Driven by Curiosity…

I had a lovely weekend. It was a great way to end that stressful week I had last week. My brother moe got very sick, and I had to take him few times to the hospital. He has a very bad anemia, but with some iron, his color is back, and he looks young and healthy again. My sister had no one to take care of Nizar and so she brought him over. He is an absolutely adorable curious little thing, but needs full attention. Omar (other brother) came back from London, and I had to cook for all of them, healthy stuff because moe needs to have good food in his system. Elena left in the middle of all this to go attend to some meeting abroad and I had to take care of all the meetings in Amman last week! Phew…! Life can be so hectic, but I definitely love this much MUCH more than my empty life of the past few months. I came to realize that I did not reach the high level of spirituality where I can deal with any situation in life and be happy and grateful. In this case I am talking about my situation in Saudi, being alone with nothing to do, I tried to fill my life with reading and drawing, and researching things I have always wanted to know about, but I need something else. I need to have my plate full, I need to work, to live first hand the more hectic the better, I need to run from meeting to the other and from one trouble to the other, I need to deal with family issues, with friends, with strangers, with stories…etc.

Anyway, K called me, he is one of the people I met last week in this setting where my sister created a scene, and told me that they are having a BBQ and that I am invited with my sisters. Elena is not here, and hania had a family day yesterday, and I decided what the heck?? I went… it was the first time I spend time alone with a group in Amman. It was amazing to realize that in the last 6 or 7 years in my life I have not dealt with this setup, a group of Arab people. Have lost touch with how people think, how they interact with each other, how they feel, and what they do, what they know and don’t know and I realized that I miss this, that I like it. I also realized that in the last few years of traveling and living in different places and having to deal with marriage life made me much more tolerant and less judgmental about shortcomings of myself and others. It was so mellow, so relaxed, so laid back, no complications, with grilled meat and marshmallows, and beautiful company and the lovely breeze. I slept so happy yesterday.

This is a very incoherent entry, I am all over the map but I want to write very briefly about THE project. Basically, we are involved in a youth exchange program, where we are getting 50 people from Lebanon, France, Italy and Jordan. We will give them a tour in Jordan in 12 days, and we will ask them to make us a report about Jordan, a multimedia CD and a written report that we have to give to the EU. These people should be people of less opportunity, who never will get the chance to do something like this. So we are chosing people from refugee camps and from different cities of Jordan where they don’t live the glamour of Amman. We have a beduin, we have few Baqaa refugee camp youth, we have few kerak people, and the rest are from the Princess Sumaya university. I am coordinating this project, and I really like it.

One last note I want to thank the people who commented on my diaries, it is great getting feedback and it absolutely wonderful knowing that there are people out there who actually read about my life and have something to say about it. Thank you. Ah and sorry about not writing lightly always, but my life in not always light!

I leave with the blessings of DIEU

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I had a very interesting evening Wednesday evening. I went out with a new group of people. I knew one guy Y. I met him twice through his work in kerak. He is responsible for the kerak project from which we thought of choosing four ladies for our project. (I will give an idea about this project in my next entry, I promise!). Y. has helped us get support and approval from the ministry of tourism for our project, and to celebrate this victory, we decided to get all the people involved to go out. I did not want to go alone, and so I asked hania to come with me.

Anyone who knows me would know how much I ADORE public scenes, especially if it was me or someone I know involved. Hania showed up after 10 minutes, and she said hello to the people on the table. Somehow people got mixed up and thought, Hania came with one young lady on the table and could not connect her to me. In a split of a second an understanding passed between hania and this lady and they created a scene! They started pretending that Hania stole this lady’s 12 year long boyfriend and the love of her life. Obviously it is an old story, since Hania has been married for the last 3 years, but the bad feeling were still there! The girl asked Hania, ahh you did not tell your sisters about what you have done? Hania answered that it is part of the past, and that there is no need for them not to be civilized to each other or to hurt each other, the girl answered, “you can’t hurt me because you have already hurt me enough and hania took the knife from in front of the girl and said, yeah, I can’t hurt you but I don’t know what you are capable of!.” They both acted so well, the anger part, the trying to be civilized part, the bitchiness part. I totally believed it and was GREEN!( have you ever seen a green person?)

Obviously, we instantly liked each other very much, which is a very unusual case in women meeting women scenario in Amman. It was so interesting that this phenomenon dominated the conversation of the evening.

Women in Amman have unspoken rules that everyone follows religiously. The main problem here is that there is a very high demand for single guys because mostly guys that belong to a certain class don’t stay here, they are working abroad, but most of the girls from this same social circle are living here. This, alongside with the fact that Amman is a very small place, makes the chances of meeting the “right guy” from very difficult to nil!. All these women managed, collectively, to come up with a set of rules that protects each one’s area. Just like the way lions pee around their territory so that everyone knows this is the lion’s area and KEEP OUT!

For example, everyone belongs to a group here, and women are so possessive about the group they belong to. The biggest Faux pas is to get introduced to a group through one of the single guys there, what will happen? You will get the dirtiest looks you imagine from every direction, your clothes will be trashed, your make up will become vulgar, your unpedicured toes will be highlighted and any very well kept history will be out in the open in the matter of hours! Don’t forget everyone would know someone who knows someone who happened to know about your hidden secret!

Another advise, Don’t ever ever and i mean EVER commit the stupid mistake of asking a girl to take you with her to one of the gatherings of her group, especially if it is the Christmas or Eid event, New Year or any other important event. Because you will get a very bitchy NOO! accompanied with a disgusted look. But in all cases If you are not blond and don’t have straight hair, and don’t like to wear the short pants (3 quarters) you have nothing to worry about because you are uncool!

God,Sometimes I just love being married!

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