Final Meeting with Khalifa

Today I had my last meeting with Khalifa. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before but Khalifa takes being late to a whole new level. And by that I mean if we agree to meet at 7 and if he arrives by 7:30 I’m impressed. This time I waited almost an hour (not my longest wait of the semester) but I used the time to get some homework done and he showed up so I was happy. His cousin Abdul sat down and talked with us for a little bit which was neat because I had met him briefly before but we had never really gotten the chance to talk.

Also, since it was our last meeting, Khalifa insisted on buying me something to eat. I told him thanks but that I would buy my own but he was adamant. It was McDonald’s so I didn’t feel too guilty but still only let him buy me fries. It was definitely a kind gesture and showed respect that seems much more common in Saudi Arabian culture than it is in America. I would always try to open doors for him when we were going places but he would never let me. He always insisted on me going in first. In America, we would just take it as a kind gesture and walk right in but it seems like they have certain unspoken rules when it comes to that kind of stuff.

This was the first time that we had met at McDonald’s and for some reason Khalifa seemed much more comfortable in the environment. Soon this began to make sense as he professed his love for American fast food. He said that he goes to McDonald’s for lunch multiple times a week and even had a table at the campus McDonald’s that he usually sits at. He then began to list all of the fast food restaurants that he loves here and trust me, the list was plentiful. As funny as it may sound, this was one of the topics that we were most able to relate to each other with. He thought it was really funny that my first job was at McDonald’s and said that he couldn’t picture me behind the counter. He asked me if customers were mean to me and he thoroughly enjoyed the stories that ensued. He told me that he knows fast food is bad for you but it tastes so good and it’s cheap. He was kind of surprised by how supportive I was of his fast food addiction as his sister always tries to get him to stop eating eat. I will never be one to judge people for eating too much fast food. While I worked at McDonald’s I always got stuck in back drive-through and would regularly sneak burgers, fries, and milkshakes back there. And during my senior year (thankfully I was no longer working at McDonald’s) it got to the point where I would pick up fast food before work pretty much every day. Luckily, at that time I was running cross country or the results would have been disastrous.

The last fast food restaurant that he listed was In N Out and he said it was by far one of his favorites. Since he’s moving to California in a matter of days, I asked him if he was going to go to the original. His eyes lit up. He had no idea that the original was in California but was very excited to go and would be willing to drive hours just to go there once. When I told him that when In N Out came to Texas a bunch of my friends and I drove an hour to get there and then waited another two hours to get our food, I expected him to respond that I was crazy. But he said he would do the same!

The more I thought about us connecting through fast food, the more sense it made to me. When you think about American’s going to foreign countries what is the one place that they always see and are comfortable ordering food at? McDonald’s. Not only was fast food a way for Khalifa and I to connect, I feel like it has become a way for the rest of the world to connect with America and vice versa.

Finally, Khalifa brought up Juha one more time and said that he was wondering if the editor who translated the stories from Arabic to English made any mistakes. When I said that I didn’t notice a single one throughout the book, he was amazed. With all of the difficulties he has experienced in translating things from Arabic to English, he definitely admired Salma Khadra Jayyusi.

After this we got up and got ready to leave. Khalifa made a few jokes about crying as we said goodbye. Clearly, guys from all cultures across the world enjoy joking about feelings. When we got outside I thanked Khalifa for his time and told him that I really enjoyed getting to know him over the course of the semester. Since he’s moving to California in two days, there really won’t be any more chances for us to meet up and see how each other are doing but I told him not to hesitate to text me if he ever needed help with anything.

I have truly enjoyed my time with Khalifa over the semester and it has definitely given me a different perspective on Saudi Arabia and their culture. With all of the faces we see on TV and the negative publicity that the region receives, it’s easy to associate the behaviors of a few with the entire region. Especially since 9/11, I feel that it would be fairly accurate that almost 100% of Americans at least believe at least one stereotype toward people of the Middle East or at least have some reservations toward people of the region whether these feelings are vocalized or remain internal. Honestly, before I met Khalifa and even after our first meeting or two, I was definitely one of those people. But, getting to meet Khalifa, and hear stories about his homeland, and just being able to associate a friendly face with the region has really made a difference for me and has truly been an eye opener. Hopefully, I was able to provide the same type of experience for Khalifa and he will be able to go back to Saudi Arabia and tell people that America is nothing like what they think it is.

7th Meeting with Khalifa

On Thursday, I met with Khalifa for the seventh time. After lots of unnecessary work, phones calls, and trips, he has finally been given permission to move to California. He will move to California on December 7^th so he only has a little over a week to pack. He was hoping that I had been to California before so that I could give him some advice but sadly I haven’t. His brother went to school in California 6 years ago and loved it. I assured him that nobody I have met from California has had anything but nice things to say about the state. He’s also excited to get back to the beach. In Saudi Arabia he can look out his back door and see the ocean so being stuck in the middle of Texas left him quite beach deprived.

He had a writing test today and thought he did pretty well. He wrote over 250 words so he was pretty confident that he would get a good grade. The writing test was the last test that he will ever have to take in Texas. He asked in detail about my presentations and finals since he’s going to be going through the same situations a year from now. He’s really looking forward to beginning college but is scared of the work load. As an ESL student, his homework is basically just to communicate with Americans and learn the language and culture. He can’t imagine having to spend more than a few hours in the library doing homework. But, he knows that he needs to get good grades, get his degree, and get back home and there is tons of family pressuring him to do so as fast as possible.

We went back to talking a little bit about our Thanksgiving breaks and I was talking about being at home for the week. Khalifa asked how often I went home, and I told him at least once every month. Since I live an hour away from campus, I can really go home whenever I want. Khalifa, hasn’t been home in a year. He arrived in Texas last December and hasn’t been home since. I can only imagine how homesick I would be if I was in his situation but it doesn’t seem to bother him too much. He admits that he misses his family but said he is here getting his education and having fun and that he doesn’t really have a desire to go home yet. Once he moves to California next week, Khalifa and his sister will get settled and then head back to Saudi Arabia for the break. He hasn’t even told his mom that he’s coming home yet because he wants to surprise her. He’s much more anxious for California than he is for his trip back to Saudi Arabia. Either way, he will get to look out his back door and see something that I have never been able to; the beach. 

6th Meeting with Khalifa

On Wednesday, I met with Khalifa for the sixth time. The first thing we talked about was Black Friday. He went out with his friends and was shocked by how crazy everything was. He had never seen anything in America that was that chaotic. However, once he saw the prices of the items he said he completely understood. And then, he watched as his sister proceeded to buy tons of stuff. He enjoyed getting to experience the atmosphere but didn’t really need anything, so he bought a few shirts. He really enjoys getting to experience the eccentricities of American culture.

Next, we talked about his trip to Washington DC. He went alone because he had to get registered to move to California. While there, he saw and met so many Saudi Arabian students  that he concluded he could never learn English in DC because he would never have to practice the language. He told me some stories about DC, about how gorgeous it was, and about getting to see the White House. I have always wanted to visit DC but I have never had the chance so I was extremely jealous.

He also told me a story about his taxi getting into an accident. Khalifa and his taxi driver were driving by the White House and the driver was pointing things out and explaining certain aspects of the White House. While he was doing so, another taxi was trying to speed around them and ended up rear ending them. I imagined how annoyed and flustered the second taxi driver must have been and thought this story was rather hilarious. However, Khalifa was much more concerned about everyone’s safety and was just glad that nobody was injured. Throughout our meetings, Khalifa really hasn’t found any instances of physical humor funny. At one of our meetings, we watched somebody walk into a glass door. I was cracking up. He felt really bad for the person and wanted to make sure that they were ok. Clearly, there are vast cultural differences regarding our opinions of physical humor. America has embraced movies such as Jack Ass. But, based on my meetings with Khalifa, I doubt Saudi Arabia will ever embrace anything similar.

I also brought Tales of Juha to show Khalifa. I handed him the book and asked if he recognized it. At first, he didn’t seem to recognize it and I was beginning to feel extremely stupid. Then, a huge smile began to form and I could tell that it clicked. He didn’t recognize Juha at first because he had never seen the name written in English. He was so pleasantly surprised. Finally, we had an element of his culture that we could both talk about. He was absolutely shocked that Tales of Juha was a book that we were reading in class. Basically, he described Juha as a celebrity. He’s not as popular as he once was but if you walk up to anyone in Saudi Arabia and show them the book, they will immediately know who you are talking. I asked him about why there are so many stories about Juha involving his donkey. First, he made clear that donkeys are not as common in Saudi Arabia as Tales of Juha may make it seem. But, he told me that there are two versions of stories about Juha, stories with him and his donkey and stories with him and his family. Khalifa said that he thinks the stories with the donkey are much funnier. He also finds the wit and wisdom stories funnier than the ones where Juha is stupid. We spent the rest of our dinner talking about the book. I mentioned some of my favorite stories. Some of them he recognized and some of them he did not but it was nice to finally have a subject to talk about where he was the expert.

Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

I have enjoyed everything that I’ve read by Mark Twain whether it be essays, short stories, or novels. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were pure genius and I loved reading them.  As a result, I was really looking forward to this anthology of Twain quotes. I began searching through the pages and highlighting the passages that really resonated with me for one reason or another. I figured that I would probably highlight around 10 and easily be able to narrow it down to 5 for our assignment. Yah, I ended up highlighting 30+. Twain’s wit and wisdom covered such a broad range of topics and really gave me a feel for who he was as a person. We all know that Twain was a brilliant satirist, full of wit and wisdom, and we have all heard stories about him being a cranky drunk. But, this anthology proved that he was much deeper than that. One of the things that I like most about Twain is his bluntness. I am amazed at how he can say in one sentence what other writers wouldn’t be able to say in less than three pages.

The two passages in the Wit category helped me better understand what Wit actually is. I had used the term frequently throughout the class to describe the kind of humor I liked and to describe works such as Tales of Juha and parts of 50 Funniest American Writers. However, if you had told me to define wit, or put it on a vocab quiz, I probably wouldn’t have been able to define it. Twain states that, “Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.” While I completely agree with this passage, I believe that it is the second passage that really sets Twain’s wit apart from others. “Wit, by itself, is of little account. It becomes of moment only when grounded on wisdom.” It is the necessity to have both wit and wisdom that makes Twain so great. Oftentimes, I consider things like good comebacks witty just because they’re spur of the moment and flow without time for contemplation. While most of Twain’s one-liners, if not all, were spur of the moment, it is clear that he always had a great understanding of his subject matter and there was always substance behind his reasoning.

I have only had the chance to read a few of Twain’s essay but some of the excerpts in this anthology reminded of just how genius he was. His social commentary was always spot on and looking back over 100 years, many of the things he criticized are still issues that we struggle with today. In 1895, he wrote that “no civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.” I find it amazing that he wrote something over 115 years ago that has now become such a prevalent issue in our society. After reading some of the more offensive and degrading stories about women in Tales of Juha, I’m sure this quote was quite a welcomed shift for most  of the class.

Tales of Juha Part III

Up until part three of Tales of Juha I found all of the humor quite relatable and surprisingly, I really wasn’t getting caught up in any cultural barriers. For some reason, I felt as though cultural barriers were present in much of the third section. This section was full of stories about donkeys, corrupt judges who openly take bribes, and tyrannical leaders. Not exactly the easiest topics to relate to. That’s not to say that none of the stories were funny or enjoyable, but I found a majority of them much harder to relate to everyday American life than the stories in the previous two sections.

I don’t think the presence of cultural barriers makes the stories any less entertaining, in fact, I found myself more actively reading because I was constantly trying to figure out what was going on and relate it to my everyday life. However, the cultural barriers did keep a majority of the stories from being truly funny. Not many of these stories resonated with me at all and I just wasn’t able to relate with them. This inability to relate is what I believe kept me from finding many of these stories the belly laugh type of funny that was present in the first two sections. If anything, many of these stories were a “haha I have a feeling that was supposed to be funny but have no idea what you mean but I’m going to laugh anyways so that I don’t feel awkward/courtesy laugh” kind of way. One of the sections that I had particularly high hopes for and that I was quite disappointed by was “Boastfulness and False Pride.” I was imagining what an American version of this section might include and since America is full of boastfulness and false pride, the possibilities were endless.  Not to ridicule these stories, I found most of them at least entertaining, but the section was definitely not filled to the brim with belly laughs like I was expecting. Maybe this was because Arabic culture isn’t consumed by false pride and boastfulness like American culture is? Since my conversation partner is from Saudi Arabia, this is definitely something I intend to ask him about in one of our meetings this week.

The one story that I did find extremely funny and relatable in the False Pride section was the one where Juha’s friend told him he was going to interrupt him with a nice “ahem” every time that he caught him exaggerating. I found this story relatable because I have a good friend who everyone knows is a huge exaggerator. After we all got to know him well, a few of us in the group began calling him out every time that we caught him exaggerating. It got to the point where he couldn’t get through the first few sentences of a story without getting interrupted. I also found the story where Juha’s friend interjects with the true story before Juha can even begin exaggerating funny and relatable for many of the same reasons.

In many of the blogs so far and in class, people have associated relatable with funny and I couldn’t agree more. Tales of Juha has really made me think about relatability in regards to humor.  I had never really thought of the correlation before, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that being relatable is a requirement for something to be funny. We find comedians funny who discuss things that we can relate to, we find crazy pet videos funny because we all either have pets or know people who do and we can relate to these situations, and we find America’s Funniest Home Videos funny because we have all had things like that happen to us or they are realistic enough that we could see them happening to us.

This is why humor rarely transcends cultural boundaries. Cultures are so different that it is nearly impossible for people from different cultures to be able to relate to each other and their daily activities. Because of such extreme cultural differences, it is shocking that Tales of Juha is able to transcend cultural boundaries (at least for the first two sections) as well as it does. 

Tales of Juha Part 2

Well, not surprisingly chapters 2 and 3 went along much like the first. I was left admiring Juha’s quick witted comebacks even though in these sections they were increasingly harsh and critical. Once again, all of the stories were extremely relatable, giving them a much more personal feel. As expected, I generally loved all of the short 3-4 liners such as the one on page 45 about his wife’s lack of brains. Next, came probably the two most relatable pieces in the novel so far. The first is on page 46 and is the one about relationship baggage and how at night there’s 4 people in the couple’s bed, the husband, the wife, the husband’s late wife, and the wife’s late husband. Now, the deceased part is hopefully well beyond our years, but who can’t relate to past relationship baggage ruining a current relationship? Everyone has experienced it in one way or another. While thinking about this story, I came to realization that I think this is what makes Juha such a relatable and enjoyable character at least in my perspective. Juha has been in virtually every situation you can think of, the good, the bad, the awkward, and the terrible. I think that this is his most endearing characteristic because it allows everyone, regardless of their background, to find something about Juha that they can relate to.

On to the next story which is on page 48. This is probably the piece that I have most agreed with and been able to relate to so far. It is the one about the father and the son and their donkey. When the father is riding the donkey and the son is walking people think the father is being rude to the son. When the son is on the donkey and the father is walking people think the son is being rude to the father. When they both ride the donkey people think they are treating the donkey poorly. When they both walk, people think they are stupid for not riding the donkey. And finally, when the two decide to carry the donkey, people think they are being imbeciles. Obviously, the moral of the story is that you can never please anyone which is very applicable to everyday life and an internal conflict that many of us face daily.

Another story that I really enjoyed was the one where Juha sold his entire house besides one nail. I felt that this story was a particularly good example of Juha embodying the trickster figure. Also, it gave me a good belly-laugh.

Next, came chapter 4, which for me, provided quite the cognitive shift. Admittedly, I skipped the title page for the chapter so I was not expecting for the stories to shift from Juha being all knowing and full of wit to naïve and stupid. Even though it’s a completely different kind of humor, self-depreciating on the part of Juha if you will, I still thoroughly enjoyed this section. My favorites were the ones about the pigeons flying out of his hands, his wife asking for the matches on his left, the miscounting of the donkeys, and the proclamation that his daughter was six months pregnant. I feel like it is due to the precedent set in previous chapters that these stories include cognitive shifts. Throughout the first three chapters, Juha is the wittiest character I have ever read about and seems to 99% of the time get the upper hand. Obviously, that trend does not continue in chapter four but for some reason, time after time I expected that it would hence the continual cognitive shifts.  I can't think of the word, but in this section, he clearly encompasses the  naive and lacking-in-common-sense character who is generally the brunt of most comedies. No offense to Juha, but in chapter 4 he slowly but surely began to remind me of current figures in pop culture who have made a living off of being mind-numbingly stupid (Snooki to be specific).

Tales of Juha Part 1

When I looked at the assignment sheet and saw that Tales of Juha was next and that we would be reading basically the entire book, I thought to myself “come on. WE just got done with Hokum which I thought was going to be hilarious but wasn’t and now we’re reading Arab Folk Humor?! There’s no way that this is going to be funny or even enjoyable.”

Low and behold, finally something truly humorous! And full of endless cognitive shifts! I expected Tales of Juha to be similar to Hokum but that is far from the case. The first section of Tales of Juha far exceeded my expectations. I love dry and witty humor so I was entertained throughout the entire section. And it wasn’t just entertaining, it was enjoyable. Not every story/joke ended with a chuckle, even though many of them did, but there was not a single story that had me bored while there were a few that had me cracking up. I find it very interesting that I didn’t find African American humor to be very funny but that so far I have found Arab Folk Humor hilarious. I figured that the differences in culture would be much more prevalent in the Arab Folk Humor and would prevent me from enjoying the stories.

However, even though Arab culture was prevalent throughout the first section, it was very relatable. As they said in the introduction, “there are certain comic personalities that cross the boundaries with ease and weave their way into a different culture. I think Juha is one such personality.” While reading this in the introduction, I was extremely skeptical. I found it hard to believe that you could translate Arab folk humor for different cultures and have Juha still be a comic character. Clearly, I was wrong.

I find the fact that it was possible for Juha to weave his way into our culture and still be a comic personality. I’m sure Juha is an even funnier character to Arabs but the fact that he is funny to us also really amazes me. It was also very interesting that although there were many aspects of Arab culture in the Tales of Juha, they didn’t prevent people who aren’t familiar with the culture from enjoying the stories. Even though donkeys were mentioned in the stories numerous times and I’ve never owned a donkey, I still found the stories quite humorous. Also, a few of the stories discussed having multiple wives which has never been a part of American culture (to my knowledge) and I was still able to find the stories funny.

I don’t want to say that the stories were dumbed down because that would be inaccurate but there was definitely a sense of universal understanding present in Tales of Juha that wasn’t present in any of our previous novels. Even in 50 Funniest American Writers, some of the stories were way over my head. I think it is a true testament to the genius of Juha that people are able to find the character funny across very different cultures and I don’t think I’ve ever had a chance to examine a character who has been so successful at this. Usually, when people try to translate things that were successful in other cultures into American culture, the movie, novel, song or whatever it may be flops.

 I also feel that it is a testament to the changing times of American culture that a book of Arab Folk Humor is even published let alone widely read. People might and still do (just as I did) have their own individual prejudices, but as a whole, I feel like at least on the outside, America has become much more accepting of other cultures. Like I said, I was very skeptical at first, but I am now truly amazed that “the humor [of Juha] transcends national and cultural boundaries to achieve a university that is instantly recognizable and accessible today.”