Up in the air

I’m writing this from the cramped 26A seat on a BMI flight from London to Amman (it’ll get pasted from the Word document later; I’m trying to be proactive, which is why I’m on the British Midlands flight in the first place). Pros of 26A: window, view of London fading away. Cons of 26A: near tail, very bumpy, hence vaguely motion sickness and fear inducing. I’m flying somewhere over western Turkey, and everything in my life is up in the air. Turbulent, if you will.

As of this morning I’m “formally” moved out of London. However, since I’m not yet really moved in anywhere else, that’s only half true. Last night I slept on a sleeping bag on the floor, and this morning I surrendered the keys to my flatmate. Who needs an address when the world is your oyster? (Me, me, me!!!) My flatmates left the house with me and each helped carry a suitcase down the sidewalk, onto the bus, off the bus, down the stairs to the tube, onto the train, and I hugged them goodbye in between the closing doors of the Picadilly line. At Heathrow airport I alternately pushed, heaved, and gingerly pulled everything  off of the tube alone. My arms are sore but I’m proud of the feat. Who needs a gym when you don’t have money for a taxi? (Me, me, me!!!) I’m also impressed that I didn’t pay a pence in overweight luggage fees, even though it required nonchalantly smiling whilst standing in front of the check-in counter while the straps of my hand luggage, in which I had placed all of my heaviest books, sliced into the skin over my collarbone. I assured my friend in Amman that I was going to try mightily to be brave around him about my uncertain future, and that I would consolidate my baggage in both the literal and metaphorical sense.

I hate saying goodbye to people (though I like goodbye parties, because I like any excuse to throw a party). Leaving DC over a year ago was heartrending enough; leaving London is sad because I’ve added more people onto the long list of people I miss. Today was a beautiful fall day, and as the plane took off and flew over London I could recognize many places that meant something to me. From 26A I noticed, “Oh, that’s the airport road with the hotel where I had dinner with Karina during her half day layover, there are the Kew gardens! In the winter Joelle and I had tea there, and scones with clotted cream. We took a photo in front of the red Japanese pagoda, the pagoda is what you can see best from the air,” and “Oh, that’s the Public Records Office, the home of the British National Archives, it looks like a soviet office building, sprawling cement.” I thought to myself, “That’s the first place I spent time in London, I miss researching the Assyrians, reading old musty documents, the British Foreign Office was so organized, remarkable, it was so cold when I was staying at the archivist’s house on that road there, I bought a scarf with orange and pink stripes at the Marks and Spencer’s in that giant mall…there…I won’t miss Marks and Spencer’s…what a ridiculously overpriced store.” As the plane flew closer to the center of the city the places I noticed and the memories associated with them grew denser, more intense, and more difficult to separate, and I was awash in a streamofconsciousness nostalgia for my year in London. “There’s the London eye! Well, of course it’s easy to spot. I went there with every visitor who came to town. The Thames. Such a long, important river. I’ve heard it’s shallow, only three feet deep. One could wade across if it weren’t for the undercurrents. I wonder what it was like three hundred years ago. Busier? Dirtier. Arsenal stadium! The Emirates stadium. Arsenal, sponsored by Emirates. Why? And the New Academic Building at LSE donated by Sheik Zayed and the PR firms of Abu Dhabi. I should go back to Dubai. The Dubai metro is running now, ‘hamdullilah. There’s Finsbury Park! My house, oops, not my house anymore, must be somewhere…right…there…aw, there’s Regent’s Park. Regent’s Park is nicer than Finsbury Park. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. I had a daylong picnic there with Emily and Olivia, and we ate the most delicious brie cheese. Those are the Southwestern railway trains snaking towards Brighton.” I remembered in a jumble of thoughts the first trip I took out of London, this time last year, to Brighton beach. “Another beautiful fall day. I didn’t have a mobile phone yet. How did I manage to find Jolie in Victoria station? Jolie and I sitting on the beach. Drinking beer and eating chips. Contrails in the sky, from planes headed towards America. Vegetarian Indian restaurant. Hippies and Caribbean Britons. I bought a pair of red and black striped beaded earrings. I think I lost one of them recently. How did I meet Jolie anyway? Caroline! Through Caroline! How is she? Is she in Germany? We went to dinner at the Turkish restaurant, by the river, somewhere…there…we walked along the brick quay near the Globe Theater to a wine bar. Tube back to Brixton. Crept upstairs in my old house by the light of a streetlamp. That house had the greatest kitchen and a cookbook that I always meant to buy for myself but now I can’t remember the name of it…”

Now the map says 601 km to destination. I’m somewhere over Konya, the sufi town. Rumi is burried there. Its the home of the Mevlevi order of Sufis, the whirling dervishes. Not all Sufis see the value in this, of meditating while going around in circles. Maybe the journey is the destination? I don’t know. Like everyone I have a strong desire to feel useful in the world, but at 35,000 feet, neither here nor there in life, I just feel nervous. But maybe that’s the turbulence.

All in a Wednesday

For better or worse, London is no longer an English city. There are many Anglophiles who would find such a claim contentious, even contemptible, but I don’t think its such a bold assertion. London is a global city, and thats what I like about it. Everyday one is destined to encounter people from an assortment of far-flung places with a variety of far-out opinions. Today was no different.

When I jumped into the Tube at Holloway Road this morning, I sat near the most impressively elegant French woman and her adorable yet annoying daughter. The little girl, who was probably seven or eight years old, was fidgety on the train. She fussed with the purple bow in her hair and clicked together the heels of her silver ballet flats while whining about dying of hunger. Lately my usage of French has been limited to reading newspapers over people’s shoulders on the train (un peu “creepy,” I know) and trying to understand eight year olds, but this restless girl’s mother inspired me to keep up my French. An integral concept in philosophy and social science is that one understands and defines oneself only in relation to others (or The Other, if you prefer excessive capitalization and are prone to quoting Hegel). Equipped with this intellectual framework and a year of living in London, I think I am beginning to understand the infamous interminable French and English rivalry! This French woman was amazing: amazingly chic in her black and white striped dress, onyx-colored blazer, and Greek-style sandals that exposed her painted toenails; and amazingly patient without being subservient as she handed her daughter napkins. I SO admire women who dress up despite having to feed querulous eight year olds on the underground.

Later this evening, I went to dinner at a Persian restaurant on Edgeware Road with two people in my International Relations program. Inevitably, we started discussing what we were writing our dissertations about. (A digression: the English higher education system refers to what is basically a short Master’s degree thesis as a “dissertation,” and to a long Ph.D. dissertation as a “thesis.” I haven’t quite gotten used to this, though I have taken to calling my roommates flatmates and my apartment a flat. It is a shorter word, afterall. But I don’t think I’ll ever in seriousness say “jumper,” “loo,” or “lorry,” and I’m still not entirely sure if I should interpret “cheeky sod” as an insult or a term of endearment. Anyway, telling people that I’m writing a dissertation throughout the summer makes it seem a lot more difficult and important than it actually is). Nevertheless, I rather like my dissertation topic and I’m excited about the project, so I was enthusiastically describing it to my friends. (A disclaimer: the following sentence is extremely nerdy. Of course, if you’re reading this blog, So Are You!) I explained how I was hoping to examine how Jordanian foreign policy is affected by the conflicting dynamics of regime security for the Hashemite monarchy, long-term national economic interest, the maintenance of Jordan’s international reputation, and popular opinion and demands for democracy–especially by the 70% of the country’s residents of Palestinian origin, who are frequently discriminated against in favor of the powerful Beduoin families close to the monarchy.

As it so happens, as I was describing “the King’s dilemma” (How can a Malik modernize a monarchy, gradually liberalize a country in order to gain national and international legitimacy in the year 2009, and not make himself redundant, the victim of his own success?) to my captive audience over kebab, I realized that we had sat next to a table of Jordanians. I had first noticed the three of them when one man was extremely rude to the Chinese waiter when he didn’t understand Arabic (at a Persian restaurant…), and then I overhead them conversing with curiosity about how we were chattering about Jordan. Since the guy kept looking at me, or, as I realize in retrospect, more probably at my V-neck shirt, I decided to engage them in a little polite restaurant conversation. I was thinking this was a good opportunity to practice my Arabic, but it was a decision that I came to regret. I asked him where he was from; predictably he said Jordan but when pressed as to where, he suggested that his family was 40,000 members strong throughout four powerful towns. He demanded to know how I spoke Arabic, exclaiming incredulously, “Surely you have Arab blood!” “No…” (I never know how to answer people’s questions about why I’ve studied Arabic or am interested in the Middle East without sounding like an orientalist or a teenager or a spy). I asked him what he did in London and he evasively told me that he worked on “this and that, bits and pieces, yanni…” I quickly concluded that he didn’t need to work and to the extent that he did it probably involved something sketchy, quite possibly with government money. Maybe that was an unfair assumption but nonetheless after swapping these pleasantries the conversation began to make me uncomfortable.

I tend to try to avoid unsubtle discussion regarding religion or politics with people about whose backgrounds I know nothing, but my Canadian friend shared none of my hesitation in this regard, nor any of my insight into this guy’s likely loyalties. Instead, he saw an opportunity to elaborate on what we had just been talking about, and he enthusiastically lauched a barrage of overwhelmingly forthright questions at the group.

My jaw dropped when he nonchalantly asked them, “So, what do you think about the King?” and I felt really secure in my choice of research question when one man answered, “Of course, we love the King! I mean…Jordanians do not love him as much as they love his father, but he follows his father in all policies, or he tries to. We don’t like that he married a Palestinian woman though. He should have married a Jordanian lady, or an English lady, like his father did.” (A clarification: Queen Noor is actually American of Syrian and English descent, in that she grew up in the United States, but I guess if you’re privileged as a result of your status as an “original” Jordanian whose family controls the army and the national institutions you don’t grow up with a paradigm for thinking about people’s heritage in such terms).

As if to illustrate this point, he proudly mentioned that he once “beat up a policeman and didn’t even go to jail!” He added [ironically] that, “In Jordan, what matters is manners. It doesn’t matter if you pray to God or to a stone, as long as you have manners. In this way it is the families of Jordan that matter, not the law.” My Canadian friend couldn’t get enough. He eagerly leaned in to ask, “Isn’t that a problem?” I couldn’t help to wonder how our new friend would manage to whitewash this answer, and I too leaned in as he continued, “No, its not a problem. We don’t have any problems in Jordan. This is because the families [tribes] take care of things. For example, manners, we all know that there is only one reason that a man wants to know a woman, and when a man makes a relationship with a woman in a bad way, not in a respectable way, the families will make sure they are both finished. Halas.”

Halas I was finished with my rice at this point, and while part of me wanted to record them and write down everything they were saying in defense of honor killings, a bigger part of me wanted to pay the bill and get out of there. My other friend, an Iranian, looked repulsed and receded from the conversation. I tried to hit his feet under the table in solidarity before he jumped up to get the check. Having grown up inundated with his fair share of repugnant political opinions, he had heard enough. He had just been telling us how his parents in Iran have to call his Canadian cell phone because the Iranian cell is blocked. He’s pissed off because it costs $4/minute, but he doesn’t have much choice. Apparently, calls from Iran to English mobiles have recently been blocked as well. Are English-Iranian relations still so bad after all of these decades? Or, like me, does he just never keep enough credit on his phone?

How I Feel About English Weather

Regardless of what you may think of Rushdie, this bit from his Satanic Verses captures how I feel about English weather:

“But where should he begin? –Well then, the trouble with the English was their:
Their:
In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather.

Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. ‘When the day is not warmer than the night,’ he reasoned, ‘when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything –from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs –as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is *so* and not *thus*, it is *him* and not *her*, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, HEATED. City,’ he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, ‘I am going to tropicalize you.’

Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coil and sprays…. Increased appeal of London as a centre for conferences, etc,; better cricketers; higher emphasis on ball-control among professional footballers, the traditional and soulless English commitment to ‘high workrate’ having been rendered obsolete by the heat. Religious fervour, political ferment, renewal of interest in the intelligentsia. No more British reserve; hot-water bottles to be banished forever, replaced in the foetid nights by the making of slow and odorous love. Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old folks’ homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier food; …the joy of running fully dressed through the first rains of the monsoon.

Disadvantages: cholera, typhoid, legionnaires’ disease, cockroaches, dust, noise, a culture of excess.

Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: ‘Let it be.’”

more on english laundry soaps

I used the last of my flatmates’ laundry detergent this afternoon. As I didn’t feel like writing my essay about Russia, I figured that I would briefly procrastinate by stepping outside to replace the empty soap bottle. I dropped my house keys and four pounds into my coat pockets and set off for the 98 pence store on the corner. I only brought four pounds because I didn’t think laundry detergent could possibly cost more than four pounds, and if it did, well, I assumed that I wouldn’t want to buy it. But being a champagne socialist complicates matters. I was insistent on replacing it with the same brand of “non-biological liquigel” that my flatmates had previously purchased. The biological detergents have enzymes in them, and are not as gentle on clothes. Athough I’m not sure why I care; all of my clothes come from charity stores. Anyway, the 98p store failed to stock Persil non-bio liquigel. I wandered the aisles for awhile in search of it, getting distracted by the Valentine’s Day section with its temperature sensitive coffee mugs with photos of men and women whose vestments evaporate when coming into contact with hot liquid. I absentmindedly doubled back to make sure that I hadn’t missed the detergent, humming “Its gettin’ hot in here, so take off all your clothes…” and marvelling at the stacks of Ribena black currant juice with which people here appear to be obsessed. I popped into the A&E Discount store nextdoor and was similarly disappointed. I considered buying some green jeweled hair clips but thought better of it when I remembered that I hadn’t brought my wallet and I had to save my precious four pounds for the elusive laundry soap. I grew increasingly exasperated when I realized that the turkish store across the street didn’t carry my non-bio soap either. Annoyed, I resigned myself to walking a bit farther and braving the long lines at the Morrisons, “Britain’s Best Supermarket,” according to the billboard-sized poster above its car park. I pushed my way past the crowds of Sunday shoppers only to discover to my horror that the Persil non-bio liquigel sitting on the shelf in all of its gleaming glory cost four pounds and NINETEEN PENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I angrily fingered the four pounds in my pocket pushed my way out of the store in a huff.

I decided to console myself for my misadventure and continue procrastinating by stopping at the Ocean Breeze Fish ‘n Chips on the way home.
“Hi,” I greeted the turkish man behind the counter, “A small chips, please.”
“Open or closed?”
“I’m sorry?”I don’t know why this question caught me off guard, but it did. I was confused, because I didn’t think the chips came in a sandwhich or on bread of any kind, and I was worn out from my laundry soap search.
“Open or closed? You don’t understand?”His eyes sparkled with mocking and he chuckled mightily.
“No.”
“You speak English?” He stared at me as he scooped up the fries, erm, chips.
“YES [Very well thank you!]“
“Where you from?”
I refrained from pointing out that his question lacked a verb and that technically he really shouldn’t end his English sentences with prepositions. Like Winston Churchill once exclaimed, normally “That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put!” Instead, I just smiled my widest most insincere American smile and sweetly answered, “The United States.” Now give me my damn chips!!! I lunged for my remaining two pounds thirty pence and walked home wihout my non-biological liquigel.

Overheard

I used to live a few blocks away from a fantastic Japanese noodle restaurant called Fujiyama, and the last time I was there I overheard a bemusing conversation between two British ladies with matching gray bobs. “…yes, she acts on stage in New York, yes, New York!” “Well, my online name is Laura London…because my cat’s name was Laura, and I live in London.” “Did you see, the BBC had a wonderful series on a few nights ago, all about Islam, yes, fascinating, and all the more so because I have this friend who is a professor, you see, who knows all about those things, you know…” I was tempted to lean over and exasperatedly interject, “YES. I know,” but I luckily remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be evesdropping. I took a sip of wine, looked down at my noodles, and ate a chili.

The reason I mention this now is that the BBC is now showing a new documentary that everyone should watch. Iran and the West is a 3-part series that includes interviews with former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Rafsanjani, and Khatami. Should be interesting. Fascinating, even…all the more so because you have this friend who, you see, knows all about these things, you know…

We Don’t Like.

When I was a little girl, my mother drove me crazy by speaking in the royal we. I remember with particular clarity one incident wherein my mother informed my friend’s mother that “We don’t like fried foods.” “Speak for yourself!” thought my indignant five year old self, “You don’t cook anything delicious because dad won’t let you because he doesn’t want you to get fat!” (“Because he’s a misogynist jerk,” realizes my twenty-five year old self). As a result, since confronting the reality that I too could have children if I so chose, I’ve become hyper-aware of mothers’ tendencies to subsume their identities to those of their children. I am very, very conscious of striving never to speak in majestic plurals. When I talk to my brother, or when I babysit, I am careful not to assume, to overstep, by using the royal we. It does not amuse me. Or as this country’s monarch, Queen Victoria, famously said, “We are not amused.” I am afraid I will end up as dazed and confused as my mother as to who I am, and worse, crush someone else under a collapsing identity.

Despite this paranoia, I was excessively amused by the following bumper-sticker-sized sign declaring simply that “We Don’t Like.” I first saw this weeks ago, long before the holidays (probably not long after my last blog post, if that gives you an idea of just how long ago this was), when I went out on Brick Lane with two girlfriends and a guy who, while I love him, doesn’t share my friends’ and my feminism and can make unfortunate comments that have more in common with my father than I am comfortable with. The four of us were sitting outside of a curry house/bar on a wooden picnic table in the cold when a man handed us each a “We Don’t Like” sign. “I don’t like the royal we,” I told him. “It amuses me not,” I said in what I hoped was an amusing way, blowing smoke in his face for good measure. “What is this?” I asked. He informed us that he was part of an improvisational theater group called We Don’t Act, and he urged us to come to his show the following week. “We” said we would consider it, and then I asked him coyly, “So what don’t you like?” He thought about it for a second and said, “Hrm. I don’t like violence. And I don’t like having wives.” “Wives? You don’t like having wives or you don’t like having a wife?” “A wife.” The three women at the table, well, we were not amused, and we realized that this sign could succintly express our displeasure. In unison we held up the signs towards our solicitor friend and chimed together, “We Don’t Like.” After this, the signs came up nearly constantly throughout the rest of the night, mostly in response to any borderline misogynist comments from our friend. We joked that we should bring the “We Don’t Like” signs to all of our seminars, and hold them up silently whenever a student made a tedious, annoying, or poorly argued point. Just think how amusing this could be during meetings????!!!!!

I was in fits of giggles that entire night, and I don’t foresee the “We Don’t Like” sign getting any less funny anytime soon. This is probably because “We Don’t Like” a lot of things–most notably blogging. I am not a blogger, and I realized why. Not only do I at least attempt to privilege the present over the virtual, I prefer talking to people individually. Its difficult for me to write solipsistically for a wide audience. We also don’t like CCTV and constant surveillance of citizens in England. As I was riding the night bus back from Brick Lane that night, I took a photo of this sign that enthusiastically [creepily] declared, “Our new buses are fitted with digital CCTV so that you have a safe and pleasant journey. We have prosecuted over 60 people for vandalism and graffiti on our buses. You are being monitored NOW by cameras fitted to this bus. So just sit back and smile!”

We Don’t Like.

Windsor Great Park

I recently spent a weekend as a guest of the Queen Mother at Cumberland Lodge near Windsor Castle. In between a series of scheduled bars (including one before and after both lunch and dinner) the International Relations department discussed such lofty and pertinent topics as dilemmas of China’s rise, partnerships amongst India, Brazil, and South Africa, reflections on the end of the world, the decline of America, and the death of capitalism. Mulling such things over whilst surrounded by such finery and decadence, really put the champagne in champagne socialist.

The Royal Lodge:

The Royal Landscape:

Pineapple

After eight weeks of eating Sunday roasts and drinking pints of London Pride every evening at Ye Old White Horse, the Knights Templar, the Princess Louise, Shakespeare’s Head, and the George IV pubs near LSE, I realized that I could use some exercise.

My flatmate generously offered me use of the fancy Nordic track in the garage (pronounced here with the emphasis on the first syllable, GARE-age), but I confess I felt a little too much like a caged hamster on a treadmill. In secondary school I used to run all of the time, going so far as to join the cross-country team, though I admit that running everyday was of secondary interest to the comraderie and the parties in the mountains. I remembered that when I attempted to revisit running here, dutifully setting off in the direction of Brockwell Park. Running has the benefit of making me too tired to think about anything in particular, which is good for me, but few people jog for fun here, and I got some alien looks as I shuffled past the Nigerian currency exchange stores and laundromats. There is a nice view of London from the center of Brockwell Park, which sits atop a hill, and I suppose the view was worth the expedition, but as I ran down I passed a group of people sauntering up the hill to drink beer and smoke. The men were all wearing tight black jeans and the women high heels. They were all thin and no one felt obligated or inclined to run. They moved past in a little cloud of cigarette smoke. It smelled fantastic, I wondered why I wasn’t with them, and I vowed never to go running again.

A few days later I went to a classical jazz dance class at a studio in a converted pineapple warehouse near Covent Garden. I hadn’t been to a serious dance class in at least three years, and when I realized that I could still keep up I felt as if I had stumbled upon a pile of bricks of cash stashed and forgotten about in the back of the closet or under the mattress or in the basement or something (haha, yeahhh…people do this in rural America….and there is a banking crisis on now afterall). It really was an extraordinary feeling; it made me inordinately happy. Also, at the same time it was useful for me to recognize that I was not the most prepared student in the class. Sometimes I get arrogant, and complacent, within my familiar circles of policy wonkette subject matter expertise. Dancing was simultaneously energizing and humbling, and ultimately centering, and reinvigorating.

The woman who taught the class was also really amusing. She has green eyes and wild curly red hair, and a semi-operatic voice that leaks out when she sings lyrics in lieu of counting. If the class danced a section well, she stepped back and bounced up and down excitedly, punctuating her jumping with little yelps of “YES!” She narrated one portion dramatically, instructing the group to, “Grab your heart, rip it out, throw it on the floor, turn front to the mirror, wipe your mouth a bit, yes, well, almost, yes, then…walk away, disgusted! You’re disgusted!” and then “…On ‘one’ you hit the floor, ‘two’ you are lying on the floor, broken, but then! on ‘three’ ‘and’ you hit the floor with your fist, pound pound, ‘four’, you look up, you recover, that’s right, raise your head, you’re BACK! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

Display

Does anybody else find this window display near Covent Garden as creepy as I do?

Little Venice, Regent’s Canal