Anyone who has been in a leadership role in AIESEC knows that a large part of your everyday agenda includes meetings – strategy, weekly team updates, coaching, sales – the list goes on. This week has had me doing all of those; but I’ve also spent a large part of it as Saba, the person. Whether it was meeting up with a fellow nomad, or with editors of Jordanian magazines, or even the random chat I had with the guy who runs the repairshop near my house (in Arabic, and on Pakistani politics!) or the time I took out of AIESEC business meetings to chat with CEOs on doing business in Jordan and how my integration has been into the culture here…after a long time I felt like I was talking like Saba, the individual and not Saba, the AIESECer, which dominates so much of my identity now, even when I meet people outside of AIESEC.
Despite the fact that the news from home is anything but pride-worthy; I feel more and more connected to being a Pakistani. After months of being in Jordan I start speaking in Urdu phrases before correcting myself. And yesterday, I was filling out an application and for the first time I had to write my address in Jordan as ‘home’; and it was looked unfamiliar and out of place; and yet right somehow
As I look at scanned pages of the travelogue series I am writing on Jordan for The Friday Times, I miss the familiarity of buying TFT from the same hawker every week on my way back from university, or the excitement I used to feel seeing my name in print. A scanned page isn't the same as trying to read TFT in a rickshaw while desperately holding on to my paper, handbag and books.
As a last thought - the intense pain in my back or the fact that I am catching up on sleep by resting my head against elevator walls in myriad office buildings, means that I am finally, finally tired enough to not be able to think about anything at all - especially the things that upset me. I miss my random day-long update chats, and I miss being able to share the everyday-ness of things, but at least I can still try and be there for those who matter.
Labels: jordan journal, random musings
