I heard through the University grapevine (on which I’m one of the newest leaves) that, in this three-story building, there are only two men who work diligently. That is, when no one is hounding them down.
Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally), those are the very two gentlemen who’ve been helping me the most. They’re both PhD holders who’ve been educated partly in the West and who speak (comfortingly) excellent English as a consequence. And for those of you whose thoughts tend to venture far, summon them back. These men, Drs. M and Y, are of ‘ammu (uncle) status.
My meeting with Dr. M had twice been postponed, so I was anxious that he’d be gruff, egotistical and impersonal. But I was wrong with Dr. Y, and I could be wrong again. (When I first met Dr. Y, he amiably asked me what my qualifications were, if I had written a dissertation for my degree, and if I would like to get married. At our next business meeting, he introduced me to his son. But that’s a story I’ll save for a rainy day.)
Well, Dr. M proved to be as nice as Dr. Y, only a touch less forthright about my marital status. With Dr. Y backing me up, I spoke to Dr. M about the possibility of teaching a creative writing class at the University. It turns out that he and Dr. Y had already talked it over. Together, they had gotten the ball rolling — or shall I say, snowballing? If all goes well iA, I’ll begin teaching the day after next.
Now that we had that established, Dr. M asked me, as an Arab American, about a curiosity he’d observed with respect to American undergraduates. I gulped.
“I’ve always thought of them — or American graduate students, anyway, because they’re the ones I’ve interacted most with — I’ve always thought of them as measuring their words carefully and that we — we’re usually the ones who are blunt and speak before we think — and yet,” he pulled out several printed legal sheets, “listen to this. It’s from an American girl’s blog.”
I hoped against hope that this wasn’t some kind of a mean joke, where he’d be reading out to me the idiocies I blog about.
It wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t help listening uneasily. Maybe he had several examples. Maybe this was just a prelude, and the big blow would be next. Maybe I’m paranoid. Yes, maybe that’s it. I’m paranoid.
I listened with a falsely critical ear. There was nothing remarkably brilliant or stupid about the blog entry he shared with me. It was rife with the stuff of daily life: the breakfast menu, the cityscape and orientation week.
The author of the blog had presumed to know Jordan because she knew Muslim Americans. And she criticized this person or that.
“This is published, it’s on the public domain, it’s on the net.” Dr. M protested. What irked him, he explained, was how provincial, how judgmental, how superficial it was.
Privately, I agreed with his criticisms. This wasn’t a scientific article, it was highly subjective, and it definitely didn’t go through peer-review. (If it did, those peers ought to lose their peerships.) What I wanted to say, of course, was, “It’s just a blog!” What I actually did say, however, was nothing.
“Are they all like this?” He asked, looking disappointed.
I told him that many of the Americans in my program have blogs and that they’re not, as far as I can tell, grossly judgmental. And, besides, I added, blogs often reflect the mood swings of people far away from home. (Naturally, I steered clear of mentioning this tnbc rubbish lest I get fired before I’m hired. Later, I also considered privatizing this blog but, weighing my options, opted to blog about our conversation instead.)
“It’s something I’m interested in researching.” He reflected as he organized the pages of the blog post. “Maybe you’d like to research it further?” He said in earnest, as our meeting drew to a close.
“Yeah, that’d be interesting.”
It could be a sophisticated research project, I thought in retrospect. Maybe I could even get my findings published, on a blog.
