I was given was the mother of all antibiotics, an atom bomb set off in my system that destroyed any and all bacteria that could possibly have been living in my body.

So on a Monday afternoon I was admitted to Sahara Hospital, and I stay there until Friday afternoon, being given constant rehydration and antibiotics via IV while the doctors attempt to arrive at a diagnosis. Since I didn't die within 24 hours, bacterial meningitis was safely ruled out, but each day the diagnosis flipped from viral meningitis to tuberculer meningitis to a possible small brain hemorrhage to typhoid, until both Ahtesham-sahab (the head of the Urdu program) and I became increasingly unsure of the quality of care at this hospital and after some discussion with Purnima-ji (the head of AIIS as a whole, based in Delhi) we decided that I would be transferred to the East-West hospital in New Delhi. Time in the Lucknow hospital wasn't wasted, though; I read my Urdu newspaper aloud to the delight of the nurses and orderlies (best nurse quote: "Please, supine ho jaae") and had a stream of visitors from my program (time for heartfelt shout-outs to Cayley, Jessica, Hasan, Christine, Alisha, Nida, and especially my wonderful, wonderful roommates Ranjanpreet, Beenish, and Sehris). In my spare time I tried to think of verses that had to do with sickness, medicine, or healing. As Ahtesham-sahab said, the most dangerous drug is that of Urdu poetry.

On Friday night they flew me to Delhi (an unpleasant flight - the pressure caused another killer headache) and checked me into East-West, where I was given a very nice private room and the kind and communicative Dr. Chawla to look after me. There the IVs continued, as well as a second MRI and CATscan to ensure that there was no further swelling of the meninges (lining of the brain). After a weekend there, I felt much better, was more mobile, and was released this (Wednesday) morning with diagnosis of a viral meningitis that had at this point run its own course. The care in Delhi was excellent, and I'm also very grateful to Purnima-ji and AIIS for having taken care of all of this for me. I flew back into Lucknow early this morning, wearing my surgical mask lest I catch the swine flu currently endemic in India, with no lasting damage except some bruised and bandaged arms and a surprising weight loss which I will do my best to reverse by eating excessive amounts of jalebis and kebabs. Only about a week is even left in the Lucknow program, so I have to finish up my poetry-translation project and live up the ash-o-ishrat before moving on to Amman!

Benaras Darshan

Entry forthcoming.

Snakes in the Rain: Nainital

Entry forthcoming.

"Poetry carved in stone": Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, part 2

And on Sunday, on to Fatehpur Sikri - the Mughal city built by Akbar around the tomb and shrine of Saleem Chishti, to whom he prayed for a son (whom he named Saleem in the sain'ts honor but who would later become Jehangir), the city that served as his capital for 15 years and was mysteriously abandoned in 1585 when Akbar moved to Lahore. The soul of Fatehpur Sikri is, of course, the shrine, and so that was the first place we visited. Although the place was swarming with vendors trying to sell us postcards, jewelry, the usual tourist junk, I felt like the shrine itself had a calming atmosphere - maybe it was the presence of hundreds of generations of tombs of the Chishti family surrounding the main sanctum and the cool shadows of the covered walkways and gates around the edges (I've begun to wonder whether or not European monasteries got this distinctive architectural feature from India - I've seen them in every mosque we've visited). Anyway, the tomb of Saleem Chishti is an elegant structure in the center of the reddish-stone mosque complex, all curls and tracery of white marble and lattice-work windows through with the white smoke of incense lazily floats. Inside, the tomb itself is covered in colorful, embroidered sheets as well as garlands of flowers, and in the heat and stillness of the little sanctuary you can hear the murmured prayers of the pilgrims crowded around it. On the pillars of the tomb and on the lattice-work windows are tied thousands of red and yellow threads, little prayers for children, marriage, love, and other everyday miracles.

Exploring the rest of the complex, we saw tombs hundreds of years old (Saleem Chishti died in 1572) of the saint's various extended family members, as well as other interesting historical oddities (like the entrance to the fabled tunnel through which, if you take your history lessons from Mughal-e-Azam, Anarkali left Akbar's court and traveled underground all the way to Lahore where the other entrance is supposedly in the old Anarkali Bazaar):

Talking to some of the kids trying to sell us stuff also proved to be an interesting cultural experience. Upon hearing that I was American, this sentence tumbled out of one little boy's mouth: "AmericaverygoodObamagreatman MichaelJacksondead." I'm glad that the two things America is associated with are Obama and Michael Jackson. Also upon finding out that the girl I was with was both American and Muslim, this same kid said "But there are being no Muslims in America except for Barack Obama!" That was a fun discussion to have.

The other main attraction of Fatehpur Sikri was the palace of Akbar, where his Nine Jewels rose to fame and where, as in the Red Fort and other palaces, the Diwan-i-Am and Diwan-i-Khas, as well as the queen's quarters, boasted gorgeous architecture. There were also some unique details to this palace complex, though, that spoke to the ash-o-ishrat of the Mughals, such as special concert halls, spaces for fountains and gardens, and a live-size parcheesi board built into the ground, where some unlucky servants would have to be the pieces. All in all, a pleasant foray into the age of the Mughal Empire, even when the sun made the stone underfoot literally blistering.

"Poetry carved in stone": Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, part 1

This past weekend, most of the students in the Urdu program went on a group trip to another famous location nearby to Lucknow - the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is, and the connected Fatehpur Sikri, both cities at the heart of Mughal history and lore. Other than the monuments and palaces, neither city really has much else to recommend it, but the architecture alone is worth risking your life to drive through oncoming traffic for 8+ hours to get there.

We began our Saturday morning with, of course, the Taj, mingling with the throngs of other tourists (Western and Indian) who came to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The Taj really is a wonder - even though I'd seen it before on my last trip to India, there's still something that makes you catch your breath when you first glimpse the white marble dome through the arch of the main gate. We meandered through where there would once have been gardens and a reflecting pool up to the main sanctum, where the tombs of Mumtaz, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, and Shah Jahan, who had it built, lay. Although the Taj Mahal is commonly glossed as a monument to undying love, I think Sahir Ludhianvi says it better in his ode to the Taj where he asks his beloved to meet him at some other place, since "Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,/Who would say their loves weren't truthful or strong?/But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised/For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng." (A different verse from the same poem, in the original Urdu, is as follows: Yeh chaman zar yeh jamna ka kinara yeh mahal/Yeh munaqqash dar-o-deevar yeh mehrab yeh taaq/Ek shahanshah ne daulat ka sahara le kar/Hum gharibon ki mohabbat ka uraya hai mazaaq).

After seeing the Taj, we made our way to the Agra Fort, which would be more accurately described as the Great Mughals' walled city. Inside it are the famous Diwan-i-Am (public audience hall) and Diwan-i-Khas (private audience hall), the Khas Mahal, all white marble and intricate tracery where Jodhaa Bai and other queens would have lived, as well as private mosques, areas for the harems, and once housed pools and gardens. Shah Jahan was also imprisoned unti his death in the Fort by his son Aurangzeb.

Having seen what would have been the height of Agra's grandeur at the time when Akbar made it his capital (1558), we visited Akbar's tomb, which also boasted amazingly beautiful calligraphy and geometric designs. The room where his actual tomb was, though, surprisingly stark - a simple tomb with one lantern hanging from the ceiling, the walls dull white. I suppose that at the time of his death this room would have been opulent beyond belief, but probably due to the difficulty of restoration the decision was made to just paint over calligraphy, carving, and paintings. Nevertheless, I thought the tomb's simple nature was somehow fitting, in the sense that Akbar in particular with his love for exploring religion and life's great mysteries was at peace in a room that was free of all the pomp and circumstance that was a Mughal emperor's trademark. Just a quiet grave and the shadow of the lantern on the walls.

We also saw peacocks competing for attention in the gardens around this monument, which was exciting.