{"id":12773,"date":"2011-11-30T10:19:06","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T06:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=12773"},"modified":"2011-11-30T10:19:06","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T06:19:06","slug":"the-call-of-home-on-jordans-diaspora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/middle-east-life\/the-call-of-home-on-jordans-diaspora\/","title":{"rendered":"The Call of Home on Jordan’s Diaspora"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When Iman Obeidallah visited Jordan as a teenager, she never once imagined that she would call this country home. Several years later, Obeidallah was adding the finishing touches to her Amman flat that she shared with her husband, Saleh Nabulsi.<\/p>\n

Obeidallah left the United States and moved to Jordan in 2008. She was seeking a better future for herself in a surprising place\u2014her father\u2019s homeland.<\/p>\n

Obeidallah\u2019s father, Salaheddin, was one of 27,000 Jordanians that moved to the United States in the 1970s. In the years to follow, Jordanian immigration to America averaged to around 2,500 people a year.<\/p>\n

But while many second generation Arab-Americans have grown comfortable with the life that their parents have created for them in the US, some have moved \u201cback home\u201d to find the missing pieces: a simpler life, religion, and the Arabic language.<\/p>\n

According to the latest census by Jordan\u2019s Department of Statistics, nearly 3000 Americans who do not have Jordanian citizenship live in Jordan, and nearly all of them are in Amman.<\/p>\n

Obeidallah decision to move to Jordan came easily. On the night Nabulsi proposed the idea, she happily agreed. The family and friends she was soon to leave behind all told her she would return. But Obeidallah paid no attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband said we could live very comfortably there if we made good money,\u201d Obeidallah said. \u201cI thought this would be a good experience for me. I had no idea what I was getting into.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Obeidallah left the bustling American state of New Jersey, her home of 26 years, with her new Jordanian husband. Nabulsi already had a job waiting for him in Amman. Looking forward to living in the country they both remembered so fondly from their childhoods, the couple was met with a multitude of obstacles upon arriving. They soon became disenchanted with their fantasy of living a dream life in Jordan.<\/p>\n

Nabulsi, a civil engineer from California, was hired by a firm while living in America. Upon his first day of work, he learned that the company assumed they had an open position for him, and they no longer needed him when he arrived in Jordan.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe only left his job in America to move to Jordan,\u201d Obeidallah recalled. \u201cDid they think it was easy for him to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obeidallah\u2019s luck wasn\u2019t much better as she struggled to find a decent paying job. With a background in teaching, she was offered a job at a preschool paying her a salary of 300 JD a month. She refused to accept the position because of the low wage.<\/p>\n

\u201cJordan is so expensive, and they pay nothing. I don\u2019t know how people make it work, but they just do,\u201d Obeidallah said, acknowledging that many Jordanians are paid around the same salary she was offered. \u00a0These salaries, Obeidallah argued, can\u2019t accommodate daily expenses such as food, mortgage, and private education.<\/p>\n

Left unemployed and feeling defeated, the couple considered their options. Nabulsi took the engineering company to court, and was rewarded compensation for his move. After a few months passed, Obeidallah and Nabulsi returned to America.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why we thought we were going to live so comfortably,\u201d Obeidallah said in a phone interview from her California home. She was unpacking moving boxes in the home she recently purchased with her husband. \u201cYou have to spend all of this money on items that we take for granted. If you want to live the way you lived in America, you have to make more money and spend more money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alaa Mencke agrees. A relatively seasoned traveler, the American born convert to Islam has grown accustomed to the country. She moved in 2009 with her husband and three children. When asked how they make a decent living in Jordan, she laughed and replied, \u201cWe don\u2019t work here.\u201d Mencke and her husband own their own business\u2014she works from home as an editor for various companies, and he is an author.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem here is that salaries are really low,\u201d she said. \u201cThe cost of living goes up, but the salaries don\u2019t. And if they do, it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mencke, Obeidallah and some of the 200,000 Americans that visit Jordan every year argue that Jordan is becoming staggeringly expensive. According to the International Institution for Management Development, Jordan\u2019s cost of living is in fact higher than the United States.<\/p>\n

Mencke tries to overlook the struggles of living in Jordan. She\u2019s lived here on and off for several years. After ten years in America, she settled back in Jordan, and this time she hopes it is permanent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really hope I don\u2019t have to go back,\u201d she said. \u201cOf course it\u2019s easier living in the States, it is what I am familiar with. But we can\u2019t always be satisfied with what\u2019s comfortable for us, sometimes we have to go outside of our comfort zone to find what is better for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mencke\u2019s defines a better life as learning Arabic and openly practicing her religion.\u00a0 A devout Muslim with a Masters Degree in Education, Mencke appreciates the advantages of her children learning Arabic as a first language and the abundant Quran and religion classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy children weren\u2019t as proficient in Arabic as we wanted them to be,\u201d Mencke recalled of her years in America.\u00a0 \u201cTheir Arabic is much better now. They didn\u2019t know the colloquial, or ameeya<\/em> Arabic, but they have picked it up as well as their grammar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obeidallah also acknowledged that living in Jordan would help improve her Arabic.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Arabic is very broken,\u201d Obeidallah said. The daughter of a Jordanian born father and an Anglo-American mother, she generally understands Arabic but is not comfortable carrying a conversation. \u201cI want my son to learn Arabic. With one Arabic speaking parent, that is almost impossible in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mencke is raising her children in a similar type of household. Her husband speaks to their children only in Arabic, and Mencke\u2019s proficiency is continuing to progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cShame on their parents,\u201d Mencke said, speaking of those who do not teach their children Arabic. \u201cAt some point, people should think about leaving America and making serious steps to do that. Having another generation grow up in the states makes two generations missing out on what it\u2019s like to grow up in a society where everyone is just like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maya Berry, the Executive Director at Dr. James Zogby\u2019s Arab American Institute, said they have yet to see statistics of Arab-Americans returning to the Middle East, but the connection between the immigrant community and their country of origin is especially strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children of first-generation Arab Americans are saying, \u2018Well when [our parents] left, they left partly because of what\u2019s been happening [in the Middle East]. And now that the area is beginning to transform, I want to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obeidallah also hopes to return to Jordan.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause my child is getting older, and I can keep busy there, I think I would return.\u00a0 I have a family now,\u201d Obeidallah said. \u201cI told my husband if he was to get a job, I would go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAWSAN MORRAR: The call to come ‘home’ is strong for Jordan’s diaspora, and yet the reality of coming home can be a hard adjustment to make…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":451,"featured_media":12774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,90],"tags":[423,295,9432,2404,2047,567,18278,7084,18305,191,2103,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}