escapology: study of freeing oneself from constraints

There is a soap opera that seriously is taking over the women of the Middle East. Every night at 10:00pm from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, spoons and cooking utensils drop, brooms and mops are abandoned, children beg for attention and are ignored as all eyes and channels turn to "Noor." I can hear the theme song in my sleep. I wish I could explain to you the intensity of commitment you see in women here for this TV show, but it’s really something you have to see for yourself. In our house, Ashley’s Tata (grandma) and her helper Cassie (who basically does not stop working for one minute during the day) sit like deer in the headlights for the hour long show. Tata just told us that EVERYBODY in Jordan talks about Noor…yesterday at a party we had for Ashley’s new step mother’s family all the women were apparently talking about it.

"Noor" is actually a Turkish program, and is dubbed in Arabic for all the ladies in our region. The credits at the beginning of the show say so much about the show...all the characters at the peak of their acting careers either yelling or looking longingly depressed or having some intense discussion in slow motion or just doing she "shady crook eye." I can’t remember all the characters, but the ones that stand out to me are Noor, the hot lead female who encapsulates everything about the liberated western woman that most Arab women are not but desperately want to be, Mohaned, the sexy blonde hair blue eyed buffness that is Noor’s husband, Mohaned’s paralyzed ex/other wife, Noor’s Tata, who controls the family, is super generous, and owns a giant mansion that the show revolves around, and Abdeen, the psycho weirdo who is obsessed with Noor and recently tried to choke her to death. There are also a bunch of other family members somehow related to Noor and Mohaned in some way that manage to get involved in Noor and Mohaned’s business.

Now, just because it’s so freaking entertaining, here’s a short overview of Noor: Mohaned was married to a woman who got into a car accident and was killed…or was she? After her death, Mohaned married Noor, and life is happy and cute. But wait! First wife is still alive-but paralyzed! AND since the accident has given birth to she and Mohaned’s son…so we’ve got Mohaned splitting time between his handicapped ex-wife and "new" son, and poor little Noor. Weird. Now enter Abdeen, who loves Noor with one of those "if I can’t have you no one can" types of love. So he kidnaps her, flies off the handle, and tries to choke her to death. But of course Noor can’t die, so she escapes and runs to Mohaned. But Abdeen finds them and shoots Mohaned in the leg, forcing Noor to shoot him like 12 times all over his body and put him into a coma! Then while visiting Mohaned in the hospital, Noor starts to feel faint and they rush her into have an ultrasound (yeah, cause they know exactly what she needs without running any tests…BS), and discover she is pregnant with Mohaned’s baby. And just today, Noor had her trial for shooting Abdeen (p.s. no jury of peers in Turkey…just a judge in a space-agey suit and a couple of lawyers), and has been sent to jail for an unknown amount of time. And, might I add, fragile little Noor is in for a world of hurt in Turkish jail. And wait! As I’m writing this, Abdeen just flat lined in his ICU bed, and the doctor shocked him three times and he came back to life! WOW! Amazing how it’s possible to shock someone out of asystole in Turkey, but it’s not possible to do that anywhere else in the world!!!

Like I said…intense. Tata gets more worked up about this thing than I have seen her get about pretty much anything else. Ashley was sitting with her the other day while Noor was on and a guy on the show did something mean. Tata’s eyes narrowed and she whispered "kelb" which means "dog." And another time, another guy on the show made her mad and she yelled "what kind of man is this?!?!!" It brings out all sorts of emotions I didn’t know were there.

It’s humorous to me that this show is so incredibly popular in the Middle East. It’s like the epitome of Western culture all rolled into this one show…the clothes, the stuff, the issues, etc. It’s the opposite of all of the traditions and generally speaking the way women here are. Noor is successful, sexy, dresses great, works in the fashion industry, married a hot guy for love (that is NOT the norm over here), is super rich, etc. But I guess that’s the reason it’s so popular here; it’s what every woman really wants, and just about no one has. That one hour a day is a time for these women to forget the things that constrain their human liberties and immerse themelves into Noor's idealistic life. It seems like the only women who have anything that resembles Noor are from a not so traditional and rich family that allows them/can afford the above mentioned freedoms.

Enough of Noor…on to real life. We’ve been continuing to work at the Iraqi clinic. Recently of note are Ashley and my increasing responsibility: we’ve been taking BPs, blood sugars, and fielding questions on our own! Woot! A bunch of visitors came by on the same day we were there last week and thought I worked there full time, so I got to answer questions I really didn’t know the answer to, give a mini tour/overview of the process, etc. It was funny.

Erin at the clinic in the nursing room. The typical patient first comes in here, get their BP and blood glucose checked and briefly interviewed on diet/other problems, then wait to see a doctor.

These are some volunteers cutting and counting pills in the pill room/tea room (a staple of the middle eastern diet).

This is Ashley with Amira, the woman with the 5 kids, 3 of which we are teaching English to/hanging out with. Her second to youngest child was premature and almost died because Amira could not adequately care for her. One of the doctors in the clinic, Dr. Angie and two of the nurses finally took the baby from Amira to try and revive her. They passed her around for a couple months, feeding her and keeping a close eye on her. Amira eventually changed the name of the baby to "Angie" because Dr. Angie saved her life. Angie is about a year and a half now, and has a younger brother, too!

We also met a woman from Hong Kong who was volunteering at the clinic, who then introduced us to a woman from Egypt named Amira. She is a second wife, and has 5 kids ranging from ages infant to 13 yrs. The lady who introduced us to Amira said that she lived in a really tiny house and the combination of that and summer break from school meant the kids are always inside, cramped together and fighting. She also mentioned that the oldest 3 kids wanted to learn English, and maybe we could help with that. So we went over there a couple days ago to meet them and hang out. Indeed they do live in a small house. For those of you who’ve been to CU, it’s the size of about 2 Printy rooms. For those of you who haven’t, we’re talking about one 12x12 room, a 10x8 room, and a really really tiny kitchen. Tight. They’re pretty poor, but they do have some sweet shelving and drawers. The dad is a carpenter.

Anywho, the first day over there, we just hung out for a while getting to know each other, tried to evaluate where their English is (the younger two=not so hot, the 13yr old is pretty good), and figure out how to teach them stuff in an organized fashion. Ashley used our Rosetta Stone program as flash cards for the younger two, and I just taught the older girl some slang, and words she didn’t know when we came across them. Later, Ashley played outside for a while with the younger 3 kids (Islam and Dina), and I stayed upstairs talking to the oldest girl, Sumar.

The kid in the green is the third kid, Islam. This is him and some buddies putting plastic onto their kite to fly.

This is the 2nd child, Dina, she's probably 11 or so, with Ashley, near the front door of their home and the door into the bedroom. Ashley has been primarily working with Dina and Islam (with English).

Erin, baby Angie, Ashley, and Islam using our Rosetta Stone program (that weve been using to learn Arabic), to help teach them English. We just use the pictures and then they can read the Arabic, and then we translate and talk through the English, so that is what's going on here with the laptop.

This is Ashley with Angie and Islam and some neighborhood kids outside of ther house.

The next day after getting our visa’s renewed (which is a whole other story in itself…), we picked the kids up and took them to a children’s museum for the rest of the day. It was a pretty neat museum. Honestly, Ashley and I may have learned more from it than the kids did. But man, I’ll say this: keeping up with those kids was WILD. Islam, the only boy, is almost impossible to watch. He’s here, then there, then pushing a kid off the bee you can sit on, then throwing another kid out of the way of something else, who knows! Sumar stuck with me a lot, and Dina with Ashley. But we played tag team watching to make sure Islam didn’t kill anyone or take a taxi somewhere. They actually are pretty good as far as listening. I didn’t have to ask the little guy to do anything more than once, once he understood me that is. Just hyper hypos, and giving me heart palpitations running off like they did. But what kid doesn’t do that. We tried to teach them English while at the museum but they were too distracted.

This is Ashley and the oldest, Sumar, at the children's museum.

A lifesize pin pushing thing! Erin is on the left, Ashley on the right, if you're unsure...

It's Erin and Sumar having a puppet fight. Sumar is on the right, hiding from the camera.

On the way home we grabbed some shwarmas (meat roll ups), and at this point the oldest girl fell apart a little bit emotionally, so it was good that we were done. We dropped them off shortly after. We’re planning to do some more English teaching, and take Sumar to the mall at some point. We asked her what she wanted to do, and that’s what she asked for. So as much as Ash and I detest it, that’s what’s going down per request of teen girl. NO SHOPPING…just looking. I ain’t messing around on that.