This conversation lingered in a hidden corner of my subconscious. It resurfaced again as I saw a glimpse of Catherine Zeta Jones (on TV of course), who is famous for her prenup agreement among other things.  Her prenup with “Wall Street” star Michael Douglas entitles her to $2.8 million per each year of marriage.

For some reason, my friend’s perception bothered me, since it is a barometer to what the society thinks…. In my family the mu2akhar is around 5 thousand Dinars. This is the standard number among many Palestinian families…  now I will get back to this number in a moment, but now I will introduce a new thread.

Usually, both husbands and wives work , in many cases women give up their careers to take care of children… when they buy property, it is almost always registered in the man’s name, even though they both have contributed to the marital life… even if the wife did not contribute financially. In case of a divorce, the man’s only financial obligation to his wife is the 5000 dinars mentioned above! Or there is an even better deal for men.

khlo3 divorce!

In that case,  she gives up even these 5000 dinars! And the man walks away with everything… regardless of the number of years they lived together, or whose fault it is that things go to that point….

I look at Catherine Zeta Jones and almost feel jealous, not because she gets that much money, I mean Michael  can afford it,  but because she lives in a system that respects a  woman’s rights to protect her own interests in case of a divorce…  and in Jordan,  if the laws don’t subjugate women, then society will  most definitely take care of it.

Brilliant, sah?

On a different note, I just finished the historian… I think it cured me from my love for vampires for a while! It was one of those long books that get you lost in details, which makes them difficult to follow at some points.  In that sense it kind of reminded me of  Orhan’s Pamuk ‘s the Black book… it was a good book, that lost me several times. I finished the historian because it was a good read, in the sense that author Elizabeth Kostova did a fabulous job in giving it roots in medieval history… she kept referring to historic events during the Ottoman Empire time… and managed to build her story based entirely on historic facts, which made me wonder , only  for a split of a second, if vampires really exist!

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?

Anyway… I caught my friend S. online few days ago. S. appears to have made an awful mess of her life. I don’t know any one who has covered so much ground in such a short space of time. Since her graduation she has been married, has had a baby boy and lost him at birth, divorced her husband, quarreled with her family. There seems to have been no reason for her divorce from the ORDINARY point of view; the marriage just simply didn’t work. They weren’t compatible… She was brought up on the theory that MARRIAGE is not only siter for a women but an achievement… “siter is another word that I hate especially when coupled with the word marriage, as if women are daireen 3ala 7il sha3irhom waiting for this Mr. man to yustorhom! ikh… sometimes our culture has hateful expressions.

When she finished university, she was naturally eager to start on her career, but M.’s family presented themselves in the old fashioned way. Her family scanned him and his family closely, and found him perfect in every respect…good family, good morals, good Financial position, good looking. S. was in love with him. Ever since she was 16 her mother was taking her to every wedding in Amman maybe ibn il 7alal would see her… She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens of embroidered towels. Everything looked propitious.

But as they began to get acquainted, they realized they were fundamentally different… they didn’t like the same books or jokes or people or amusements…. they did not share the same political opinions, or religious principals or even methods of children raising…. they often found themselves on two different extremes. I suppose most traditional, orthodox people would think it awful to break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at first; but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in itself, but making a mountainous total, I agreed with S. that it was awful to keep it going. It wasn’t really a marriage; it was a mistake. So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would research on how she could get a divorce without so much fuss… and for the first time in years he agreed with her.

You can imagine the outraged feelings of her ultra conservative family had. In all the seven generations that have been tracked on the family tree. They have NEVER had anything so scandalous like this to record in the family history. It all comes from giving women too much freedom…. “If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair,” S. wailed, “it would have been legitimate; but because we didn’t actually throw things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce.” The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and M. were admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn’t match each other; and when two people don’tmatch, all the ceremonies in the world can’t marry them…. I told you guys society IS changing!