I must warn you guys that i am writing this with the most difficulty. To start with, I am staying at a farm in the middle of nowhere. Secondly, Internet is a rare commodity in these areas and thirdly the keyboard i am using is a veteran from World warI. God bless it, for still working.  Fourthy, EVERYTHIN is in Spanish! So today my spelling mistakes must be forgiven!

The farm is a heavenly heavenly HEAVENLY spot! It stands on a flat spot and is surrounded by miles of green meadows. Ohh it belongs to my grandmother. It is nice to spend time with the family… they are all the same, but a bit bolder and bit greyer..

They have chicken and horses and dogs…in a nearby farm ( a few kilometers away) they have cows and pigs! We have to be quiet around pigs because they are sensetive. Around, you smell the smell of earth, mixed with shit and farmenting plants… Seriously,  What more chic was I hoping for?

I am so relaxed, I forgot all about the work, and the stress of serving 170  studnets on a daily basis… I now believe that Heaven must be a place where no phone nor computers  exist. I hope they have different ways of communication there. I am hoping telepathy?

By theway, I realized how spoilt we are in Amman, we are living in a bubble of materialism, consumption and services  that we forgot how to enjoy the simple pleasures of life… such as cleaning, and cooking and living…simply living.

Anyway, I  need to log off, my daily buisness is to get the frech eggs. It is almost time for breakfast  So  will try to write as often as i can.

One last thing… i have never seen so much water in one place (put aside big rivers and seas…) but in a home I mean. There is a small stream running in the farm!

Hens are calling so till later.

 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.

The hospital is full of people who have come to visit teta.  The first thing you see when you walk in the long corridor is that people have poured into the corridor out of the room.  It is almost surreal!

I always thought that we are a small family, I often joked that we are so few, we won’t fill a bus.  Oh boy! how wrong I was. 

Modernity and family ties

First thought that occurred to me during last few days is  that I have not seen most of these people during the Eid, even though it was .. what…less than a month ago?   As a matter of fact, I have never seen at least half of the guests.  It hit me that people in our culture don’t share other people’s happy occasions; they share their sad ones only.  Ya3ni, I have never seen most of these people’s in family weddings for example (my analysis is that this is an economical issue;  happy occasions are more expensive, so people keep guests at minimum.  Sad occasions, on the other hand are cheaper, how much do they cost? dark coffee?)

The second thought that occurred to me is that modernity has affected our communication skills so severely, that we no longer talk each other… and consequently, we have no ties with our communities.  

I was examining those who came to the hospital, and their relations to my grandmother.  Among the relations are the following:  her sons and daughters,  their spouses, her grandchildren, their spouses, her daughters and sons in laws’ brothers and sisters, and their spouses,  in some cases their cousins and their spouses.  Her grandchildren’s in laws (including sisters and brothers  and parents in law) her cousins, their spouses,  their spouses families,  her nephews and nieces, their spouses,  their spouses families.  Her husband’s cousins and their spouses. Her sisters and brothers’ in laws,  her sisters and brothers daughters and sons in law and their families. 60 years worth of neighbors, friends and their families (daughters, cousins, daughters in laws… etc.)

The thing is I realized that I don’t know most people who have these relations to me…   and if I know them, I have never put any effort to maintain such relations…  it is modernity, it is that we no longer inter-marry, and we don’t live near each other…  it could be many many reasons…  but the main thing is that I realized that we lost something very valuable…  communities.

On a different note, teta is hopefully better,  the left side of her face is still  hanging slack, she still can’t move, and she keeps coming and going in consciousness… she is with us a minute and in a far away land another,  she talks to me as if we are cooking, while she is laying in bed…

Hope she will get better.

 On Thursday night, she was perfectly ok, and in a split of a second on Friday morning, we almost lost her.

 Teta has been mentioned in many posts.   Mostly, because of her controversial character; she is the matriarch, the sun that stands at the center of my family’s universe.  She is the kind of person that you can’t ignore; you must acknowledge her presence if you come across her.  And that I do.

Since my dad is the eldest son, she has moved to live in with us a few years ago.  At the beginning she shared my room. When I reached a point of either going crazy or committing a crime I moved out of my room into a state of homelessness.  I got my own room two years ago.

Teta is not chic in anyway… she is oblivious to the fact that other people live with her, and does as she wants without even wondering if what she does affects other people. She interferes in things that have nothing to do with her, and asks the most embarrassing questions in the most inappropriate times, as if it is the most normal thing in the world… and I can’t help but be amused by her incorrectness.

 But this is not all.

My grandmother is the ultimate queen of manipulation … she ALWAYS gets what she wants, I sometimes feel squashed under her constant demands and her unstoppable nagging.   If she wants something; it seems that it is the only thing in the world that really matters.  So usually the whole family ends up succumbing to her demands, if only to stop her. 

Among her tools are:  sulking, brooding, huffing, and taking the family in torturous guilt trips, dropping casual hints about the days, her sons and daughters were born and how painful that was! 

Yesterday, I stood outside her room at the hospital and watched her frail body.  A sense of love swept over me.   My tiny ferocious grandmother; she has always had the ability to shake her world and change it to shape it as she saw fit.  She has never allowed anyone to make her feel inferior because of her gender, even though she was not allowed to go to school because of her gender.  She has always spoken with so much confidence, reducing her illiteracy to a tiny insignificant obstacle. She has always been many things… but strength is the one constant attribute in her character.

 Hope you get better soon teta!

After the child was circumcized, he was supposed to get salt bath to make sure the skin will heal without any infections, my mother forced me to go with her to visit my sister and help her in bathing the baby… i just could not stand the agony the poor kid was going through after the shock of the birth which was not even ten days before… I am sure he was thinking, but i was happy inside why are they doing this to me?! first they get me from my dark, small safe world to this cold, big lit thing, but not only that, they deform me, and i am in so much pain! so i just sat in the balcony on the other sode of the house with my sister, who was as traumatized, leaving the procedure of bathing the child in a salty water to his grandmother and his father!!

Anyway, I have always been fascinated by the idea of circumcision… mainly because it is something that is practiced by Muslim and Jews around the world and by almost everyone in the Jordan regardless of their faith.  It is for sure one of the topics I don’t know what to think about. Circumcision is not mentioned in the Qur’an, but Muslims everywhere regard it as essential, and the Hadith record it as a practice enjoined by all past prophets. Significantly, it is also known by a euphemism: tahara, meaning “purification.

My conflict comes from believing in the power of the creation of God and the perfection of human beings. The Qur’an clearly states that God created human being in the best form… so why Muslims deform something that is supposedly created perfect?  Is it really because of following Sunnah? If so, then why do all Muslims choose to follow this specific habit from Sunnah whether they are extremist, liberal or secular? And not the other aspects of Sunnah?! And sometimes not even religion itself?  I mean many Muslims drink for example or don’t pray or don’t fast… but they are all circumcised! or at least I think they are!!
 

I obviously don’t have answers… but I would like to discover a bit of the history of circumcision.

According to Dr. John Smith, circumcision, or removal of the foreskin, is an operation of great antiquity. As a magical or initiation rite it was introduced independently by aboriginal tribes in Australia, Africa and the Americas. Circumcision was practised by the Egyptians of 3,000 B.C., at first as a privilege of the nobility, but it later became the custom for all males. The origins of the practice are lost in antiquity. Theories include that circumcision is a form of ritual sacrifice or offering, a sign of submission to a deity, a rite of passage to adulthood, a mark of defeat or slavery, or an attempt to alter esthetics or sexuality. It was later on adopted by Jews and by Muslims after them Another question here, how come Christians are not required to get circumcised? When Christianity also started in the same area? And why do Christians in Jordan at least follow this tradition? Does that mean it is more of traditions than religion?
 

The most interesting theory I found is proposed by Dr.Bashir Quereshi:
  “…in Ancient Egypt, there was a pharanic belief that gods were bisexual.  A man or women must be unisexual so as to belong to their respective gender group and not to mimic the gods. Pharaohs believed that the feminine soul of the man was located in their prepice (the tip of the foreskin) and the masculine soul of the woman was situated in the clitoris.  Therefore male and female circumcision was performed to please the gods so as to obtain favors.”.. A Cool theory. No?!
 

My new discovered passion in anthropology took me into a trip to one of the most beautiful places in Jordan. A place where hot water springs are born in the dead mountains, they end in hidden cascades that are unexpectedly found in this volcanic savage area…Yes, I am talking about Jordan. I had a theory that the beauty you find in unexpected places is much more fascinating than the beauty you know exactly where to find. This is the story of shalalat Zarah or Zarah cascades. An entertainment area that is visited by families who can’t afford to go other places, … people who don’t own farms to escape the stress of the city in the weekends… people who enjoy nature and who love to be part of nature…. Mahmoud brought his six children to enjoy the warm bath… they don’t have hot water otherwise… they come here every week, even in the winter, because this the only place where his children can feel clean… and who needs a man-made bath tub when you have God-made bath tub? He said with a smile!

Ahhhh… I caught you; you are unable appreciate the sweetness of fatherhood and the touching human quality of the moment because of the garbage in the picture… but look at the bright side, these kids’ immunity is really really good, they will be able to resist any sickness inshallah

Omar, my little brother always had a thing to bother Hania our eldest sister. He would tickle her, push her, jump in front of her without notice, or make a bee sound near her ear… ya3ni a typical man! when we were younger she used to complain to dad and dad used to rescue his little girl… and explain to Omar that Hania is petite and delicate and can’t handle his big tifish hands! Omar would always look shocked and say to dad but how could hania not be able to handle him when she is OLDER?!

Dad finally understood that Omar had no concept of size… so he told him
“Ya Omar ya habiby.. How big is a small elephant?” And Omar indicated a big elephant with his hands…
“Tayeb how big is a big bird?” And Omar showed dad how small a big bird is
“Bravo 3aleik ya habiby! See that a big bird is smaller than a small elephant even if it is older in age. Consider yourself a small elephant and Hania a big bird!!!” dad told Omar who finally said ahhhhhh!

I remembered this story, because I called them yesterday, and I heard little Nizar shouting at Omar who still gets the urge to bother her even after he became a big elephant Nizar was saying “mama halam!” Nizar is Hania’s little man; he is the one who jumps to her rescue these days

Spending my evenings in taverns where Argentinean medical students played the bosa nova in its absolutely sensual sounds, or at the house of my uncle Se ( or commandant Rogelio) as I like to call him, discussing deep theological ideas with him, he who thinks of himself as atheist after thousands of years of religious abuse …

My grandmother showed me pictures of me as a baby in the arms of my deceased grandfather, she told me that I was always in his arms and I had funny sensation in the pit of my stomach. Then spending my weekends in a farm house in the middle of the beautiful nature, listening to my aunt Carmen telling me about the history of my family starting from our great great grandfather who was a shoemaker, talking to me as if she had seen me every day for the last 28 years of my life… and I felt at home…. Carmen is a very strong lady, Her strength is so inspiring… knowing that we have someone like that in the family is a source of pride for all of the ladies in the family, but what really makes her special is the heart made of gold that she has and her sensetivity that is covered with all those layers.

Many pieces of my identity finally fell in place in this trip. I made a reconciliation with myself and I feel perfectly happy with who I am. I understood where my argumentative nature comes from ( spend one weekend with Carmen and Adrian to understand how we the blancos would react), where my tendency to get so emotional in the (God Forbid) case of watching a stupid love movie started off, where my dry skin is originally inherited, my dark colour and curly hair… we are all like that!. I understood why my mother thinks like that and why she behaves like that… she is simply like that

Maybe we are not the most ideal family on this planet… but the greatest thing about this family is that they are MY family.