The comment brought up a conversation that keeps repeating itself in my life: Women and property. 

 Stories about women and property

 In a conversation I had with N. couple of years ago, she complained about this particular issue. N and her husband made an agreement that anything they will purchase after they got married, should be registered in both their names, regardless of who brings the bread home. She felt, at that point, that she had given up her career to take care of him and the children, and felt that she deserved to share his money and his property. She complained however, that every time they purchased something, things worked out in a way that the property ended up to be registered in his name alone!

E. on the other hand, was getting engaged. Her fiancé was about to purchase their dream house, she suggested that she should pay part of it and co-own it with him. But the idea was shot down before it even got the chance to reach his parents…. He told her clearly, that his family would find this offensive.  It would have given the impression they could not afford buying the house and therefore she had to help… her intention was to co-own the property that was going to live in anyway.   (She ended up buying a piece of land somewhere with the money she was going to contribute to the house)

L. is a third example…. She comes from one of these business oriented families. The family buys property and land for girls in the family in return for their share of the family business. However, they don’t allow them to be part of the business…

What do they say?

Would women give up their marriage or stop getting married if they have lands?

Hala (house wife, 54)

“Bullshit! Women have the right to own land. Fatima, the prophet’s daughter, owned a small garden, and she stuck to Ali till the end.  Why can’t other women do the same?”

 Kifah (counsellor , 39)

A lot of women choose husbands based on their financial status. If they own property, the pressure to choose financial support becomes much less, and therefore they choose based on compatibility. Therefore I think It is the opposite, if women are financially independent, the quaity of their choises improves.)

 Maria (teacher, 61)

“This is the masculine perspective. A woman would never leave a husband that she respects and loves for land. At a certain age, companionship becomes the most important thing for women… However, maybe men have been getting away with a lot in the name of financial support. The question that should be asked… do they deserve to be with the woman they are with? Only independent women can answer this question.”

Lara (Marketing guru 26)

I don’t believe women would stop getting married if they own land, or maybe this is the way things are here in Jordan.

I think men feel threatened that women can leave them any time since they can become independent after owning a piece of land. This is only in the minds of men where they should be the providers, but women in nature need to settle down and have a family, it’s instinctive. However, if women live in an environment where they need to rebel and retaliate then this would be their chance to prove that they do not need men.

Either way it’s good to show men that women are not to be taken for granted, to sleep with one eye open

 Hamza ( salesman, 24)

It is true. We know how women think (so emotionally ) and they have speedy reactions. If she gets angry with her husband for any small reason, she will leave, because she has the land and can live alone.

 Issam (IT guru, 31)

I can’t help but laugh. Please excuse me but this is the silliest logic I’ve heard for a long time.
While financial dependence on the man is dominating in the marriage relation, I can’t see how financial well being of a woman could lead to a tendency to abstain from a relationship or marriage.

 I would like to take the thought a step back, a peek in the recent history.

Women property rights in the ottoman empire

According to Amira El-Azhary Sonbol in her study Women of  the Jordan (2003), Ottoman records show that women’s property rights were implemented at all levels of the Islamic legal system. They show that “no one, including the husbands or even fathers, could make use of women’s property without their consent, and women appealed to the courts when anyone tampered with their assets.”

It seems that women’s property rights started declining with the European colonization.  Women got caught between the western imperialism and the conservative Islam that started spreading faster and faster.

Back to today’s world

I no longer think it is about women at all… I think it is about the land.  I just learnt that some tribes have an unwritten agreement, where, people should not sell land outside the tribe. Land equals status and bargaining power, therefore should stay within the tribe. The problem in the case of women is when they marry outside the tribe. In that case, land will be no longer the property of the tribe.

According to a survey that was conducted by freedomhouse, women’s access to inheritance, housing, and property is affected by their educational level, family support systems, economic status, and access to legal information and mechanisms. One thing for sure, women don’t get their share of inheritance or property.  In some cases, when they are not financially independent, and don’t have any providers, they cede their share of family land to their brothers, in return of economic support.

The problem is that governments do not take aggressive steps to enforce women’s inheritance and property rights and often allow abuses to go unpunished.

I was walking with my sister in Souq Jara this last Friday, right at the door we saw a woman pushing a baby stroller trying to get on the pavement, but could not.  Two foreign fellows jumped to help her. She smiled, thanked them and went on with her baby.  My sister was extremely impressed, and when I asked her, she explained that Arab guys would be reluctant to help, as these foreign men did. I was very surprised; I am so used to hanging out with gallant men, that I did not even notice it.

However, it seems like I hang out with guys who belong to a dying breed. They open doors for women, they give up their seats when a woman comes in any setup and in buses (not that we use buses in Jordan to my chagrin), and they would not mind fighting someone if they offended one of us.

My sister and I went through our men folk and put them in two categories, those who would help and those who don’t.  One thing came out clearly; most of the men who would help have lived abroad at some point of their lives…

Now, since I am not hasty at forming judgments, especially when it comes to a delicate matter, such as Jordanian men’s honour, I decided to investigate the observation further, and therefore decided to go to the lion’s den and get the information directly there… this means, I asked a few men about their opinions on the matter.

The men I asked all admitted to their lack of chivalry, they defend their position as a natural consequence of women reactions….

 The idea of male chivalry, as Moe explained, makes many women nervous, when we try to carry a heavy bag, they look at us and say coldly “ I can carry it myself” and therefore, we let them carry their heavy bags on their own. Moe explained that when he does an act of chivalry, he is aware that the woman he is helping is not weak, and that she is as capable as he is… for him it is a simple show of respect… the problem is that women get very offended by his show of respect,  that he feels they don’t deserve it.

N-man on the other hand told me about an incident when he was walking ahead of two young women, he kept the door open for them to walk in. When they finally arrived, they did not even give him a second glance. They walked on so rudely as if he was the door man, whose job was to keep the door open for them.  N-man explained that it was not only humiliating, it actually irritated him…

it takes a certain level of spitefulness for human beings not to look at someone who is being kind to them… 

N-man is just another man who believes Jordanian women do not deserve gallantry!

Sam provided a third perspective… he saw a woman carrying a baby and couple of bags, when he offered to help, she thought he was flirting with her, and started shouting at him in the middle of the road…  he laughed as he explained that he almost started cursing her, but instead cursed himself for helping the likes of her… he walked fuming and promised himself never to help another woman… he joked..

I really don’t need to get into some honour related case… leave me alone!

When asked, why do men in the west help women, Omar explained they don’t always do, some men feel that if women really want to be treated equally, they need to stop expecting men to treat them specially.

N-man on the other hand pointed out that gallantry is something they learn at schools or observe other men do… so in reality, it is expected from him to keep the door open for a woman, but in return she is expected to acknowledge his gentle mannish act.  He says that he reverts back to his chivalrous nature the moment he leaves Jordan…

After talking to several people, I was really beginning to feel sorry for men.  Some of them seemed to be the victims of the tyranny of bitchy Jordanian women, who are not capable of acknowledging an act  of kindness, or a show of respect, even when it is staring at the them in the eye.

Most of the guys I spoke to this week agreed that to some extent chivalry is dead.

That is a disheartening fact for us ladies because believe it or not, we’ve killed it.

 I just discovered the funniest comedy ever, it is called arrested development! it is truly hilarious!

The husband could not deal with the catastrophic request, so he went and created a huge sign, where he wrote love messages and stood in front of her office asking for her forgiveness. She happens to be a Royal Jordanian employee at the 7th Circle office. He did not stop there, but he invited some musicians au Spanish motif, and called different news outlets in Jordan to come and witness his sincere regrets. As you can imagine, the wife was very touched, went out crying and gave him a beautiful hug amid the cheers of the gathered crowd!

Not me unfortunately… I would hate it if my husband would put me in the spotlight like that… but what can i say…Allah yihanihom!  

For me this incident was interesting on several levels…. But most of all was the audacity of the husband, who was more ready to deal with a nation that, more often than not, suffers insecurity about manhood and does not tolerate the concept of public display of affection than divorcing his wife.

Mahmoud says : “ this man is a habeeleh! Actually look at his picture, he looks retarded!”

Dina said that this was the sweetest thing she heard… if her husband was that kind of man she would be happy!

Lama on the other hand hates public display of affection. She explained to me that she hates it when her brother and his wife start snogging… she is single and finds it both selfish and in bad taste…  she usually leaves the room with displeasure…. But they still have not got it!

The most intriguing bit, is that men in this country have no problem in showing affection to each other.   How often have we seen men holding hands while walking in the streets, or kissing on the cheeks? How often have we seen men give each other a pat on the back…? in other words, it is very acceptable for male friends to engage in a bit of a slap and tickle… the problem rises up when women are involved.

This story brought up a similar debate to that, which was created when Jordan was gripped with a Noor mania last year….  Both debates revolve around the lack of affection, whether public or private, among people here… parents don’t hug their children, and spouses don’t hug each other… so we have succeeded in producing generations of Jordanians who suffer from a lack of any physical display of emotions…

This  could be caused by several reasons;  One of them is related to the events that took place in Jordan in the last few decades.   As a matter of facts Jordanians have constantly been more focused on survival than on anything else, whether because of poverty or repeated disasters happening one after the other…  Another reason could revolve around the fact that parents were, and still are, very focused on bringing up men to take on responsibilities and therefore, it is not appropriate for them to be spoilt by love and mushi emotions…  The truth is many reasons come to mind… but I won’t go through them… even though I would like to know if you guys have some ideas…

The true question that comes to mind now…. Could this man’s actions be a symptom of a resistance against this emotional desertification that has characterized this country for decades? 

It is now 23:00 and I am exhausted… so will go to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls… I always loved that girlie series… I think I like the rosy life both Lorelei and Rori live… but my favorite one will always be the manipulative Emily… I love how what really matters is what other women say… kind of reminds me of here?

He is an A-hole. He does not respect you, leave him!

Now, my opinion has changed dramatically… it has become:

Where is your self confidence?

Elsa on the other hand used to hate it when her partner (ex-husband now…) used to check women out, especially when they were out and she was with him. This was always the base for an argument… she told him repeatedly that it made her feel uncomfortable, she felt it was not respectful of her as a women… his standard answer was a cold “it meant nothing”

Her mother used to tell her that being upset was not about him staring but it was about being insecure in her relationship…. which obviously she was not… and rightly so, since he ended up cheating on her…
Today, when she is with her boyfriend, she truly does not mind if he checks someone out,… which he seldom does, … and when he does, it is done discreetly and respectfully. Actually, it is ironic, that she would point out that a girl is cute…… what would he do in this case? He does nothing…. absolutely nothing… he might mumble something funny and move on.

So I guess her mother’s comment was right after all…. It really is not about who does what… it is about trust… if you trust the person, if you are secure about the person you are with… checking out other people is fine. The point is both men and women look every now and then… it is no big deal, but what is not normal is for people to stare and comment EVERY time some member of the opposite sex walks in a room. Which really was the case with Elsa’s husband, it used to make all of her friends uncomfortable… he would scan any woman’s body rudely…it was disgusting!

Why do men check out women?

I really don’t want to provide excuses for Arab men…they get away with too much as it is…. but let’s look into evolution here. We need to remember that even though we moved from the caves into modern buildings around Jordan… and we started eating cooked mansaf around tables in different Jordanians cities and villages instead of eating raw meet around the fire in the caves, we still share DNA with animals.

We should never forget that the aim of the human race is to spread DNA for the survival of the race! A guy, having to do little work to give birth to a kid, would be more likely to pass on his DNA if he mated with several women… Is this all? Well of course not. There are other reasons as well.. For example the fact that society celebrates men’s behaviours… I mean it is completely ok for a man to look around, but it would be viewed as completely unnatural and maybe a little sick for a woman to do the same…

I would also imagine that it is because the way women react to it… A friend used to let her husband know how cute the waiter is whenever she caught him looking at other women… she would tip these handsome waiters handsomely, and the sting of spending unnecessary money was enough to teach the husband not to look when she is around!

She still tips people handsomely every now and then, after 13 years of marriage!

Can you think of other reasons why men look at other women??

I wonder who would get upset by this video… Michelle Obama or Carla Bruni?

I have been always fascinated by the beauty industry in Amman. It is available, affordable and professional. But what fascinates me most is that it is thriving and on the rise despite of the financial crisis.   For this post, I asked several “Salons” how their business is doing with the financial crisis; their answer did not fail me…  “Never better” every time!

Apparently, there is an increase in the demand for beauty services during times of financial instability. One possible explanation is that since women can’t afford much anyway, they spend their money on fun stuff… What I call retail therapy. But I suspect instinct plays a bigger role here.

What do women do in times of crisis?

I found this very interesting quote. The oldest adage about fashion and the economy is that hemlines rise and fall with the stock market. If we analyze this a bit deeper, we will realize that women are survivors… they need to take care of themselves and their offspring. Therefore they need to feel good about themselves, especially in times of crisis.

If they don’t have partners, they need to attract the right ones, and if they do, they have to keep them… and how better than recreating themselves in times of crisis? This way women make sure there will be someone will do the hunting …. or put food on the table in our modern times…. Now what kind of beauty do we seek?

Well, well, well…Media bombards us with images of slender, young and flawless women offering products that bring back youth in the best cases and preserve it in the worst. This evidently fuels insecurities among women, whose perceptions have been altered to believe that youth is the only acceptable form of beauty. Consequently, we are driven to beauty parlors, hoping to stop time in order to stay young and beautiful. But wait how does that affect us in Amman? and how much does it cost us?

I was talking to my sister in law, a beautiful young woman who celebrates her beauty. We were expressing our shock at the unbelievable increase in prices in beauty industry.  This comes after a visit to trim my hair, something that I seldom do.  I keep postponing that trip to till there is really no option.  The thing with me is that I really get restless sitting on a chair for an hour while someone is pulling my hair with a roll brush and exposing it to extremely hot air…however this is not the point here.

The point is as we were talking, we started calculating how much it costs to stay beautiful all the time… R. started calling her friends, and i started calling salons to get quotes… we gathered around twenty five voices, and ten quotes… a very small group… 

The prices I am naming here are average…not fixed… think of it as more or less… we are talking about average western Ammani women …   Here we go

Total: 1,604 JDs a year

We still have not talked about essential care products that average women use…

Total: 740 JDs a year

Of course we still have not talked about clothing, shoes or gym and special diet food… if someone is a tad more careful… but just FYI… Dietitians cost about 40 JD’s a month (10 JDs a visit) and Gym about 85 every three months… so we are talking about 820 JD

So how mush does that amount to?  3,164 JDs

Not bad, eh?

  It took me a long time to convince Um Yazan to write about her problem.  She finally did.  You can read the article on 7iber.

I came across this lady in one of the lectures that have been organized through the project Citizen in my City project, in one of the local communities. I won’t mention what community, because she specifically asked me to keep all these details confidential.

I will go back to Um Yazan in a bit, but now, I will give a brief about the lecture, so that people understand the background.

The lecture was about violence in general. However, the lecturer spoke a lot about sexual harassment.  She was explaining to parents why their kids would not approach them if they were facing issues of this sort in their lives. 

“ if your kids tell you they did bad in an exam, and your reaction was to take the slipper and throw at it them, they would start thinking that if my mom did this with something silly, what would she do with there is something shameful involved?”

I thought she had a good point there. She encouraged women to get their children to talk to them, even if what they is childish and silly. This will increase the chances of children talking…. I am not sure how true this is… but I think children can slip when they are younger… however when they get older, it becomes more and more difficult to talk about things like that with parents…. but Ya3ni… it does not harm. On the contrary it definitely helps.

Um Yazan’s Predicament

Um Yazan happened to be in one of those lectures… she went blank in the middle of the lecture… she approached the lecturer afterwards in a panic mode… she had realized what was happening to her son yazan (an assumed name). 

For the longest time, she was not sure what to do about the change in his behaviour.  He stopped eating, became edgy and angry and became aggressive with his siblings… but what puzzled her most was his persistence on wearing very shabby clothes! She knew something was wrong but could never decipher the signs.

When she talked to the lecturer, she started crying helplessly… she said that she suspected something bad was happening to her son… she could not even bring herself to give it a name. ..

After that, things moved quickly, she launched an investigation at the school with the support of the right channels, and did what was needed…

It turned out that her son was being harassed by an older student … (a kid himself), whom in turn was being harassed by someone older somewhere in his own neighbourhood! The story was really shocking! Victims turn into predators… I think maybe it is a normal human outcome! And honestly, who know maybe that would have been Yazan’s future?

 Yazan is being helped by a counsellor now… and the other kid too…everyone is a victim in this story… and hopefully they will start leading normal lives now.

 Going public?

As I was involved in the story from the beginning, I was trying to convince um Yazan to go public with the story. Bring the issue into the spot light… but she refused stubbornly…

Honestly she had a good point.

 She explained that they come from a very conservative background. If this was happening to a girl, it would be a shame and end of story. But if it is a boy… (and here is the surprise)  it is double shame! He will be accused of not being a real man (which is silly, since he is only 11), he will start being bullied in the street and in the school… but worse… the family will start abusing them… I don’t even know where to start if I want to explain the complexities there… sisters in law, brother in law, cousins… competition, jealousy, favouritism, inheritance, gossip…

ya3ni… going public will only open Pandora’s box.

Heavy negotiations took place between her and her husband… she was angry and wanted to do something….the husband agreed to seek help, but refused to go public… his concern was that this will stigmatize their son. His opinion was that now that the boy is being treated, khalas they can move to a different neighbourhood, change schools, and start fresh. Basically, give the boy a chance to put this in the past and move on….

But if they went public…this will be the most important thing about their son forever…. and since their community is very small, he will never be anonymous, he will always be remembered as the boy who was harassed at school.

Yazan’s parents explained…that their duty is to help their son and not save whole world…they won’t be able to, they said realistically….

This is why I appreciate her writing the article.

I sympathize with them, and with the hundreds of families who suffer from similar issues in silence…

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.

I had a nightmare yesterday… in the dream I sat in my room, knowing that I am home alone… suddenly my door opened and a total stranger poked his head into my room… I almost gave myself a heart attack… I went through the motions and the feelings of this scenario as if it was real…. I woke up in a cold sweat….

I knew the nightmare was related to a conversation I had with the sister the previous night… it was about a guy she thought I should meet… Meeting a guy has been on the agenda of several people lately… I guess people worry that I am not getting any younger.  For some odd reason I absolutely have to meet someone right now, get married on the spot and reproduce immediately (…don’t waste your time… you get married today, you have a baby nine months later… boom…boom…boom… as if this process is in the same category as buying tomatoes).

The problem here is that i don’t seek the same kind of guys i had when i was in my early twenties. At that point I was looking for someone Strong, i felt vulnerable and wanted to be protected. I wanted someone with the standard shit, money, house, car…etc. So that he can provide for me (I still did not know that I can provide for myself… ) And of course intelligence. 

*******************

A few days Later….

I see that I have a wandering keyboard this week… but to return to the original thread, I want to introduce another couple of incidents that took place this week…

“Guess what?! Hala told me first day of Eid  “Fares got engaged to XXXX,” She said…Fares was her cousin’s boyfriend for a long time … we both were surprised at his choice, since both women were so extremely different… while the cousin was smart, ambitious and strong… the fiancée was quiet, unmotivated and dull….

The long conversation we had about why men tend to prefer boring women for marriage was shelved in my head till last day of Eid…. I visited some family members for Eid… They just moved back from Saudi Arabia… I said naively to the lady “you must be happy about being here, you regained your freedom now”.

“On the contrary”, she said… “In Saudi Arabia, I did not have to do anything at all…my husband had to do everything.” She said…

I was appalled! What I heard was “in Saudi Arabia, I could sit on my lazy ass the whole days, and the poor ass I married had to do all the work!”

I found her completely unimpressive… she seemed smart enough when she was first introduced to the family… (five years and three children ago) even though we were a bit uncertain.  I mean the husband is quite an intelligent man… and we did not feel that she was that spectacular… what we failed to realize then, was that he made an intellectual decision to marry beneath him….

*********************

12 November 2008

For years, there’s been a popular conception that men are intimidated by intelligent women in this part of the world… however, intelligent women have a strategy…

They play dumb!

I can’t remember the number of times my grandmother told me to tone it down when I meet someone… or ordered me not to read publicly because it is not appealing… or treated my glasses as a shameless secret… The holly fear is that women who are too strong are less likely to find a man who will love them, let alone marry them.

Honestly I look at my grandmother and she is one of the strongest women on earth. She always knew how to play it down. And well she has been married for more than 60 years now!

Are Jordanian men intimidated by smart, strong women?  

Well…I was browsing when I came across an exhaustive study of people from primary school to middle age has proved that clever men are much more likely to marry than those with lesser intelligence. But for intelligent women, the reverse is true. Their chances of have that beautiful white wedding at Intercontinental Amman are considerably lower than other women who went through university because it was better than staying home!

The study says that one possible cause of this result is that many smarter women are too choosy in wanting higher status men whereas the men are not as choosy about status of females and hence can find a suitable mate from a much larger pool of women.

Another possible explanation (my lovely caveman analogy) men are more driven to seek physical beauty and youth as a result of selective pressures to seek fertile mates. Whereas natural selection favoured a female preference for higher status men as better providers…

“Men have no problem with an independent intelligent woman, but what I have found with women that call themselves that, is they are very judgmental, closed minded to certain things, and love to argue or debate as they call it”

I have been writing this post for a week now. I guess the new Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth has been keeping me busy…. Not bad at all.. Lahiri knows how to show the human side of her characters…. Also this week i have realized that i am in love with Lebanese singer Marwan Khouri!

I am glad I made it to my graduation, not because of the ceremony itself (even though it was very emotional) but because it felt like a closure to my brief affair with my MA degree…. it really felt like a delicious affair. Very intense, very satisfying…yet very painful when it ended. 

I loved every second of my experience during the MA…and I embraced it with all my heart.  I was the geeky student who sat in the first raw and contributed an opinion when necessary and when not. I was one of those who prepared before class, and studied afterwards. I enjoyed every joke, every new thought and every debate… I derived pleasure in reading not only the required material, but all the material around the required material….  I researched, studied, wrote, debated, and read and read and read because I felt that there were twenty something bare years behind me (even though I was initiated on reading at an early age). I wouldn’t believe what an abyss of ignorance my mind was; when i started my MA I had just realized the depths myself.

I am one of those who would not mind spending their lives being perpetual students. My friends often make fun of all the degrees that I dream of being awarded. I want a degree in English language (I have never done English properly, and looking back, most of my English teachers were as foreign to English as I am to Italian!), and another degree in Journalism. I would love to do counselling or psychology because people fascinate me and a PHD in Anthropology… once I have all these degrees, I would feel that I achieved the level of education that i deserve  … (Yes I am a nerd and I am proud of it!)

Instead of any of these exciting degrees i did Computer Science for my undergraduate! for me, it was the most useless degree in the world .. since my knowledge in Molecular Medicine (which is zero)far exceeds my knowledge in computers! I blame myself firstly, but i also blame our lovely educational system that does not allow students to study what they want, but forces them to study subjects based on their Tawjihi grades. I did not do that bad. M GPA was 86.something out of 100. However in my year, for some odd reason, everyone did better!

I remember i went to university to register, and the registrar told me that i did not qualify for public university, for the minimum GPA for girls was 89 and for boys 81… I was very angry and shouted at her… i said angrily:

Are you telling me that i, the one who spent my whole year studying can’t go to university, but some boy who spent his year playing cards can go?! 

Looking back, of course i understand that the country needs a quota system for education… if there is no quota system, boys will end up not educated and girls will end up with all the education….Girls are already far more advanced in every aspect in Jordan… and this is creating an imbalance in the society… so how about adding education to the mix?

The point is i ended up in a private school trying to decipher computers… and even though i graduated with a high GPA, the knowledge that retained is almost zero… i secretly felt ashamed of it all… and waited till i could afford it to enroll myself in a respectable MA program  that would make me proud… I treat my computer science degree like a hideous scandal, hoping that no one will find out about it…

and finally now i can proudly say, I am an anthropologist and a youth expert…

Getting back to London….  what I loved even more that getting a decent degree was living in London on my own. In grey, cold London I started walking… I roamed the city for hours and hours like a lost soul… i discovered far corners that no one cares about…I visited markets that are listed in every guide….I was amused by Camdan Town … the way they sell pot so rudely is just corking! ….i bought my food at borough market  every week… and i enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Portabello Market… 

It was there in London that I learnt the beauty of mobility… the meaning of freedom … and in one those cold lonely walks in the heart of Greenwhich village i met myself…. ( i was having a coffee in cafe Rouge there! I am kidding but this is considered sentimental crap even for me!)… it was there in London that I learnt who i am, what i wanted from life and where i belonged…  

I am going to enjoy my next few days in London… I will walk in the rain and enjoy the solitude of beautiful London.

Till Then… enjoy London.

Near North Greenwhich, isn't this rain amazing?

New Cross is a very special place

This would be our esteemed Dean

 Now these following pictures are taken by a friend in 2006.. but i will use them since i feel they represent London for me.The Glorious Oxfrd Circus

Camdan Market in the rain

 

The world is a beautiful place, camdan Town

The glorious Oxford Circus

I had a workshop that revolved around creating a community center there.  The discussion went into the direction of public gardens… since Sahab community was complaining about the lack of public spaces for children. A lady there said that the problem is not in the gardens themselves… even if there are gardens, she (as a mother) would not send her children to a public garden, since there is a lot of drugs activity going on there. …

Obviously that did not go well… people slaughtered her! They were so upset about her accusations for a number of reasons… maybe that she was a woman, maybe that we are not local and it felt like she was showing dirty laundry…. Does not matter…what matters is that public spaces have been used as ideal spaces for predators.

*********************
I got the idea in one of those days that my sisters and I took the kids to a local park… We try to take them to a park on daily basis… truth to be known is that we don’t take them because of any brilliant maternal skills… but that is the most effective way to exhaust the kids to make sure they are in bed as early as possible…!

The thing is… I had noticed that whenever I go to a public garden, ….the demography of adults is something like: 6 Indonesian women,  5 Philippians,  4 Srilankan, one or two Europeans… No Jordanian women what so ever… European women go to public gardens to spend quality time with their children, Arab women send their maids to spend quality time with their children.

That particular day, there was a suspicious teenager going around, he would look for young children that are alone and just come close to them… with the maids busy socializing with each other and the mothers busy elsewhere doing whatever that they are doing… very young children are left vulnerable to pedophiles, drug predators, and other kinds of predators…

That particular day, my sister, who noticed this guy went to him and yelled her lungs out, questioning him on what he was doing,  threatening to get the security guard… upon hearing this, the guy dissolved in oblivion… We never saw him again…

So basically, the presence of one responsible local adult, could save the future of a few children… whose duty or fault is it? Government? Predators? Children? Families?  Or us locals who lack any sense of social responsibility and sense of belonging….. ? I wonder….

Speaking of different nationalities and cultures, I have recedntly watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for the 18the time  probably… I still think it is the funniest movie ever made. It is sweet, hilarious and completely relevant.….