Monday, August 04, 2008

Flirting for Fruit

For my 24th birthday, I celebrated my youth by embarking, the day before, on a grand test of stamina: getting up at 6 AM, taking a public bus to Irbid, a town about two hours away, going to church, hiking up a two-mile hill to a crusader castle in Ajlun, visiting a Byzantine church and the supposed site of Elijah's ascension, hanging out at a farm in a river valley, navigating my way back to Amman on three separate public buses, eating dinner at the house of the branch president, chasing his young children around for at least an hour, and then having an impromptu midnight birthday party with my roommates and whoever of the 22 students on my program stopped by my apartment. Think that's not enough of an endurance test? Think again: I did most of that in Arabic, from chatting with bus drivers and old women pounding spices and overenthusiastic tour guides to praying in sacrament meeting, bearing my testimony, and translating the Young Women's lesson I attended. And it was 100 degrees out. And it was Fast Friday, and I, for once, remembered, which means I did all of that on an empty stomach and dry throat. Let it not be said that youth is wasted on the young: we enjoy it.

My hunger (or, more precisely, thirst) made me, luckily, not disposed to put up with any crap, which in this case means the attention of one of the bus drivers, who told me I had a "pretty body" and tried to kiss me, despite my effort to be fully covered so as not to look like a tramp. And here I thought long sleeves were a magic protective shield. Somehow, though, my creep-detecting instincts didn't kick in for the castle's tour guide, who, after taking me on an energetic and detailed tour of the castle, including the secret tunnels, announced that we would then continue our tour to Mar Elias, the aforementioned Byzantine church. "Wait," I wondered, "I thought he just belonged to the castle. Did I somehow agree to this without noticing? Well, he seems nice enough, I guess." So I jumped in his car and off we drove, just the two of us.

And that's how I ended up with an afternoon drive through a Jordanian nature reserve, with a 50-something Arab man inventing love songs to me, in grand classical style, with a low vibratro voice. Imagine Leonard Cohen, in Arabic, producing lines like "I would that I were a bird/so I could flutter near you forever, in any country, even America" and "the trees dance in the wind/only for your sake, O light of my eyes, O my blue-eyed darling." Every so often he'd pause in the song, just to make sure I understood the lyrics: "Flutter--you know? Like to fly around closely. So I could always be near you, see. Get it?" Yes. Yes, I got it. And yes, it made me uncomfortable--how, exactly, should one respond to such a serenade?

Not that I'm complaining too loudly: as the result of a little Arabic and a little flirting (or, okay, a little blue eyes/blue passport magic), I got a personalized tour not only of a crusader castle--and we all know how I feel about castles!!--but also of a beautiful old church site, complete with herds of grazing goats wandering through, and of a charming farm, where, get this, there were trees. And grass. Growing! Naturally! Maybe I've been in the desert too long, but that was the best part, that or the fact that my would-be suitor then plucked fresh figs and pomegranates and mint from those trees, thoughtfully arranging them for me in a box so that I could break my fast on them later, or, as the case was, share them with everyone who came to my impromptu birthday party. Wandering off into forests with strange foreign men is probably not a good habit--at least, my mother never sounds too happy about it--but how can I quit when I get such rewards?

10 comments:

Margaret Proffitt said...

I thought of you on Saturday but couldn't wish you happy birthday because I was internet-less. So happy belated birthday!!! And WHEN will you learn NOT to ride in cars with Arab men? You're pure nuts.

Katie said...

Sometimes when I'm reading your blog, I get a little bit jealous that you're so much more adventurous than I am. But then, wuss that I am, I read a blog like this and think about how glad I am that I'm not that adventurous . . .

Zillah said...

sweet mother of lust...

if only my birthdays could be so varied in their...experiences. in other words: i'm quite jealous that you were semi-abducted by an arab man and particularly that he tried to seduce you with byzantine ruins.

Diane said...

Its true. Mother doesn't like it. Maybe mother will pay for self-defense lessons for birthday 24 so that daughter has something more than the "I can't, I'm fasting" defense against poetry spouting, fruit offering foreign males.

Petra said...

Confuzzled--

Seeing that "adventurous" and "completely lacking in common sense" are often synonymous, I wouldn't be too jealous.

JB said...

Hm. Cool, and yet scary all at the same time. You're very well traveled in areas of the world that frankly, would scare me to travel in because I know so little about them.

annie (the annilygreen one) said...

a piece of art and fabulous!

Ginsberg said...

If it were anyone else telling this story, I don't think I would believe it. Happy birthday.

Nathan said...

I got hit on a fair bit when I was a missionary, but it was always pretty obvious whether the object of the hit was my person or my passport (almost entirely the latter). Never was both, that I could see. But then again, the Ukrainian woman (like a Lenny Kravitz song: "Ukrainian woman! Get away from me. Ukrainian woman! Mama let me be.") may simply have had less practice mixing her motives than the Jordanian Leonard Cohen (about which description, BTW, I LOLed).



...



Come to think, it still kind of works:

Jordanian Cohen,
Get away from me.
Jordanian Cohen,
Won't you let me be?
Don't try to drive me to a castle again,
I'm tired of middle-aged Arab men.
I'm fasting when you try to feed;
Your interlinears I don't need.
Now Cohen,
Get away.
Jordanian Cohen,
Listen what I say.

Nathan said...

... And then with creeping horror and amusement I realize that now I'm the one writing unsolicited corny songs.

I'll just be over here, in this corner, quietly working on my 'fluttering' similes....