Absorbing the Little Things

After living in a different culture for a while, you begin to pick up some of the little, daily habits as your own. This has happened to me, for instance, with my cell phone.

Cell phones in Amman are often people's main source of communication for both business and personal matters. Business cards often just have a cell phone number, and it is not uncommon for people to have two or three mobiles. (This is not to separate parts of their lives, work and home, for example, but to save money.) "What company do you have?" someone will ask when getting your phone number. The choices are basically Zain, Umnia, or Orange. Based on your response, your friend will pull out a different phone, since it is much less expensive to call within in a company (from a Zain phone to a Zain phone, for example.)

Since cell phone communication here is so important, (and since there is no voicemail!) people have slightly different cell phone etiquette. It is nice of people not to answer a phone call during the middle of your sentence, but this is not required - and your fellow conversant will certainly check first to see who it is, even if the call goes unanswered. I have gotten used to doing the same. My Conflict Resolution professor sets both of his phones out on his desk at the beginning of class and then will check each time one rings - sometimes he will pick it up.

In the States, not putting your phone on silent, even during an informal social gathering, will earn you a sneer and a major faux pas. Here it is a normal part of daily life, and many adults have Arabic pop songs or even religious chants as their ringtones - another element not relegated to the "youth" here in Jordan.

There is also a heavy reliance on text messaging in this country. While "texting" is a verb usually employed in the States by people under 25 and seen as something teenagers do while "chilling" with friends, here it is a normal mode of communication, used in business and family alike, and I've come to really appreciate it. Today before meeting with my language tutor (I won't say her age, but she has two full-grown children), I texted her several hours earlier to confirm the meeting. She shot back a "Yes dear" and I had my confirmation. I didn't have to interrupt whatever she might be doing, and she could respond with exactly what she wanted to say, without being caught off guard on the phone. I find it to be a much more efficient way to communicate.

Love of SMS also translates into a tradition of a text message flurry for every holiday. The minute Eid al-Fitr started in October, people started getting and sending tens of messages from friends and family. For Eid al-Adha (I'll blog about this holiday soon) I even received stock greetings much like people send Christmas cards. "May this auspicious occasion bless you and your family. Holiday greetings from So-and-so and Family."

There are other things besides cell phones - one of my favorite is the exclamation points. I know this sounds strange, but I love to observe people's quirks, and Arabic-speaking people, in general, love exclamation points! I've observed this phenomenon in daily life, but my recent reading of Harry Potter in Arabic confirms it. (I'm reading it as my first Arabic novel - not elevated subject matter perhaps, but a good way to start the genre.)

One paragraph translates roughly like this:

And the third letter was for Harry! Who would send him a letter? For what reason? It was for him without a doubt!
(printed address)
And it didn't even have a postage stamp! He began to open it. His uncle hurried him to return with the mail and saw one of the letters was for him. His relatives laughed at him!

Often you will see "!!" used, or even "?!!" which you would rarely if ever find in an English novel.

So I wonder if I will lose my old sense of blithe decorum (or maybe I already have) and start making all my sentences exclamatory by the time I leave here. Maybe I will return to the States and offend a few people by answering my phone at the wrong time, or even try to convince my parents to discover the text function of their phones. Who knows!!?