At Queen Alia International Airport, I tucked away my laptop and lunged to the security check point before the gate. On my way I double-checked the flight departure monitor. It flashed: “RJ178 Gate 3 Last Call.”

Right before the X-ray machine stood an airport security guard that checked passports and boarding passes. Upon seeing my pass he said: “Montreal not yet open. Please wait in the other lounge.”

“But they just made the announcement,” I said in Arabic. He simply smiled and gave me a blank look, then pointed to the lounge. There were a few people behind me. Most of the Arabs, having overheard my conversation with the officer, stepped out of the line and headed back to the outside lounge. A few Canadians continued to proceed to the gate. They were really confused when the officer again pointed them to the lounge. This was not the first time that this had happened. I suppose this is a system or a process issue. Just poor communication and coordination between airport personnel.

In any case, I was happy that I had managed to book a window seat. It is a long flight to Montreal and this would help me try to get some sleep. Boarding the plane, I walked towards my seat. The configuration of the seats were 2-4-2—aisle next to a window seat.

I spotted my seat, 31A and yes, it was vacant! What a delight. So many times in the past on Royal Jordanian someone would be in my seat, usually playing dumb and asking me to switch with his seat, which invariably would be a middle seat. So many times I had to fight for what was rightfully mine. Luckily, not this time.

A girl in a veil sat on the aisle seat, 31B.

“Excuse me, I am sitting there,” I said to her with a courteous smile, pointing to the vacant window seat next to her.

Her face turned a bit red, she stood up but did not step to the side to let me in. Panic seemed to engulf her and she looked like she was fast cooking something in her head. She then looked at the man and woman sitting one row ahead and said:

“Excuse me. Are you ka-bel (couple)?”

The man and woman, who were non-Arab, looked at each other, as if amused at the suggestiveness of the question, gave a brief smile, then said to the girl in veil “No.”

The girl in veil looked at the woman anxiously and said: “Do you mind sitting next to me. It’s a long flight you know.”

It all happened so fast that I only realized what was going on after the other lady had stood up, went to sit in my seat and gave me hers—which was an aisle seat.

Then, a lady, walking from the front of the plane to the middle section, stopped a couple of rows ahead and asked a seated passenger to do a seat swap so that she can sit next to her friend.

Indeed, it was a very sociable plane, people would spot others they knew and pay them visits at their seats. The mother of the girl behind me came to check on her daughter, arching over me, resting her arm on the back of my seat and breathing down my neck. “Excuse me,” I said, but my words didn’t stir the determined.

I had to move my head a bit lest it gets bumped. Every three to four rows, there was one such visitor. The plane was still at the gate.

The flight attendant announced: “Everyone please take your seats and fasten your seat belts. We will not take off until everyone is seated with their seat belts fastened.”

Then another flight attendant, realizing that a speaker announcement was not enough, passed through the aisles, ushered lingerers to their seats and reminded them to fasten. An unshaved man a couple of rows ahead would not fasten his seat belt.

“Fasten your seat belt please. Just for fifteen minutes then we’ll be up in the air and you can unfasten.”

“Why don’t you fasten it for me,” he said with a smile that she quickly returned with a smirk.

The flight’s final destination was Detroit with a stop in Montreal. Roughly half of the plane was filled with Montrealers, the other, Detroit passengers.

Seconds after the plane touched ground in Montreal, the beast was still bumping on the ground, air brakes still laboring at full throttle to bring the plane back to steady motion, but people stood up and started opening the overhead compartments. A couple that were being jerked around, looked like drunkards desperately trying to regain their balance.

“Please sit down and remain seated with your seat belts fastened until the plane has come to a complete stop and the seat belt sign has been turned off!” The voice of the flight attendant sounded fiercer than usual.

People reluctantly went back to their seats. Then as soon as the plane stopped, and before the seat belt sign went off, people sprang up and claimed their carry-ons and filled up the aisles, ready to exit the plane.

“Passengers headed to Detroit are to remain on-board. You cannot leave the plane,” came the announcement with some other information.

There were some visits here and there, some seat swapping by the Detroit passengers, and it seemed that the flow of people out of the plane was impeded. Apparently, some Detroit passengers were standing in the way because soon, another announcement followed.

“Detroit passengers, please take your seats, let the Montreal passengers exit the plane.”

Finally, there was movement again.

“Would you stop pushing. Where are you going to go. Look! You going to jump over all these passengers?” One man scolded another behind him.

Just when I was about to disembark from the plane, a flight attendant, standing by the gate, asked me if my final destination was Montreal and I confirmed. Apparently, some Detroit people had stepped out of the plane and had to be escorted back so a flight attendant had to act as gatekeeper.

***

On another long RJ flight, I was seated in the middle seat section, with three empty seats next to me. As soon as we were airborne and the fasten seat belt sign was extinguished, a lady in her late forties popped up and asked me if she could sit on the other end of the empty seats. Had I acted like the other passengers, I would have claimed the territory at the earliest chance, extending my legs or placing objects and securing my sleeping space, but I did not want to be desperately opportunistic.

I said okay. I was sympathetic. She was an older lady. After dinner and when the lights went off, she made herself cozy, curled sideways and extended her legs, claiming all three seats—her toes almost touching my side while I sat squeezed in my one sorry seat.

Feeling a burning sense of injustice, I finally spoke out.

“Can we at least share?”

She withdrew her limbs from the third to the second seat and I extended mine to that second seat, so we sat from the outside seats with knees ridged upwards, each claiming two seats and facing each other. Every once in a while she would doze off and her legs would seamlessly slide into my territory and I would have to push back, so over the course of the flight, far from getting any sleep, we were throwing contemptuous glances and playing a hostile game of footsie to fend off intrusion into this tough turf, part of which almost became a no man’s land.

***

I’d been consulting for over ten years on international assignments, travelling on average once every three weeks across the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. The travel experience with my fellow Jordanian and Palestinian brothers and sisters is truly unique.

In some cases, adults act like children. Their behavior ranges from lack of common courtesy and consideration for others to outright self absorption and selfishness— me first in line, me the all-deserving of better service, of a better seat.

“Madam, you are requesting a first-class service, but you’re paying economy,” a flight attendant told a passenger once. I thought that summed up best this aspect of my culture—over expectation, under contribution.

The irony is that one would expect this selfish individualism to take place in a culture known for that, not in a culture famous for being anti-individualistic. We are a self-conscious people, obsessed with what society thinks, with reputation, image, and with something we call ‘honor.’ We are also very sociable people, flocking to weddings, funerals, newborn baby parties. And as such, Arabic culture probably ranks one of the highest in hospitality.

When we have guests, we show off with our generosity. We are very supportive of our kids. It is unheard of to kick a son or daughter out of the house after reaching eighteen, even forty, regardless of economic hardships, while this may not be so unusual in the U.S. for example. We respect our parents and our elders. We are very supportive of family members, extended family, members of the clan or tribe, our friends. Abandoning a friend or relative in need is considered a taboo.

Inherent in all this is compromise and sacrifice. If anything, it is more selfless than selfish. We are willing to give more to our loved ones than are others in the U.S. and Europe, perhaps.

Yet, once we step out of the circle of friends and family, another personality takes over.

My explanation for this is that there is no sense of the collective, a sense of a common identity, of a common people working together. There is no belief in a fair and equal system that we belong to, adhere to, that represents us equally. There is no participation.

The common man is someone that gets trampled on. The common man in our culture does not get much respect, while the common man in a first world country is as good as any. In the absence of democracy and a system that works for the one and the many, we end up with dog eats dog. To each their own. That helps us remain divided. The perception is that the gain and success of one is at the expense of the other. Though conceptually this is not unique to us, or to people of the third world as a whole (i.e. rich at the expense of the poor,) the extent and degree are more severe for us.

Rather than the sense of: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, we get: Do unto others as others have done unto you. And ‘others’ have treated you unfairly and gotten away with it, so the exploited becomes the exploiter in a never ending cycle.

The other exhibited behavior, that of restlessness, might be symptomatic of people’s frustrations and sense of powerlessness—those whose lives are not within their control. So to compensate, they make up for it by taking it out on others. All this is consistent with the way people drive in Amman.

Little common courtesy is given to the ‘common’ man in shared, common spaces such as airplanes and streets.

Amman is famous for its villas and mansions, burgeoning out of most beautiful gardens. Unlike any city in Europe or the US, though, there are no beautiful common areas, just disconnected islands of beauty fenced behind walls. Similar to what Robert Fisk observed about Lebanon, people don’t feel a sense of ownership of their streets and neighborhoods and cities. They have no problem littering outside the fence while their gardens and houses are kept immaculate. There is no sense of ownership of that which is shared.

Though the aforementioned generosity, hospitality and selflessness may not always be genuine—often done in response to social pressure or for a desire to show off— they are still something to be proud of. A less turbulent journey, and a more cohesive society would emerge if we changed our mentality and realized that we are in this together. If I don’t fasten my seat belt before takeoff because I am too busy chatting with a friend, I won’t just be delaying others, but also myself.

They’re wrinkles
On the face of history.
History is a tired woman.
History stands by the side of the road,
Her cheap necklaces toll for you.

These old scars,
Rock against people,
Time against more time,
Cannot be kissed away.

After my body
Has stopped complaining
At the end of the rope,
After your feet enter the slippers
Brought to you by another woman,
The rock will still be telling
The same story to itself.
The ending never changes.

Implacable but steady,
The city never stops blushing,
As if it has an amusing secret.

I think it’s adding footsteps
To its scrapbook of desecrations.

No one righteous,
And no one to blame.
We have forgotten its loves
And big and little deaths,
And it “forgets” to bless us on our way.

SOMETHING INSIDE OF ME died when I read about French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal for a ban on burqas on the streets of France.

Beyond the usual platitudes about “respect for other cultures,” or “but what if the women choose them freely,” what upset me was the possibility that the women wearing whatever it is that Sarkozy deems objectionable—he wasn’t even specific about what he meant by the word “burqa”—might face harassment from law enforcement in addition to the stereotyping of mainstream society.

If a woman knows what it’s like to be harassed and stereotyped, if she has experienced the scorn of people who, based on just a few silly outside markers, have decided to debase her, how could she not worry about it happening to someone else?

I am the least likely person to support the total veiling of a woman’s face and body. Yet my experiences with sexual harassment in Amman have cemented my belief that there is something fundamentally violating about being bullied into trying to pass as someone you’re not.

In the early spring of 2009, I began wearing the hijab when leaving my house in Amman. I am a non-Muslim woman with a drawling American accent and Slavic heritage—and no, I don’t think “Russian Natasha” jokes are cute, just so we’re clear. I was trying to appear to be someone else. It started when I realized that the compromises I had originally expected to make when coming to Jordan—more conservative clothing, no alcohol on my breath, no smiling at strangers in public, and so on—were not enough to allow me to feel safe.

After a number of increasingly scary experiences in comparatively nice neighborhoods like Shmeisani and Abdoun, I was nearly run over by a man who was pursuing me in his car. He must have realized I was set on ignoring him as he shouted the standard lines: “Where are you going?” “Five JDs, baby!” Then he decided to impress me by turning sharply into my path at an intersection, screeching to a halt inches from my body. As it happened, all I could think was: “Am I really about to die or get maimed because of some guy trying to pick me up?”

I broke down in front of my Ukrainian hairdresser later that day, and was gently reminded that many people in Amman “think they know everything about you” if you happen to be young and conspicuously foreign. Out of desperation more than anything else, I decided to try getting around that.

I DIDN’T WANT TO appropriate anyone’s lifestyle, and definitely didn’t want to act like those non-Muslim women who put on Muslim garb to play at being the “exotic” princess they read about in the Arabian Nights.

So I got Fatemeh Fakhraie, the editor of Muslimah Media Watch, a website that critiques the portrayal of Muslim women in international media, to speak to me about the practice of being a “part-time hijabi.”

“I don’t like how the idea of hijab is fixed, as if once you take it on or off, there’s no going back,” she said, when I asked her about what it meant to put it on as a safety measure. “It doesn’t allow for the realities and differing circumstances of life.” We talked about how, beyond being a sign of religious expression, the hijab can function as a “do not approach” sign when one is surrounded by strangers.

I’m cool then, I decided. Sure, I’d known plenty of women who’d been coerced into wearing the hijab, and they all told me how unpleasant it was, but my situation was different, right? I’d be OK. Right?

Indeed, I felt the more aggressive episodes of harassment did become less frequent. But in my scarf I became even more miserable than before.

I could see the confusion in men’s eyes as they sized me up, and overheard hilarious debates as to the subject of my identity. I never ceased to look out of place, but I was no longer conforming to their expectations. I would have thought this would bring me some relief, but I began to feel lost and defeated, as if some fundamental part of me had come unmoored and was floating away.

Looking at my reflection in a shop window at one point, I asked aloud: “Who are you?”

The woman staring back was like a chimera. It was a small relief to find out that it wasn’t just me, when I spoke to foreign women who hadn’t had much success with wearing scarves either. One woman said she didn’t even see a difference in the level of sexual harassment. Another did, but said she felt there was something really wrong with having her inner person validated through dressing like someone else.

I quickly came to learn that when we try to disguise ourselves as someone else, the experience of being “found out” can be even more traumatic than whatever it is we were trying to escape in the first place.

Once, I found tears streaming down my face and destroying my over-priced mascara as I yelled at a construction worker who had whistled at me on the street as I passed by in my scarf.

“I’ll get my husband and he’ll beat you up!” I shouted. (OK, I’m not married, but I knew by then that jealous husbands are the scariest specter women can invoke on the streets of Amman). The construction worker looked genuinely shocked. Although I’m sure he eventually got over it, and maybe even learned a valuable lesson, I realized that my grief and pain had little to do with him.

IT’S EASY TO BELIEVE that one is fundamentally “safe” in a hijab. It’s a pleasant fiction propagated by those clerics who compare uncovered women to “uncovered meat” or candy, and by people who romanticize Muslim dress. Yet more often than not, the muhajabat I “came out” to in Amman when asked if I was also Muslim completely undermined this fantasy.

“My family didn’t believe me when I told them I was being harassed at my new place of work,” said Layla, who asked me not to use her real name. “My aunt finally said, ‘But you’re covered. You must be attracting attention by misbehaving.’ I didn’t talk about it anymore. I gave up.”

Only after Layla announced she was thinking of switching jobs did her boss threaten her harassers, and the behavior abated. Of course, it still took a male authority figure to demand dignity on her behalf.

So, seeing France’s anti-burqa rhetoric through the prism of my experiences in Amman, and the experiences of the women I have spoken to, I can’t help but return to the dreadful condescension behind the assumption that a woman does not have a right to construct her own identity and—horror of horrors—expect that identity to be respected by men in particular.

As for my own hijab, I took it off. In Jordan I have the freedom to do as much. Police officers don’t approach me and tell me to cover my hair. Aside from the usual harassment, I sometimes even get random compliments from passing women on my particular shade of straw-yellow hair (blame the bleaching effects of the Jordanian sun).

I can’t say that I’ve somehow learned to stop worrying and live with the assumptions made about me and women like me, but what I understand now is that you can’t challenge such assumptions when you’re compromising an integral part of your identity.

A fake muhajaba is merely participating in a charade, no matter what appearances may tell you. Perhaps, in time, President Sarkozy may also realize that appearances can be deceptive.

Jonathan Mok: Why and when did you get interested in the life of King Hussein?

Nigel Ashton: I’ve been interested in King Hussein ever since I was a PhD student back in the 1980s working on British and American policy in the Middle East during the Suez crisis. I was fascinated from an early stage by the way the King successfully negotiated a series of dangerous challenges to his position and the way in which he managed his relations with other powers in the region.

After King Hussein died in February 1999, I felt it was a good time to start researching a biography of him. Up to that point there had been no full biography written with the benefit of access to his papers and interviews with his close friends, family members, and confidants. Thereafter I made more than a dozen trips to Jordan between 1999 and 2007, carrying out a range of interviews with former political leaders and his close family members, including his wife Queen Noor and his eldest son, King Abdullah of Jordan.

Jonathan: King Hussein seemed never to employ anti-Semitic rhetoric to condemn the Israeli occupation and Jewish lobby in the United States. In fact, he was believed to be good terms with leaders such as Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. How did the King view Jews and the Jewish state?

Nigel: As far as King Hussein was concerned, the first crucial step that had to be made before one could contemplate making peace was to empathize with those on the other side of the conflict. He felt that he had to show that he understood and appreciated the historical tragedy of the Jewish people in all its parts before peace would be possible. His strategy to achieve this goal involved the offering of endless reassurance to Israelis

Perhaps the best example of this came in March 1997 when, after a Jordanian soldier had gone mad and killed several Israeli schoolgirls on a field trip at Baqoura on the border between Israel and Jordan, the King flew to Israel and personally visited the bereaved families. His gesture of kneeling before them and offering his personal condolences had a profound effect in Israel, turning a tragedy into an event which helped cement relations between the two states. So, King Hussein was aware of the hopes and fears of Israelis and did his best to reassure them.

Jonathan: How did King Hussein influence his son, King Abdullah?

Nigel: I would say that [King Abdullah] has inherited much of his father’s shrewd grasp as to how to navigate in troubled political waters. He has built on his father’s close relations with the United States, but made sure that he has also remained close to the Arab middle ground on key issues such as the peace process with Israel.

King Abdullah has also improved relations with Saudi Arabia, which had been strained during the final years of King Hussein’s reign. He has been more inclined to focus his attention on key domestic problems as well, especially economic and administrative development, which his father tended to delegate to others. So, while the two monarchs have much in common, King Abdullah has inevitably brought a fresh perspective to some key issues.

Jonathan: While King Hussein was well-recognized for his diplomatic successes, he was also criticized for failing to modernize the country. Can we talk more about that?

Nigel: Hussein himself would have seen the achievement of peace with Israel as his greatest achievement. But, in the final three years of his life, he was already becoming frustrated at what he saw as the failure to translate this into a broader peace in the region. Although he blamed all parties for the failure, he was particularly critical of the role of the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he believed had allowed the chance for a comprehensive peace, pursued by Yitzhak Rabin, to slip away.

From 1989 onwards the King pursued a program of domestic liberalization which opened the political system up to the opposition. However, this process had largely halted by the mid-1990s. The irony was that the making of peace with Israel, which was domestically unpopular, contributed to the slow down in domestic political reform. Despite this, King Hussein was certainly the most benevolent, open and fair-minded Arab leader of his generation. He dealt with opposition more by trying to co-opt it, or channel it, rather than by simply repressing it.

Jonathan: Finally, in your opinion, what lessons Arab leaders can take from the late King Hussein?

Nigel: I think the key lesson is the need for dialogue. Across the decades from the early 1960s when the King began to talk covertly to Israeli representatives he sought to resolve the problems of the region through debate, discussion and dialogue. Of course, this approach involved inevitable frustrations. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, when the King pressed hard for a broader peace settlement, his approach did not find a receptive audience in the region. But he persisted in his efforts which eventually bore fruit in the shape of the Jordanian-Israeli peace Treaty in the 1994.

The second lesson is how to deal with political opponents. For sure, the King’s regime had authoritarian aspects, but he was notoriously lenient in his treatment of political opponents, even those who had plotted against his person and his throne.

The final lesson concerns the exercise of power. Hussein understood that Jordan was a weak state in terms of its military and economic resources. But he consistently exercised disproportionate influence both through his moral authority and his subtle grasp of the hopes and fears of others. Empathy was ultimately his most useful tool in regional politics.

The area where few dare to tread is the concept of cost/waste reduction as a means of enhancing revenues or making each Dinar count. Divining cost saving methods requires relevant experience* and hard work. It does not lend itself to slogans and is not particularly glamorous. One remembers the decision of the Water Authority to fix leaking pipes throughout the city of Amman. It was estimated that fixing the pipes is tantamount to increasing the water supply by 30%!

What is required today is a handyman with cross jurisdictional ministerial authority to do the fixing wherever it is required.

A glaring example of a leakage of efficiency is the way the Ministry of Health manages its procurement policy and structures its services contracts. An investigation uncovered that the ministry has a General Supplies Department (GSD), which buys items for all the hospitals in bulk – acquiring anything from nails to equipment to meats and vegetables.

Those items are purchased by the GSD, then stored in GSD’S warehouses and cold stores, then issued, and transported to hospitals where they are stored and issued according to requirements. One can see that items are stored twice and transported twice. It is a rule of thumb that items of perishable nature lose 10% of their freshness when they are transported 10% more when they are stored and 2.50% more are pilfered due to double handling. Let’s call this the 1st Leakage.

Furthermore, GSD, much like the State Trading Agencies of a neighboring country, are famously inaccurate and inefficient in determining or meeting the needs of markets, or hospitals in this context. So, they may over-order or under-order. This is the 2nd Leakage.

Store keepers and transporters are paid employees and even with the best of intentions will not safekeep, handle and transport these itmes as if their life depended on it. This is the 3rd Leakage.

The solution to these leakages is a change of philosophy.

What does that mean?

First, we need to outsource all ancillary services to specialists in catering, housekeeping, janitorial, landscaping and maintenance services. To illustrate the importance of this shift in approach, examine the way the ministry deals with catering services:

The food is supplied to the hospital through the GSD. There may be shortages or overages because of central purchasing as mentioned before. The labor supply contracts, which MOH gives out, are drafted to be mostly concerned with the number of personnel /quantity of laborers on the job at any point of time. No serious consideration is given to the quality or quantity of food served to patients or staff (remember, freshness of food and adequacy of quantity are not the responsibility of the labor supplier).

To rectify this situation, new contracts may be drafted where the caterer is responsible for providing the food items and for serving meals according to a set menu, with measurable quantities in a hygienic and timely manner, and at a fixed price. If the job is even done by two monkeys and a guard, and all is well , who cares?

The advantages of this switch in tactic are plenty:

1. Quantity and quality are controlled by supervisors. Penalties are applied for non performance.

2. Food ordered will NOT be more than required as the caterer’s profit and loss depend on it.

3. Food is purchased, transported and stored only once.

4. Storekeepers are audited by the way they organize their inventory– FIFO (meaning that the oldest items are sold first, and not left to deteriorate) and cleanliness rule. Their jobs depend on this.

Similar contracts can be drafted for maintenance, janitorial and housekeeping fields, where performance and not body count are the true measures of contract execution. Outsourcing those services to specialists allows both cost reduction and better performance. If MOH’S hospitals suffer due to high costs or low performance, the answer is here. Not to mention the fact that outsourcing allows MOH to concentrate on its core business: Staffing the hospitals with the best doctors and nurses for the job.

Saving money means writing new contracts with new specifications and finding different ways of supervising those contracts. It may also mean eliminating or reducing the task of GSD. It involves a change in philosophy where the emphasis is on quality and not quantity. However, it is the critical area to focus on today. I don’t believe there should be a debate on that.

Note:* A person with relevant experience is someone who, while educated in the West, has acquired his experience in the East, in the area of life support services. Particularly, this would be someone familiar with the way things are done in Saudi Arabia, where ancillary services have been outsourced with a large measure of success for the past 30 years.

The moment of impact is black. The moment after flooded with emotion—anger, confusion, acceptance, detachment, strength—all in one rush of adrenaline. The rest of the punches all blend together; after one, ten more aren’t all that unique. I don’t remember pain or blood or the feeling of my face breaking in three separate places. The touching, the grabbing, the clawing, the choking, the screaming: clouded and surreal.

What’s vivid was my reaction. It’s the first time I have ever proven to myself that I wanted to live, that I valued my existence. It’s the first time I have actively recognized my rights, the complex role of being a woman, and the sacred ownership of my body. I took it all for granted before that day. I’ve thought about it every day since.

I went abroad to change my views. On the sixteenth day of my year-long life in Amman, Jordan, my perspective of myself, of social roles, of the world changed forever.

American women abroad – especially in the Middle East – all seem to find themselves trapped by the same stereotype: easy, promiscuous, inviting, and naïve. Nearly everywhere I went in Jordan, in Syria, in Egypt, and even in Qatar the stares, the shouts, the touches all confirmed my unwavering place in society: an object first, and a person second. It became clear to me that being a white, blonde woman in the Middle East seemed to mean two overarching things: free sex and the possibility of a green card.

For most foreign women I knew, it was something that slowly sunk in. The first weeks were too overwhelmingly exotic for much of the cultural and social norms to appear. Then began a gradual but gnawing process realizing that with every blatant stare, every rude comment, provoking grab, or lack of acknowledgement, we were different. This wasn’t America, and we were nowhere near equal. What’s more: the majority of the population seemed to accept, and even expect, it be this way.

However, my initiation was sudden. It was fast. It was painful. And there was nothing subtle about it. In the second week of my life abroad, I was abducted by a taxi driver on my way home from the grocery store. It was broad daylight, in the western, trendy Abdoun neighborhood of Amman. But that didn’t matter. I didn’t know much Arabic and I was obviously foreign. I smiled too much, I laughed too loud, I talked and made eye contact. I realized I wasn’t headed home when it was much too late.

We ended up on a dirt road on the outskirts of Amman, no houses or people in sight. In one swift motion the cab doors locked shut, the driver hurdled over the front seat to pin me down in back, and my clothes were ripped and torn. I managed one call on my cell phone before he threw it to the front seat, and we were alone. I screamed, he punched. I kicked, he choked. I bit, he hit.

It probably lasted all of ten minutes; I blank on most of it. I just remember an intense will to live, coupled with an outrage and disgust at the injustice of being so objectified. Ultimately, I remember the look of astonishment in his eyes when he realized I would not submit.

Lost in translation between the Paris Hilton images and the Britney Spears music videos, my personal empowerment, my individuality, my self-reliance had never been part of his consideration. I was not the easy American woman, the promiscuous American woman, the inviting American woman; I was the enabled, proud, and independent American woman.

Thanks to him, I am also now a much less naïve American woman.

He stopped and I jumped from the cab. I grabbed my groceries. I demanded my phone. He offered to give me a ride home, and I almost laughed between sobs. I looked him straight in the eye as he slammed his door and barreled away.

Three young Jordanian men happened to drive by soon after, finding me bloody, in shock, and crying in the middle of the road. Without realizing it, they offered me the first in a series of second looks at a culture I almost dismissed. They called the police, bought me water and ice, stayed with me for an hour to wait for help. In broken English, they managed to string together one sentence: “No worry, it will be okay.”

The next two weeks were spent between hospitals, police stations, and Arabic classes. I was contacted by the American Embassy, the UN, the royal family. Everywhere I went, with my battered face and my known story, it seemed someone wanted to apologize, to excuse, to sympathize.

An old Bedouin man found me soon after the attack. He took one look at me, shook his head, and said sadly, “There are good men, and there are bad. In the whole world. This man, he was bad. But we, we are not all bad. You understand?”

A woman, her face covered and her head down, came up to my translator as I waited at the police station for a medical exam. She said something in Arabic. My translator turned to me and said flatly, “She wants to know if your husband is beating you too.”

Everyone stared, and it was a much different stare than I received before or after my face was healed. The women stared with understanding and pity, the men stared with a mix of shame and anger. I realized that I was in no way the only person struggling in my story. While my pain may have been more recent, my situation more extreme, I was only a piece of a continuous, daily strain on society—man or woman, American or Arab.

The author in Jordan.

Going back to America never really crossed my mind; in fact, three days after the attack, I petitioned my home school to let me stay abroad the full year, instead of the one semester I had planned. I wanted to make sure that awful cab ride was the beginning of my time in Jordan, and not its definition. I consider that one of the best decisions I have ever made. The resulting year was one I’ll reflect upon indefinitely.

Still, throughout the year, my feelings about being a woman—an American woman—only became more distressing. The catcalls, the grabs, the assumed inferiority never stopped. I learned to keep my eyes down, to smile less, to speak to men only in Arabic and only when addressed.

In taxis, I used the same story every time: I was Lebanese and I had moved to Amman with my new Jordanian husband. As best as I could with my blonde hair and white skin, I assimilated.

It wasn’t until about six months in that I began to realize that my stereotypes, my assumptions of the average Jordanian woman were just as misplaced as my attacker’s thoughts of me. It took time, but I allowed myself to take another look. What I found were some of the strongest women I have ever met, women who had realized their rights and empowerment in a society where it was not an easy find. From filmmakers fighting harassment to journalists reporting honor killings; health care professionals teaching sexual education and female college students aspiring to study law in America, Jordanian women also proved that social norms and stereotypes are different than definitions.

That’s not to say I necessarily felt more empowered myself; coming back to America was a giant and much needed breath of fresh air. But I realized that I was not at all fighting the feminine fight alone. In fact, most of the time Jordanian women were fighting much harder than me.

Coming home, I was suddenly surrounded by things that had been taboo—short skirts, tank tops, male friends, individuality, and an expectation to be an independent woman with a job, a voice, and my own life plan. I felt like I was handed every social freedom for which those women in Jordan fought every day, but for the first time in my life I could fully appreciate them all.

They never found that cab driver, despite the hours I spent looking at lineups, mug shots, and impounded taxis. With over 10,000 registered taxi drivers in Amman, and probably thousands of others unregistered, it’s not surprising he disappeared.

I spent a lot of time being angry about what happened. Part of me still is, but a much larger part of me has tried to transform the experience into something meaningful, if not positive. That incident forced me to open my eyes early in my time abroad, and I don’t think I would have gained as much insight otherwise. America may provide me independence, but Jordan granted me awareness.

I probably won’t ever live in Jordan again, but I would visit tomorrow if I could. Jordan managed to become part of my identity, and I think it always will be there. Once a place is home, it’s home.

A previous version of this piece was originally printed in Abroad View magazine.

Some say that in order to stand in solidarity with Gaza civilians, we must stand in solidarity with Hamas. I have rather mixed feelings on the issue, as you can imagine. I think I can understand why Hamas have become such a popular force in Gaza, but I don’t have to like it either.

In fact, it looks like Hamas’ popularity is the best thing to happen to the Israeli far-right at this crucial juncture.”But what about the civilians being killed?” You will ask. “What about the families getting destroyed?”

“But what about the people that those families wanted into power?” – Will be the counter-question. And no amount of reasoning, no amount of shouting, even pleading, will do a single bit of good.

When I heard about the local Jordanian effort to bring food and clothes into Gaza, the first thing I had to ask was: “this aid is going to civilians, right?” (It is, of course – and the Jordanian government can presently deliver aid where it needs to be delivered, but I had to check)

Supporting Hamas, in any way, shape, or form, is off the table.

And yet, who else do the people of Gaza have, if not Hamas? The very physical realm of Gaza has become a terrible conundrum, a trap. The people protesting on the streets of Amman, yesterday, today, tomorrow, they all know this.

How do you defuse a situation in which civilians have no one left to trust but the very people who can easily, and, it seems, without many regrets – considering the reward that surely awaits the suffering in paradise – get them killed? How do you defuse a situation in which violent death no longer frightens, but hardens, hardens a spirit that has already become steeled with grief and hate?

I ask these questions on a sunny holiday in Amman, Jordan, as my neighbourhood prepares for yet another protest, as the streets lie quiet, despite everyone having a day off for the Islamic New Year. On a beautiful day like this, it’s hard to believe the level of violence that’s going on next door.

I spoke briefly to a few protesters down the street yesterday, and the one thing that stood out in our conversation was the sound of helplessness and frustration in their voices. “The world has to see,” they said. And I agreed. The world sees, and then goes flips the channel back to the ball-game. George W. Bush, in his last days in office, has waved his hand vaguely on the subject of civilian deaths. That’s all.

“Are you American?” They asked. I thought I had done a pretty good job of hiding my slight drawl.

“Ukrainian,” I said.

“A Ukrainian writer in Jordan,” they grinned. It seemed they understood these things after a quick glance. They looked like old hands to me. The protests themselves are part of a cycle these days – the never-ending, grinding cycle of death and outrage.

While living in Amman, I generally do not bring up my father’s cousin, the one who married an Israeli and moved to Israel. How do I explain the level of anti-Semitism at her old job in Ukraine to explain her decision to go? How do I humanize her? And how do I humanize the Palestinians, especially those living in Gaza, when talking to her about the legacy she has now inherited?

One of the jobs of the writer in these times is to be a conduit, but what if there is nothing left to pass on, except for visions of blood?

There are more questions than answers, today. One day, the cool eye of history will judge these events in an insightful, perhaps even impartial manner. But for the people living, and dying, within these moments, these hours, the only thing left is to ask the world to see.

Why do I love my country? – The question keeps torturing me.

Most pressing of all, apart from what they taught us in first grade and what certain billboards tried to achieve in recent years, do we really have to nurture such an emotion at all? While to some people the uncertainty itself is blasphemous, I am not ashamed to say that my thirst for a rational answer keeps intensifying with time. I just cannot suppress the itching curiosity to understand the roots of this non-severable connection that I’ve developed with earth, concrete, very little water, and a whole load of hairy, grumpy strangers.

I am not interested here in the theories of a social contract, taxation, or the tribal or political attachments to a certain community or nation state. I am intrigued by a totally different aspect of this relationship, the one, for example, that triggered a profound sadness in me as I read that the toll of the recent fire in the Dibbeen forest was a staggering 5,670 trees lost forever, taking the news as if a piece of my own flesh had been charred by the same fire. Why did I feel like that?

Ever since I came back from Switzerland to settle in Jordan last year, not a day has passed by without asking myself why I even bother in the first place with this mistress named Jordan. Although I understand that love is an irrational business, I still want to discover why I would develop an affection towards the only thing that consistently keeps breaking my heart every single day.

From ill-mannered drivers, to unprincipled politicians, to unethical businessmen, to mosque goers who close down entire streets on Fridays by parking their cars in the middle of the road to answer the call of the Almighty, to pitiful scenes of abject poverty, to uncooperative government bureaucrats, to so many other things, we all know how pleasant a single day in Jordan can be. Yet, I persevere in my masochistic love affair. Call me a romantic fool, but I find nothing more meditative than taking advantage of the empty streets of Jordan on early Friday mornings to try to get lost in the familiar terrains of this mountainous country, basking under its magnificent blue skies.

The elusive whiffs of pine fragrance on my solo morning rides through Wadi-Seer cliffs, Mahes hills or Jerash forests remind me of a carefree existence during bygone family picnics when Amman was a very small town, nostalgic moments that are only surpassed by the seductive odors that seep into my nostrils when I pass through the perfumed alleyways of some rare quarters of old Amman on cool summer nights, jolting me back thirty years in a couple of jasmine-scented seconds. These aromatic experiences no doubt mirror very subjective feelings and private memories, but so is patriotism and love of country, which are equally personal emotions as well.

So, to deal with my nagging question, I will use an unlikely analogy:

Connoisseurs of whiskey cannot deny that in the absence of the intoxicating feeling of pleasure associated with the drinking process, the beverage itself, at its best, tastes only slightly better than pungent urine with a twist of onion. Yet, the scotch aficionados wax poetic about its effect on the palate solely because, in their experience, whiskey has always carried the quality of making them feel good, and with time, its unpleasant bitter taste becomes not only acceptable, but even delicious, as its consumers associate this taste with moments of satisfaction and delight.

In this sense, and by the same token, any intolerable shortcomings of my country become secondary and bearable, because the bond of my own personal history and the memories evoked by the geography of the place would eventually eclipse and dwarf its other sad realities.

This all might sound like passionate babble to many, and I can understand why. Alas, a love of earth and wind is a very difficult thing to describe no matter how many whiskey metaphors I conjure up (or gulp). This is especially disheartening when half of your fellow countrymen cannot elevate their petty differences with the other half beyond the boundaries of how certain vowels and consonants are pronounced.

Oh yes, I’ve been aching to get this off my chest for more than two decades now, this whole east and west bank thing that infests our society and refuses to go away. Although a taboo most of the time, it keeps rearing its ugly head at every corner of our lives, because it has never been openly and frankly addressed. To be absolutely fair, both sides of this poisonous discourse are equally guilty of ignorance, pettiness, and worst of all, a refusal to grasp and appreciate the true meaning of a homeland.

I have witnessed the travesty with my own eyes, and it is sickening. On one side of the divide, a sizeable number of people living in this country, many of whom were born here, are still paranoid that they are discriminated against because of their origins. Somehow though, this supposed discrimination never prevented them from making very successful livelihoods for themselves and their families, and never stopped them taking advantage of every opportunity this country has offered them.

But when you talk with them privately, they express a kind of venomous contempt for the land in which they chose to build their homes that leaves you wondering why they wish to be treated as equals in the first place, if it is such an insult for them to belong to such a land. Recently I had a nasty personal episode dealing with a major bank in Amman, which I will not name here for legal reasons, save to say that it is an Arab one. While waiting for the outcome of my personal affair, I took a walk in its alleyways, reading name tags of employees at random to pass the time while they kept me waiting.

To my absolute shock and dismay, I discovered that the rumor that this bank only employs people of west bank origins is not only absolutely true, but is also disgustingly executed to perfection, without exceptions. Apart from the treacherous and obscene treatment that this bank meted out to someone with a family name like mine (so much for their hypocritical solidarity), I just could not believe that a major institution such as this one can still get away with such overt and unashamed ethnic discrimination in its employment policies.

On the opposite side of the divide, you still have the usual xenophobic morons who expect an oath of allegiance to their own brand of Jordanianism with every sunrise, and have the temerity to keep referring to their fellow citizens as guests in ‘their’ country, questioning their allegiance in so many subtle and explicit ways. These agitators can get away with their ranting because the easiest task for a charlatan is to proclaim loyalty in peacetime. Brown-nosers become abundant when there are no testing crises to tell the men from the boys, and at the cost of having to put up with such imposters, I do hope we never have another civil upheaval in our country to put them to the test. I’m prepared to live with that.

But lament no more, for I’ve found a therapeutic remedy, a special treatment to deal with both these retarded specimens. Whenever anyone questions my attachment to the land where my father was born and where my grandfathers are buried, I rub it in his face by proclaiming I’m a Palestinian to the bone.

And whenever the other side reveal their repulsion by the idea that they could love or belong to the land where they were born and lived all their lives, I become a fanatical Jordanian, as hard as they come. I advise all of you to do the same. It can be fun sometimes, and there is no other way to overcome the madness, trust me.

Of course, speaking of the memories evoked by the Jordanian landscape, a few Fridays ago I found myself revisiting the town of Na’our, to remind myself that I’m also a half Circassian citizen who spent some of the most beautiful nights of his childhood attending outdoor traditional weddings (Fantaziyyeh) in Na’our, marveling at the energetic dancing of this hot-blooded and fascinating people – and collecting empty rounds of 9mm shells whose loud bangs used to accentuate the euphoric foot thumping involved in the mixed gender dancing (thankfully, the Circassians, although devout Muslims, are still only mildly contaminated by Wahabist and other doctrines of segregation).

I’m not trying to run for elections here, but it crossed my mind as I passed through the old streets of this quiet village that I’ve got a very politically correct mix of national unity running in my veins after all. Hell, I am actually like Barack Obama (except that I don’t pal around with sons of Irgun terrorists who believe Arabs are destined to a floor-mopping destiny). Never mind Obama’s Zionist staff right now, as I must share the fascinating fact that Na’our is a town that has hardly changed a bit in the last thirty years.

While all surrounding areas have expanded by more than forty fold in population and buildings, Na’our truly remains one of the last sleepy vestiges of the old rural Jordan, and I wish it stays like that, if only so that I could have this convenient snapshot reminder of the beautiful culture of my maternal uncles and their unforgettable parties.

Where am I going with this, and what’s the answer to the question in the very first sentence above? Well, I guess every one of us is a product of the childhood air and dust we grew up inhaling, and you would love your country in as much as you hold that childhood dear to you. Personally, I can tell you that the addiction that compels me to keep roaming the streets of this country is stronger than any other ancestral linkage to a family name connecting me to a city in which I have never dwelled.

One can only understand the connection with the soil if one is haunted by a moving reel of his early life hugging every particle of sand in his backstreets, or climbing the ancient almond tree in his grandmother’s garden. This is what really connects me to a place I can call home, despite all the unfairness that may exist in this place and all the rotten things that take place inside it. That is also why you can only bow in reverence before those who choose to give their lives and sacrifice everything to defend their homes from foreign invaders, wherever they may be.

I am writing this on my way to Jordan, forty thousand feet across the Atlantic, and in addition to the burning longing one naturally has for his family, there is definitely something else to the inexplicable urge to be back home after a few weeks abroad, something deeper than just an urge to switch on that motorcycle once again. To all those who do not share my perception of this homeland, I say to them that whatever our backgrounds or origins are, we are all on board this ship together; we sail if it floats, and we drown with it, God forbid, if it sinks.

I will continue to visit my favorite view point in Abu El-Soos to watch the shimmering lights of Palestine with pride and remembrance of a tragic loss. And I will continue to love, with equal pride, the country where I was born and where I chose to raise my children. These two emotions should never clash in our country, and in my mind they never will. I shall continue to feel this way regardless of how inexplicable or irrational this love maybe. I have no choice over how I feel, because this homeland is the only one I’ve got.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Come on Jordan, this is it.

This is your chance, change the world for the better.

Contribute to society as society has done for you.

Change Jordan, Change Jordan, Change.

My questions are almost finished, so show me the answer.

Show us the answer.

Show them the answer.

You know, its about time you answered.

Answer, because theres no use in running away from questions.

Answer, let free the passion that’s driven you for so long. Far.

Answer: it’s alright.

They want to know the truth.

Don’t worry about philosophical teachings.

Unhampered expression is really what truth is.

Be the change you want to see in the world, said Ghandi

Jordan, don’t worry about the consequences. Answer, and be set free.

Answer, and give way to a better life.

People will always be out to obstruct truth.

Muster up all your strength, and let us hear an answer strong enough to defeat their obstruction.

By the way Jordan, you should know, Contradiction is what I live for.

I have the power to inspire

I have the power to disuade.

Confusion is less a state of mentality, and more a stimulant.

Contradiction is a open-ended confusion.

One that has no answer.

Go ahead.

Three things you should know

Life is nothing more than a series of random occurences picked out of an infinite list

Literature is nothing more than a series of ultimate values

An artist’s job is to show us what an eye and camera can’t.

What are you gonna do with your life?

You know, its about time you figured it out. You’re getting old.

All three? Are you up to it?

You’re out of your mind.

I doubt you have what it takes.

You will fail, you will be worth nothing, you will die.

Make up your mind, because that ain’t no answer.

Its time you changed your mindset.

Time you grew up.

Time has grown up, so are you ready to take on the challenge of your life?

Don’t forget your family, you don’t want to leave them behind.

Do you want to be a father of orphans?

Hush. Wait until I’m finished speaking.

You know, we haven’t been seeing each other much lately.

But you really don’t want to die.

Think it over, and we’ll talk.

You really shouldn’t die, you’re still too young to die.

Think it over, I know your not the religious type, but you would make a good pastor.

I sent a job application on your behalf.

I’ll let you know when they get back to me.