… A guy drove by in a fancy car, slowed down and stopped at some 100 meters in front of me…

I was tempted to cross the street, but then decided that I should not let him intimidate me.

So I kept going…

He opened his window, and started shouting numbers… 200? 300? Ok 500… I soon realized that it was JDs he meant!  This guy either thought I was a prostitute and was offering money in hope of service, or he simply was acting like a jackass!  Which probably was the case.

I kept going without even giving him a second glance. I know how cruel it is not to acknowledge the existence of a human being… and this guy, certainly,  did not deserve to be acknowledged.

He kept following me.

I turned left to a side street and he drove back and forth at least ten times in that street, till I reached my destination….he waited a bit, and then realized that I was not going out any time soon, and so he left, probably to bug another girl…

Ohh.. the car had a Qatari number.. It really is upsetting, that some people from abroad come to Jordan, thinking that girls who walk in the streets are  free game… I am not saying that our local guys are better…… but still, when you go as a guest somewhere, the minimum requirement is to practice some self respect….

Our local guys… akh from our local guys…they have succeeded into turning the experience of walking in our lovely Amman into a very unlovely  experience….I can almost swear that any Jordanian girl, regardless of her dress code or background can share horror stories related to her experiences in walking in Amman…. girls get exposed to men’s dirty words, and pathetic sexual frustration at a very early age…and they never share their stories, because they know that their families will only practice more control over them…. so they internalize their bad experiences and move on…. moving on is their silent resistance to things they can’t control

Actually… I am tired of writing about this … so will go watch Dance with me instead!

I followed Sarkozy’s historic speech addressing the French Parliament this last June,  where he addressed one of the most debated issues in France, the Hijab!

“We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind bars, cut off from social life, deprived of identity,” he said. “That is not our idea of maintaining the dignity of women.” to know more about the story, read here.

What was not clear to me was whether France will ban burqas or was Sarkozy just encouraging people in France to feel and express hostility towards women who wear them? I also did not understand how denying women this choice would enhance their dignity?  It is interesting how the west always assumes that women who wear the Burqa do so because they are forced or pressured into it.   I would like to refer here to an Egyptian Anthropologist… Lila Abu Lughod, who researched the hijab extensively and referred to the hijab as a form of  resistance.

In one of her studies, she was talking about how the Americans made it a point to say that one of the reasons they would go into Afghanistan was to save the Afghani women from the Burqa… I guess they were expecting that all women will go in the street and throw the Burqas the moment they saw the Americans…

It, as we all know,… did not happen.

Actually… I really don’t want to talk about the hijab, this was not my intention in this post. What I really found interesting was that Sarkozy… the man who divorced his wife in a sex scandal after cheating on her with a model was talking about women’s dignity with so much confidence… I am not sure how women who wear the hijab are not dignified, but women who get cheated on through sex scandals by their partners are?…. I, as a women find that interesting, i wonder how other women feel about it? also I wonder how Sarkozy can speak about women’s dignity? when he was checking a young woman’s butt in a very indignified way… not too long ago actually. …

Just to add another dimension to this… researches affiliated with the Sorbonne have recently published a report on inequalities in France… The volume  includes extensive statistical information about social and economic inequalities in France… it addressed the gender inequality… Apparently, women in France are clearly discriminated against in the workplace… till today, these dignified French women don’t earn the same salaries as men, even though they hold the same positions…

I guess we should aspire to a world where women have their full rights, but let’s not get too lost in the western idea of rights to a point where we ignore the right to chose, and the right to be different in the process…

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?

I started the day thinking about something else… I realized that I was no longer putting myself in the shoes of that Gazan girl while she is going through a moment between the world of sleep and the world of the awake. Last few weeks, I would imagine myself at that moment when realization rushes back. At the moment when she would know that she was 160 cm when was driven into the Shifa’s hospital, but became only 80 cms when she woke up… she does not want to acknowledge it. So she pretends that something isn’t happening when it is.

Today, I realized that I am moving into the next chapter, but the Gaza chapter left an empty space in my life. This makes me wonder about those guys and girls who spent last 7 weeks of their lives with us in the warehouse… I wonder how they feel about suddenly having a lot of time on their plate, but even more, I wonder about their reasons for spending those chunks of their days at the warehouse? What pushed them to drive all the way to Al Qastal to work there?

I guess these questions made me think of a book I read while I was finishing my MA… at that time I was completely taken with it… it is called weapons of the weak by a thinker called Scott. I have previously written about it… but here I find myself thinking about it again. The theory in this book is that human beings revolt against the inequality and injustice of life by every day hidden forms of resistance when they can’t do much to change their realities.

I always felt that inordinate attention has been paid to open resistance, and too little to ordinary, everyday forms of resistance and their symbolic and ideological underpinnings.

I completely believe that resistence was one of the reasons these youngsters came. By showing up day and day out there,

by challenging the weather, defying the cold, rebelling against parents and ignoring the Israeli changing rules on daily basis, these youngsters  resisted the tyranny of Israel and the hypocrisy of the world… it would have been much easier to sit in an argeeleh place frustrated, or to simply stop caring…but the freedom of the human spirit is beyond our comprehension. These youngsters kept on returning against all the odds!

For the second time around, I realize that the concept of absolute power will never exist, because no matter what, human beings are free… and as long as we have an intangible spirit and an unidentifiable instinct… no one entity can achieve absolute power…

Before yesterday, at the Rabieh demonstration. Adrenaline was running high at the prospect of the police taking down the tent. The tent has been set up there for more than a week now, in an open demonstration till the Israeli ambassador is out of Jordan.  (They did not take it down, the rumor has it that the Prime Minister interfered in their support)  Even though I was there with my guy friends, that did not seem to stop random guys from coming for a chat. They would ask me about my camera, or give me snippets of information about what was going on…all done courteously. However all conversations had a flirtatious undertone backed by a body language mixed into it. I won’t delude myself into thinking it was directed towards me personally…in that setup, I was simply a female!

Q. got a bit protective, he was trying to warn me about men there…. he cracked a few jokes about the trend in that space.  A group of women would gather around the fire (it was cold). That would surely attract one man to add oil to the fire to make sure it stays on.  More men would automatically join…and more men… soon, the geography of the place would be defined by groups of men gathering around smaller groups of women!

Now he might have been joking, and the picture I am painting here is definitely exaggerated since men outnumbered women by dozens… but there is some truth to it.

For years, scientists have suspected that people feel attraction more intensely when they are excited, be it through anxiety, fear, anger… I found this 1974 article that states that attraction occurs with increased frequency during states of strong emotion… I guess if we take it back to the basic caveman analogy, the main aim of human beings is the survival of the race. Therefore in times of war, when people feel threatened, they are driven by instinct to reproduce and survive…. and thus they become more flirtatious and physical.

To bring the argument full circle, I will have to take it back to Jordan and analyze it according to what is going on there.  People have been gathering in this tent every day for hours… they also have been meeting in protests… these setups, being public, are quite respectable… especially when there is a cause such as Gaza attached to them….  protests are perfect spaces for guys to meet girls, and for girls to meet guys.

Nas had an interesting insight into the argument. He thought that protests are spaces where people meet others knowing that they share core values.

To analyze his argument… Whoever is in a protest is someone who is passionate about the cause they are protesting about.  They are people who subscribe to a certain set of beliefs and personality traits, such as being public, courageous.  I don’t know maybe vocal, driven, active (?) therefore they do share something strong in common… including a basic intellectual compatibility…. I am not saying that everyone in protests is the same… but I am saying that a protest is a space where the probability of finding people who share common ideologies is high…. For me it is much simpler… the caveman analogy! We are hard wired to make sure the race survives.

During our food drive, the setup was very safe. People were working hard, in a very public open space for long hours… in a way the setup gathered all the necessary elements for young people to meet and get to know each other and hopefully to fall in love.  Truthfully, a lot of innocent flirting was going on (I personally was delighted).  Those youngsters had definitely many things in common.  Now, I find myself waiting for a day, in a few years, when we will receive an email from someone telling us that they are getting married and that they met in our food drive!

Ok.. that was my intellectual relief from the intensity of the situation… I have not been this emotionally drained in a long time… I have been glued in front of Al Jazeerah waiting for the ceasefire…

Today we will know what the UN has decided. Inshallah there is some consciousness still alive in that group of people.

So…we spent the last three days gathering food for Gaza. 7iber created an event on facebook to tell people about the drive…

I am not sure how things picked up, but I received messages about the drive from fifteen different people!

Now, we told people to bring food to the empty lot of land facing  Cozmo… Aramex generously donated the first truck.  We thought we will fill it out and go home feeling good about ourselves…

Around 1:00 Am, I was hit by a fit of hysterical laughter!… the sheer impact of looking at the mountains and mountains of stuff made me unable to stop laughing.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people showed up throughout the evening and brought stuff… some people donated truck loads…. Tens of young men and women showed up out of nowhere to help!! When we originally started, we hoped to fill one truck load, but we filled at least 16 (Thanks to Aramex that provided  truck after truck)  Tons and tons of cans and food and clothing were gathered.

Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinains, Egyptians, Europeans , Americans were there to help… .I am not sure how to describe the feeling, but seriously… my faith in the human race that was taken away by the Israelis is restored by the Arabs… and those who were there…

Two specific  incidents: a mother showed up with her two kids… they are not more than 5 or 6. They gave me their small money banks ( I don’t know what they are called) they were full of coins… they donated them so that kids in Gaza  can  have food! I wanted to hug them… these kids will grow up to be good human beings

Incident two: around 1 am, when our energy was drained, four Egyptian workers appeared from nowhere to help us load the truck (seeing the amount of work was depressing)….they worked and worked and worked, bringing new energy into the group… we wanted to give them a tip, but they refused… they said we are brothers…

 For videos, please look at Ali’s blog  and of course, 7iber for constant updates

 31/12/2008

We spent the day in the warehouse that was placed by Aramax  at our disposal … I LOVE Aramex! At least  a hundred young people showed up to help yesterday… some of them had their tawjihi exams, they finished their exams and came running to help… others were with us till 2:00 AM the previous night… we were working like an assembly line with so much passion.

We decided to attack food items… as we went on; rules of the game became evident. We had to sort the cans by the following rules:

1-      Expiry date (not less than 6 months)

2-      Every class of cans alone (tuna alone, soup alone, peas alone,  hummos alone, beans alone… and so on)

3-  no meat products are allowed.

4-      Every can had to be examined to check where it came from!! If it was made in one of the countries that are enemies with Israel, the can will not make it there…

5-      Any used clothing will not go through!

Now the last two points are worth contemplating… I am appalled by Israel. I can’t believe that they would put such rules at this time. What difference would used clothing do to Israel? It baffles me… people are being murdered there… 420 people so far… and thousands of injured… if this is not ethnic cleansing… i don’t know what is.

I wonder when they were being killed and the world donated stuff for them, did they care if it was new or not? Did they care if the food came from Germany or France or India?!

What worries me is that the world is not doing anything but watch…. I wonder what would have happened if the roles were reversed?

The world is unfair.

On a local front, around 100 young people decided to sacrifice their new years eve to work with us.  It gets me emotional just to see the dedication these youngsters showed.  Young people are always accused of not  caring… well let the world be a witness to how much we care…  the work was fun, hard and amazing…

These pictures have been taken by our one and only Jad

1/1/2009

We gathered in front of Cozmo at 11. We started with 20 people.. I was depressed, I thought that the number was too little. When we got to the warehouse I found another 30! They came there alone! We were around 50 people. Throughout the day people showed up alone… at around 3:00 Ramsey set off to Cosmo to bring the people who were there…

I was seriously shocked when they came back… an army of women came in, ready and determined to work… it was brilliant!

 From a bird view, we would look like ants!

We started with the clothing… our beloved army of young gorgeous women, got onto the task and within hours they finished the initial sorting

As my dad says, there is still good in this world.

This one was in Shmeisani, on Thaqafa street. The whole demonstration was organized through facebook. It included some artists, who helped prepare the signs carried by the protesters. Some of the signs were quite artistic. The protesters chanted Marcel Khaleefeh’s patriotic songs, the palestinian national anthem, and other emotional slognas, while carrying candles. 

This one is in Rabia.  The closest the protesters could get to the Israeli embassy. It is planned to be an open protest till the Israeli ambassador is out of the country. Even though it was raining, those guys brought their tents and their fire and just sat there. They drew the map of Palestine with their candles.

Some of these videos are taken by my friend Ramzi,  you can see more pictures and updates on 7iber and on his ikbis profile

Don’t forget our food drive

“We were sitting in the dark, oblivious to what is happening outside” says my friend Shorouq in Gaza. “My parents closed all the doors and asked us not leave. We could hear wailing, screaming and the constant stream of bombs. We are simply waiting to die.” She continued before the line was cut off. That was the last time I heard from shorouq. I don’t know if she is still alive, I don’t know if they are still waiting to die… but that hopelessness makes me feel sick.

Shorouq said when I asked her what they need, that the only thing they needed is for the aggression to stop, which one of a lot of things we can’t do for them. However, instead of feeling helpless here in Jordan we can do something.

My friends at 7iber are going to launch an emergency clothes and food drive which will be taking place over the next 48 hours.

You can bring canned food items (no meat), clothing, blankets, and jackets – all in good condition –

to

Cosmo Center 7th Circle

from 6:30-8:30PM

on

Tuesday, Dec. 30th.

Click here where you can join our event page to find out all the details you need

We have to help because the Israeli government has been starving Gaza. Since 2006, the humanitarian situation of Gaza has been declining drastically due to the Israeli closure and siege of the area. According to the UN:

·         56 percent of Gazans are classified as ‘food insecure’

·         76 percent of Gazan households are must accept some humanitarian assistance

·         At least 60 percent of Gazans in poverty rate by international standards

·         The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth

·         1.5 million Palestinians  in 139 square miles (360 sq km) and  25 mi long and 4-7.5 mi wide

·         Israeli government (ultimately) controls all borders and seacoast of Gaza

If you want to do something, this is your chance.