Oh Jordan!

(speech meant for our Farewell Party, June 7^th 2018)

Me: Joris, do you remember the dress I’m wearing tonight?

Joris: [silence]

Me:

Well, almost exactly nine years ago we organized a party in the Botanical Garden of Ghent University, and, yes, I was wearing this same dress. (so if I look a bit out of fashion tonight, blame it on memories). It was a party that, although I had helped organizing it, I didn’t quite know how to feel festive about it. It was our farewell party before leaving Belgium for Washington DC.

And yes, I was dragging my feet. I did not feel at all like leaving my home, my country, my family and friends, my job. Even though I knew I was in the hands of a wonderful fellow, I didn’t quite see why we had to leave what felt like a warm bountiful bath that I was sitting in.

Two days later we took a plane. That is: Joris took the plane and carried me on the plane. Because I couldn’t walk, dragging my feet literally. In that damned tropical garden of our farewell party, I got bitten by an insect, and my whole foot had inflated. Reason why we were almost denied access to the plane because the cabin crew thought I had contracted some contagious infection. This is how I entered the United States of America: like a veteran, in a wheel chair. Reason why, also with Joris, doubt about our adventure started kicking in.

–          You see, he said, this is a bad sign, I shouldn’t be dragging you into my international endeavors.

Yet, in our luggage, I carried this same red dress. And ever since, it has blushingly witnessed. The rounding bulge of a baby still hidden inside as a secret between just the two of us. The rounding bulge of my head and heart as they opened up to all the new horizons. It has witnessed the full cheer of this incredible life abroad, and it can vouch that, since my landing in Washington DC in a wheel chair, not a nanosecond have I questioned again my final decision to follow this crazy guy oversees.

And here we stand, today. Another farewell party. Packing up again. This time for going back ‘home’, to Belgium, after nine amazing years.

And again, I feel myself dragging my feet even though no tropical insect hit me this time. It is that I am truly dreading a farewell to another country that we called ‘home’ for five years. To Jordan. To this life as an expatriate. To the kindest and most interesting people that we met, all of you. Farewell to a beautiful expat childhood so far for our three girls.

And when I was contemplating about tonight, the farewell party, or about all the fragmented moments that one says goodbye before actually leaving, I came to understand that I was confusing my feelings of sadness with what is in fact deep and profound gratitude.

Gratitude for Jordan, in the first place.

A deep confusing love for Jordan

Oh Jordan! When we first met, I didn’t quite know what to expect from you. I had anticipated to land in a kind of vast desert, in every sense. Little did I know about your oases, your forests, the secrets of your seas and mountains, the tangibility of your rich history, the friendliness of your beautiful people.

Oh yes, there’s been some misunderstanding between you and me, Jordan. At first, for example, I thought you tried to impose rules on me. Dress codes, ways of thinking, a religious orientation. Yet, perhaps, those rules just sprouted in my own mind, merely from my imagination about you.

And over the course of time, we discovered a lot of common ground in our behaviors. I started feeling at ease in your presence, I could be more and more myself when I was around you. I freed my arms and legs from sleeves and knee-length skirts. It may again be my imagination, but I think that you and I, we grew our mutual relationship, we matured our bond. After all, we were condemned to each other and it was our duty to make the best of it together.

And it was so much you had to offer and gave us, Jordan. We embraced it with open arms and opening minds.

I’m grateful that we could call you ‘home’, for the entire family. Amongst the most precious things kids can receive in life, are, I think: places to belong to, to long for. The certainty of a place that they can go back to, to recall the sentiments and atmosphere they once felt there. This is what my parents gave me, places from which I still source a whole lot of who I am and still become today. This is also what I hope we gave our three girls by spending the first steps of their childhood in this country, in this region.

And with that place, oh Jordan, you gave our girls at least one extra language to express themselves. You awakened their eternal love for humus and falafel, the only family dinner at a restaurant that Joris and I could enjoy having an actual conversation with each other, our offspring being absorbed with dipping and cleaning the plates. You gave our girls the early unconscious love for walking, as their small steps would lead them unknowingly into the past that was covered with treasures of pottery shards and glittering pieces of azure Roman glass for them to discover. In the endless playground that we called Petra (and Little Petra), and all your other places where history so faithfully surfaces.

I’m grateful for the lasting souvenir of Laura’s birth in the hotel that they called a hospital, where she was caught from my belly by a veiled lady, who would not understand why I would want to hold and nurse a freshly hatched chick that had not seen water yet. But who would all the same respect that strange wish of mine and accommodate for it as long as I wanted. And Laïs, who was thrilled to see her baby sister at last opening her eyes two days after she was born, because Laura’s Belgian genes had not equipped her to cope with the bright Amman September light. Laïsje who taught us that upward nodding stands for “la-a” which means “no”, and definitely not “yes” or “maybe”. Julie who did not understand the concept of translation from one language to another: you just talk, English with one, Arabic with the other, you don’t translate. Why would you if you understand each other anyhow.

I’m grateful for the work opportunities I got to contribute to beautiful projects to further develop you, Jordan. They showed me the possibilities instead of the impossibilities, the capability and engagement of your people beyond your unemployment statistics. The efficiency beyond your inefficiency.

So gradually, Jordan, I grew a deep confusing love for you, despite your shortcomings and sharp edges – don’t we all have them? It was not a light-touch summer love – even though, for a Belgian citizen, you spread summer all year round, with winter in Jordan still feeling a lot like a mediocre Belgian summer – but truly warm feelings that I will cherish forever. Because above all, Jordan, you were a teaching friend to me and I learned a whole lot from you. You did not shy away from sharing hard but wise lessons. The greatest things and insights hardly come from within one’s comfort zones.

Perhaps, most of all, it was a true privilege to live at the other side of the other side in these polarizing times. To see Europe from the Middle East, instead of the other way around. To be the minority and not the majority. And I came to understand that multiculturalism may stay a beautiful utopia, that even just living together with different cultural backgrounds is not a self-evident thing to do. That trying to understand the deep differences requires continuous exercising and stretching of the mind. And that just respecting the dissimilarities that cannot be overcome, can be a very demanding yet rewarding first step.

And now, I almost tangibly sense how a very special chapter of our life has come to an end, and an entirely different new chapter is awaiting us, which we are looking forward to with eager- and nervousness. We will have to learn and teach ourselves again how to be natives instead of expats. Leave the position of what I’ve come to consider enriching, namely of being an outsider, to become an insider again.

But, again, I would like to make a point of trying hard to keep the outsider’s view at that, to take the birds’ perspective and keep all things relative. And be led, before all, by gratitude. And a flattering red dress.