Learning to Walk Again
Slippery, like drizzly Sunday in rubber flip-flops on flagstone
Swift, sudden action cut by collapse--
a stall, an opportunity for reflection.
Cold and bleak and I struggle to stand.
Roots and Reflections:
Some weeks I feel as if I never went to live in the Middle East for a semester, I assimilate seamlessly into American culture and I forget that I ever found it to be a difficult place to re-enter. Mostly, on these days I don't think about Oman, or if I do, I think only about it as a place disconnected and far away--a story that I heard once, or a friend from elementary school whose name I vaguely remember.
Other times, though, I remember Oman as I remember my ex-boyfriend--with fond memories but a definite end. I think of my family there and remember the excitement of enjoying life with them, of going on trips and to weddings and experiencing awkward cultural stammers. I drop them into my conversation, I bring up the culture, seasoning my conversations with moments from Oman--like an experience that I have learned a lesson from. Sometimes on days like this I look at my map that hangs by my bed and I feel impressed to draw x's on the places I visited, on the areas I know well. These days, much to the chagrin of the people I share my life with, I explode at moments of silence with explanations of life there, I become the person I used to hate going to lunch with--the recent returner who begins her every sentence with "Well, when I was abroad..." On these days, I generally experience longing. But not a longing to return, but rather a longing to recapture the excitement that I remember--the highlights that I have elevated so long they have swollen and blocked my recollections of the mundane or bad days.
Still other days, when I consider Oman, I recall my family as I do my best friends who live outside of Memphis and my wonderful family in Oklahoma and brother in California. I anticipate the next time that I will get to see my sisters. I plan for their visit in my head and think about the places that I would like to show them, the parts of Memphis that I missed while I was away, and the things that I feel like encapsulate the culture (as I experience it) of Memphis. These days, I daydream and recall the day-to-day routines, I make endless lists of things I don't want to forget--experiences, places, people, clothing, decoration, ritual, customs, foods. In the middle of lectures and while studying in the library, I find myself moving my hands to interact and speak to my housemaids. When lunch time comes around, I listen for the call to prayer. While running, I look behind for my sister or Tihru. I think about growing up and maybe getting married, about graduating, about inviting my family from Oman to celebrate with me. I plan like I'm going back next year. I check American Airlines for flights that leave, tomorrow, just in case they suddenly become really cheap. These days, I mumble "insha'allah" under my breath when I speak about the future, opt to wear long sleeves and jeans instead of shorts, doodle the roses of my sisters' wallpaper onto my notes from class, I remember and remember, but mostly stay quiet about it. On these days, it's fair to say that I also get angry, and frustrated. Mad about the way that the man in my home-stay family in Nizwa did not desire to live with his wife any longer, frustrated by my sister's perception of Jewish people, angered at the curfews and social rules my sisters live by that bind them. I think of the drive to school every morning and the way it feels to be a foreigner. I think of adventure and the way my perception changed while I was abroad. Mostly, I feel nostalgic and compelled to be a lot of different things that I never knew I would. I wake up, on these days, in the middle of the night and I look for my journal, I practice writing Arabic letters and I mumble a hodge-podge of Arabic phrases I remember. I look up the weather in Muscat--always sunny and warm--and I recall the lyrics to a song I like, and wonder "how can you trust somewhere the sun is always shining?"
Most unusual, though, are the days when I wake up convinced that I'm there, or days when I walk to class sure that I'm walking on the corniche in Muttrah. The days when I get my food from Ms. Jessie in the rat and respond, "Shukran." These days, I gawk at short skirts and running shorts, I spend large amounts of time sleeping, I judge people who choose pork in their stir fry and I choose juice over water. These days, I ache. These days, I feel foreign in my dorm room. I lose focus when trying to study in the quiet, I look around expecting Master to be playing at my feet and my Omani family to be watching Oprah or Al Jazeera all around me. These days, I want to wake up before sunrise and run to the ocean, to see the white-dishdawshed men walk along the shore in bare-feet toward morning prayer, to feel the rush of the October breeze that pushes me into the dark water, to sit on the sand talking with my sister until the sun comes up and dries our skin sticky and clothes stiff and to walk back home, our hair tied up in long colorful scarves.
- a reflection from my journal
