Outside the Wardrobe
Have you ever eaten at a Middle Eastern restaurant? Dark-haired people speak Arabic and the music wanders. When I walked onto my Royal Jordanian airlines flight out of New York City, that's how the atmosphere felt. But now that I’ve actually arrived in Amman, I feel more like C. S. Lewis’s adventurers taking their first steps outside the wardrobe. The smell of cigarettes everywhere mingles with that of food cooked in olive oil. And there's that same sound--like “stream of consciousness” set to music. I detect no tunes, only notes.
Our group of about twenty journalists, a fairly even mix of men and women, from the states met for the first time as we gathered in the Amman terminal before gathering our bags—which were run through security scanners before we could take them out. Then we boarded a bus for the thirty-minute ride to our beautiful downtown hotel. There we waited once again for our bags to be scanned before we could tote them into the hotel.
So far my most interesting experience has been reading yesterday’s Jordan Times. When was the last time news out of Jordan was pasted all over our papers? Well, the headlines here said, “After historic win, Obama looks to future” with this subhead: “World reaction mostly positive.” Jordan and the U.S. have a history of good relations, and everyone expects that to continue. One reporter did acknowledge that Jordan may soon receive less aid, but only because of the financial crisis, not because of a failure in diplomacy. Interestingly, while the US stock market plunged, Jordan’s shot up in response to our election results.
The paper contained numerous stories about positive worldwide reactions. How about this one: “Kogelo, Kenya (AP) – Barak Obama’s Kenyan relatives and Africans across the continent sang, danced in the streets and wrapped themselves in US flags Wednesday to cheer for America’s first black president. Kenya will party for two days, after the president declared a national holiday.” The article also said partiers picked up Obama’s half-brother and carried him through the village, and Kenya’s president declared a public holiday. So did Sierra Leone, where newborn babies were named “Barak Obama” at the city’s main maternity hospital.
While many Americans watched the election results with a “ho-hum, sure will be glad when this election is finally over” attitude, the Jordanian news reported a much different response across the globe.
People here held all-night watch parties in private homes or at the US embassy; international students attending college in the U.S. called their parents in the middle of the night yelling “We did it!” Not they did it, as one proud father living in Jerusalem pointed out, but we.
A European wrote a column saying how the standard response to those challenging racism in the past in his own country has been "At least we’re not as bad as the liberty-loving US! Look at their pathetic history on racism. People don't change." Now, he says, their excuses are silenced. All defenses shift to the past tense. The election of a black president says the US has overcome and November 4, 2008 marked the beginning of “someday.” Not only have US citizens demonstrated we’re less racist than Europeans thought. More troubling—and exciting in its implications—to this writer (him, not me) was that we’re less racist than his own people are. Illusion shattered.
There were other reasons cited for the excitement. For some Obama’s win is a CinderFella story. Instead of the privileged rich kid becoming king, we have a kid breaking through both class and race barriers to ascend to the most powerful political office on earth. It screams to the oppressed that “All things are possible! Don’t give up! Yes, we can!”
Recurring themes like “justice” and “cooperation” kept popping up in the prose, as well. Here they say our image has been badly tarnished by the letter-of-the-law-but-violation-of-the-spirit practices at Guantanamo. When Americans think of the biggies happening in our nation, Guantanamo has not generally been on the list. But for many outside the US, it’s on the top three or four. Where were those who believe in human dignity on that one? Mostly defending their political party over justice—again, the way they see it here.
In the columns I read, the word “justice” kept popping up. And not just from the nations who typically criticize the US. It was pretty much worldwide. One Arab commentator even predicts a two-month honeymoon period in US/Middle East relations. The mere statement by Barak Obama that he would speak to Iran, while considered “soft on terrorism” by many of my friends at home is seen here more like a lovesick man separated from his wife saying “She many not want to work it out with me, but I’m stopping at nothing to make sure I’ve done everything I can.” They want to hope America, which once had a reputation for having the moral high ground, will be the last to quit trying.