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 will wander a bit here, and am being so unfocused… but I just thought of a The Map of Love by Ahdaf Suief. Where she said in the words of an English lady who was in Egypt at the beginning of the century, that the English came to Cairo and mixed only with the Egyptians who worked for them, and she said imagine someone going to France and mix only with the maids and servants. Since they never mixed with the other, the real , everyday Egyptians, they never knew what they were missing on. Now to connect that to what I was saying earlier. My friends fell in the same trap, They wanted to be in certain areas, with certain people… not realizing that they were missing on the real , human, everyday London.
 Back to my story, I was walking there, when an older gentleman stopped me to ask me about something. I did not know, I smiled politely and started to move on. But he stopped me again, and started telling me right there about me, about my life! I was completely taken aback, but of course my curiosity won over and I ended up spending a while standing there talking to him and asking him questions!

This man was a Buddhist monk; he told me that I have a lot of positive energy, and he told me that somehow when I smiled, he felt that we connected. He started explaining that we all have hallows of energy around us. This energy has 7 energy points in our bodies. One at the head called the Crown Chakra, which controls consciousness, the second one is on the forehead and is called the third eye and it is the chakra of time and awareness of light. The third one is the Throat Chakra and is communication and growth. The fourth one is the heart Chakra which is for higher emotions, love , compassion…etc The fifth one is the near the intestines and is responsible to transform the base to higher emotions. The sixth one is near the ovaries or testicles and it is related to the base emotions or sexuality, and the last one, is between the area between the gentiles and the anus and is called the root or survival instinct. It was all very fascinating, very enlightening and very shocking.

He started telling me about people in my life, by describing them, and telling me about how I felt about them, and how they affected my life…he stold me about some of the things that i am really good at. He told me that i am curious and that love learning and knowledge… and when I asked him how he knew, he said that energy travels. And we do take some of the energy of some of the people with us. We finally came to the conclusion that my third eye and my survival instincts are under active. This is probably true! Since I barely started to learn how to trust my instinct, and I did allow myself to take a lot of crap from people, till I reached a point of die or survive! Of course death means can mean a lot of things. The point is, I never trusted my instincts to tell me run, I just hang around till the very last possible minute!  Of course the cynical me was thinking he is a liar and doing this for the money… the fact that i was reading about body language the day before and how we can tell a lot about people through reading their body language, and how fortune tellers know a lot because they read the body language… so I tried to offer him some money. He was very upset!  damn!

This could be a load of bullocks! But at some level, I think we are not only material energy… our bodies, the money we own, the house we live in, the cars we drive…  we have other parts to us, the mental energy and spiritual energy… our ability to love, to give, to empathize with others. In proof, happiness is completely independent from money and materialistic matters. In fact a lot of rich people lead empty, lonely and wretched loves….and a lot of poor people are miserable sods. But also a lot of rich people are happy and lot of poor people are happy as well…. Why? maybe because they do have a healthy balance of all the right chakras? Or in other words the body the brain and the soul….

I think this could be my new toy… learning more about all this.  I really am a nerd!

Anyway, it is very beaky outside; the sky is grey and overcast. I am still in bed, the first thing I did when I opened my eyes was to look into all this Buddhist philosophy…. One last note… my dream for a long time has been to spend time with Buddhist monks, learning from them… this was something that started when I saw a movie called the Razor’s Edge with my dad when I was very young. The book was given to me later in my life by F. who had no notion how he awakened a very old desire in me by giving me that book. The other movie that got me to think about this is called Beyond Rangoon. I saw it with my friend R. when I was in tenth grade. I truly loved R. and it brings me so much sadness that she is not part of my life today.

… it is raining now.

By the time she was talking to us, she removed her hands from her face and started covering her legs that were slightly exposed because of the fall, It all happened very quickly, in few minutes really we helped her stand up.  At that point my tears were officially forming… I tried to be discreet about it, and so I went down with her and walked her to her club while barely able to fight tears… Usually, I am a very unemotional person, I don’t know what hit me, seeing her shame and humiliation for falling down… a woman who could be injured, who could die, and the only pain she acknowledged at the moment was her shame… something inside me snapped and i could not stop myself from crying… the moment she went into her club, I had to sit down on the stairs and sob away!!! I am not sure what was it really all about… was it feeling sorry for the lady? Or was it about me … maybe imagining myself in her shoes and feeling sorry for myself? I am not sure…

Ironically, I am thinking about this now, because I am listening to Fragile by Sting… we are really really fragile.

If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrows rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetimes argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are on and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are on and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Yesterday Veena joint us a bit late, she was preparing for another exam with someone that she fancies and who is with her in the same class. Last semester they had some sort of fling… she comes from a very respected Indian family where her life was structured by the values of wrong and right and woman respectability and honour and decency… she finally broke free from that  very strict system and decided to give herself a go with this guy.

In the last few weeks, she managed to fall in love with him and he managed to find himself an easy girlfriend who is not as demanding or serious as poor veena. The poor thing just found out yesterday… Veena is one of the most reserved people I have ever met, for her showing emotions is very hysterical and vulgar, and she prides herself at her refined manners… She had few relationships before, but she never showed emotions when they finished… she has a very good reason, she says, she usually likes them, and based on that, ends up sharing maybe a bit more than is accepted by her society.  Usually these boys who come from the same social background are as deprived of emotional attachment as she is… and once they get that kiss, or holding hands.. they move to the next girl… Veena started understanding this and she feels that showing emotions will make her acknowledge that she was used… so she simply pretends that she does not care and that she is also parting that relationship willingly.  The point is we had an animated girlie discussion about what she did when this new guy told her that he is seeing someone else… obviously we started hurling the worst words and descriptions on the guy! and we all were hoping that she hit him…

She told us that she took it very calmly, she finished what she was doing and then gathered her stuff and was ready to leave, the guy was very shocked, as he thought that they were over and he did not think she feels this way about him, so he asked her to stay and to talk about it, and she tried to explain rationally that she is upset and that she does not want to loose her rationality and go hysterical! Which I found really amusing but the guy who is actually a very smart guy, told her that human being are irrational and she could be irrational if she wanted, so she told him that she wanted to hit him… and the guy’s body language immediately goes into the defence mode!  But Veena is not violent and her rational self interfered to save the day to she started crying quietly to our disappointment.

They were both ok about it eventually, they talked about it calmly… she felt better when he explained that he can’t handle a serious relationship now and so he went to an easy one, and that if he was looking for a serious relationship, he would be trying with her! Blablabla… men are really full of bullshit but the argument worked… she instantly felt better and ended up leaving feeling ok…

Veena was very excited about the fact that she cried in front of the guy, that she told him how she felt, she even called him useless!  She felt that she is finally learning how to be herself, how to show emotions, she is finally growing claws! Growing claws comes from a book ny Isabelle Allends called Portrait of Sepia, we both loved this book and we both could related to the book when she told us about her new found experience of showing emotions Her objective is to unleash the irrationality that has been hidden by years and years of learning and training to be a classy lady…I think that even if the incident is very small it really shows that she is changing towards the person she hopes she will become…

I have nothing to say honestly… I simply wrote this because I needed to put my mind away from development and democracy, refugees and immigrants and multiculturalism, human rights and child labour and few other topics. Wish me luck!

My friend L. just had her baby, and I was there every step of the way! But here I am getting excited, so I will slow down and write the story coherently! One of the activities that I have been thoroughly involved in the last few months revolved about baby Kanz! Shopping, disinfecting the house, putting together the bed and bath tub  L and I are so experienced in putting furniture together we decided to open a warsheh and call warshet abu il shababa! Hell I even discovered that I like it… it is just like lego! And men keep making us believe it is a difficult task…ha! We listened hours and hours to baby Einstein! Kanz was inside there, dancing and kicking her mommy’s bladder! Isn’t that the sweetest thing ever?? I find it barely comprehensible that she is here and she is real and she is an actual separate individual and human being!

Saturday night at around 12:00 F. called me panicking, he was with his wife in the hospital and he wanted some support, I was there around 2:00 AM and when I went into the room, she was having contractions. It was very very very painful! Just remembering her pain makes me shudder! We kept going like that, till the best invention that was ever created finally came to the room the one and only Epidural!! Allah yibashbish il toubeh illi ta7t raso! The person who  invented it that is.

After the Epidural, it was like we were having a sahrat tarab! We had the laptop with us, and spend the night listening to Um Kalthoum singing inta 3omri Which still remains to be my favorite, il atlal and other less important songs. We heard Fairuz in aer collection of andalusiat and Abd il halim in a glorious song called ana leek 3ala toul. Wow! When we felt spiritual we put suret Mariam and Al 3imran… We literally spent the whole evening reminiscing and laughing throughout the process… I honestly can say it will always one of the most memorable nights in my life! helped with the fact that i have not slept for more than 40 hours makes the experience even more intense.

I don’t know how I can go through a description of this experience without all the crude details, but I will spare them, it was so simple and natural that it was just fascinating… our bodies are simply amazing…. The way we function, the way we are created, they way we are born is fascinating… I can’t find any word to describe the way I was feeling….

Once my friend was fully dilated the process of pushing started… it was very exhausting and when I saw my reflection on the window, I realized why the doctor made fun of me the moment he walked into the room asking me if I was afraid! I looked TERRIFIED!! But of course I was not, this was a piece of cake!  wink wink!
Little Kanz was born on the 18^th of March, 51.5 cm, 3.020 KG and she is very very cute with her full lips and very dark hair!

In short, the only thing I can say about this whole experience is that the placenta is such an ugly disgusting thing!!! YUCK!

We went to this club after dinner, because we decided it would be nice to spend some time together. Our semester is coming to an end, and we are all a bit sad about it, especially that half of the class will not be there next year, as they graduate this year.

We went to this club off Oxford Street; it was freezing cold with a little snow. We went into the club, it was very smoky and people standing near each other like a sardines in a can. People were dressed in baggy pants worn very loosely, baseball caps worn backwards; oversized rugby or polo shirts, and expensive tennis shoes, some of them even had sun glasses.

What was very striking is that it would seem like a male dominated African culture yet, it is a culture that crossed over different ethnicities and gender, and you find people from everywhere, just enjoying the music and united in this amazing atmosphere. I really liked looking at my class mates, Christian and Carla, who are a very well dressed, always impeccably tidy and fashionable and who would go there and start singing and dancing… they looked completely out of place with their fashionable clothing, yet very much at home.

It was a Karoke night, where people will have wrote their names before hand and they would be called to sing the songs they prepared… it was like being part of the movie 8 mile… the whole concept is street language transmitted to the hip hop culture through rap music. Since Christian knew the DJ and the presenter and some of the performers, we were privileged to go all the way to the front and stand with the DJ and the presenter, who were really good and seemed to be enjoying that music.

I had an absolutely great evening, I felt so young, so alive  and just so out there  at the top of the world!  and i completely loved it… maybe i would develop  a hip hop ear, because the ear i have suffered some aches! but with time

It was cool man! Yeah yeah!

I spent literally the whole week writing my paper…. and my brain is fried, and I am tired and I am cold and I am hungry and I am BORED! The good news though is that I am learning how to do a proper research…halleluiah…  I would like to know how my research methodology will help cooking on the stove or maybe in washing the dishes?!

Couple of says ago, I was in the street when this guy approaches me, he looked quite well dressed and I thought he wanted to ask me something. So he says with an exaggerated English accent “ Dahling, I am homless. Can you spare ten pounds?”

I was amused by his audacity, thinking “did I really hear him say ten pounds?” and said “ I can give you 1 or 2, would that work?” so he goes “dahling, youuu ah a doll, do you know what I will do for you? I will give you a kiss! My body has instinctively jumped back, and my hand came directly in front of his face speak to the hand motif and I said Allah yirdah 3aliek bala 2ARAF! And left him standing there, he was shouting behind me  ”dahling, youuu ah a doll… dahling, youuu ah a doll”

Ok on a more serious note Last week our class was about democracy, corruption and development… I went like sheikh il shabab, all ready and prepared to use the Hamas example to prove to those arrogant Brits that they don’t know what democracy is all about… only to find 200% support in class! What a positive disappointment it was…disappointment because all the energy and the arguments I have prepared all week were not needed as people were all with me anyway….  positive because I am impressed at how the citizens of the world think.. That maybe things are not as bad as Arabs think?  an example is cafe loulou ”Seeing Arab in my bathroom mirror”.But wait a sec… here I am drifting again to intellectual blablabla… when I am just not in a very intellectual mood, I am in the mood for a silly girlie movie and a bucket of popcorn and drink pink lemonade and wear the silly pink furry slippers !My potatoes are all done…so get ready cooking, here i come!

When I am preparing a seminar, I don’t maintain that calm pompous dignity with which I face my audience during the seminar! And this IS the problem. I have been becoming aware of how structured and rigid I am. It could be that I come from a business background where time means money and I have to be aware of every minute, or it could be my Arabic thirst to compete and prove myrself and become the best. We all want to be the mudeer, dont we? I definitely don’t think many Europeans need to prove anything, their social system takes care of them. Their health, education and retirement days are taken care of, so many of these people are perfectly happy pushing the same button at work for thirty years, if not more! And unleash the energy in planning their vacations to go to exotic place like hunting in South Africa or backpacking around Europe! and honestly lucky them, i guess this is what makes Europe the great place it is.

Ok picture it… an Arab lady trying to convince two English ladies to do as she wishes, because of course, she is right!…my partners are charming voluptuous Rayenne, who is of French and Brazilian origins but grew up in London, and classy feminine Rahima who is a Bengali and who also grew up here in London. Their methods are loose and unorganized and really don’t get things done! Although very smart and we ended up our seminar with a round of applauds which is not the everyday case. It was hard getting my partners to organize themselves and get down to results without giving them the idea that we Arabs are ruthless, authoritarian, bastards… So I used my best tone that I learnt in social occassions in Amman and used sentences like “I think what you are trying to say is…?” and “if I understood correctly…” replacing sentences like “min 3eini bint 3ammi…” and “tikramou…” or ” inta o2mor…” which are not translatable! I mean if I say you order or from my eye my cousin…i would have got a HA?!!

oh the seminar was about child labour and human rights. … “friends” is on TV, that episode where Brad Pitt is also on the show… does anyone agree that Angelina Jolie is really the one controlling the relationship and he is like a toutou?.. Anyway… mish mawdou3na…

We met one time before, and we agreed to group the class into five categories and have them prepare arguments in their roles. One category is the children, another one is the parents, the third category is the owners of the mine, the fourth category is the government and the fifth one is the international aid workers! And what an interesting contradicting combination of ideas resulted… ifft my head is still swirelling with excitement!

One example I argued , was that the west wants to impose certain ideas on the third world countries, such as democracy, liberty in women clothing and education, which are very nobel but naiive. The west believes that education in the antidote of child labour in the third world, but what about the western children who are targetted as consumers, who are very aware of brands. These children start feeling low self esteem and shame at very early age, because of their families’ inability to buy them stuff like the other kids, so they go work to make little money to be able to afford these things… in this case these children are also forced to work… why is it not considered child labour and is encouraged, while the idea of children who are forced to work because their families will starve otherwise and have absolutely no other way is banned and condemned?? Not that I am defending the idea…but well…

Anyway… I really don’t want to talk about this anymore… I want to make myself a nice warm cup of tea and watch friends… a girl can relax every now and then…. can’t she?

Oxford Circus, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben There is actually a big tower with a CLOCK on it!is there anything more exciting than this?!, Westminster, London Bridge, like in the song! Soho This one was interesting! Especially the girls in windows!! The only other place I saw girl prostitutes in this very obvious context was in Amsterdam, when I went with my friends two years ago we soon realized that people were staring at us, because we were the only DRESSED women in the street! Boy how shocking and embarrassing this was! My face still goes red at the memory!

I still can’t grasp the freedom I feel, I don’t understand it, I don’t know what to do with it. I just know that I want to experience London to the maximum! I want to go to every musical, to every concert, to every museum, to ALL my classes, and I want to walk and walk and walk. I want to enjoy the culture, the beauty that this place has to offer….But to be able to do this, I need to find a job NOW! London is really TOO expensive.

The company was nice as well. My friend took us to this beautiful Japanese place, I had what they call a bento box, it was a bit of everything… sushi, sashimi, chicken tiryaki, some fried shrimps yummy!! and of course the beautiful salad and a lovely miso soup!

The girl was fine, she is clearly in love with the guy and as sweet as her devotion is to him, as much as these very same feelings made me realize that we women are much more attractive and much sexier when we are strong and in control of our destinies, and we are completely unattractive and boring and Blah…when we allow ourselves to be weakened and submit to emotions… I am not talking about falling in love, I am talking about how to handle being in love….and as my good friend used to say “il tu2ol san3a”! which means for a women to be hard to get is actually hard work that requires very good skills!