Um Raed, our neighbour at the Jabal. She has a wide range of children (literally). The age range starts from 5 and ends at 25.

Her life is difficult, mostly because her husband is a mean old lazy bum. He could never keep a proper job, and he never quite figured out the meaning of a wife and the responsibility that comes with children. He is one of those who believe that he has rights, but never really fathoms the meaning of responsibilities. Possibly this explains why she has many children… since the husband does not bother with providing for them, he does not mind having them.

I see her on my way to work. I look for her every day, her sense of humour is brilliant and her smile is just very hopeful. Last week, I realized that I had not seen her in a couple of days. I asked Abdullah, the neighbour, about her and he told me she is recovering. “ kheir, inshalla, what is she recovering from?” I asked.

Abdallah, explained that a few days ago, he heard her scream, he thought it was one of the usual, almost daily, episodes with her husband. But soon he realized that the other voice he heard was not her husband, but her eldest son.

Her son does not like the fact that she works as a cleaner. His role model is his lazy father; so needless to say, he has chosen the same path. The son asked her for moneyto buy cigaretts, and when she refused, he started cursing, shouting and offending her. He told her that she is a prostitute; this is what she does at her work as a cleaner. He told her that she is an ugly bitch, and that his father’s biggest mistake was to marry a prostitute; he added that if his father is a man, he should divorce and marry another woman.

Um Raed was shocked. She never expected that one of her sons would ever utter such horrible things. Especially, that the only reason she works is to put food on the table for her family, since her husband and her sons fail to provide. She found herself slapping her son. He became so angry. Next thing she experienced was being dragged by her hair outside the house. Her son started beating her up, brutally, in the middle of the street.

Abdallah, the neighbour found himself jumping and yanking the boy off his mother, then he started beating him up. Abdallah said that his blood boiled, and started beating the boy so strongly, until Um Raed, who was crying humiliated (she was not dressed properly, her hair loose, even though she is mahajabeh) started shouting at Abdallah to leave the boy alone. More people gathered to break them off each other.

Abdallah now was angry. He told her. “ It is my fault, I came to help you !” She answered crying: “But he is my son, I did not want you to kill him”

I talked her, she is ok now. She says that something broke inside her. She knows that her son is imitating his father, and she worries that the other sons will do the same, as they grow.

I am not sure what I could say to such story… it is very sad that this women feels all her sacrifices had not been appreciated. It is very sad that she put all her hopes on her sons, and they turned out to be the way they turned out to be.  It is sad that sometimes, women spoil their sons in the name of love, and they end up paying very very high ” she prices.  “Um Raed asked me not to call her that again.

 she said upset,  ”I am not anyone’ mother from now on” she wants to be called by her maiden name.”My mother respected me, she gave me my name, why would i give it up to these sons of dog.

P.S. I know the picture is not suitable. But i saw it, and i found myself laugh my heart out! as we say in Arabic ” shar il baliya ma yud7ik” Which means the worst disasters make you laugh

October 2008

We have finally joint the 70,000 Jordanian families that have foreign live-in domestic workers. Irani, is 23, smart and ambitious. She started her studies in economics at the university, and is here to save enough money to be able to go back to school…. I picked her up when she arrived…

And for a split of a second, I imagined myself going into a new place… where I know nothing at all… I don’t speak the language, and where I am supposed to move in with some completely random family … lets say I can understand why she looked bewildered.

October 2009

Rani is still here; we managed to become friends during this last year. By now I know her life story. She still impresses me with her intellect, intelligence and her subtlety. I also know that her mother is here in Amman, she does not live far away from us… she is a cook at some wealthy household.

Today, Rani told me a very strange thing about her mother… she mentioned that even though she is the cook, her employers made her sign a very strict contract that stipulates she is not allowed to taste or eat any food at home. They give her 5 JDs every week to eat!  FIVE JDs  for the whole week!  While  these fat, ugly pathetic excuses of human beings spend extravagantly on their meals… Rani has mentioned several times before the kind of  meals her mothers cooks, the luxury items her employers export from abroad…Salma spends her entire day cooking! Literally!

Does anyone knows how much cooking this is?!

Salma laughed embarrassed as she explained how she  sometimes desires the food she cooks… but since there are 2 other maids there, one of them works as a spy… she actually can’t eat any food… so she has been feeding on Tuna cans, Endomy Noodles and other crap from the supermarket… she obviously does not want to spend her salary…. understandably, she travelled thousands of miles with her daughter  in order to save enough money so that her 3 kids  (including the daughter) can go to university and don’t have to clean people’s toilets for the rest of their lives!

I know it sounds horrible, but I found myself hoping this family will suffer from high cholesterol and high blood pressure, so that they start eating non-tasty food and desire things they can’t eat… maybe then, they can understand what they have been making this human being go through every single day last year.

Apparently Jordan is so known for our creative abuse methods when it comes to domestic help, that someone went ahead and wrote an article about it on Wikipedia….  Human trafficking in Jordan…

Yup this is how we want Jordan to be known on the world’s map! Fabulous, eh?

We were at the embassy in Amman few months ago. When we ran into this very shabbily dressed young lady… I looked at her because the emotional reaction on my mother’s face (my mom is very good at not showing emotions) was very unusual. I looked at mom inquisitively when the girl hugged her… her name is Kristina… I did not have the chance to talk to her because another lady came and ushered us all inside…. The lady told us proudly that Kristina’s mother was her friend and she is a true martyr!

I could barely wait to get into the car to ask mom. She told me that, Maria was their friend; she died few years ago a miserable death. She fell in love with her husband when they were young, got married , gave up her life to come with him all the way to a place called Jordan. Mom said with a sigh, “Ya reit ma ijat” I wish she never came.

With time, her husband turned into an abusive sociopath! Who made her life a miserable hell… she developed an ovarian cancer after 2 daughters and many years of marriage. He did not want her to have an operation, she will not be able to have kids, and cancer ends with death anyway…what is the point? (I remembered an incident when I was younger. My parents had to go visit some “people”, where my dad had literally to beg the husband to allow him to perform an operation on his wife Maria)… Dad performed the operation, but Maria has lost her appetite for life… last few days of her life, her death bed was moved to the living room, while her room became the room of another wife. Her two bracelets (which were promised to Kristina and Salma) were taken from her hand as a wedding gift to the new bride….her two daughters Kristina and Salma were reduced from daughters to servants…The only cosolation in her last days was that all the foreign ladies that belonged to the same community in Amman stayed with her to help her die despite of the husband. Mom told me detail above detail of that heart breaking story… by the time she finished…we were both crying in the car! ( we kind of have this habbit, wecried together when we saw all about my mother, which is one of my most favorite movies in the world)

Something mom said will always stay with me “ I can not understand, how a human being is capable of mistreating someone else’s trust like this….It is the biggest sin of all, because you kill someon’s faith” Maria put her life in this man’s hands, because she trusted him…

Maria died… Alma and Kristina were never allowed to finish high school…until Salma got married to a decent human being, who brought sunshine to her heart… They live in between Amman and Europe now, she has a daughter who is called Maria. Salma managed to convince the father somehow to allow Kristina to come and live with them…and that is why she was in the embassy fixing her papers. Maybe luck decided to finally smile to that poor creature I saw…

Unfortunately our society does not punish sick individuals who are the protagonists for many several stories… he is still a respected pharmacist in his community… but what is truly sad is that this is the story of many women around the world…women who are decieved by their own trust.

I would translate it, but it would lose the sense of humor( yeah there is humor even in this very bad topic) on the wall it is written that 87% support men beating their wives, then it says the survey is done by the family health organization…

what abou mahjoob is saying “um mahjoob you want democracy? this is democracy, after you have seen the survey, mop without a word, before i mop the floor with you!!!

http://www.mahjoob.com/en/archives/view.php?cartoonid=936v

if anyone is curious about what i am reading at the moment, i am still in my south America phase, i just finished an amazing book called in the time of the butterflies by Julia Alvarez… it is sweet, sad, and informative…i recommend it for those who dont know what to read next.

There is an article in Al Arabiya newspape says that 60% of Jordanian women support being beaten by their husbands. At first i was very outraged, thinking that this much be a flawed survey. Because if I apply this the people i know, i really dont know 60 women who want to be beaten…. But at a second thought i decided to look at this objectively… what if this true? wht if actualy 60% of Jordanian women think that it is ok to be beaten by their husbands? i believe that the coming generation will have a very low self esteem if they come out of mothers who believe that they should be beaten. and if this true, why do you think it is true?

http://www.alarabiya.net/Article.aspx?v=12005