Visual Podcast-Jordan
Mustafa: Walk me through how it was in terms of the procedure by which your organization moved you around the world.
Tobias: Usually, every 4 or 5 year the time would come that the announcement is made from London where we would be informed to apply for positions in different countries.
Employees were unlikely to stay in one location for too long. Then, a list of available positions in several locations around the world would be made available. I would delineate my preferences in sequence of most desired to alternative options. That summer I would go back to England to spend my summer holiday with my parents. During that time, I would be informed of which location and position I have been moved. All my belongings would be shipped to the new location and I would arrive in the autumn.
For years I never thought much of the process, until one day I was on a business trip to Israel and crossed path with a mental health professional. She was an Israeli lady who had immigrated to Israel from Russia. She made a passing comment about how some people experience having to constantly uproot their lives and move countries as some sort of a trauma. That actually resonated with me, by then it was in the 2000s and I had moved countries many times. I had begun to feel the need to settle in one place because I began to realize that every time I invested socially in a place, I was never there for long enough for these relationships to evolve into lifetime company.
Mustafa: You did eventually make the decision to remain in Western Europe. We will get to that part of your story. I myself identify with the notion that uprooting one’s life geographically, especially when against one’s will as it is the case with me - we will talk about that too- can be traumatic. You often speak very fondly of friends who live far away and how sad it makes you feel that they aren’t present in your day-to-day life.
In any case, let’s go back to your time in Jordan.
Tobias: I experienced Jordan as an exceptionally interesting place. I was there during the late 90s. Compared to Pakistan it felt a lot more open. The social circles that I ran in comprised of people who were really socially liberal, very intellectual and interested in the world. There was a high degree of tolerance to different opinions. In those days before 9/11, before the Iraq War, before the Arab Spring, it felt very safe and easy to travel. After the emergence of Al-Qaeda in the Middle East I imagine that security had more presence in everyday life. Back then it was very relaxed and chill.
It was a time of sort of a boom in cultural development really. A lot of internationally-oriented Jordanians had still stayed in Jordan. I was there after the First Gulf War in Kuwait, and Jordan had been in the Western alliance. Therefore, there was a lot of money that flowed into the country. The economy was being propped up by the government.
The art scene was booming with lots of art galleries featuring local artists. I was still running the teaching centre but it was in Jordan that I really started getting involved in more cultural development projects. The minister of education at the time was also a broad-minded individual who and he encouraged projects of the sort that our organization ran. I think the presence of foreign aid stimulated intellectual and cultural projects. It was a time of fun and openness and I had a fantastic time. Also, the internet was just starting to become widely used.
Mustafa: If we think about technological freedoms nowadays, especially in the Arab World, then surveillance and authoritarianism come to mind. I supposed in the late 90s people were just starting to discover technology as a platform to voice one’s opinions.
Even though you had lived in Yemen, which has a focal aspect to the Arab identity in ancient times, Jordan has a more central location in modern Arab history. I would say that the authorities there had not yet caught up with the newfound freedoms that the internet provided people with. You found yourself there at a time when things were on a trajectory of opening up to the world. Your social life must have been vibrant, I bet.
Tobias: Yes! There was even a café with a very cosmopolitan ambiance which was run by an openly-gay man.
Mustafa: One could be openly-gay in Jordan in the late 90s?
Tobias: I would not say that without qualifications. However, in the right social groups and circumstances it was very relaxed, yes, but not in the wider society. I crossed paths with many people who had family problems because of their sexuality, but in my group of people and friends, things were very relaxed. My friends came from all over the Arab world and the wider globe. There were people from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, France, Norway, Sweden, and many more European countries.
Mustafa: Jordan does have a stereotypical association with honor-killings because of sex-crimes, but I guess that took place not so much in the cosmopolitan capital where you lived.
And with your job, you ran an English-teaching centre. Had you started with major art events yet?
Tobias: My posting after Jordan had major art events, but in Jordan I mingled a lot with people in the field. I often went to exhibitions and local art centres and really enriched my collection. There is a pair of twin paintings in the hallways in my house in Holland which I got from these. They depict distorted imagery of a field and a street view but they are really integrated with the style and colour palette as to belong together. The arabesque carpets which I own were also acquired on a visit to Syria which I made during my years living in Jordan.
Mustafa: Having been born in Oman, I am trying to reconcile your description of a cosmopolitan and internationally-oriented life in a Muslim society with my experience as a liberal-minded person growing-up in an intellectually oppressive environment - often with the threat of violence without accountability as the price for non-conformity.
Let me attempt to stratify the societies you lived in and place you in a social group which felt in a different universe than me. After all, we are not talking about societies held-up by values of a liberal democracy and rule of law.
I imagine that you still had to interact with the wider, more conservative society. Was that through interactions with the students? I mean you started out in a village in the middle of nowhere in Sudan, and now you were dining in 5-star restaurants in establishments patronized by Jordanian royals.
Tobias: When we travelled through villages between Amman and Aqaba, we were aware that people there were very traditional. We made sure not to wear shorts, for example. If I was going to Book@Café, the one I told you about earlier, then I didn’t think twice about freely being myself. On the other hand, if I was going to go smoke shisha or go to a ‘cheap and cheerful’ restaurant to eat hummus, I would have thought twice about my attire.
Ultimately, did I feel animosity towards me as a foreigner? No.
Mustafa: Tell me about living in an Arab country sharing a border with Israel.
Tobias: The years I lived in Jordan were directly in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The general attitude across both sides of the border as I experienced it was one that was characterized by curiosity. For example, one time I went on an excursion in a beautiful mountainous valley (wadi) in Jordan and I saw people who looked very Arab but upon a closer look I realized they were speaking Hebrew.
Cross-border tourism was by no means something that only westerners did at the time.
Jordanians and Palestinians visited Israel and so did Israelis visit Jordan. All of this was done with due regard to plight of the Palestinians. The political developments had encouraged an atmosphere of dialogue. I went to Tel Aviv in Israel once with two Norwegian diplomat friends of mine. We had such a blast clubbing and gay and transgender bars in Tel Aviv. It was a fantastic trip with a very bad hangover on the beach. This was a unique period of time where the Oslo Accords made people feel like: ok let’s find out about the ‘other.’
Mustafa: It’s almost as if, for a moment, the liberals on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict found themselves empowered to build bridges. Nowadays everyone will say we all know how that sadly came to an eventual end, even though narratives of why the peace process failed are stark opposites.
Tell me more about your local friends in Jordan, bearing in mind how the socio-political atmosphere was one of openness and the internet slowly shaping its way into people’s hearts and minds.
Tobias: My friends were very excited to explore the world beyond. All these years later, I would say about 7 out of 10 of them ended up immigrating to Canada or the US. In the late 90s, the internet provided much to quench the thirst of people over there to explore the outside world, much like myself as I sought to travel out of the UK to make someone of myself.
Mustafa: I understand that your social life played-out in an arena of cosmopolitanism. What emotions did you experience as you had to edit yourself when interacting with a conservative wider society? Being secular or even about being gay, I’m sure a degree of frustration existed. Was that the case, or was it more like a temporary experience in a foreign place which you knew was going to come to an end? I ask in the context of feeling one’s true identity compromised by external pressure.
Tobias: At work I was no more than a professional. Nothing else mattered. At a party, I would have to judge the kind of crowd I was in the midst of.
Mustafa: There wasn’t an external power, so to speak, that forced you to be someone you are not.
Tobias: It was important to remain diplomatic as I always represented my organization. My work comprised all of my life to an extent. If I had managed to misrepresent the organization, then I might have been placed doing a boring office job in London, and I knew I wanted to keep traveling and living abroad.
Mustafa: It was career-considerations, then, which exercised that power over you. Your job description was what dictated the course of your life, rather than other forms of social mobility. That’s a really interesting take for me as I compare my own frustrations with having to hide my true opinions in the environment I grew up in.
Tobias: Yes, I wanted to build a solid career in the organization I worked in. I had come from a good family, but not a wealthy one per se. As I said, I did not want to end up working in the UK.
Mustafa: Not to mention that attitudes towards sexual minorities weren’t as evolved even in the West. Perhaps the organization became some sort of a home.
Tobias: I would say that, yes. It became a bit like a surrogate family. There evolved a group of individuals from my generation who grew up working for the same entity for decades across many borders. We all witnessed each other develop and I am still in touch with them.
The organization became like a family, maybe more than one would admit.
Mustafa: How about your personal life whilst in Jordan? With all that you mentioned about your social life in Jordan, it seems that it was more vibrant than in Pakistan.
Tobias: I dated a man from Norway. We are still friends. He ended up marrying a guy who he met in Jordan. Moving to Jordan from Pakistan felt like I was going to Paris or something, if I consider how vibrant and international my experience ended up becoming. Perhaps being more involved in cultural relations than only teaching English had something to do with it.
Mustafa: Yes. I met your former boyfriend from Norway too as he came to visit us in Holland with his husband from Jordan. Enough about Jordan then. Where and how did you end up going next?
Tobias: My last 18 months in Jordan I had a new boss who ended up becoming more like a mentor. She suggested that I apply for director positions within the organization so as to run an entire operation in a country. That’s how I ended up getting a position to work in Khartoum, Sudan.