Love in time of war
After ten days in the streets, going from one demonstration to another, and working on 7iber’s food drive… my brain started picking a peculiar vibe… the sweet promise of love in the air! Some might find this an inappropriate topic right now… but falling in love in time of war is the most instinctive human behavior…. (Subhan Allah really)
Before yesterday, at the Rabieh demonstration. Adrenaline was running high at the prospect of the police taking down the tent. The tent has been set up there for more than a week now, in an open demonstration till the Israeli ambassador is out of Jordan. (They did not take it down, the rumor has it that the Prime Minister interfered in their support) Even though I was there with my guy friends, that did not seem to stop random guys from coming for a chat. They would ask me about my camera, or give me snippets of information about what was going on…all done courteously. However all conversations had a flirtatious undertone backed by a body language mixed into it. I won’t delude myself into thinking it was directed towards me personally…in that setup, I was simply a female!
Q. got a bit protective, he was trying to warn me about men there…. he cracked a few jokes about the trend in that space. A group of women would gather around the fire (it was cold). That would surely attract one man to add oil to the fire to make sure it stays on. More men would automatically join…and more men… soon, the geography of the place would be defined by groups of men gathering around smaller groups of women!
Now he might have been joking, and the picture I am painting here is definitely exaggerated since men outnumbered women by dozens… but there is some truth to it.
For years, scientists have suspected that people feel attraction more intensely when they are excited, be it through anxiety, fear, anger… I found this 1974 article that states that attraction occurs with increased frequency during states of strong emotion… I guess if we take it back to the basic caveman analogy, the main aim of human beings is the survival of the race. Therefore in times of war, when people feel threatened, they are driven by instinct to reproduce and survive…. and thus they become more flirtatious and physical.
To bring the argument full circle, I will have to take it back to Jordan and analyze it according to what is going on there. People have been gathering in this tent every day for hours… they also have been meeting in protests… these setups, being public, are quite respectable… especially when there is a cause such as Gaza attached to them…. protests are perfect spaces for guys to meet girls, and for girls to meet guys.
Nas had an interesting insight into the argument. He thought that protests are spaces where people meet others knowing that they share core values.
To analyze his argument… Whoever is in a protest is someone who is passionate about the cause they are protesting about. They are people who subscribe to a certain set of beliefs and personality traits, such as being public, courageous. I don’t know maybe vocal, driven, active (?) therefore they do share something strong in common… including a basic intellectual compatibility…. I am not saying that everyone in protests is the same… but I am saying that a protest is a space where the probability of finding people who share common ideologies is high…. For me it is much simpler… the caveman analogy! We are hard wired to make sure the race survives.
During our food drive, the setup was very safe. People were working hard, in a very public open space for long hours… in a way the setup gathered all the necessary elements for young people to meet and get to know each other and hopefully to fall in love. Truthfully, a lot of innocent flirting was going on (I personally was delighted). Those youngsters had definitely many things in common. Now, I find myself waiting for a day, in a few years, when we will receive an email from someone telling us that they are getting married and that they met in our food drive!
Ok.. that was my intellectual relief from the intensity of the situation… I have not been this emotionally drained in a long time… I have been glued in front of Al Jazeerah waiting for the ceasefire…
Today we will know what the UN has decided. Inshallah there is some consciousness still alive in that group of people.
Heh-heh, ya khalto, I was thinking the same thing!! Scenarios as you described enable one to cut through the junk, the pretense, the show, and get RIGHT to where the heart of a relationship beats.
Tragedy forces us to be real.
I speak from experience, it is the background where I met my now-husband.
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I know a few people who met this way… honestly kinzi, it would be great if a few couples were formed out of these protestts !
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i’d like to add to my original argument that times of tragedy force us to have a more united feeling. it dominates the air. people we would normally not stop and acknowledge on the street are now people we stand next to, shoulder to shoulder, singing songs or chanting slogans. the circumstances demand that spiritual closeness and it manifests itself in physical means: be it a protest, a march or a food drive.
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I think you are right that heightened attraction does occur during times of stress or excitement. The usual barriers that separate us fall away when something really unusual happens in our environment. I have been in a few unusual situations when I felt at ease talking to strangers, and they to me. I think there is something to the caveman analogy, but I also think there is something to the idea that people who come together for the same reason may be more interpersonally compatible than a random group of strangers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some love matches were formed out of this crisis.
I hope there will be lasting ceasefire too, and soon!
I was reading an article today about Israeli politics. They will have elections soon. If the conservative party of Nytenyahu (I hate that man!) wins, there will never be any peace. I was reading that the rival party Kadema might be willing to form a coalition government with the Arab Israeli members of the Knesset. I say might, because this is more an idea than a real possibility, at this point. However, I hope it could happen! Arab Israelis working together with Jewish Israelis could really make a positive difference!
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I agree it’s caveman instinct, pure raw survive and replicate, that’s what we all function on.
Days are passing, death tolls rising, weakness and helplessness,a pathetic situation that makes one wants to throw up,and its a continuous non stop feeling..
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