I thought I have a problem, and blamed my diet, then I blamed my shampoo… but then I realized that a lot of people suffer from the same problem, and eventually realized that almost everyone around me suffers the same problem.

A friend mentioned how her hair falls when in Jordan, but when in London, it is relatively healthier. I wonder if this problem is connected to the location? Could this be a Jordanian problem?

Truthfully, I have no idea why we are suffering of hair loss in Jordan. And since I am still not ready to investigate it, I decided to ask several people about their perceptions on the subject.

Some answers truly surprised me… Maybe there is a need to actually look deeper into the subject?

Why are we losing our hair?

Enas, 30 years old, project manager:

 “It is the fall of course! In the summer, I did not face this problem…Look at nature around you, trees lose their leaves, animals shed their skin, and we lose some of our hair.”

Ahmad, 24, marketing officer:

 “It is the effect of all the weapons that have been used in Iraq and Palestine since 1990. Hair loss is only a symptom of all the changes that have been happening in our bodies for the last two decades. Did you know that cancer rate is very high in Jordan? It is because we have been exposed to different doses of nuclear radiations throughout these years”

Sahar, 47, Librarian

“Ahh you hit a nerve!  Things go way beyond hair loss…. there is sicknesses, infertility…

This is the result of food and products we export from the west.  They have a plan to reduce our numbers, because they see us as underdeveloped. A friend of mine is a lab technician. She told me that today, the number of men who suffer from infertility is much higher than before. Ten years ago,  from every ten men, two or three men suffered of infertility, today the number has increased to eight or nine.”

Samira 63, Retired

“it is gel, mousse,  creams…all the disgusting things young people use on their hair!”

Mona, 19, student

“For girls my age, it is malnutrition and unhealthy diets. We are all so conscious of our weights that we don’t eat properly… so I assume an imbalanced diet that lacks certain vitamins or minerals is often the cause of hair loss.”

Rami, 35, Engineer

الولاد، المرا و طلباتها ، الشغل… مع هدا  stressكتر خير الله انه لسا في كم شعرة

Grisly 27, writer

“Over treatment of water in Jordan. After water crisis in the nineties, they started over treating water. Calcium (also known as lime) is injected into water systems or be used as part of the water treatment/delivery process. When it attaches to hair, it creates an invisible limestone wall on skull. It looks like Dandruff, but it is not reallydandruff

Saad 14, student

“Climate  change for sure!”

Salam, 51, House wife

“Years of chemical treatment, colouring, heat and styling.  Think about it like this, we start fussing about hair colour in our thirties maybe?… for me this is about 20 years of harsh chemicals… I am sure it has not been healthy for my hair… but it is still better than the alternative”

 

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!

I have been begging Diala (an assumed name) to go out for a quite a while now…. between her two children, her petulant husband and her demanding career, she has gone incommunicado… Diala’s husband (lets call him Fadi) is a nice guy. They met at work and they liked each other… when he proposed, her family scanned him closely, and found him perfect in every respect. Good family, good manners, good financial position, good looking. Even us, her friends, we simply adored him, he is funny, witty, helpful and smart…

However dark clouds started appearing over their marriage less than a year after they got married…

While he needs someone to serve him, she needs someone to spoil her. He is very domestic but she is clueless when it comes to cleaning and cooking… He has a streak of sadism that would stay dormant if a strong partner stepped in; she is simply weak. After a while concerning patterns appeared between them. His sadism has been feeding on her weakness… and her depression has been feeding her vindictiveness.

From an ordinary point view, they have the perfect image,… Their family portrait could be published  in a magazine!  but when someone digs deeper… oh boy!

She has been avoiding not only us (her friends) but also her family because Fadi humiliates her subtly in front of us; he makes fun of her and calls her names, he acts arrogantly, does not take part in family events… so she feels embarrassed and prefers not to see anyone. This is called Isolation.  She, on the other hand withholds affection. She puts him down, and discounts his accomplishments. This is part of emotional abuse. He controls money, does not give her access to their joint bank account, spends family income without her consent, registers everything in his name, even though they both work… Surprisingly enough this is also a type of abuse; it is referred to as economic abuse.  They both use children to relay messages, they use them to make each other feel guilty…

The one thing they don’t do is physical abuse…Diala regrets that fact…

His problem is that he does not beat me up! If he did then we both would be forced to acknowledge the problem …

I got so angry hearing Diala’s troubles that I had to go out and take a walk.  I understood exactly how she feels… I am just amazed at how many people are in abusive relationships without even being aware of it… and I am talking about both men and women…

On a relevant note… I was talking to my counterpart at Sahab… she was explaining that people are in love with the series “Nour”… because it made us see that we are emotionally barren …

I wonder if this is the result of our educational system? Culture? Society? Religion? What is it exactly?

I was completely fascinated! Even excited about the idea of a counselling before you get married! Apparently they get people to think about certain things that you would imagine that people intending to get married would have covered long time ago in details…only to be shocked at how many couples don’t have a clue! Such as kids, where do we want to live, the finances, the in laws, how to have an interesting life…..etc…etc… .I don’t know…these are the obvious things… but there so many things that are really really not obvious… all those awfully important details that parents would call the BASICS of life, and unmarried people would not even imagine… after all the most sophisticated unmarried brain is not equipped to think of all these things that encounter people when they do get married.

I will chose a perfectly safe example… like let’s say finances…these seminars get people to think about things like: who will take care of the finances at home? If they thought if they will have two bank accounts or a joint one? if they have any financial plan for their life? If the woman will contribute at all? How much would she contribute? Will she have some money for her for security? Other topics such as in whose names the properties are going to be if they both are working or if one of them is sitting home to take care of the children? What is their retirement plan? The kids’ university fund?!!…etc…etc… and all of a sudden what started as a perfectly simple and innocent marriage ends up being one hell of a complicated spiky thing!

From the conversation that we had… and I never saw them this stressed out. Bea said that she was amazed at how many people have not talked about important things things, and how many topics she discovered she did not cover with Peter. Peter on the other hand said that in these seminars you get shocked that your partner thinks like that! And it made me realize what a wonderful idea it really is to go through this before you get married… how many couples will be spared the horrors of divorce? How many children will be spared the mental abuse of an unhappy marriage? I don’t know honestly… maybe it is not like that, maybe with or without counselling, if a marriage is meant to stay it will and if it supposed to end it will….but I still could not help wondering how many people think after many many years of marriage if I knew this thing about my husband or wife, would I still have married them?!

I will sit down and enjoy my cup of tea while hearing Dido ironically a song called hunter, whom I have not heard in months… I will also go back to my painting… something happened and all of a sudden I am very inspired… I suppose I discovered the ink that is used with water colour and hell… it is brilliant!

T. literally spent these days walking between Bond street and Tottenham court Road, which happens to be one of the most famous shopping areas in the world! So YES a woman’s process of redefining herself, definitely includes  a major redefinition of her wardrobe! We turned from residents to tourists with her; we have been walking around London, attending musicals and concerts and posing for pictures in front of every high building!!

On the fourth day, T. confessed that one of the reasons she came here is to think of a marriage proposal that is perplexing her. The guy is smart, successful, ambitious, extremely good looking, funny and from a very good family. There is one little problem though, she feels that he is not in love with her personally, but he is in love the high score she made on his list of requirements. When she explained this, the visual image that was created in my head was rather funny. Here I imagined him sitting with her in a romantic setting explaining his principals in life, asking her questions and ticking on a list in front of him. for some reason I just remembered all those  guys explaining their principals in life to their girlfriends while  walking in the gardens of jame3 il jam3a (the Mosque of the University). I wonder if the gardens still attract these romantic souls?? In our case, the perplexity comes because 3arees il ghafleh! is too good to pass, especially that her parents like him, and she is in the right frame of mind, since all her friends are getting engaged and she feels the social pressure.

I am one of those people who are really unromantic! I don’t believe in fairy tales and happily ever after. I believe that relationships need hard work to flourish, they need wise judgements and  intelligent choices, but in this case I could not help wondering if two people made a very intelligent choice based on a very well defined list of requirements would that bring happiness to them? Would that be enough to ensure that the marriage would be successful? And where should a person draw the line of what is enough and what is not?! Just thought I should share….

I am reading one of the most intriguing studies ever, it is called Tearoom Trade. It is an eye opener to a shocking world I knew nothing about. And here I thought I am a cultured, well read individual… it is funny that being at school is a very humbling experience. It makes a person feel that the more she knows the less she really knows… perplexing hah? time to sleep… it is 2:30 AM and my eyes are closing on their own.

Between her family and her job, years passed and she woke up one day to find out that she is a38 year old single pregnant woman with a boyfriend who did not last more than couple of weeks… Sarah came to work devastated, and between the interesting mixed group we were, we went through a long back and fourth Islamic, Christian, Ahiest, socialist, middle eastern, European discussions about abortion and the baby’s right to live to help her decide whether she should keep the baby or not. These discussions lead to other discussions, the single mother thing, and how is she going to cope with it emotionally Society in Germany has tolerance for single mothers, it is not as scandalously looked upon as la sma7 Allah in our society. This has lead to another type of discussion and whether it is fair for the child to grow up without a father, we discussed in painful detail about the father’s right to know and to be part of the child’s life…The discussions ended with the biological woman’s clock. After all Sarah was 38, and even though she never thought about children seriously, this might have been her last and only chance to be a mother…

Sarah decided to have the baby. Thomas’ father did not want to be part of his life, and so Thomas is all hers. I don’t know where to start in describing my own feeling about all this… I know one thing though, when I saw what a beautiful and loved baby Thomas looks in his second birthday. How proud, satisfied and happy Sarah looks…. I feel there is something right about this….

I know this is still not a big issue in our society, but one of these days it will become… like many other things that were not accepted and are being accepted little by little.. I mean in Egypt this is already an issue through what they call “zawaj 3orfi”… which is really a different route to the same result…

The ladies came to visit me few days ago, and as usual we had an interesting conversation. What women talk about in this country is men (I guess that is what women do all over the world anyway!) but here, these “women sessions” are the most interesting. They show off about all the tricks they use to have their men in line! I am not kidding! And they give advises…

This conversation made me think of a contradictory comment said by Natasha few days ago about that could not leave my mind…about how men have their own anxieties as well.. how Arab women expect perfection from their men… they have to be strong, rich, self confident and always on top of everything…no room for mistakes, or hesitance or any sort of weakness what so ever… and that brought to my mind yet another comment said by Tareq (another friend) few weeks ago about how when Arab women get married they leave the house of their old father to the house of their new father!!! Obviously this comment has several sides, but really what he meant was that we have very high expectations from our husbands… the “Standard” that we have lived in all our lives can NOT be compromised for any reason!

I hate to be quoted saying this, but there is some truth in all this..I mean honestly thinking about it a man’s life in the Middle East is like the minesweeper game, there is always a trick, a game an expectation…it is never simple. He has to have every move calculated or else… boom! Ok this is a bit exaggerated (but I tend to do that). No wonder no one wants to get married these days!

Anyway… I just finished another book by Paul Auster, and like all his books it is dark, smart and unpredictable. It is called Oracle Night but if anyone wants to read Paul Auster I recommend Leviathan (Which happens to be my favorite) and Book of Illusions which I thought was very good. My next book would be Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho. I am not a fan, but Nassim insisted I should read it. So far this is the third book he recommends (Memnoch the devil and the invalids of hot climates) it took me years to convince myself to read them, but they were both not that bad 

And by the way Nassim if you read this, I have your copies for both books, if you want them email me!