We had our bathing suits on, but we didn’t dare take off our t-shirts or pants before entering the water. It was 1:00 am and for some reason the beach was packed; the heat, stifling even in the middle of the night, was near unbearable in the day, and the locals understood that the best time to enjoy the Red Sea was long after the sun had set.
We waded into the cold water and inched our way gingerly across the sharp rocks underfoot until we were comfortably bobbing a few meters off shore, all but our heads submerged in the sea. Our one male friend casually wore his swim trunks, but we three women ensured that our bodies were completely covered—by the clothing we refused to remove and then by the now-black water—but it didn’t matter. The men found us anyway.
“What is your favorite thing about Jordan?” my male friend had asked me just hours before, and I hadn’t taken long to think of my answer. “The hospitality—so many people here are so kind,” I’d responded, thinking of my landlady who had urged me to take dozens of fresh fruits from her garden, and of the Uber driver who had insisted I should take his “Uber” coffee mug after I complimented it in passing, and of the people at my work who had been so quick to help me buy a SIM for my phone, find a surge protector for my devices, move my belongings between apartments, and travel to and from our office. My friend had nodded at my answer, well-accustomed to the hospitality in the region as his several visits to Jordan with his native father had exposed him to similar kindnesses over the years.
“And your least favorite thing?” he’d asked, and I—along with my two female companions—had answered without even the briefest hesitation. “The harassment,” we’d all laughed, but it was a bitter sort of agreement. “Most definitely the harassment.” Our male friend had nodded almost embarrassedly, as if to concede that he should have known as much, but it struck me: something so ever-present in our minds, so integral to our daily lives in Jordan, had not even registered on the radar of our male counterpart.
As the four of us crouched in the dark water of the Red Sea, a group of young men gravitated toward us.
We ignored them, ourselves settling into a circle and talking to each other about our plans for the next day, but the young men refused to be disregarded. They called out to us; they picked up rocks and threw them all around us; they swam within inches of our bodies; they splashed us and borrowed a small boy’s water gun to shoot at us; one reached to grab my leg under the water as he passed too close for comfort.
My two female friends and I remained quiet, refusing to acknowledge them. Our male friend picked up a rock.
“I really, really want to fight them,” he held the rock in his hands and faced the small gang, “But I don’t think I’d win.” He meant it as a joke, but his voice held in it a tension that was unamused. “I wish the police were here, they’d take care of them.”
My first week in Amman, I’d been walking down the street when a police officer had stopped me, asked if I knew Arabic, and commented that he would be happy to provide me with free private lessons. His suggestive smile, his hand on my arm, and his roaming eyes encouraged me to politely decline.
In a single month, I’d become jaded. I’d had countless men take pictures of and with me, had gotten one proposal of marriage, and had gotten one offer of 100 camels in exchange for my company. More ominously, I’d had random phone calls declaring undying lust for me in animalistic grunts and had men reach out for me and my clothing as I walked down the street. Scarier still, I’d had taxi drivers demand my phone number before unlocking their doors for me to exit and had others climb out of their cars to try to follow me into my apartment.
The other women I’d met had all—without exception—had similar encounters. While traveling with her classmates, an acquaintance had chosen to remain alone at her camp rather than attend a hike with her fellow students when she’d been approached by her taxi driver who, completely nude, attempted to force himself on her. She had reported the incident, but the driver had not lost his job.
For some, the harassment carried with it a racial impetus. My two Singaporean friends had been repeatedly solicited by men who assumed all Asian women in the region were prostitutes. My English friend of Nigerian descent had had men call her “Rasta”—short for Rastafarian—and reach out to her as she passed to touch what little skin of hers might be bared.
All of us had felt the panic of walking alone at night, even in crowded spaces; all of us had worried for each other, contacting one another at the end of each day to be sure we’d made it home safely after lone taxi rides; all of us had learned how to shoot glares at the men who called out to us even as we simultaneously feared any altercation our glares might help to incite.
“Really, don’t worry too much about it,” I told my friend. “You’re just experiencing Jordan as a woman.” Only after I’d said it did I realize how true—and how saddening—it was.
Harassment can come in any number of forms, and it is by no means solely specific to the Middle East. As a young traveler, I have been stalked in Vienna, nearly molested in Geneva, followed back to my room in Paris, and almost assaulted in Shanghai. As a young woman in my own hometown, I have had men call out to me and attempt to force their unwanted advances on my person. Jordanian men are not the sole perpetrators of these encounters, and certainly not all Jordanian men mean women their ill-will. But never in my life—in my home or in any of the countries I have visited—have I experienced harassment as consistent or as terrifyingly well-integrated as I have in Jordan. And the women in the country are taking note; female residents have been raising their voices in protest for some time, taking to the streets in Amman just two months ago to protest the harassment they face on a daily basis and to urge Jordan to make harassment of women a legally-recognized crime. As a traveler, this is all temporary for me; for these women, harassment has become a daily staple.
There are so many beautiful things about Jordan: the kindness of some strangers, the tastiness of local meals, the splendor of sights both natural and man-made, the comingling of many cultures that manage to interact even as they retain their distinctiveness. But so too is there a harassment that, for all females, proves pervasive of the entire experience.
My friends and I left the crowded beach earlier than we’d planned. As we walked back toward our hotel, a small boy—no more than ten years old—whistled at we three women as we passed, his tune a weak imitation of the wolf-whistle that his older counterparts had so perfected.
Such a weak whistle, I thought, to carry in it the weight of an enduring objectification of women, made all the more sinister for the boy’s inability to comprehend his own intention in producing it.