"The Stocks"

2.17.2007

“Kate, do you want to go with us to ‘the stocks’”?
I heard “stocks” and thought “NASDAQ”. This quite confused me.
I said, “sure!” thinking, “well, if I go with Sanaa and Ahmed, then I’ll at least get to understand what the crap they’re talking about…and since they’re asking me if I want to go, it can’t be dangerous for me.”

When I was in Photo II with Mr. Hing, one of our large projects was an advertisement. We had to go through all the stages of production, including brainstorming, reforming the idea, actually photographing the thing, and working with photoshop to add text. I remember helping Mr. Hing put the photos up on the wall in the main hallway in the Reed Center. He stopped at an advertisement for a pair of shoes. “Something just doesn’t work here…the photography is excellent, but the wording just doesn’t work. It got lost in translation.” English was a second language for the student photographer.

Basically, everything in English around here is like that. For example, the “International Student Office” is called the “Ex-patriot Student Bureau.” Yarmouk is organized into “villages” – the word makes sense in Arabic, but in English…it doesn’t really. “English Village” sounds like some quaint little moor somewhere in the United Kingdom. By far and away my favorite are the daftarat, or the school notebooks. Most of them have cheesy pictures of babies, flowers, or landscapes with the most hilarious phrases, made triply hilarious when there are spelling and grammar mistakes. Here are some examples:
“You are happy when you see a flower and recognize the blessing.”
“Fish for a dream, you never know when you might use it.”
“A Friend…makes the world we live in a better and happier place. A friend is someone we turn to when our spirits need a lift A friend is someone to treasure, for friendship is a gift A friend is someone who fills our lives with Beauty, Joy and Grace and makes the world we live in a better and happier place”
“Thinking of Future Mysteries with pure minds. Wondering What is Future with innocent eyes. Babies Future.”
“Blue as spring sky shining as a day light roaming as a bird to get further looking future with a big smile.”
“Flowers write with the sence of romance…2 the one you love…I love you Can be said with Words…

So when Sanaa asked me if I wanted to go to the “stocks”, I automatically assumed that I was wrong about us going to something that had to do with the NY Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Probably she either heard a poor translation of the word balay, or she looked it up in a dictionary and took whatever definition came up. “Stocks” would definitely not be the word I would use. Maybe I would use that word to refer to a place like Costco, or the Bishop’s Storehouse, or any wholesale place, but the place we went had nothing to with those kinds of places.

The words I would have used were more like: bazaar, flea market, second-hand shopping, or graveyard for American clothing. Before coming to Jordan, I went shopping with Trevor. We spent the whole time looking at where the different things were made. So far, everywhere I’ve gone with Hibba or Sanaa in the Soog (market) literally everything I have seen – including makeup and accessories – has been ‘Made in China’. So it was quite a shock to see things like a Dallas Cowboys jacket, a sweatshirt with ‘Los Angeles’ on it, sponge-bob square-pants slippers, and brand names like Land’s End, Old Navy, American Eagle, and Abercrombie and Fitch. There was a black and white Armani blouse underneath an XXL pine green sweatshirt with a giant tweety bird on it. Table and table and tables of dirty clothes, dirty shoes, dirty coats for miles and miles and miles. People walking, rummaging through them. I couldn’t tell where the balay began or ended. It was insane, and all around were Arab men shouting/singing, “25 cents! 25 cents! Any 3 for 25 cents! Just today!” I felt like I was doing a double-take for four hours; strange enough to be in a foreign country, in a bazaar reeking of dirt, mold, urine, coffee, and the ever-present tobacco, but then to see random objects from home completely out of context. All of this was odd enough to take in, even knowing that most of those products are not made in the United States. Then I decided to check the tags.

Eight – nine – ten in a row I counted before coming to one that was not “Made in the USA.” I didn’t know how to feel about this. I kept wondering, “Where the heck did all of these come from?” Seriously, I love second-hand stores. Deseret Industries, Salvation Army, Second Hand Rose in downtown Westfield…four hours of looking at this stuff, and there was only one, and I repeat ONE thing that I saw that evoked in me a desire to buy it. This place was scary. Miles and miles of crap, stuff I would never dress myself let alone my children in, yet it was crowded with moms, dads, children – holding shirts up to shoulders, bartering down the price. I took over 100 pictures, and not one of them was easy to take. People already stare at me wherever I go, being the only white red-head that apparently any of them has ever seen in real life, but the whole camera-in-face thing substantially increases their tendency to stare.

It was interesting; the whole dynamic of me-Ahmed-Sanaa. We all helped each other stay safe. Sanaa was the oldest and dictated where we were going. I stayed right by her side (they warned me quite forcefully to take care of my purse and not let it out of my sight); she kept me safe. But Sanaa could not have gone by herself; this is not a country for walking alone in. Ahmed’s male-ness assured that nobody would harm us. He’s 18, but looks younger. If there was one of us who could have gone alone, it would have been him, but Sanaa’s knowledge and go-getter personality definitely helped him. You may wonder how I contributed to the dynamic; I held the bags of stuff they bought. I stood with Sanaa when we were waiting for Ahmed to pick up the showarma from the mataam, I told Sanaa when something was extremely unstylish/dirty/not worth buying, or when we found a hidden treasure. But my most useful job of the night was translating the English written on the endless sweatshirts, coats, shirts, and shoes.
“What does ‘Sassy’ mean?”
“No, you shouldn’t buy that one.”
“Oooh, this is Nick!”
“You mean Nye-kee!”
“What does ‘Big Dog’ mean?”
“Yeah, you don’t want that one either.”
“What does this say?”
“Sanaa! Do you really want underwear that says ‘call me’ on it?”

The funniest thing I saw was a purple child’s sweatshirt with a picture of Malcolm X on the front, and one of his quotes on the back about protecting rights and freedoms BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. It seemed a bit out of place in the “stocks”.

Besides wondering how Irbid, Jordan had ended up being the final destination of a long journey for all the stuff, I also wondered over and over, “What would drive someone to work here?” Maybe I’m too much of an idealist; maybe people do aspire to work in these kinds of places. With unemployment being what it is in Jordan, I shouldn’t be shocked at anything.

Anecdote:
I came to learn later that most of the clothing in the bala is either used, or there was a manufacturing mistake. And even though you can buy a used Armani jacket for 2 JDs (about $2.75), it cost the people selling it about 2 gursh (about $0.05).