Since highly educated women frequently present a social and economic boon to a country, Jordan has ensured a successful and steady flow of female graduates into the employment market.

The recent release of a new report by the Canadian-sponsored National Center for Human Resources Development (NCHRD), in association with the Jordan-based Al-Manar Project, does however, cast a pall over the otherwise pleasing advancements.

According to the survey, in 2005 the distribution of Jordanian employees by gender demonstrated an 86.8 percent male majority over a 13.2 percent female minority. Within two years a slight increase brought female participation in the labour market to 15.7 percent, while male participation decreased to 84.3 percent.

Yet further disparities emerge on the earnings front as 8.1 percent of male employees earned JD 500 or more per month in 2007, while the figure for women remained at 4.4 percent, despite rising from 2.8 percent two years previously.

The diminutive figure on both counts proves further perplexing due to the preponderance of Jordanian women holding undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Just as the Jordanian labour market is dominated by a male majority, so too do female employees surpass their male counterparts in terms of higher education qualifications.

During the period 2005 to 2007, the number of male workers holding undergraduate degrees rose from 13.9 percent to 16.8 percent; likewise, holders of graduate degrees increased from 2.6 percent to 3.0 percent.

Contrastingly, female employees holding undergraduate degrees increased during the same period from 38.4 percent to 43.2 percent, while postgraduate holders grew from 3.6 percent in 2005 to 4.6 percent in 2007.

Of equal interest is the distribution of employees by gender within the employment sectors, with women flourishing in the field of professionals – that is, as doctors and lawyers – with figures rising from 42.2 percent to 47.9 percent over the same two year period.

The technical professions witnessed a slight decrease in female activity, down from 29.1 percent to 24.3 percent, although the total remains higher than the male presence, which dwindled by a fraction from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 8.5 percent in 2007.

Occupations comprising legislators, senior officials, and managers remain however, fiercely elusive to the female grasp with 0.0 percent holding positions in the field, although male employees have retained a steady hold with 0.1 percent between 2005 and 2007.

At present, women make up half of the six million strong population, and complaints that they are being deprived their share in the decision making due to the conservative, tribal-oriented government sector have become more vocalized in recent years.

Due to such calls, change is slowly eking its way forward: last year seven women won seats in the 28-strong cabinet of Prime Minister Nader al-Dahabi, with four named as ministers.

When compared with previous cabinets, in which two or three women occupied such positions, an optimist could cite the appointments as a step of progress on the path to gender equality in the government sector.

Encouragingly, and somewhat contradictory to initial assertions by the survey, the percentage of women active in the Jordanian labour force between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine years trump their male counterparts over the three year period.

In 2005, of male workers between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, 34.4 percent were engaged in the labour market, while in 2006 and 2007, their percentage increased to 34.9 and 33.8 percent respectively.

Similarly, between the ages of thirty and thirty-nine years, their presence remained consistent, fluctuating only from 30.3 percent down to 29.1 percent, before rising back to 30.9 percent.

For female employees, however, the nineteen years are marked by a veritable flurry of activity that leaves their male cohorts gasping on the sidelines as the primary age group – between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine – peak in 2005 at 39.1 percent, rise in 2006 to 41.0 percent, before stabilising in 2007 at 39.1 percent.

Proving these years to be but a warm-up, a substantial surge occurs between the age of thirty and thirty-nine years with figures of 36.8, 34.7, and 37.3 percent for the 2005 to 2007 period, marking a notable increase.

From the midst of these figures emerges a compelling picture of the gender dimension within the contemporary Jordanian work force, and one which lends added poignancy to the message conveyed by Queen Rania, on her YouTube channel.

Under the frenzied guise of the television series 24, the short clip titled, ‘See What Arab Women Are Up To’, depicts a collection of women in an array of professions, from home-makers, judges, and CEOs.

Up-beat and contemporary, the objective of such clips is to change the global misconception that oppression remains a prominent feature in the lives of Arab women.

Unfortunately, it cannot obscure the reality that both within and external to the kingdom oppression remains tangible, both in the social and professional spheres of female activity.

While the recent sentencing of a man for ten years over the killing of his sister has been lauded as the first step towards banning such killings, the long and arduous fight to reach this stage emphasizes the necessity to mark this landmark sentencing as more than a one-case gesture, and to ensure that women’s rights are on the agenda to stay.

The plethora of organizations operating within the kingdom to ensure such an agenda persists provides pleasing solace, particularly given their scope of support.

From matters concerning sexual health to workshops on the role of women in politics, groups such as the Human Rights Forum for Women’s Rights, the Federation of Professional and Business Women, the General Federation of Jordanian Women, and the Al Kutba Institute for Human Development ensure that the needs of Jordanian women are emphasized and addressed.

Of particular note is the General Federation for Jordanian Women (GFJW). Established in 1981 as a national non-governmental organization of women’s associations, societies and individuals, the Federation continuously strives to enhance the political, economic and social status of Jordanian women.

Comprising eighty-six Jordanian women’s organizations throughout eleven GFJW local governorate branches, the Federation also advocates legislative reform favouring women and initiates income-generating activities in collaboration with other NGOs, including the Noor al-Hussein Foundation.

Previous and ongoing projects include ‘Enhancing Women’s Participation in Political and Parliamentary Life’, which operated for one year in 2001, and an ‘ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Literacy Program’, started in 2002, which aims to improve young women’s computing skills and provide them with the skills to find suitable employment.

Just as the rights of women infuse a plethora of issues on a global scale, so too, in Jordan does it require attention and change.

From citizenship and nationality laws to honor killings and equal professional opportunities, each aspect remains a contentious, yet crucial issue – so much so that it would be a churlish endeavor to address the profound implications of the status quo, and the necessary changes, within the confines of a single article.

With a budding population of highly educated, motivated, and conscientious women, Jordan must continue to push the boundaries that have, to date, prevented women from occupying significant roles in the country’s employment market, particularly in the legislative, official, and managerial sectors.

The study by Al-Manar provides hope and disappointment in equal measure: Jordanian women are better educated and more active in the work force than ever before and yet their presence remains muted.

Despite this, progress is being made – it will be a slow process, but as long as it is sustained, changes will occur.

Perhaps there is no conclusion more fitting to such a capricious issue than that which Queen Rania surmised towards the end of the aforementioned broadcast: while much progress in the realm of women’s rights remains to be charted, for the moment, we can extol the progress that has been achieved thus far – and shall continue to be made, thanks to the endeavors of women’s organizations, and the sheer tenacity of the Jordanian women themselves.

K. Luisa Gandolfo is a graduate of the University of Exeter, where she recently completed her Ph.D. in Middle East Studies. In between research, she is a freelance journalist and compulsive reviewer of books.

She is a persistent reader despite the fact that our kind of society may even look down upon people who read, because reading is not yet an integral part of our social, cultural, and psychological make up.

While in other societies it is common to see people holding books and newspapers in public places, such a sight is rare in Jordan, or, for that matter, in the different parts of the Arab world where I have also lived in. This is why I look with curiosity upon my “reading wife” simply because the reading culture or the book culture is not there to support her. In spite of that, she would munch through myriads of words, as if their meanings and extrapolations were Turkish delight.

She was socialized in a “readersless” society and had the tenacity to pick up books, opening her mind and indulge in a literature that took her far from her roots, though she continues to value our Arabic and Islamic traditions.

In between getting the house chores done, taking the kids to and from school, cooking, cleaning, and taking them (and, occasionally, me) to doctors, the flow of her reading today remains at a constant pace, a steady momentum that only she can control.

I don’t really know how she manages to find the time, but she closes herself in, finding “reading time” whenever she can. When she reads about something that really matters to her she might discuss it with me, but most modern novels, some that may be wrongly described as pulp, she leaves to herself.

I don’t mind me telling you she is putting all of us to shame, since we rarely read and looking at words on a page is not really in our blood, despite the fact our Holy Koran has instructed us it to read, and fathom knowledge; even if we have to go to China to acquire it, as the saying goes!

She sometimes teases me that most of us don’t have not the guts to read, nor the energy to understand, we prefer verbal communication, and are guided by cinema and television. When I shoot back that she too watches television, she replies that she is in favour of balance.

She makes sure she sticks to a balanced reading ‘diet’ while I sit by and envy her, sometimes inspired to follow suit. Hers is an acquired habit of discipline, as if she were saying to herself “I’ll put in two or three hours a day to nourish my mind.”

She makes it a habit to read on the couch even while the kids are watching television, and I don’t know how she can actually become so consumed despite the noise. She reads in the bathroom at long and frequent bouts, and reads in bed despite the fact that she hardly needs to be rocked to sleep late at night.

She started first reading in the 1980s when she came to England, with one of her first books being Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, after the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to ban it. She decided to read the book because of the controversy surrounding it, due to the fact that certain officials said it compromised intelligence.

For her this was to be the beginning of a reading journey that blossomed over the years, despite the fact that reading and writing is a solitary, lonely, confining experience.

Because of the nature of our society, that which stresses kinship, my wife carries on with her reading without compromising any of her social commitments. She reads away from prying eyes of my mother, father, sister, and so on. Her reading is confined to our house.

Following Spy Catcher, she moved on to the works of the late Edward Said, which are today standard textbooks on post-colonial societies and their development.

I had bought the books to read one day, as I suppose many people do, but they ended up as decorations in what has become an interesting English and Arabic book library. I complained that I had no time to read, because of my supposed other engagements. She would leave me to my complaints and keep reading quietly.

As a housewife she is a multi-tasking reader, reading for knowledge, intellect, and sheer curiosity, to improve the agility of her brain and exercise her mind, as well to simply enjoy herself, to relax, and to lose herself in the narrative when other matters threaten to overwhelm her.

She was the one who taught me that one can read books purely for enjoyment. It occurred to me then that veteran readers start to accumulate what can be recognized as “reading experiences,” whereby you become fluent in language and sentence construction, which becomes useful when you are editing other people’s work.

My wife has accumulated a rich reading experience, while her thought process has become more methodical. Similarly, I have felt that my ideas, and the way I expressed them, were becoming more organized and systematic, as I read to improve the quality of my writing.

Marwan Asmar is the Responsible Editor of Jo Magazine, a monthly publication produced in Amman that mainly deals in local affairs and writes frequently on Palestinian-Israeli and Arab issues. From 1993 until 2003 he was the Managing Editor of the Star, an English-language political, cultural and economic weekly, also in Amman.

In the cold, Amman is a quieter place. Sound carries. Sunlight is milky and diluted. The nights are more energetic, now that new bars and restaurants are welcoming residents and travelers into their cavernous, smoky insides. For myself, I have now discovered Loki, the place that everyone started talking about a long time ago. As an infrequent traveler, I hope I can be forgiven for my lateness and general un-hipness.

The joke goes that Jordan is stuck “between Iraq and a hard place.” And yet for a nation literally bordered by conflicts, Jordan has done fairly well for itself, all things considered. It remains a favourite with tourists who are particularly keen on history and nature (although international brand-name luxury certainly has its presence in Amman, the Dead Sea, and beyond). The economy has been growing, and the currency is pretty strong.

The Islamic Action Front, a conservative political party, has suffered losses in Jordan’s most recent parliamentary elections. This may have something to do that the economy appears to be a top priority to the electorate, but personally, I’m not sure either way. Jordanian society as a whole is still pretty conservative, but Amman in particular has mellowed out some. I used to feel my foreignness keenly in Amman. Perhaps I’ve mellowed out as well.

In many public places, hotels especially, metal detectors are a reminder of the bombings of November 2005.

The metal detectors have a dual effect: they both inspire a feeling of safety, and remind one that there is no such thing as safety. Although, where in the world is really safe to begin with? I suppose I could bundle up and stick it out in my old ancestral lands in the Ukrainian countryside, or else in the North Carolina mountains, but then there would be people-smugglers and fundamentalists to fear, respectively.

Today, the threat of terrorism in Amman is a whispered threat. Upon a casual observation, it doesn’t quite seem real. You want to relegate it to the ghost-world, to the realm of the Chupacabra and the Abominable Snowman. Desire doesn’t always correspond with reality, however, and in the Levant this is especially so.

But you don’t want to think about these things in the waning days of winter, when women in niqab look badass in leather trenchcoats and shawerma places stand with their doors propped open, exhaling hunger and heat. It’s perilous to try to guess the future, but hope reverberates here, like adhan in those hours when a lazy bum like me has to stop for a second and marvel at how people manage to get up while all I am capable of doing is burrowing further under the blanket and away from the lingering cold.

The olive trees creak on the wind and sleepy cab-drivers honk irritably as a new day presses upon Amman. It’s gorgeous and unfussy, like the women stomping their cold feet at the bus-stops, like the gentle curves of the hills. After I finally come awake and face the music, a Ukrainian woman who dyes my hair tells me, while laughing, a story of her husband beating up her old boss when the latter tried to solicit sex from her. Throughout the day, different people relate the same grim suspicions about the famous Abdoun suspension bridge, a marvel of modernity, that’s “probably built with crap-materials.” Why? Who knows? And anyway, the bridge is so, so pretty that the doomsday talk surrounding it reminds me of a Morrissey lyric: “to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.”

I wish I could stay for weeks, eat mansaf until I’m fat and happy, listen to tales of terror surrounding gas prices, talk about the apparent plans for the prettification of Queen Alia International Airport (hey! I like it just the way it is! Oh wait, no one’s asked me…). I wish I came here more often. That’s the thing about Amman. It may not be obvious, it may not be in-your-face, but it is subtly, dangerously charming, even as it changes and morphs and breaks apart and comes together, like a craggy kaleidoscope before your eyes.

I recently got asked a bunch of questions by someone from a past life currently writing a book that includes a chapter on creativity, cinema, Palestinian and Arab independent production among other topics. After a few emails back and forth, the writer popped the question: “Do you mind if I include you in the chapter on Palestinian (as opposed to Jordanian) cinema?” I replied that that would not be true nor accurate to me personally and professionally and proceeded to dissect my life in an email back:

“I know that you’d like my answer to be the ideal story, but to tell you the truth, it’s not.

On identity – I am Jordanian. I never felt Palestinian nor can I relate to that part of me beyond the wider family meaning. It’s not how I grew up and the lifestyle I led allowed me to look way beyond borders of origin and just be a citizen of the world who happened to be from Jordan and from a family of Palestinian origin from Nablus. I did not grow up in a home that was Palestinian at all and did not receive that kind of awareness from my Jordanian-born father and Lebanese mother as we lived in 7 different countries around the world and I attended 8 schools during 12 years, speaking four languages and learning about the religions of the world through social studies and not ‘religion’ class.

My father was a politician and I hated politics – and still do. It’s not a strategic, conscious choice about being this or that, it’s who I am and what I am as a result of my life. And that may not be good news for your angle on Palestinian identity issue/unity/origins/rights, but it is my reality and works for me, end of story.

On film, you mention that I’m probably attracted to being Jordanian and not Palestinian from my professional perspective due to the pioneering position/entrepreneurial/being first – in truth, I could care less about all that. I’m so much more concerned about continuity and raising the bar and delivering outputs and maintaining perpetual movement. Being the first is nice for about two seconds, but it’s nothing and deserves no glory if it doesn’t become part of an industry that grows forward – and for me, that is the creative industry that happens to be in Jordan and will hopefully have a vast horizon.

Why film you ask? I’ve always loved the movies. I enjoyed my school video club, home movies, and over time I wanted to make films that entertain in a way that reflect things in my life or the life I can relate to. Most of my entertainment was American and some European and I couldn’t relate to some of it although I was always entertained by it and would seek it out. On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded with crappy Arab productions that are insulting and far from entertaining on one end (with a handful of exceptions of course), and on the other end there’s a barrage of ‘preaching’/cause related films/docs most of which I find repel more than they engage; or they are simply ‘good to know’ and didn’t push me to any kind of activism. So all I’ve had was foreign audiovisual which was extremely entertaining but did feel borrowed at times.

In 1990 I interned at a Jordanian production house. Back then they were successfully producing series for TV (and still are), most of which I could not identify with. I had no means to produce independently, so I started making TV commercials at that company. I liked the idea of creating little stories for products, I also made some corp docs to train myself and for the money (which paid very well). I started getting interesting assignments just because I spoke English, could present and pitch and develop creative concepts – stories. A couple years later I got offered a great job both in scope of work and salary at a regional ad agency which I took and worked with full-time for 4 years, making TVCs and creating stories for commercial clients, one of whom wanted to put a real-estate newsletter online in 95, and so I did that with Khaldoon Tabaza (founder of Arabia Online, which does not exist anymore, and is current chairman of Riyada Ventures) and got a taste for this little Arab digital city he was creating with a wonderful small group that was years ahead of the community around them as they built Arabia Online.

That year we were hacking test accounts to connect to the web, or dialing long distance to the UK or Israel, using a free ISP account to connect to the web. The agency client paid JD5,000 to put online 12 newsletter issues which for a few months in Jordan he could only access thru that expensive convoluted long distance way before the ISPs launched in Jordan. I was immediately hooked on the online world and tried to get the agency to embrace it, but it was too early and they shrugged it off. I got restless, and left, and dabbled with Arabia. At first the thrill of building the portal was great and I soon realized the ‘cool’ content that could be created freely, away from censorship and the hassle of the industry status quo and how it was reaching a wider audience, anywhere. At Arabia I often struggled to find or help create new original content and after we built the monster I started realizing that it won’t happen by force as people are not used to ‘creating’ and it just had to evolve gradually.

While in Dubai I felt the time was right to start making content, I considered staying in Dubai and producing, and did the rounds with some production companies, but they were mostly doing TVCs and programming for pre-sold television and I didn’t see myself there again at all. I’ve been a huge fan of mobile – in 97 I was roaming on my very expensive Fastlink line on the first Nokia Communicator/the brick, checking my Arabia mail and looking at the few portal pages on a small B&W screen – paying hundreds of dinars monthly to do that. And no, there were no sites formatted for mobile or small screens then.

So consuming media on my mobile and laptop in small format is innate and attractive to me. I figured it would be easier to start something from scratch in Jordan. So I came back and was actually looking into making snackable media for small screens, because I believed people would want to consume entertainment and information quickly and on the go. In 2003 I spent an entire dinner talking with an investment banker friend about making entertainment for small screens, and he mocked it all night saying there could not be a business model as people would never be willing to consume media that way.

At that same time I was also developing two production projects with friends, one was a docudrama about an ancient lost land, and the other was a sitcom script I started writing in English about a bunch of Arab friends living and working in Arab cities – the genesis of which was my life really. While in development, the intent was to pitch the doc to European funds. But at the same time the Film Commission in Jordan had just been announced and I knew some of the board and the exec commissioner, so I went to them to pitch my doc project hoping they had some money or resources to tap into. They had just started to build a team and were about to start exploring what to do, so after my presentation they asked me what I needed to take the project forward, I told them and they said they wished they had the means to do all that but don’t at that point.

A couple days later Samer Mouasher ( Commissioner at the Royal Film Commission, entrepreneur in ecotourism & film production) asked me to help put together a set up that would do just that so we could jump-start parts of the industry. It was a good opportunity for me to get to know the local market, and what better way to do something right than to structure it out of need. I told them I really wanted to produce and that the RFC job would be a temp thing I would help with thinking I could do it over a few months and then go out and produce. Well, nothing in this part of the world gets done that fast, so I stayed with the RFC 2+ years and developed some amazing capacity building programs that included multimedia literacy as well as the specialized filmmaking ones.

Then I was finally very ready to produce, and when I left, I walked out into a beautiful space that had various resources I could bring together. Finally I was ready and found a community around me that had kicked in. But the real tipping point was the access to the digital filmmaking tools that were becoming mainstream, allowing us to sidestep celluloid film, labs, specialized skills, etc – all of which did not exist in Jordan, and never had to. We could do digital production which made things easier, cheaper, braver, faster – allowing us to experiment and explore and do it our way – whatever that was going to be.

It’s been a totally organic progression, and now, with multiplatform distribution, I love the producing space at this point in time because it’s possible for me to pull into it everything I’ve always loved and all I’ve learned through my rich experiences.

You [the letter-writer] mention Elia Suleiman’s views on “Palestinian identity: the one which was born in the 70s based on human values, freedom and justice for all.”

Surely human values, freedom and justice for all belongs to Homo sapiens in general, not just Palestinians. It’s nice to say all that, and I get this view, but I don’t see how that differs from what any other nationality wants or aspires for. It’s the basic requirement and rights human beings seek anywhere, is it not?

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is extremely unjust and outrageous and most of the time I find the events surreal. Maybe shame on me for moving on with my life, but in that same breath I say shame on the world that continues to enjoy its spectator status on this issue! But I also remember growing up thinking the same about the Native Americans when I learned about them in social studies while sitting in a multicultural class which included Israelis, and I thought the same of slavery in America, about South Africa, and the Maoris, and the Dalai Lama, and the Indian caste system, and, and, and…

I will not apologize for not fitting into the Palestinian mold while holding a name like Toukan, rooted in Nablus. I am proudly the product of the life, learning and cultural awareness that nourished me over the years as I lived around the world, and I cannot turn back time and don’t wish to either. When asked about my nationality, identity, where I’m from, the answer is Jordanian, without hesitation. I am fully aware that my roots/larger family is originally Palestinian, but to me that’s a detail of lineage that I don’t identify with in my present.

I was recently Facebooked by a young Toukan – a total stranger who messaged me because of our last names. When I asked him about himself, he said he was a twenty-something Lebanese.

You may find this tragic, but it’s a reality I embrace.”

More About Nadine Toukan: With an insatiable appetite for adventure, living in Tripoli, New Delhi, Beirut, Belgrade, Tehran, Rome, Muscat, Dubai, Washington and Amman while playing everywhere else was never about the air miles. It’s always been about the stories. Over the years, I’ve produced stories for advertising working with Horizon, FCB, for online communities working with Arabia Online, and for multiplatform with aspiring Arab filmmakers through my work setting up the Capacity Building Division at Jordan’s Royal Film Commission.

Today, as an independent producer based in Jordan and passionate about the convergence of artistic hearts, tools,storytelling and the power of collaboration, I’m working with filmmakers in the region to bring new entertaining stories from the middle of the east to interested audiences anywhere. Why? Because I believe that good, well made stories that entertain have and always will change our world. And because I believe that the industry of filmmaking and other arts enables us to engage in a wider progressive global dialog, transforming our attitudes and economies….and because I like the quality of my life when I’m creating with beautiful people.

Well, the time has come to separate the best from the rest. For me, the festival peaked with the world premiere of “Captain Abu Raed” – the first Jordanian feature film in a rather long number of years.

Let me tell you, all those decades upon decades were certainly worth the wait.

Director, writer, and producer Amin Matalqa described this film as a “fable,” which is probably as close as one can get to its essence without giving too much away. The hero of the story, portrayed by veteran Nadim Sawalha (you’ve seen him everywhere from “Syriana” to “The Nativity Story” as of late), is a janitor who gets mistaken for an airline pilot on account of a hat fished out of the trash in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport.

Abu Raed is an older man who leads a quiet life, having conversations with his dead wife’s portrait and spending his evenings with only a cup of tea for company. This is a man who had dreams once; you can still see something of them in his kind, keen gaze, alongside past calamities and defeats, all equally ground down by the thievish passage of time.

It is the exicted attention of his humble neighborhood’s children that inspires Abu Raed to assume the role of storyteller and sage; as he recounts tales of the fictional adventures of the man he might have been, we discover that the man he is is not a whole lot different. Abu Raed can still be a hero, janitor’s uniform and all.

Thanks to the editing of obscenely young Laith Majali (who is also one of the producers) and the brilliant cinematography of Reinhart Peschke, the movie has a lush, gorgeous look: the light alternates between laving like honey and casting inky shadows on faces and streets. The city of Amman exists as a separate character here, a living landscape transversed with human lives.

This is a family-friendly (I hate that horrible adjective, but there it is) film that nevertheless deals with the darker side of life. Domestic abuse, classism, societal pressure, and senseless tragedy figure heavily in the plot. Not all characters are redeemed, and not all loose ends are tied up with pretty bows. While neither edgy nor gritty (more adjectives I despise), this movie lingers with you like a beloved childhood story whose undertones continue to unfold in one’s mind long after the original encounter.

If great books cannot be read, only re-read (this is according to Vladimir Nabokov, a good authority on the subject), then great movies ought to be re-watched, and “Captain Abu Raed” is no exception. This movie will open in Jordan in February of 2008, and it will make its way to Sundance earlier next year as well. I’d love to chase it all over the globe, but will have to sustain myself with memories in the meantime.

If you need a point of reference, I would say this movie is a bit like “Monsieur Ibrahim” – only more engrossing. It’s an urban romance both humourous and melancholic, and a great antidote to pretentious art-films and sickly-sweet family dramas combined.

It is also hopefully the start to a new era of Jordanian filmmaking. Enough of Jordan being solely the backdrop to foreign-made films, I say. While “Captain Abu Raed” is a standalone achievement of tremendous magnitude, it could also be the start of something equally terrific.

It’s good news all around, at last.

Before I reveal to you my ambitious proposition to end human strife and achieve world peace, allow me first to share with you an unusual personal condition from which I’ve been silently, yet painfully, suffering for at least two years now. Today, I believe the time has come to speak out and seek counsel, and perhaps even find a cure. Although I know this is not a help-line for my ailments nor is it the right venue for such private complaints, I still feel the need to blurt it out in public. Maybe, just maybe, I would feel a little better somehow by talking about it. So please excuse my selfishness if you can, but here it is, my mysterious disorder: I cannot read, hear or watch the news anymore.

There it goes, off my beleaguered chest (I already feel some relief, by the way). As ridiculous as it sounds, I am confessing that I lost the ability to concentrate during what should be an important part of my daily life, namely those moments I used to dedicate to finding out from various media outlets what’s going on around the world. They say that a problem diagnosed is a problem half-solved, and I think I know exactly why this is happening to me. Although I’ve never been one with a soft heart, it seems that the sheer magnitude of violent deaths and human suffering in every story, in every broadcast and in every line of news, has finally overwhelmed me. I have finally succumbed to the ugliness of this world by unconsciously shutting down my receptors. As an involuntary reaction, my mind started to switch off completely in the face of unspeakable calamities. A defense mechanism, I would guess, is being triggered inside my brain to block out the mayhem. No matter how hard I try, each time I tune in to the news or browse newspapers on the internet, I crumble under the weight of an insurmountable depression that envelops me.

How many of you suffer from the same syndrome, I wonder? In one day in Iraq, for example, while digesting the report of the daily maniac blowing up the daily crowded market killing the daily dozens, we learn of American soldiers gang-raping a fifteen year old girl in her house and then killing and burning her with her entire family. Because I refuse to believe that our species can be so barbaric, for a fleeting fraction of a second I get the feeling that I would wake up from a terrifying nightmare – only to discover that these are true stories and that the images are real. Yet, in a streak of masochistic conduct, I persist in seeking that which eats away at the core of my soul. Out of indefatigable habit, I suppose, I keep following the bloody news and keep suffering the consequences, just like a moth drawn to the fatal light that will eventually consume it.

Although I stopped getting the paper editions long ago (mainly because their ink messes your hands), one glittering Saturday morning in Geneva, I decided to buy a few newspapers to re-experience holding them up and flipping through them while waiting to have my haircut. I see people doing it all the time, and it looks so normal, so human, so unnoticeably routine. However, by the time my turn had come and I was seated in the barber’s chair, I couldn’t for the life of me remember how I walked across that room, nor could I recollect where it was that I dropped the newspapers along the way. Wrapped in that cloth that you wear inversely like a straitjacket (yes, they have those in Geneva, too), I saw a different gloomy face in the mirror, one I could hardly recognize. I realized that I had lost focus somewhere between reading of the latest mass grave in Iraq, the latest family wiped out in Gaza, and the latest meaningless slaughter in some remote part of the world which I cannot recall right now. Even the small side stories were as ghastly as the major ones. There was no respite in the graphicness of death, and no time even to reach the sports pages either.

I found myself suddenly stranded in a surreal state of utter disbelief, staring at the scissors swinging over my head and imagining what it would really be like if its blades had been used to decapitate me. The skies outside were no longer as blue and uplifting as I had left them. Neither was my spirit as elevated as when I first hopped out of bed that sunny morning. Looking at the same mirror, I thought to myself, surely, the oblivious clients around me waiting for their trim could not have been reading the same news and casually pretending they were from a different planet? Unless, of course, they were, and I was stuck inside an endless horror movie, packed with weird alien characters. “Would you like to wash your hair?”, the voice came as I was about to stand up and leave. “No, thanks”, I mumbled, with my incredulity peaking as I glanced at the avalanche of morbid tales still plastered on the front pages of the papers I had just left behind. “Your papers, sir”, the lady said with a smile. I feigned a smile back, asking her to add them to the stack of Paris Match and Hola magazines scattered on the coffee table. I don’t need them anymore, I said to myself, nor do I need her straitjacket. What I needed most was my sanity. Escape, if I have to, and I was going to do just that. We all need to and we all do every once in a while. In my case, I just couldn’t take the news anymore, and I deliberately decided to get as far away from it as I could. I turned on my noisy engine outside, and off I ran like a coward, looking for a new ride and a new secluded mountain to hide.

Thinking of the Jordanian MPs who had walked all over our dead bodies by desecrating the memory of our fallen martyrs, I remembered a line from the movie that made Mustapha Akkad, the genius director murdered in the same attacks, so popular in the Arab world. At the beginning of this household epic, as prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Abu Talib, worried for his nephew – who had spent the last three days meditating inside the cave of Hira’ – the old man gazed at the hilltop, and with deep resignation in his voice, he expressed his trepidation: “I don’t know what it means… men see the world too well from a mountain”. I don’t know what it means either, and I don’t pretend to descend from these long rides drenched in revelation or singing words of wisdom. However, it dawned on me during one of these escapades that the true meaning of citizenship in any society can only be understood through appreciating the complexity of the two-way reciprocal stream of taxation and representation. European citizens love their countries and passionately cherish them because they know that they elect politicians and civil servants whose paramount obligation is to provide them with a decent level of public services, wherever these citizens may be located. In other words, they expect and do get something in return from their participation in public life.

So, as I was cruising the French Saleve mountain towering over Geneva, but climbing its other side which overlooks the beautiful city and lake of Annecy, I crossed through a tiny village that was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Yet – and it was the first time that I paid attention to this particular observation – it struck me that the infrastructural development of the roads, the services, the landscaping and every other little detail in every little corner of this seemingly obscure spot on the map was simply astounding. Admiring the beauty of the perfection, I noticed a phenomenon that we so badly lack in the Arab world and which Europeans take for granted: that every remotely isolated square inch of rural Western Europe is as developed and nurtured by the state and its local authorities as the heart of any of its bustling capital cities. That’s why, I believe, you always detect this natural desire by the inhabitants to care for the land and for its surroundings, far beyond the boundaries of their private properties. This communal protective instinct is the healthiest trait any government can aspire to instill in its citizens, motivating them to assume that noble task of being the voluntary guardians of the realm. And such behavior flourishes in Europe not because Europeans are superior beings, but because they have realized that good citizenship is a mutually beneficial state of affairs, for them and their governments.

For example, these lonely villagers go through the trouble of adorning their balconies with such a breathtaking array of geranium flowers because they do feel that their village belongs to them and that their tax money visibly bounces back from a government system that caters for the well being of their community. That’s why they want their towns to look so pretty and do their best to keep them that way. That’s also why they will avoid littering their streets in as much as they will refrain from doing so inside their actual homes, because both physical domains are afforded the same affection and viewed with the same sense of ownership by their residents. Both spaces inspire the same attachment to a dwelling, a personal habitat, one that belongs to you as much as you belong to it, whether you actually own it or not. This domino effect of mutual concern between citizen and state, when it is multiplied throughout the land, symbolizes the real meaning of a homeland inside of which you feel significant as an equal tax-paying citizen, no matter what your last name is and who your relatives and friends are. This balanced equation is in my opinion the ultimate concept of a nation that you would want to safeguard, one that you would give your life to protect. That is also why this fact should be remembered by all those good men and women in Jordan’s recently sprawling committees, the ones seeking to inject into our people a sense of patriotic belonging by using various creative slogans. For such efforts to succeed, it is indispensable for us to bear in mind that the rights and duties associated with citizenship have to flow both ways. There is just no other way for this river to take shape.

Down to sea level, slowly but surely, reality sinks back in. News of our region is as unavoidable as I had left it when I took off, and it breaks my heart yet again. How many times can I bear this cycle in the space of 24 hours, I wonder? There is just so much injustice in our part of the world, so much misery and suffering, all perpetuated by overzealous fanatics from all faiths in the name of worshipping the same creator. If religion is indeed the opium of the masses, as Karl Marx famously opined, then the Middle East must be experiencing the dizzying nausea of a lethal overdose. From Jewish supremacist politicians who regard non-Jews as vermin, backed by evangelical Christians who can’t wait for the end of the world, to Islamic fundamentalists who think all Jews are descendants of pigs and monkeys, I can think of only one way to end this ancient squabble once and for all. I do believe that there are enough people like me on all divides who do not want to occupy other people’s land or drive them from their homes, and want to live in peace with peoples of all faiths and denominations, whether they worship the same God or worship nothing at all.

We have to stand up and be counted, because we are not the problem. The problem lies in the fanatics and extremists on both sides who are bent on exterminating each other. Therefore, I say in all earnestness, let them fight it out. Why not? Let those who believe in killing and death go to a neutral and far away desert and put themselves out of their misery. We just need to convince them that they need to conduct their battles elsewhere, not in the middle of our towns and cities, and we should provide incentives for them to do so.

For example, if there are indeed people living amongst us in Jordan who believe Zarqawi was a hero, I think our government should not persecute them at all, but should instead provide the transportation by airlifting them to a place where they can join their fellow madmen. In other words, we should shorten their quest for paradise as much as possible and do all of us a favor. I used to laugh with an Algerian friend of mine back in the early nineties when he used to advocate a drastic solution to the murderous upheaval in his country by criminals disguised in the robe of Islam. He used to say that Algeria has enough vast deserts to allow these sword-wielding butchers to set up an independent state of their own where they can have all the camels and tents they need to live in the stone age, if that is what they really aspire for.

Today, I don’t laugh anymore. We do need to take polls and we do need to ask people what they truly want and where they stand. If we can ultimately separate the advocates of a just peace and co-existence from the advocates of death and destruction on both sides, then as I said before, we have a problem half-solved. Thereafter, let those in favor of resolving human disputes through violence battle it out away from us. At our paid expense, if need be, they should be transported to a suitable battlefield. I will even pray for all of them to go to heaven, as long as they keep enough distance to let the rest of us live in peace. A crazy and idiotic solution, you’re thinking? Perhaps. But when in Rome – and if all Romans have lost their heads – then you have the absolute right to do as they do and start speaking their twisted, insane language. When the only currency in circulation are rusty copper coins of madness, who can blame a humble writer exchanging absolute folly for the semblance of wisdom? Yes, I say, let them fight it out.

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

Mmmkkkhhh! Hhhaaaakkhht! Thfoouu! No, these are not horrendous typos you are seeing. This is my best attempt to emulate and reproduce some of the charming sights and sounds we still encounter in some of the streets of Amman. Excuse me for turning your stomachs, but I almost slipped on one of these stray missiles the other day while navigating my way in downtown Spitville.

I went there to buy a famous book of Hadeeth, or the alleged sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. You see, I had written a mini-study in Arabic some years ago, which emphatically proves that most of these sayings could never have been uttered by the most intelligent, the most compassionate and the most civilized man to have enlightened Arabia fourteen centuries ago because they directly contradict with the clear text of the Quran. I still maintain that they were falsely attributed to the prophet in a concerted effort to tarnish the great religion of Islam.

So I thought I could reinforce my arguments because I recently read in this particular book an alleged story which claims that Prophet Muhammad had instructed his followers to lick their fingers and lick their plates after they finish eating any meal – because they never know which particle of food carries the blessing. Even that piece which falls on the floor, these bizarre tales related, should be picked up and devoured because it could be the magical one harnessing the hidden goodness. I thought that such heresies directed at the prophet were worse than any cartoon that can be drawn in an obscure newspaper because its authors insist that these are stories that are as authentic as any verse in the Quran. But the finger-licking instructions were only a small fragment of the whole story. I do believe that the greatest damage done to the heritage of Islam has been deliberately inflicted by those who invent, print and promote these lies. The aim is very clear: to empty Islam of all manifestations of beauty by making it synonymous with ugliness, vulgarity, and everything backward, unhygienic, primitive, and intellectually retarded. And what better arenas to contaminate than those in which Muslims had once been the unchallenged pioneers. From architecture, science, and the arts, to the very clothes Muslims wear, a vicious campaign of “uglification” was underway. The sharpest and deadliest sword swaying over any dissenting neck was to claim that the prophet himself had wanted it to be this way. For example, there isn’t a square centimeter of monuments from Alhambra to the Dome of the Rock to Taj Mahal that Muslims did not lavishly decorate with breathtaking precision and magnificence. So comes a weird hadeeth to proclaim that the decoration of mosques with Arabesque and calligraphy is prohibited, and that the shape of the dome – Islam’s gift to the world of architecture – is un-Islamic. That explains why the historic old town of Mecca was completely bulldozed, using the same dogma of the morons who dynamited the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan. Muslims invented the prototypes to all the orchestral musical instruments of today (kithara, rebec, lute, psaltery, tabor, timbale are the precursors to the guitar, piano, violin, cello, bass, and percussions). Flamenco songs are the only European folkloric songs that chant for the majestic allure of the night (noche), the moon (la luna), and the black eyes (ojos negros) – and guess where that came from? Even the word Ole according to the etymology section of a Spanish dictionary comes from the name of Allah, which Muslims used to hail upon hearing a moving tune. Yet you have entire chapters in these hadeeth books decreeing that musical instruments will be melted in hellfire and poured down the ears of those who listen to music. Muslims, who used to fascinate the world with their exotic and colorful attires, were also the first to wear shirts, or qamees in Arabic (camisa in Spanish and chemise in French). So comes along fabricated directives of the prophet that Muslim men are better off wearing a short dress that reveals their hairy legs, and to top it all, should don a wild, untrimmed beard and crown it with a shaved moustache. Why? Because this is the closest to an orangutan that you can look. The list is long and depressing. No longer do we recall that Abbas Bin Firnas was the first person who attempted to fly in the 9th century. Now we only learn how to steer passenger jets into civilian buildings instead. Someone out there didn’t want Islam ever again to be associated with splendor or exquisite taste. It should be perpetually linked in the minds of the world with videotaped decapitations of innocent men and women begging for their lives.

Back to Phlegmtown. I decided one Friday morning to surprise my kids with hot, freshly baked sesame bread loaves from Abdali, a nostalgic desire that always whetted my appetite during the cold winter mornings of Geneva. So as my place in the queue approached the oven, what appeared from a distance to be the aromatic fumes of toasting bits of dough turned out to be the smoke of the cigarette hanging permanently from the lips of the baker in charge. Needless to explain, the ashes were getting flicked all over the place and all over the bread. What shocked me more than anything, however, was that I was the only person in the queue who found this scene to be objectionable, although the mayhem the cigarette was causing had been visible to all. What the hell has happened to us? We are the offspring of the civilization that invented soap. We invented bathing, for God’s sake, in public hammams no less. Arabs were the first to discover that diseases were contagious and built separate wards to quarantine the sick in 8th century Baghdad, which later came to be known as hospitals. So why do we stand numbed in a bread queue and not be outraged at the needless disintegration of our standards of hygiene?

There goes the pleasure of my coveted brunch. Back in the car, a program discussing some incest related technicality that can result from polygamous marriages was airing on a local station. My blood started to boil. It is indeed a sad fact that one of the first things westerners learn about Muslims today is that they are the people whose religion allows the men to marry four wives. What is even sadder is that almost all of you are reading this saying, well of course it does, under certain conditions. Wrong again. There is only one situation where the Quran ever allows men to marry more than one wife, and it has nothing to do with the widespread fallacy of the pre-condition of fairness to the wives. The one and only place in the Quran where polygamy is mentioned is in the first three verses of the Chapter of Women. Any six-year-old is capable of understanding the unambiguous language used in those verses. After reminding humans that they were created from one soul, the second verse of this chapter immediately states:

“And give to the orphans their property, and exchange not the good for the bad [in your management thereof], nor embezzle their wealth into your own wealth; that would surely be a great crime”.

As you can clearly read, the subject discussed here is not the needs of the husband or the number of his wives, but the noble teachings about the rights of orphans in society. In the same breath in the immediately following verse, the Quran makes this unequivocally conditional statement:

“And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice [between them], then [marry] only one”

The chapter continues with more verses about the holy duty to protect orphans and the unforgivable crimes of digressing against the rights of this vulnerable group in society. Nowhere else in the entire Quran is the subject of polygamy raised again. The prophet himself grew up an orphan and appreciated best what it means to be a fatherless child. Indeed, in many places in the Quran, Islam appeared as if it is a religion whose sixth pillar was to protect the sacred rights of the orphans. And the above Quranic text could not be any more straightforward in this regard. In a war-ridden community where most of the male fathers would have been lost in battle, Islam envisaged that widowed mothers would be greatly disadvantaged in that harsh, male-dominated environment. Therefore, only if the purpose of marrying more than one wife had been to provide shelter and protection for the orphaned children of that wife could Muslim men combine two or more women under their guardianship. And even under those severe circumstances of an orphan’s crisis, if the man cannot be fair to the wives then only one is permitted. This is where the confusion about fairness comes from. Muslims conveniently ignored the essential pre-requisite of protecting the orphans, and legalized polygamy under the unenforceable regulation of requiring husbands to be fair to all the wives. Today, when Muslim men practice polygamy, no one ever mentions orphans, thereby conveniently committing a gross misreading of a very simple Quranic stipulation. It does not take a scholar to understand the first three verses of the Chapter of Women. Yet, an entire society has willfully twisted the text to a point where a famous Egyptian soap opera has recently achieved household recognition in the trivializing of what is an otherwise obnoxious and perverted practice. As usual, dissenting voices were silenced. Once again, Muslims chose to wallow in their deep ignorance of their own religion.

When I discussed this subject with friends many years ago, one of them directed me to a proper sheikh who he said was more capable of answering me (as is the case with most Muslims, an overriding fear of reading the Quran for themselves has been instilled by clergymen who want to reserve such rights for themselves – lest Muslims use their heads and interpret a simple verse without their aid and supervision). So I referred this eloquent cleric to the first three verses of the Chapter of Women and asked him to explain how a blanket permissibility could ever be construed from the conditional requirement about the orphans stipulated therein. Of course, he tried very hard to go around that pre-condition, but eventually stopped making any sense. When he had finally given up, he performed an astonishing miracle. He told me that the permission to marry four wives does not really come from the Quran, but is actually derived from the needs of males – which apparently he said we all know about. He added that we were both men – and it is at such moments of honesty that I usually get the urge to vomit – and that we both knew the uncontrollable urge one gets of needing to have more than one sexual partner. He said that Islam was a religion of accommodation, not hardship – thank God for that – and that it does cater for such overriding desires that are suppressed deep in the souls of men. I did say that his argument was astonishing because, here I was, quoting the Quran and pointing to this man of the cloth that Muslims have been distorting one of Islam’s simplest teachings for centuries, and he just stood there and casually asked me to forget about what the Quran says, because after all, polygamy had nothing to do with God and was just another case of overabundant testosterone. Right there and then, I just wished that my ballistic skills with saliva could save me and that I could shower this man with some of my thoughts. Alas, the conversation had to end at that point, and so does this edition of the diaries.

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

A year ago, many across the world were shocked by news of bombs exploding in Jordan — a country seen as an oasis of stability in a volatile part of the world. We, Jordanians, were particularly pained and angered by the bombs that killed family members, friends and acquaintances. Although having watched the rest of the region and the world increasingly being targeted by terrorism, we simply did not think it would happen to us — or at least hoped it would not.

The feeble reaction, however, we Arabs and Muslims have expressed regarding terrorism in the region and the world, may have helped encourage an environment where terrorism is tolerated. If we are to presume that terrorists inflict fear and terror in the belief that they have support for their agenda (at least from some people, at some level), then every time we have been silent we have in fact encouraged terrorists.

Every time they killed in the name of Islam and spoke on behalf of Muslims, and we remained silent, watching the senseless killings, we acted as indirect supporters of their terror (and allowed them to usurp legitimate resistance struggles in the cases of Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya, for their own ends). Every time we stood silent as they killed innocent people and bombed civilian locations we added to their strength, handing them the bullets for their next attack. Our silence has been their ammunition.

When Chechen freedom fighters forced their way into a school over two years ago, holding hundreds of Russian children hostage, many in the Arab and Muslim worlds kept disturbingly silent. The Chechens have legitimate political grievances against Russia, but is Beslan excusable?

In another instance, in October 2004 in Baghdad, Iraqi children were killed by anti-occupation forces while being handed sweets by American soldiers. Thirty-five young people lost their lives that day. Few among us were even aware. Their death might have gone unnoticed to some, in the mess that Iraq has become. A year later, in identical circumstances, 27 people were killed, the majority, again, children. No outrage was expressed.

These are but a few examples of how apathetic we as Arabs and Muslims have become. And it is apathy, not cultural or religious backwardness and cruelty, as some in the US and Europe would claim. Decades of institutionalized social and political submission, as well as the West’s relationship with us, have led to genuine apathy; a belief that our voices are simply not heard nor valued.

Daily news of the killing of Palestinians and Iraqis, and the bombing of the Lebanese in the summer, has only increased this apathy. It is said that as a coping mechanism, the body becomes numb when faced with extreme pain. What we are going through mentally and emotionally could be the equivalent of this physical numbness — who, after all, can stomach watching the daily killings of Muslim and Christian Arabs, by the Israelis, by the Americans, and, as in Iraq, by our own?

Every day, scenes on TV screens and news in print media show death and destruction around us. In the case of Palestine, we have been witnessing killings, oppression and dispossession for decades now. To our east, Iraqis fall victim by the hundreds every day.

Yet feeling victimized only compounds apathy. Like oppressed people everywhere, we have come to view our values in reaction to, and in the context of, our political realities and the West’s treatment of and actions towards us. But values are sacred; they need to remain unchangeable, regardless of the context. Killing of innocent people is wrong and unacceptable. Period. Regardless of the injustice done to us, we should hold true to our values and our Muslim teachings of tolerance and non-violence towards civilians. And, above all, we should not allow ourselves to be apathetic to a breach of our values.

In some ways the Amman bombings might have created a small shift in unconscious support for or apathy towards terrorism; the very beginning of the end of this lack of awareness, in Jordan at least.

The tragic reality is that human beings, by nature, fail to act until the arrow has turned on them or their own. But we fail to realize that each time we are silent in the face of extreme wrongdoing, we are strengthening that arrow, until it takes its own course. Until it eventually aims at us as well.

I came, I saw, and oh my God, Jordan is changing fast. Good or bad depends from where you’re looking.

Personally, I’m not going to ride the wave of positive dreaming to the tune of merry singalongs. That’s not my job. If you want to feel good, go have a joint, or read the editorials of the oldest twin Arabic dailies. Or do both at the same time, if you want to begin to believe the latter. I describe things as I see them and call them by their names. Cup half full or half empty is not my business as long as what’s in it is drinkable – and available to all.

So apart from being blessed with the best weather in the world (that’s almost as flattering as you’re likely to squeeze out of me), I will not rewrite one of my pathetic schooldays composition pieces and paint a childish rosy picture. Back then, they used to ask us in English exams to write what we did in the summer vacation, and almost all submitted pieces across the Kingdom went like this: “I went to Aqaba. Aqaba was nice. It was sunny. The sun is good. We played in the sand because the sand is nice. The sea was also nice… etc.”. You know the ones I’m talking about.

I kept telling these blissful stories every year. Then, when a government genius decided to reintroduce the mandatory ninth grade Matriculation exams (Matrek, in Arabic), I was seated for the finals in Rashid Tlei’ school, and on my same double seated wooden desk was an older Tawjihi student from a government school, also sitting for his English test. When he saw that I finished early, he asked me to help him out with the essay part, requiring usually no more than a couple of double spaced paragraphs. Uninvited, he passed me his paper and beseeched me to write the whole thing for him. To my disbelief, I warned him that it was impossible because if we get caught, we’ll both be in deep shit, and that in any case, our different handwritings would give us away. But he persisted, so I urged him to do as the question says and just describe what he did in the holiday, and he’ll be fine.

“But I didn’t do anything in the holiday”, his worried answer came, oblivious to whether the government monitor could hear his desperate pleas in the small classroom. I whispered to him to write what he did the previous year. Again, nothing, and neither the year before nor as far as he could remember. With the situation getting more absurd – and risky – I instantly learned to talk without moving my lips and advised him to do as I did and make it up; just say that he went to Aqaba and that it was an orgasmically mind-blowing journey, and get it over with.

“But you don’t understand” he retorted, “that’s why I need your help, I’ve never been to Aqaba, I haven’t the faintest idea what to say”. The poor guy has probably never left Amman all his life.

Leaving aside his own wretchedness, what a tragic education system that we had. This student spent a lifetime being told to memorize that the causes for the collapse of the Ottoman empire are three very short sentences with a specific order, and that, just like a recipe for omelet, he cannot even change their sequence. When he was suddenly required to think independently, he couldn’t dream up an imaginary trip to save his life.

So yes, there’s tons of cash pouring into the country today, but the concentration on the development of western Amman in contrast with the rest of the country is out of all reasonable proportions, to say the least. The twain are centuries apart you could hardly believe you’re in the same country. But Jordan is bigger than the few neighborhoods of its capital city, and those left on the margins, like this poor student, deserve to share in the fruits of the current rush. Otherwise, what is the point of rain if clouds continue to park over the same saturated spot to the exclusion of the rest of the parched lands? It might as well never rain.

On another front, while observing the Jordanian landscape so dear to my heart, I noticed a bizarre Jordanian fascination with the highway. Yes, I’m talking about the autostrad, the autoroute, the autobahn. All over the world, when a main freeway is built, the value of land around it dramatically drops because of noise and pollution. But not in Jordan. For some odd reason, a farmhouse on the airport road is an expensive luxury, the closer to the actual asphalt carriageway the better. Not only that, but national universities, supposed to be the breathing outlets of intellectual activity, are scattered right on its sides like gas stations are in developed countries, in this case breathing only carbon monoxide. There is just no explanation for our peculiar attachment to be near the core of the busy traffic routes. If Frank Sinatra did it his way, I guess we’re doing it on the highway.

While I will never understand our obsession with staying in proximity to cars zooming by at dangerous speeds and inhaling their poisonous exhaust fumes, the road phenomenon that I find most disturbing and downright ugly is the inexplicable choice of picnic spot on the very sides of the airport and Dead Sea roads. This has nothing to do with financial capability and everything to do with absolute laziness and lack of imagination on the part of the campers. These people have already gone through the effort of going far out from where they live, but couldn’t be bothered to veer off from the main highway to set up base for their families’ day in the sun.

This is outrageous. Jordan is one of the best suited terrains for outdoor picnics I can think of, with endless charming destinations, yet these barbecue buffs only enjoy their bloody kebabs if their children are playing literally within one meter from speeding cars. Has Jordan run out of countryside so that we have to show the world that our outings take place nowhere else but on the hard shoulder of the main highways?

Perhaps Ammar Khammash’s prolific writings on the different sites of our beautiful lands ought to be translated and distributed free by the Ministry of Tourism, or even added to school curriculums by the Ministry of Education, so maybe one day we can eliminate this hideous and extremely hazardous habit. Let me say here that the editorial policy of some Jordanian magazines is to stay away from political issues, and I totally respect that. As a matter of fact, I detest politics per se and don’t really like to talk or write about it. I actually even believe that to aspire to have a career that essentially involves controlling other people’s lives and destinies is such a manifestly suspect aspiration for a normal human being that such a person needs to prove to me first that they are genuinely interested in the service part of this career and not in its power aspect in order for me to trust them. Which is extremely rare these days, if not almost impossible. I will even go further to admit that my favorite line in the Godfather III is the almost inaudible sentence at the end of the scene in the courtyard of Don Tomassino in Sicily when Michael gets up to leave and mumbles in Italian: “Politics and crime. They’re the same thing”. So I will continue to discuss my observations of the Jordanian landscape away from that despicable domain, the inherently immoral world of politics. Having said that, a friend invited me to his farm at the Rumman mountains near Jerash, and I enthusiastically obliged. This was on the last day of the World Economic Forum conference in the Dead Sea in May 2004, so it was a good escape north of the congestion caused by the delegations crowding Amman. But on the way down from Suweileh, I just could not turn a blind eye to the miserable squalor on my right hand that is the Beqa’a refugee camp. I just could not pretend that it was not there, no matter how hard I tried.

Wait a minute. I said I will not be dragged into talking politics. Exactly, and I am not. I am writing purely as a human being. You see, I just came down from a city plastered with posters “committed to improving the state of the world”. So indeed, do leave politics aside. I want to begin by improving the state of my own backyard. For, in all honesty, I cease to belong to the human species if I continued on my journey to Rumman without feeling an ounce of compassion for the people crammed in this shameful blot on humanity, or without at least crying out for my countrymen and women to seek to improve their unlivable lives once and for all. We can end this prolonged tragedy in Jordan. All it takes is for more people to slow down their cars and peer at the camp on their way to Jerash, or at the other similar ones scattered around the country. It doesn’t have to be this way.

font face=”Times New Roman” size=”3″>Right of return or no return, settlement in Jordan or no settlement, that would be politics. Leave me out of that. The way I see it, the new Jordan should have no place for such forgotten dumps, for such bleeding wounds in the heart of the country. Human beings should not be made to live like that, no matter what politics dictate, and I will betray my essence as a fellow human if I ignored the less fortunate and destitute residents of my country because of some dire political predicament. We all have the right to living well, don’t we, and this is why we are between these pages, aren’t we?

I did not continue the story with the exam. So was I eventually convinced to cheat, you must be wondering? All I will say is that the Tawjihi student next to me and the many like him were the ones who were cheated out of a decent life by a system determined to quash them. I had no qualms about helping him and the others beat this system if I could. We all can and should – in more legitimate ways, I hope – because this country belongs to all of us. I truly believe that it does.

I wonder where he is right now. Does he look up at the giant posters in Amman and feel that his country has given him what should prompt him to give back to her? Did he eventually pass his English test? Has he seen Aqaba yet?
Oh, the Rumman trip was nice. The sun was nice. The mountains were also nice. Seriously.

Vroom… vroom, roared the Harley before its engine was turned off outside the pharmacy on duty in Geneva one quiet Sunday morning a few years ago in September. The six foot ‘quelque chose’ rider dismounted the daunting machine, took off his intimidating German helmet, neatly tucked it under his left arm, and walked slowly inside the drugstore.

Click…clack, he steadily thumped his way across the aisles in his huge boots and leathery attire. Elderly Sunday morning shoppers could not hide their disquiet at the site of this unusual visitor with his menacing looks, but pretended to mind their business. With the dark sunglasses carefully hiding hung-over eyes, but betraying weekend stubble, disheveled hair and an overgrown goatee, he placed his helmet on the counter.

“Beba 2-HA, s’il vous plait,” he demanded from the almost trembling lady at the cash register.

No, that was not the trade name of prescription heroin for a morning junkie. Nor was it extra-large, strawberry-flavored condoms even, in case you’re wondering. Nor anything else too wild or bohemian; that was actually me buying baby formula milk for my son, but decided to take the bike because it’s quicker – and makes the assignment more fun on a sunny day like that. Whatever remaining aura of mystique or coolness that has not by then already turned into powder milk had soon subsequently vaporized as I explained to the staff that although the packet says from 6-12 months, the pediatrician said that little Omar could continue to take it even if he was already 13 months. I swear I could hear relieved customers giggling around me as I said this. Yes, this unforgettable scene sums it all up if someone asks me about the changes that fatherhood brings into one’s life.

Other changes are less awkward. For example, when I blast my car stereo to Boney M’s Bobby Farrell singing “She’s crazy about her daddy, oh she believes in him…,” I’m actually thinking of my little Sama, the bluest sky of my life. But you know what? Although I learnt by heart every Barney and Elmo song out there, the outcome of every Tom and Jerry chase, the name of every Teletubby and PowerPuff girl, the man behind the mask of every Scooby Doo mystery (and the plots of a host of other weird cartoons that cannot possibly be targeted for child or adult entertainment), I still wouldn’t trade it for the whole world. Children are an immeasurable source of joy, and a daddy is still cool, Bobby.

Of course, being a father is a walk in the park compared to a mother’s job. That’s where the real hard work lies, believe me, and in our part of the world we don’t always appreciate that. Indeed, the cruelest thing ever said to a mother was what I witnessed when I went to Cairo last April to give condolences to a dear friend whose young brother had died of a heart attack, leaving behind a young wife and two children.

In Egypt, Muslims receive condolences differently than us in Jordan. They do it not in the family house, but in two adjoining halls to a mosque, one for women and another for men, at the same time, and only for one night. So when the sheikh started reciting the final prayers for the deceased towards the end, one line struck me as especially insensitive and downright disgusting. After asking God to enlarge his grave, make it comfortable and what have you, the preacher went on to request that God gives him a better house than his current one, and other similar requests for better things than he had in life.

But it was when he started saying “God we ask you to give him a wife better than his wife” that I really wanted to climb up his high chair and drag him down by his beard.

The poor widow was next door, listening to these prayers. As if she was not traumatized enough by her loss, this guy comes and rubs it in by making such an obscene remark. I cannot imagine a more hurtful thing she could have heard at such a moment. But the truly sickening episode was what happened next. This dirty old man came down from his pedestal and sat right next to me as people were leaving and started making passes at me that I will not dare mention here – after inviting me to have dinner in his house that night. I could not believe what I was hearing; it was already almost midnight while this guy wanted to take me home, and I assure you dinner was the last thing on his mind.

If there is a surreal Egyptian movie, this was it and I was a main character – or about to become one, depending on how I would react to the plot. Well, it wouldn’t be vain to point out here that I have been hit on a few times in my life, mostly by females I have to stress, but never before in a mosque and certainly not by such a character. I could not tell this to my grieving friend (although the next morning the story cheered him up and gave him the first real laugh since his tragedy), so I SMSed a friend in Amman informing him that I was about to be sodomized by the sheikh. My friend immediately replied saying: “You’re a writer, aren’t you, so go to the dinner and write an article about it. It should be interesting to read.” The problem is that he was serious. So there you go, and thanks for your solidarity and sympathies, Firas.

Cairo was a mixture of so many things all happening at the same time; I think it is one of the most difficult cities to describe. There is too much history, too much geography, too much misery, too many contradictions, and way, way too many people. The ability of the Egyptians to keep their contagious smile and their trademark sense of humor in spite of all the odds is truly incredible. I don’t believe there are another people on Earth more prepared to laugh at absolutely everything and anything at absolutely any time or any situation than the Egyptian people are. It is like the entire population is on a 24-hour readiness alert to laugh and make you laugh.

Perhaps it is a defense mechanism people develop to live with the absurdities and predicaments of the grueling everyday life. Another less refreshing subconscious mechanism to release frustration which you cannot escape noticing is the uncontrollable tick drivers have which urges them to keep blowing their horns in the endless traffic jams of Cairo – despite the forensically proven pointlessness of this exercise. So I decided to observe this phenomenon by closely watching when and why drivers do it, and whether there is any rationalization to this nervous habit.

To my disbelief, I found that drivers were still doing it not only when traffic was frozen on a red light stop and was unlikely to be influenced by noise, but my cab driver was also blasting away even when the street ahead of him was completely clear or when he was in the first row of cars on traffic lights. So I casually asked him why he was blowing his horn if there were no cars in front of him. In typical Egyptian lightness and ironic smile he said, “I’m doing it for the cars behind me, ya beh.”

So you can understand why returning to Geneva is literally like traveling to another galaxy, and driving is not even half the story. Speaking of outer space, I always believed that the best place from which to sit back and get an objective overview of anything is always from the outside, and therefore, in order to get a uniquely sobering view of our world and of humanity, it has to be done by outsiders. But since I don’t believe in extra terrestrials myself, I have used some imagination and found the following scenario to be really mind-opening. Imagine that a highly superior race of scientists from another galaxy were traveling on board a fact-finding spaceship and have spotted planet Earth for the first time. They want to report back their findings on the status of our relatively primitive species. So they lower their UFO over North America and begin their observations from there. Here is how I think the summary of their report would roughly read:

The first activity we detected was of people walking across open green fields holding a variety of different metal rods. They seem to be trying to get certain small white round objects into small man-made holes in the ground. Many other people are intrigued by watching this process on the field and around the world.

Although humans have advanced to levels by which placing these white spheres in the holes can be done by automated machinery, these creatures seem to enjoy playing games beyond their childhood years. This would have almost lead us to conclude that this is a peaceful, fun-loving species were it not for the fact that the main community of these club-wielding men appears to be comprised of owners and managers of institutions that are depleting and usurping the resources of this planet for the benefit of a few other like-minded men obsessed with the same round white objects.

Meanwhile, further down south, a great number of darker-skinned people appear to have been left to drown in their homes and very little attention was paid to them by the people chasing the white balls. Across the great body of water to the right of this land, there is a continent with many more brown people, many of whom look like skeletons and are perishing by the millions for the lack of food and the spread of disease. The lands with not too many dark people in the north seem to have excess food and medicine and it is not clear why the dark people were left to rot as carcasses.

Further east, there are two peoples who speak a similar language with harsh, throaty letters. They have common ancestors, similar features and the same facial hair but appear to fight over the same piece of land and are both obsessed with an insignificant hill that has two temples on its top. One of the two parties, who has many more weapons and money, is supported by the same guys with the metal clubs and holes in the ground. Using that support, they have built a concrete wall over the lands of the weaker people in what appears to be an attempt to strangle them.

Further east, again it is uniformed fighters from the land of the men walking the green fields who have been causing massive gunpowder detonations (the recurrence of individuals from that land popping up everywhere is notable). They are blowing people up so far away from where they live for no apparent reason, resulting in untold death and mayhem. The residue left by these explosions is a substance so lethal it remains in the earth and atmosphere for literally billions of years and is proven to cause a slow and painful death for anyone in its vicinity, including their own people. In short, this is a planet where 20 percent of its population consumes over 70 percent of its material resources and owns over 80 percent of its wealth. That is why it is also a planet with an unlimited capacity to produce exaggerated gunpowder quantities per inhabitant.

Furthermore, the capacity to obliterate the entire planet is constantly becoming more efficient and gradually becoming more likely. Finally, both the leader of the nation of the men hitting the little white balls and the people he is trying to exterminate repeatedly attribute their actions to an alleged troublemaker whom they both accuse, without evidence, of instigating all the killing. They both refer to him as God. As of yet, no sighting of this alleged super villain was detected on the planet.

N.B. A strange looking fellow with a noisy machine is causing a commotion at an establishment selling non-edible, strawberry-flavored sheets of nylon.

Recommendation: A hopeless, incomprehensible species. Abandon mission and depart galaxy.

The above may seem like an idea for a science fiction movie. Why not? Sometimes in order for us to truly capture the morbid reality of what’s taking place on our own planet and visualize the implausible insanity of humankind, we need to look through equally unconventional lenses to see the truth. The way I see it, a dumb president and a few stupid leaders are making this world a very dangerous place for us and our children to inhabit. That’s why I think we should get rid of them before they annihilate all of us.

On the day my daughter was born, I switched on the camcorder on my way back to the hospital at night after grabbing a few things from home, to capture the moment, so to speak. Juggling both the camera and the steering wheel became a little too dangerous when I answered my mobile phone (I was too excited, and technically speaking, I was still only a few hours into my new role as a responsible father, if I ever became one). It was a friend calling to congratulate us on the newborn.

I suddenly found myself impulsively telling him how blessed and fortunate we felt to have our child born in such peaceful surroundings, without bombs falling on our heads, without checkpoints and sadistic soldiers forcing women to give birth in the street, without sanctions depriving us of the most basic medicines, without famine or disease, without the eternal evil of depleted uranium, without the daily fear of random death, nested away in safety from the barbarity that man inflicts upon his fellow man. I pray that my children would grow up one day and watch this clip. If hopefully they don’t notice the bad example of dangerous driving, I wish that they would learn to think of other people with less fortunate destinies by never taking their privileged situation for granted. The world would become a much better place if we all tried to do that.

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