Oh Really?

My son had a birthday party to go to on Friday. One of my favorite mother-duty past times is trying to dodge birthday parties. Usually, I don't have to try too hard - they're at times when I'm unavailable to drive him, I can't read the Arabic writing on the party invitation (ok, this one is a bit of a cop out, I can usually dicepher the place and time at least), or my son doesn't like the child anyways.

But this time, I couldn't dodge the birthday party bullet. It was scheduled for a Friday afternoon (the time of week when nobody does anything), and it was for one of my son's favorite (only?) friends from his class. Then I started hoping that this was just a drop off party and I could get some free time to myself. I tried, literally, to dodge the party at the drop off. But my gut told me at the last minute that I was being completely rude, so I ran into the house to say hi to the parents and of course was greeted by the tug on the arm and the "where are you going so quickly, you must stay." It's not that I don't like these people. I do. I just didn't feel like socializing. So I stay.

One of the reasons I really like this family is that the father is a teacher, has an obvious love for children, and is also visibly involved in his son's life and home life. It is such a rare thing to see in this part of the world, and I always want to know more about how these random people happen. The mother works outside the home at a full time, busy public servant job. So I am even doubly surprised that she has the luck to be married to such a man.

I start conversing with another woman at the party who has three daughters aged 6-16. She talks about her daughters and their work at school. Then she mentions an event she has going on with a cultural organization. She's lived and studied in the States. So in my somewhat culturally inastute attempt to make small talk, I ask her if she works outside the home. She tells me that at one time she did work full time outside the home. When she would return in the evenings, she had no energy to cook or help the kids with homework. Her husband was resentful that her work outside the house was taking away from her household duties (ie, there was no hot dinner on the table when he returned from work), so he refused to help her around the house at all. In order to "protect" her marriage, she quit the job. Now her daughters are older and she has just been offered, or more accurately, begged to take a part time job doing what she already does as a volunteer. She said she could not make a decision before getting the approval from her husband, which had until now had not yet been forthcoming.

I don't know what got me angrier about this story - her laments about how exhausting working outside the home can be (my goodness, try being a single mother!) or her accepting that her husband's resentment was good enough to put her desires in second-third place. Ok, I get it, its a cultural thing. In a recent UNICEF report, I read a statement that said, "Arab women derive their identity from being the caretakers for their family." It's so obvious, and yet, it had never occured to me that in fact is the case.

I guess it is also why a single colleague in her late 30s asked me recently, "Is it better to be single or to be married?" I was speechless for an entire minute while I pondered this question. This is a strong, capable, independent, generous, intelligent woman. I can't imagine how she would think one is better than the other. (I also couldn't imagine why she would think a divorcee would have an accurate answer to that question) I tried to explain to her my opinion on the subject. It is not the being single or married that is better, it is what you make of yourself and your happiness when you are either.

Mothering

I've been exhausted lately. I find it hard to wind down at night, and I wake up in the morning hardly feeling rested. The crazy period at work is hopefully over for some time. And I'm in what seems to be my annual spring funk, so down on myself and whatever it is I'm chosing for this thing called life. None of this makes for good mothering.

Last night I was too tired to make my son supper - I told him he had to make his own. He made himself an almond butter and jam sandwhich. Then his father calls on skype, and my son proceeds to tell him the entire story of him having to make his own dinner because I refused to lift a finger. Now my poor mothering skills are public knowledge to the person I am most vulnerable to attack by.

After my son went to bed, I microwaved some popcorn for dinner and watched a sappy romance movie on TV (on a Saudi channel so all the good kissing scenes were cut out), and then went to bed bemoaning the fact that my life is so lacking in romance. Its a good story line when I'm in a funk, keeps me there even longer!

Around midnight, I'm deep into REM trying to figure my way out of some pseudo-realistic work problem and my cell phone jingles its notification for a text message. A text message at 10 minutes after midnight, it must be a good one! Still, I hesitate in my semi-dreamlike mindframe. I finally reach over and open the phone. The message reads, "Happy Mother's Day" and the sender is Omar's babysitter. I register it somewhere as a sweet gesture, although at the same time wonder it its strange that it arrived at such an odd hour.

My son's babysitter has been a lifesaver - always reliable, always keeping my son happy, and taking my sometimes erratic schedule all in stride. I have many things in my life right now that are lifesavers that I know after 37 years I shouldn't take for granted - a good babysitter, a trustworthy and good housecleaner, a kind and normal landlord, a safe and beautiful home, friends who don't judge, a job that pays well, a car that gets me from point A to point B, a healthy and relatively normal kid. There were plenty of times in my life when I lacked some of these, and a few key periods when I had none of them. And still, I feel like the world's crappiest mother on Mother's Day.

Language

I swear if I went to live with the lady who cleaned my house, I would be fluent in Arabic in about two weeks. She talks loud and fast and constantly to me. I understand about every other word, and sometimes I don't understand a single word she says. But she keeps talking away, and I keep nodding. At first, I found this extremely annoying. I had to ask her to stop one day. I said in my very basic Arabic, "Listen, I do not understand the word you are saying" Come to find out she was telling me that I needed more toilet cleaner. I consider that phrase to be one on the "near fluency" level, and thus did not feel any less competent.

The thing that can be frustrating about learning Arabic is how much the dialect changes not only from country to country, but from person to person. In Palestine, I am amazed at how much it varies. I don't know if its that my comprehension is getting to the a point that I can pick up quite well the variations, or if it is specific to the country and work environment which I am in.

It took me months to realize that the reason I couldn't understand a colleague was because he has a speech impediment, like a drastic lisp. There is also the "country bumpkin" language which pronounces some beginning and middle sounds of letters completely different than the formal arabic. I'm also becoming quite fluent in language around governance issues (elections, councils, ministries), but put into another context - like an informal gathering of women, and I am completely lost.

Being lost in a language can be very difficult. Its like having your mouth and ears suddenly sealed shut and having to get by in the world. It can be tiring.

Principles

I'm a relative new comer around here. It is not unusual to meet expats who have had some kind of relationship with Palestine for a decade or more. Most of course left during the second intifada, but eventually made their way back. There is an emotional connectedness that they have to this place, the environment and the politics that I admit, I lack to a degree.

What grabs my attention is how principled a lot of these people are about the politics and how they react to them. They boycot products, people, newspapers, books. Sometimes I feel a weakness because I lack this principled approach to all that happens around me, but I like to justify this weakness by saying that I am not a person who has the ability to be so black and white about the world. Or, I just wonder if sometimes people become so principled about it all to help them feel as if they have some control and power in an environment in which it is difficult to empower anything.

Throughout the Arab world, you find a large number of people who refuse to drink Coke products. The reason? Coke is produced by an Israeli company, apparently? I've never had the will to really look into the issue. Its true, there is a large coca-cola bottling company near Tel Aviv. Yet, in Palestine itself, people drink coca-cola products by the gallons on a daily basis, and the whole distribution chain inside the West Bank is Palestinian run. Palestinians raise their eyebrows when they hear that their Arab brothers and sisters refuse to drink Coke. Honestly, its making almost zero difference on the life of people here who are more concerned about the daily hassles of checkpoints and the wall.

I recently attended an NGO discussion about an operational approach that the US government put in place to get the humanitarian goods funded by them into Gaza. The operational approach actually makes things a great deal more effecient for those US-funded humanitarian partners. But, there are those principled humanitarian partnes (several of whom I used to be employed by), raising up protests because its all "American" and all wrapped up into the politics. I could be naive, but I just don't see it. Plus, we have a new administration whose made some pretty solid statements. True, its difficult to trust these statements after the past 15 year policy toward Palestine and the ability of the US Government to turn a complete blind eye to the human rights abuses. But honestly, if the ability to get humanitarian goods into Gaza is going to make my life easier, why would I protest it? I'm sure the people who are suffering in Gaza couldn't give a care how the goods that are to save their lives came in, just as long as they received them hastily.

Not sure if its obvious - but I'm kind of burned up about this issue.