Studying Abroad in the Arab World
I know why I am studying Spanish. I am from Texas and Spanish is necessary to learn to speak with a large portion of the population of our state. But no one ever asks, “Why Spanish?” instead, I am asked, “Why Jordan? Why Arabic?” even from my professors.
After finishing three years of studying Arabic, my Arabic professor asks me why I am studying Arabic and I stare back at him with a blank face. I told him it was because I liked the language, but Arabic is a tough language to master, and “liking the challenge” would not be enough to satisfy anyone asking, “the question.” Instead, my answer is more complicated. With hindsight, I realize that I did not need a reason to start Arabic or go abroad, rather I needed the motivation to stay with it. After living with my host mom and learning from my teachers, I developed relationships in Arabic that would not have been possible in English. My reason for staying abroad for two semesters and re-enrolling in Arabic this semester was not that I wanted to save the world or become fluent, but rather, because of the relationships I made with Arabic speakers. I want to continue to make more Arabic speaking friends as I develop the necessary dialect skills.
After spending the year abroad in Jordan, I have returned to campus with myriad ambiguous answers to the inevitable questions. Often, I am asked, “so, like, you’re fluent in Arabic now, right?” and I have to answer, “well, not exactly.” I am learning how to navigate questions like, “did you feel safe in Jordan?” staying true to my experience while also remaining conscious of stereotypes. When Israel/Palestine conversations come up, people look to me for an opinion, as if I have gained credibility after living in the region.
“My reason for staying abroad for two semesters and re-enrolling in Arabic this semester was not that I wanted to save the world or become fluent, but rather, because of the relationships I made with Arabic speakers.”
Arabic is a complicated language that is typically reduced to a language of political hegemonies. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur’an, the holy text of Islam. In Arab countries, countries that speak Arabic across North Africa and the Middle East, classical Arabic can be heard from news correspondents and read in literature and newspapers. However, the Arabic used in common conversation is the countries’ dialect. Arabic dialect can be split into a few regions: the Gulf dialect (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Yemen), the Levantine dialect (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon), Egyptian, and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). The consensus of the Arabic student population is that the Gulf dialect is more guttural, the Levantine dialect is the easiest to learn, the Egyptian dialect substitutes the “J” sound for “G”, and the Maghreb dialect is basically French and Arabic combined. Students are scared away from learning Gulf dialect because of the politics of the region, Egyptian after the Arab spring, and the Maghreb largely because of the fear that if a student does know French, they will only be speaking French and not learn any Arabic.
Because of political conflicts, Jordan and Morocco are the most viable study abroad options for American students. While most Arabic professors I have met learned Levantine Arabic dialect and recommend studying abroad in Jordan, one of my Moroccan Arabic professors argued that Morocco is an equally viable choice, often underrepresented in a student’s study abroad options. He explained to me the strange politics behind the assumptions that Arabic students have, specifically comparing Moroccan and Jordanian dialect. Most students go to Jordan for linguistic reasons, but those reasons are, according to this professor, based on ill-informed assumptions. He told me that Moroccan Arabic and Jordanian Arabic are equally distant from Classical Arabic. I, however, still believe Moroccan Arabic is harder to grasp without any outside knowledge of French and an American Arabic student can grasp the Jordanian dialect easier because of its similarities with Classical Arabic.
To understand a student’s decision to go to a certain Arabic speaking country, we must unpack the causes that will point a student in a certain direction. In the American Arabic classroom there are roughly four identities (and students may identify with multiple categories): ROTC students who want to learn Arabic for possible deployment in the Arab world, Jewish students who already know Hebrew and/or have a personal interest in Israel/Palestine, Arab students who know a dialect or have relatives who speak the language and want to learn classical Arabic, and other students who are interested in politics, human development, or, rarely, classical or linguistic studies.
“When I returned, not only did I have other people labeling what they assumed to be my language level, but also there was the expectation that I could explain the political concerns of the Middle East.”
Students who focus on Israel/Palestine, human development, or politics go to Jordan because Amman is less than an hour away from Israel/Palestine (and very accessible to other countries for easy travel), borders Syria for political and humanitarian concerns, and is an easier linguistic transition from Classical Arabic. Some Jewish students, however, do not feel comfortable in Jordan because of lingering anti-Semitic sentiment after the establishment of the State of Israel. While withholding one’s Jewish identity is encouraged in Jordan, the country gets a bad reputation because the population is painted with a broad stroke, even though a large percentage of people are open to Jewish companions.
Once a student weighs the safety, linguistic, and accessibility concerns of studying abroad, she must commit to a program. There are multiple programs for studying abroad in the Middle East, specifically in Morocco and Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt are great possibilities for study abroad, but because of the State Department’s Travel Advisory rankings, enrollment has suffered. These rankings, largely determined by US political interests, affect whether American universities allow their students to study abroad in the ranked country. Up until Spring 2018, before the State Department changed how they rank countries, Egypt and Lebanon were ranked “3” or “Reconsider Travel”. Most of the Arab world including Egypt and Lebanon (excluding Syria, Yemen, and Libya) are now ranked “2” or “Exercise Increased Caution”. After 2011, programs like CIEE, SIT, and Middlebury pulled their study abroad programs from countries like Egypt and Syria for political concerns and, although Egypt is now stable with an authoritarian dictator, these programs have not returned.
I chose Middlebury when I studied abroad because of its reputation for quality language instruction, but there are options for students who have not learned Arabic or are uncomfortable with keeping the “Language Pledge,” a pledge that all communication, excluding calls to home, will be in Arabic. Students also chose the length and term they go abroad but despite how few months a student spends in the Middle East, there seems to be a new credibility gained after living abroad there.
When I returned, not only did I have other people labeling what they assumed to be my language level, but also there was the expectation that I could explain the political concerns of the Middle East. This concerned me because I know students with whom I studied abroad, who had very real experiences that promulgated established stereotypes of the region.
“Studying abroad was not easy, although the highs were really high, the lows were quite low.”
In Amman, I never experienced any serious sexual harassment that I had not already experienced in cities like New York. However, when a student returning from studying abroad in the Middle East tells a story about how a man would honk at her on the way to the gym, that story is not heard in terms of general toxic masculinity, but an Arab-ing of her experience, as if the mistreatment of women would be expected there.
Studying abroad was not easy, although the highs were really high, the lows were quite low. I had trouble making new friends in the study abroad program in a language that none of us could speak well, living with a family whose routines were different from what I was familiar with, and running into situations that I never thought would arise. My experience was valuable, good and bad, but in coming back to the US, I had a lot of problems. I did not want to misrepresent the region but wanted to be conscious of the truth to my story. Furthermore, I came back to Arabic class here at WashU, after speaking a year of dialect, to return to the old ways of Classical Arabic, picking back up where I left off a year before, relearning grammar structures and vocabulary I hardly remember, but my classmates who did not go abroad easily digest. I feel like there are a lot of expectations that I fall short of in my study abroad experience in the Arab world. Too often, I have to elevator-pitch my experience, people expected a thirty-second summary of my year abroad. I tend to falsify and simplify my story for the comfortability of others, but that does not change the reality of my time abroad.
Photo licensed under Creative Commons Zero.