A wedding at Queen Alia Airport
As I was cleaning up my computer, I found an old picture. I remembered that I wanted to blog about it a few years ago (2006)… there was one problem at that time. I was not sure how to post pictures! (thank God I become less technically challenged with time.)
I can see Nas rolling his eyes!
I was at Queen Alia airport, coming from Egypt. As I picked up my bag and went out of the immigration door, I came across a huge zaffe, with the dancers and the drums and the horns… the whole nine yards really!… the party was waiting for an Egyptian couple moving to Amman.
While waiting for the couple to come out, I chatted with an Egyptian lady with the party. I was told that the groom had been living in Amman for a few years. He went back home and brought his beautiful young bride with him. It was all delightfully romantic.
That happy look in her eyes caught my attention; she was thrilled by the promising possibilities of the future.
I remember thinking how excited she must have felt. She probably felt the world revolved around her that moment. What a chic start, she was moving into a new country fully made up… wearing the white laced-dress, she probably had dreamt of wearing all her life… I wondered about the scene before boarding the plane in Cairo… were her parents with her? Was the scene emotional?
A twinge of pity hits me whenever I look into these pictures… I almost feel sorry for that young lady, coming into the unknown with so much optimism! Looking forward to being with her handsome groom, looking forward to having her cinderalla- like life… every time, I find myself hoping she is happy wherever she is, and praying that had kept her optimistic look and happy smile.
Whenever I see the picture, I think of another young Egyptian lady, who moved to Amman around the same time. Hiyam helps clean my sister’s house. She is young and had so many illusions when she moved to Amman…
Someone would hardly believe the home she moved to in Amman. It is in the garage of a very prosperous Deir- Ghbar building. This automatically, means that Hiyam who grew up in some Egyptian village, has to live huddled together with her husband and her future children (they are two by now) in an 8-sq meters room. This very room also includes the bathroom, the kitchen, dining room and is more cluttered up and unaired than any common rat hole. …ohh and they also get to breathe the cars fumes as bonus. One could safely say they are not living there; they are rather COOKING.
The husband is a guard, who has to wake up at 3 AM to carry one of the tenant’s jackets. He is expected to 24/7 for 140 JDs. Hiyam did not go back to Egypt since 2006, because her husband’s contract does not include a vacation… the month he is away, he needs to bring another guard to replace him, and thus no salary for one month.
Hiyam helps him by cleaning houses for living… she hates how west Ammany madams lead frivolous, useless lives…how they are really not as classy as they try to convey to the world… this is manifested by their love to shout …but what she hates most is when they misplace their things and accuse her of stealing them…
Malgre tout, Hiyam is a cheerful human being… She thanks God that she has a roof above her head and a loving husband at her side!
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That is a precious story.
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Madas Reply:
April 7th, 2009 at 06:28
i think so too
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An example of a huge amount of similar stories here in Jordan,I even doubt that cheap foreign labor have rights when it comes to written work contracts.
would you live in an underground small room to be with your man?
even if it was me?;)
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Madas Reply:
April 8th, 2009 at 21:10
you are most porbably right…i don’t know about the contracts, but i know that Jordan is not rights states… by that i mean people don’t really have rghts…
To answer your question… the answer is no… life is too short for that
i would not go for someone who would force us to live in an underground small room.
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[[[ A twinge of pity hits me whenever I look into these pictures… I almost feel sorry for that young lady, coming into the unknown with so much optimism! ]]] ==>> Kalam kebbeer awayyee !!
I think we need to be optimistic when it comes to such situations .. maybe we try to show our optimism to hide the inner fear… and to convince ourselves that things will be fine..
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Madas Reply:
April 11th, 2009 at 14:20
wow Samah, that is very perceptive… and you are probably right
maybe, who knows? who is inside that young woman’s heart?
Thank you for the smart comment
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I have heard that Egypt is becoming a very crowded place with large numbers of very poor people, similar to India. Perhaps Egyptians who move to Jordan have a better life there than back home?
I read an article yesterday about immigrant workers in Dubai. Many of them live in work camps with truly squalid conditions! The world’s richest people come to play in Dubai, but their pampering comes at a terrible price for thousands of workers.
In the U.S., not everyone has rights, or at least not the same level of rights as citizens. There are millions of illegal immigrants here, mostly from Mexico. They are often worked long hours and are paid very little money. Sometimes they get worked and they are not paid. They don’t really have any legal recourse. If they go to the authorities to report not being paid, they risk being discovered as illegal aliens and deported.
Another group of immigrants that have been abused are young women from Asia, many from Korea, who come here with promises of good paying jobs. However, when they get here they are forced to work as prostitutes.
So, not everything about America is good! It sounds like some things may be just as bad or perhaps worse in Jordan though.
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Madas Reply:
April 11th, 2009 at 14:28
yeah, illigal immigration exists everywhere… it is the modern slavery…
I just remembered a research i studied during my MA. it was was how the police let immigrants in the USA, because the economy is built on their services… cheap labor, no rights, they don’t cost much… if they are not in the USA, the economy will suffer.
But since INS can’t let them in openly, they make it difficult for them, so that Americans see that they are doing their jobs and they don’t support inhuman conditions. Truth is slavery exists everywhere…
The word has always built like that, some people exist to be slaves for others… counties’ economies are built on that… which is truly sad!
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