Faux Pas - Round 1

Please excuse, dear reader, the delirium of this post for I have recently suffered two days of my first illness in the Middle East. As much as I’m tempted to disclose the lewd details of my illness, I’ll skip over such unpleasant facts and report on some events, thoughts, and experiences that occurred prior to my two days living off of 7-UP and ‘Kack’ (the Middle East equivalent to soda crackers, albeit a much less pleasant name). Due to my illness, I’m going to try to keep everything digestible on this post. Thus, enjoy the light offering and I’ll be back with some more ‘heavy’ social and cultural probing in the near future.

Cultural faux pas 101 –

As opposed to most travel-blogs, I’m willing to engage in a full 1/16ths total disclosure of the world around me including social blunders committed by yours truly. Sadly, I don’t have a chain of recent mistakes but rather one ‘Westerner’ mistake that I want to pair with a faux pas made by one of my Arabic teachers who dared to extend her fashion choices into the annals of American history.

Faux Pas I: I hadn’t bought bread yet. Sure, I’ve had a few croissants and maybe some Arabic food that featured bread, but I hadn’t bought bread AS such. So I swing by a bakery right outside Bab Touma (the Christian quarter of the old city, Christian being an important part here) and see ONLY three plastic wrapped packages of bread that seemingly call my name. I went to the register and was met with less than an enthusiastic look from the nice girl with a crucifix around her neck. She says several words indicating something clearly negative. At the time I couldn’t make out the words . . . but after a bit of a back-and-forth I get the idea that, for reasons beyond my comprehension, this bread isn’t for me. I then move back to croissants, hear the familiar word for cheese croissant, buy three and call it a day . . .
Here’s what I find out later: I was trying to buy the BODY OF CHRIST pre-transfiguration. As a former alter boy with at least some background in this issue, I had thought the Catholic Church had set some guidelines on shape and color, or at the very least some parameters on authorized dealers of the Eucharist. The same thing happened to a British friend of mine – although he somehow was able to purchase the stuff anyway.

Faux Pas II A few days ago my Arabic teacher – a nice young woman who runs a pretty good Arabic class – walked into the room with a unique head wrap. She doesn’t ‘veil’ in the traditional Muslim sense, but generally lets her hair flow freely. This day, however, she went with a ‘maid’ do-rag type getup. Here’s the kicker – her fabric of choice just happened to be the Confederate Flag, fashioned in such a way that the blue stripe with stars ran from her forehead to the back of her neck: a less inclusive version of Mr. T’s Mohawk. I shot glances around the room and noticed that the other Americans and Brits also had baffled looks on their faces.
A moral question: Should I tell her that her fashion accessory is historically symbolic of the enslavement of an entire race of people? Or would it be better to just let this one slide? I seriously doubt she’s trying to rekindle her relationship with her ‘southern roots’ – more likely she is oblivious as to the flag’s meaning and selected it because it matched her shirt. Obviously, I elected NOT to tell her the back-story of her fashion choice. If and only if she’s planning a trip to the United States, will I then inform her of the deal.


Final thought (ala Jerry Springer):
About a week ago some friends and I went to the British Council in hopes of finding a suitable place to study. We found one for a spell, until we were kicked out of one of the classrooms. Whatever. While in the classroom I noticed the following questions written on the board, leftovers from an earlier English class:

1. What do you think will happen in the world after 10 years?
2. What are the three wishes you hope to become real?
3. What’s your opinion about your teacher?
4. In England there are “transvestites” – men who wear women’s clothes. What are some of the possible problems with this?
5. If you could travel any where in the world, where would you go and why?


Included are some unrelated photos from various roof tops in Bab Touma.

Also - some potential bad news for this American wanting a warmer relationship between his home country and his new adpoted country.