At this point my post starts suffering an identity crisis. The post is about two completely different ideas, but they are intertwined in a way that makes it complicated for my, already, complicated brain to choose which idea to go with.  The first one is about unlived adolescence in Jordan, and the other one is about the dating scene in Amman.

What I would do is explore one idea today and defer the other one to the next post. Hopefully they will converge eventually in something that makes sense.

 Women’s Juvenile expressions

A few years ago, I was working on a women empowerment project in East Amman.  The project involved asking a number of adult women to write their own short bios. They loved the exercise. I mean, it is seldom that anyone gets interested in them as persons.  We worked slowly on developing the information, and when they were finally done, they handed me hard copies of the bios.  I found a common feature in all the documents that sort of confused me.  These women used colors to draw small hearts and flowers around their documents… some of them even went as far as sticking cartoon characters and I love you stickers on their bios! 

The pattern used was familiar to me… it was that of 11 year old girls!

These were the expressions of adult women, who had never had the chance to express themselves when they were 11. At that age, they were expected to be women and house wives.  These women lost their freedom to go out and make friends and be juvenile when they hit puberty. At that age, they started learning how to cook and clean and take care of younger children… they were no longer children… and were expected to let go of their childhood earlier that they needed to.

What happened to them?  Well, their unfulfilled desires stayed with them through their adulthood… leaving them emotionally immature and unfulfilled, which means unable to fulfill their husbands’ unfulfilled emotional desires.

I soon realized that this was a lifestyle and not random expressions… the way they carried out their lives had something childish about it… they behaved childishly, the language they used, and their decisions were based on childish basis as well. 

Men’s juvenile expressions

I imagined that men are better off… but actually I realized that it is not at all the case…look around, a lot of men end up spending their Thursday nights driving around Duwwar Abdoun..    Men in their teens, twenties driving around, chatting up girls and acting idiotically! Older men would probably be found in night clubs doing exactly the same… <madas’ comment> I am not saying everyone is like that… but a good number is </madas’ comment> 

For many complicated reasons, these men were not allowed to explore with their sexuality at their adolescence years… and they ended up exploring that when they are older… only at this age it is no longer innocent.

My whole point here is that these two people in the car… would not sit in a car in the middle of the night, if they had the chance to do that when they were in their teens or early twenties… khalas they would have already got it out of their systems by this age…

However I don’t think that this is the only reason why men and women in Amman end up making out in cars.  … I think there are other reasons including  not having places to do that in…

Which takes me to my next question… what are the features of the dating scene in Amman?