I got this video as a forward from several people. Apparently, a mouse was spotted in the meat display section at Carrefour in City Mall Amman. I can’t say this is the precise location of the video, but the people around do talk Jordanian. One man is telling the employee in the video “Oh no we WILL videotape this, because we are paying money in this place.”
Download the clip here:
MouseCarrefour
In a continuation of the ancient practice of wa’d (a practice of pagan Arabs before Islam whereby they buried living newborn female babies in the desert to avoid future scandals stemming from these females’ dishonoring them when they’re adults), honor crimes still occur today in Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. The practice is thus still alive and well, because the aim of killing a female in both wa’d and honor crimes is to preserve family honor. A loose concept with burdens carried by women and privileges enjoyed by men.
For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse.
Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.
Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.
‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said.
He said his daughter’s ‘bad genes were passed on from her mother’. Rand’s mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. ‘They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin’s home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,’ she said.
‘She was killed by animals. Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,’ she said, tears streaming down her face.
- The Guardian:Read the full story here
Bad genes always seem to come from the mother’s side in this part of the world. A mother or a sister is automatically a partner in crime when a female family member is a suspect, she receives similar punishment and is condemned without question. Yet it is the men who rape and kill, the men who think they’re entitled not only to a woman’s body but also to her soul, the men who deny the right of life or grant the privilege of servitude in the name of tradition or religion. Doesn’t that make you wonder who really has the bad genes? By Allah!
Sitting down, I gather my limbs closer to my body and wonder “has it been that long already?”. A year has passed since that trip in my car towards Fuhais, 12 whole months passed carrying with them more change than I ever imagined possible, yet no change at all. The thought makes me nauseous. Is this how I will feel 10 years down the road? Probably. I always ask the same questions one way or the other, mainly because nobody ever answers me. The process is a futile cliché but I can’t escape it. I think I even love it.
The issue at hand is not the past, but the future. The past I leave to another mood, the future fills me with pessimism and anticipation at the same time. I want to know what happens, like when you watch a good movie and want to know how it ends. The trouble is that this is not a movie, the people are not fictional characters, and at the end of the drama I will cease to be. I will not be able to even record my own impressions of it or my evaluation of its artistic merit. Isn’t that sad? Entirely. It’s a pathetic anticlimax. You’re almost there…but not quite.
I am looking forward to a number of things this summer. One of them is the pool. The other is a mosaic class in no other than ancient Madaba. The third thing is a job interview which might lead me to something I have always imagined I would be good at (the truth of this speculation remains to be discovered.) And finally, a trip. A trip away from the hypocrisy of Amman, away from its dry and dusty summer heat, away from the people who stare and criticize. I will move away albeit temporarily, to a better world. Somewhere where I can relax and be myself without apprehension. I really shouldn’t have said “finally,” because there are other things awaiting me this summer; things I can’t disclose.
Books also await. Mostly fiction. I’ve become an ultra-avid reader this year, it seems frustration pushes me to seek refuge in the words of people I can’t converse with. I also have an exam at one point in the summer. And my birthday — that anniversary of the start of my life, relatively inconsequential and out of control as it is, the episodes that cast me as their lead character even when I choose not to. All of this, and more — I have no doubt about it, will happen this summer. Nothing according to plan though. Isn’t that ironic?
Something absolutely absurd just happened in my flickr photo stream. I haven’t been using flickr since last July, and switched to Picasa after flickr wouldn’t accept my online payment to become a pro member. I am too sensitive when online applications are concerned and can’t handle rejection, so I dumped flickr (or was it the other way around?).
So a few minutes ago I decided to post a couple of pictures to flickr just for fun. When the uploading process finished, I gasped for breath at the sight of one of my private pictures uploaded by mistake! The HORROR! I panicked, cursed repeatedly under my breath, and decided to immediately delete the picture and forget this episode ever happened. I figured there is no way anyone could have seen the picture because it had been uploaded only seconds earlier. I rushed to click “delete” but found a little surprise waiting for me: a comment on the picture from one of my contacts. ALREADY!
Damage control: delete the picture, send commenter email denying anything to do with it, and sign with “what happens in my flickr, stays in my flickr.” I should have added “I know where you live. I live where you live.” …me and my stupid little black dress vs. flickr adventures. Ugh.
I am still alive. Just positively busy, and thinking of something to write about.
 |
| From Give Me Nails… |
My car’s bumper sticker reads:
It was either that or this:
And I’m not a fruitcake. So all risks considered, I went for the disgusting, unrefined, but humorous, attitude involving mucus. I’m real classy like that.
Heaven’s Steps blogger Hadeel has passed away. I never read her blog, never knew what she stood for, and never heard of her before today. Upon her death, Bloggers Observatory announced the news and eulogized her. This made me go check out her blog, read what she wrote, and get to know this now-deceased blogger whose last post was just last month. She died very suddenly. I’m guessing she was young too.
Maybe because this is a blogger, female, Arab, and young that I feel sorry that she has passed away. Maybe it’s because she represents parts of me that the news is so shocking even though I never read what she wrote before today. But all of this has brought this question to my mind: What do you think should happen to the blog when the blogger passes away? How will the readers know their daily thought supplier has died? Any ideas?
For as long as I can remember, the name Dr.Nawal Saadawi equaled nothing more than an old hag who preached immorality and social dysfunctions. That was (is) how my family saw Saadawi, and consequently that was how I saw her too.
From the bits and pieces I heard infrequently about her, she wanted to “liberate women and corrupt society,” and demanded things like “calling a child by its mother’s name” and “abandoning the veil.” These her points of view were quickly linked to her physical appearance, words like “masculinized woman” and “old bitch” were invariably linked to her ideas and effectively stripped them of any validity somehow. Why is it that a female thinker is seen as a masculinized woman and her hair color and texture are brought up in a discussion of her ideas?
I never bothered to investigate Saadawi because I thought I had her figured out through what everyone thought of her. Gradually, though, as I started to grow out of what-everyone-else-thinks bubble I began to understand what I had been missing out on, and it was a lot.
Just today I visited Saadawi’s official website where I discovered that this is an educated, intelligent woman who has written many books (fiction and non-fiction), has served her country and has tried to raise awareness against female genital mutilation. None of that was ever mentioned in any discussion of her that I witnessed. People only talked about her crazy hair and how she had no “shame” of going on TV and speaking against society and religion at her very old age. They had not been prepared for her discourse, so they focused their attention on throwing cheap shots at her hair and age.
I have never read anything by Saadawi (novels, plays,etc.) but I plan on looking for her writings and reading them (some are available on her website). As such, my attitude to date is based on internet materials I read from and about her. I am very impressed with her talking sense into people and suffering for her cause. She was put in jail, exiled, some lawyer tried to force her divorce from her husband through courts (where does that ever happen except in the Arab world?), and some other ultra-conservative lawyer in Egypt recently tried to deprive her of her Egyptian nationality on the basis that she mocked religion through a play of hers. Thankfully, logic triumphed and the latter case was dismissed by the court.
Saadawi’s ideas on women and the wellbeing of society are also impressive to me. In this BBC Q&A she answered people’s questions directly and cleared out some ambiguities created around her thought by the media. She said she is strongly opposed to female genital mutilation, she supports secularism and argues for the essential link between women’s rights in a society and its general wellbeing and progress — things that make sense if we only reflect on them.
I find it scandalous how many religious people fabricate lies around a single woman’s thoughts instead of taking them into consideration. For this reason, I will read more about Saadawi now that I know she makes sense, and I will learn her opinions and hope they spread far and wide, because we need them now more than ever.
I realize that I have been lending the issue of honor crimes in Jordan a lot of attention lately, but that is still not enough.
I remember when I wrote the post Honor Is Another Word for Vagina, some people found it repulsive of me to link such a noble concept as honor to female anatomy. They said I was a cultural renegade, and that I was self-hating and deliberately out to maim a fundamental aspect of Arab, and Jordanian, culture. I was slightly annoyed, but I could not find a counterargument that dismissed my point that, yes, “what Arab men term as “honor” is a polite word for the Arabically-explicit word vagina.” Here were my points in that post:
The other part is a woman, an anatomically different human being who is almost always the honor-defaming culprit in any scandal. The woman’s private parts play a vital role in condemning her because they are, in the traditional male chauvinist view, the forbidden yet deeply desired apple.
To illustrate this, think of the worst possible curse words out there in Arabic and in English. About 99% of them involve someone’s mother, someone’s sister, and their genitalia. They might also include explicit references to sexual acts done to these private parts. In Arabic, these curse words are intended to verbally harm the opposite person’s “honor,” a sacred concept referring simply to a woman’s vagina.
Within this context, when someone commits an “honor killing” to wash away the family’s shame, all they are doing is killing the target woman’s vagina who may or may not have engaged in sexual acts deemed socially taboo. By the same token, when a man swears by his “sister’s honor,” he is swearing by her vagina. Fascinating, isn’t it?
The final point I want to make is this: men do not really have honor to swear by or to protect. Anatomically speaking, it is the women that live with these men that do have honor and sometimes pay a dear price for having it.
Well, what do you know. I found in Al Ghad a citation from a research paper done by Dr.Hani Jahshan defining masculinity and honor as follows:
الذكورة لدى القاتل هو “أن على الرجل أن يحمي، يراقب، ويدافع عن كافة أنواع عذرية المرأة قريبته، ويفسر هذا أنه في صالح المرأة، فإذا لم يقم الرجل بذلك يكون قد أخل بصورته كرجل أمام المجتمع، فيتخذ أنماطا سلوكية لمنع المرأة من انتهاك حدود كافة أنواع العذرية المفروضة عليها، بما فيها السلوكية والاجتماعية، بواسطة العنف الجسدي أو الحبس داخل جدران المنزل أو الرقابة الدائمة أو التخويف بالسمعة السيئة، مما يشكل بحد ذاته نوعا من أنواع العنف والتمييز ضد المرأة”.
He defines masculinity as the male’s duty to protect, monitor, and defend all types of female virginity (not just her tangible virginity, but also her moral and social virginity — not interacting with men,etc.). So I was right then, honor really is centered around the vagina, and guess what, like I argued before, men don’t have it. Something about this makes me smile.
أنهيت للتو قراءة الغربال لميخائيل نعيمة و فيه قام الأديب بتعريف النقد الأدبي و ممارسته و توضيح أسباب ضعف الرواية و المسرحية العربيتين و لوم “المقلدين” و مدح “المحدثين” و ذلك من جملة ما فعل. لم يستوقفني أي مقطع من هذا الكتاب المتخصص بالنقد و الذي اشتريته بدافع الاستطلاع فقط إلا الأبيات التالية و قد جاءت من ضمن ما كتب نعيمة عن نسيب عريضة و ديوانه الأرواح الحائرة الذي لم يكن قد نشر بعد, حيث وجدتها من أجمل ما قرأت من الشعر معنى و لربما أعجبتني لما فيها من التطاول غير المألوف على الذات الالهية و قلب للموازين فيضحي السيد عبداً و العبد سيداً –جعله الله في ميزان أعمال الشاعر و أبعدنا عن تبعاته الدنيوية و الاخرية. أما و قد استغفرنا الله و لمنا الشاعر على فكره و كفره فلنقرأ الأبيات
لو كنت رباً في السماء عظيما
بجميع أمر الكائنات عليماًلهبطت من عرشي إلى أرض الشقا
نحو ابن آدم من خلقت قديماو طرحت نفسي عند موضع رجله
و سجدت ثمَ لوجهه تكريماو لبثت أغسل بالدموع كلومه
و أزيده بتذللي تعظيمامستغفراً عن عيشة قسمت له
منذ الخليقة لا تزال جحيمانسيب عريضة -من ديوان الأرواح الحائرة
My uncle passed away yesterday morning. He had cancer and he was suffering greatly, and everyone around him was suffering as well. I always find it a good thing when death ends suffering instead of allowing it to go on for months or years — it’s avoiding the inevitable at a very high price.
There is a cloud of sadness hovering over my father’s head now. I can’t imagine how it feels like to lose a sibling. Does it feel like you lost a piece of you — what piece? Does it feel like you are finished and cannot go on? Does it feel like you’ve become a barren tree? I don’t know. I guess it depends how close you were to that sibling during their life.
Upon hearing the news, my initial reaction was complete disconnection. I tend to distance myself like that and treat death as a fact instead of being emotional about it. I suppose it’s a tactic for handling the situation, but it’s definitely aided by the fact that I wasn’t particularly close to my late uncle.
When I went to my late uncle’s house, where my cousins were receiving condolences, I felt my heart shrink as I climbed the narrow stairs. There was something overwhelmingly morbid about the yellowness of the stairs and the distant Quranic recitation coming down from the living room. I had to remove my bright red nail polish before visiting, because my mother said it would be insensitive to keep it on and go to a “condolences house.”
The trip up the stairs was historic, I hadn’t gone up these stairs for five years. My last memory of the staircase and the Quranic verses traveling downwards, the mumblings of dark women clad in black, the smell of death and coffee, was when I went up the same stairs to say goodbye to my late aunt. She was something else, what I felt for her then was on a whole different level from what I felt yesterday — and understandably so. The physical settings, however, did not change a bit.
It was heartbreaking to sit in the living room with the women, my cousins and other relatives, and not be able to truly share their sorrow. I felt sad because they were sad, and when one of them broke out in muffled tears my heart jumped out to soothe her pain. I wanted to tell them it was not the end of the world, but I knew that to them it seemed a lot like it. I couldn’t help feeling helplessly insensitive and cruel for thinking I could argue them out of their sadness.
Sitting there on a gray plastic chair in one corner of the room, I tried my best to avoid eye contact. Women came and kissed my cheeks and asked me if I was “Khalid’s daughter,” and I said yes. I didn’t know any of them and they must have sensed how lost I was when I flashed smiles at them, so they introduced themselves by their men (I am X’s wife, X’s mother). I felt incredibly small. I didn’t know any of them and yet they knew me (or my father), and they were family. How do you justify that to yourself, not knowing your own family?
Next to me was sitting an ancient woman in a traditional black velvet dress, with a crooked cane next to her and a number of green tattoos on her face. Her name was Um Abdullah, and she liked coffee. Her face was so wrinkled and her back arched and she couldn’t walk on her own, but she asked for her cup of coffee to be extra full and sat there sipping it like a queen.
The whole affair looked almost identical to my late aunt’s departure. There were less women but the procedures were the same. Coffee offered, dates, lunch and parts of the Quran. Very few women bothered to read Quran, most opted for sitting around and chatting the social obligation away. They talked about their husbands, upcoming family marriages, food… mundane subjects in the presence of death.
I tried to conjure up memories involving my late uncle. I thought if I could remember sweet things he did for me or parts of his character I would be better able to relate to his death. By knowing what was no longer there, I might feel bad and maybe shed a few tears and fit in where I was. All I could remember was his tall and strong build, his gray hair, and his playing zahar with my dad in Samara. Then someone started crying, so I wiped my tears away. I had a headache by then because I had been thinking too hard.
It’s eerie that the night before last I had a dream that my late aunt was visiting my late uncle. I don’t remember the details of the dream but it was disturbing and I woke up feeling uneasy. It was weird but I attributed it to my having discussed my uncle’s situation with someone that day. A day later, he died and the dream came true.
It’s this sea of mixed feelings that’s confusing me. I am working normally, going to school and going about my daily business normally when my uncle has just died. I go to offer my condolences and I cannot even cry, and all I can think of is my late aunt. There is a huge divide between what I should be feeling and doing and what I am actually feeling and doing. It’s uncomfortable feeling inexplicably harsh and aloof.
هل تؤيد تعديل القانون المتعلق بقضايا جرائم الشرف؟
أؤيد بشدة (55 % )
أؤيد (12 % )
لا أؤيد (11 % )
أرفض بشدة (22 % )
عدد الأصوات : 2862
في مثل بحكي : صار للخرى مره و صار يحلف بالطلاق. عزيزي القارئ فهمك كفاية
Horrific news this morning, another woman killed for the sake of a myth called honor:
Criminal Prosecutor Amjad Kurdi on Saturday charged a 23-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.
Kurdi also charged the victim’s father, mother and sibling of complicity in premeditated murder in connection with the drowning of the 22-year-old at dawn on Saturday.
The 23-year-old suspect, an electrician who got engaged a week before the murder, then placed his sister’s body in the trunk of the car, drove back to Amman, headed to the Jabal Hussein Police Station and informed officers on duty that he murdered his sister to “cleanse his family’s honour”, the source added.
The victim, who was married almost two weeks before the incident, was returned to her family home on Friday by her husband, who questioned “her fidelity”.
The victim’s family interrogated her and she allegedly told them that “she knew a man but was not involved in an affair with him” so they beat her until she almost fainted, the source told The Jordan Times.
The victim tried to resist and informed her brother that she did nothing wrong, but “he did not listen and killed her,” the source added.
This is the second woman to be slaughtered in cold blood by a male sibling this week, the 6th since the start of 2008. Nobody knows if the husband’s allegations were accurate, the family never bothered and killed the girl anyway, and now how can we ever be sure what went on?* The woman was married so she must have lost her virginity, and the husband decided to report her “infidelity” after two weeks of marriage. At the sound of the word “honor” the victim’s family was taken by some demonic myth and butchered their own daughter.
Will this killer also walk and be hailed a champion of honor?
*Please note that the woman’s being or not being in an affair of sorts should not have spelled out her death sentence. There is no excuse for murder, and least of all for murder in the name of honor. All justifications for that, real or fabricated, should be made illegal.
I am so excited to announce the launch of the New York Times Middle East blog, which I participated in launching as the person in charge of Al Bawaba Blogs. The blog is in Arabic, and it features a number of New York Times articles translated into Arabic and revolving around life in the Arab region.
The purpose of creating this blog, as its description details, is to make NYT articles about the Middle East accessible to people from the region and in Arabic, and to initiate discussions about them and learn people’s opinions.
ترغب جريدة النيو يورك تايمز في معرفة ارائكم حول سلسلة مقالاتها عن الشباب المسلم في انحاء الشرق الأوسط، كل من هذه المقالات قد تم ترجمتها الى العربية وارسلت الى هذا الموقع لغرض النشر والمناقشة. إن سلسلة المقالات هذه قد رتب لها ان تنشر بصورة دورية لتستمر طوال العام ونحن نتطلع لسماع ارائكم.
It feels so good to be a partner in such a beautiful initiative, and I am ever so proud that I actually got to work with New York Times people! I read the New York Times all the time and it’s this larger-than-life idol to me in a way, so the chance to get a bit closer to it is enormously flattering.
Caelum Moffatt reflects on this the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence/the Palestinian Nakba, in MIFTAH:
Following the Second World War, the holocaust and the termination of the British Mandate, UNCSOP passed Resolution 181 in November 1947 which called for a partition of the British Mandate into two bilateral states – Israel and Palestine. Even with a quarter of a decade of immigration and colonization, Jews still only comprised 30% of the population and owned just 7% of the land. Despite these facts, the state of Israel would be granted 55% of the former British Mandate. A war ensued firstly between Palestinians and Jews, then later between Arabs and Israelis after Israel had claimed independence on May 14, 1948.
The Arabs were defeated and by the time the armistice lines were drawn in July 1949, Israel had extended its territory to 78% of historic Palestine. 800,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, 530 villages were destroyed and 86% of the Palestinians who now fell within the 1949 armistice lines were displaced. Of the 14% that remained, 70% of their land was confiscated or made inaccessible to them.
According to UNRWA estimates, there are presently 5.5 million refugees spread across 58 camps in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
These have been replaced by some 5.5 million Jews living in Israel flourishing in freedom, prosperity and international acceptance in what can only be described as obstinate blindness and pure disregard for the brutality they employed and still adopt today in order to sustain their existence. They maintain that their actions are justified after being subject to worldwide contempt, suffering years of persecution and anti-Semitism. It is as if their unwavering resolve to achieve their goal supersedes Palestinian claims and relegates them to the unfortunate byproduct or obstacle standing in the way of their destiny.
I plan to commemorate the Nakba throughout this week. There are many events going on around town to mark the tragedy and I actually have someone to go with me for a change — progress!
Cultural Week
Guardians of the Memory — A week marking the 60th anniversary of Al Nakbeh. Starting May 10. Until May 16.
Tel: 079 5222512
May 10 Drawings ExhibitionCarlos Lattof, Naji Al Ali, quotes,
Ghassan Kanafani
Location: Al Hannouneh
Time: 7:00pm
May 11 Gallery
Tamam Al Akhal, Ismael Shamout drawings
Location: Directorate of Arts and Theatre – Jabal Luweibdeh
Time: 8:00pm
Screenings of short films
Location: Al Hannouneh
Time: 6:00pm
May 12 Poetry Night
Jerees Samawi, lute player Sakher Hattar
Location: Daret Al Funun
Time: 8:30pm
May 13 BazaarTraditional products, food and handcrafts
Location: `Ebaal Charitable Organisation
Time: 5:30pm-10:00pm
May 14 Al Hannouneh Folkloric Dance
Location: King Abdullah Cultural Centre – Zarqa
Time: 8:00
May 15 Al Hannouneh Folkloric Dance
Location: Radisson SAS Hotel
Time: 8:00pm
May 16 ConcertSho Hal Ayam band
Location: Directorate of Arts and Theatre – Jabal Luweibdeh
Time: 7:00pm
I must say that I wasn’t always aware of the dimensions and the sheer injustice of the occupation of Palestinian land and the dislocation of its people until recently, and I am ever so glad I achieved that state of awareness. It is angering how the international community embraces Israel as a model of democracy and a shrine for human rights, when in truth the country’s history and current treatment of Palestinians testify to its violent and brutal ways. Remember, dear readers, if you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything.
2008 has been a bad, bad year for me so far. I’ve mentioned this repeatedly before this post, but this current time in particular is very trying. I can’t wrap my mind around the enormous shitiness of my current situation and it astonishes me that I am still alive and willing to take it some more. It’s either hope or curiosity that’s keeping me going. Probably curiosity though.
I don’t like it how people tend to portray future life to be all perfect and happy if you get married or find the perfect job for example. That’s simply not true because happiness is always short-lived, and I don’t care if you meditate or pray or shop to sustain that illusive state, it just does not last. Maybe it’s just me but my life unfolds as a series of depressing or frustrating episodes with significantly few bright interludes that do not last more than a day at a time, if not only hours.
My family thinks it’s because I’ve abandoned faith. I say psshh, one would think god has better things to do than take it personally and take it out on me. Think of the wars and natural disasters and true and actual “sins” taking place and stop with all that superstitious talk, and then compare all that to me…a 20-something young woman trying to figure things out in an oppressive society. Seriously, he’d have a lot of issues if he were to single me out and pick on me. I wouldn’t worship that guy.
I personally think it has to do with my eternal incapability to decide. I can never make a big decision and be comfortable with it on the long run, and I also have a problem with authority. These two combined with my fear of time make for a very interesting cocktail — the buzz of which you must be feeling or otherwise you wouldn’t be reading my thoughts. But to me, the actual person, it’s not half as interesting as it sounds and I sometimes wonder why I can’t be just like everyone else. No overthinking, no calculating, no challenging, no arguing, more sheep-like than tololy-like. I really wonder. Just a tad of submissiveness is all it takes to bliss, honestly. I just can’t bring myself to grow that tumor. Can’t.
All of my life I made the decisions that were socially appropriate. For example, in 3rd grade, I wore the veil because my mother encouraged it and everyone around me had one on. I registered in the literary stream during my high school years because I hated math but also because I wanted to get a good result and make my mother proud. I had originally wanted to become a nurse or a vet (luckily for everyone, that didn’t happen.) Then I did not major in art history as I thought I wanted, because my mother thought that only dumb people opt for arts, and what sort of a job would I get after graduation? During college I missed out on scholarships because it was not “right” for me as a young woman to travel alone. The same thing happened over and over, but I was fine. It was when I started having trouble with adhering to social restraints that my life went downhill.
That started years ago. Now my life has almost hit rock bottom, but it’s not quite there yet. If I insist some more I can guarantee that it will be there in no time. I think I must have done some unbelievably horrible act of cruelty to a lot of people (not animals though, I love them more than humans) at some point in time in a different life, or maybe this one, to have earned this. It’s either that or I’m just seriously and chronically unlucky and designed to be miserable. Whatever it is, it’s not groovy and I want my money back.
A new atrocity in the name of female genitalia honor was committed in Jordan two days ago. Al Ghad reports that a man killed his 20-something, married and pregnant, sister by shooting her repeatedly in the head. The man then handed himself in and claimed his motive was defending the family’s honor.
The story in Al Ghad does not clarify exactly what the situation was that led to the young woman’s, and her baby’s, death. But there is mention that her brother suspected she was having an affair with a relative. That begs the question: how come the man who’s engaged in an improper relationship with a woman is rarely, if ever, treated with the same cruelty that the woman is subjected to, i.e. death?
In another story, a 19-year old girl was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison (originally to hang to death but the verdict was reduced) for poisoning four members of her family. The story goes that the girl poisoned her parents and two brothers because they had accused her of stealing some money, and let her brother beat her up, in the week prior to the murders. The girl felt she needed to avenge herself and stated that she wanted to “harm them” only and not to kill them when she presented them with poisoned juice, but they died.
There is no excuse for murder that a rational person would hide behind. But, given the situation in our societies, women are extremely marginalized and at the same time there are many doors open to them to pursue education and careers. The resentment resulting from prejudice against them when they have achieved just as much, if not more, than their male counterparts is bound to take shape one way or the other. You can only repress someone for so long, and then they’ll explode in your face and you won’t like it.
If that girl’s family had prevented her brother from beating her up upon accusing her of theft, she would not have been so angry and frustrated with her situation. If that other young woman’s family had cared to check the murderous brother’s actions and attitudes, there would not have been a woman and an unborn baby dead today. A large part of the reason many women are angry is because when they speak up they are violently silenced, when they dare to ask a question they are ridiculed, and when they demand their rights they are robbed of what little privileges they already have.
I am saddened by this current state of affairs. It makes my heart bleed to see the brutality of the patriarchal system that sees women not as companions and equals, but as followers and subjects. This won’t last, though, because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
In today’s news, the Jordan Times reported the following:
Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shoqerat on Sunday charged a 70-year-old man with the manslaughter of his daughter during a family brawl in Karak at dawn, official sources said.
The 30-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was shot twice in the face and head, allegedly by her father, while she was attempting to stop a fight between him and one of her siblings, one official source said. The victim died instantly, the source added.
It’s definitely a good thing that the man’s crime was treated seriously, seeing as the victim is not only female, but also his daughter. These two conditions usually render crimes committed by male relatives against female family members extremely insignificant and very often legally and socially condoned.
The man was angry at his son, and shot his daughter (who stood between the two men) supposedly by accident. The criminal part of the affair is obvious, but how is this situation any different from a man shooting his daughter because he suspects she is damaging the family’s honor? In both cases the man is angry, the daughter is not proven guilty, and oftentimes is not at all guilty (think autopsy that proves she, and her honor/hymen, are intact). So how come legal authorities and society itself look the other way and let murderers out of prison after serving a modest 6 months when the word “honor” is mentioned by virtue of the infamous article 340:
Any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an “unlawful bed” benefits from a reduction in penalty.
Is that not giving men a “license to kill” in the name of an imaginary term invented by men themselves? Any man can kill his sister in Jordan for reasons like taking over her finances or her share in inheritance, and he can simply cite honor as his motive, and it would not matter if this woman is not found “guilty” of adultery during her autopsy, and society would hail the murderer as an honorable man.
I am willing to bet that if that 70 year old man cited honor as his motive for killing his daughter, which might be his lawyer’s tactic in the near future — you never know, he would be allowed to walk free and celebrate his 71st birthday at home. The irony.
I just got this as a forward. I thought it as a very expressive caricature on the situation of real estate prices in Jordan. Owning an apartment has turned into a mission impossible — it requires a Bond kind of guy and a Bionic Woman kind of girl to manage to do it.
I realize the issue of road safety is the current craze in Jordan, but I feel the media and officials are taking it way too far, and in the wrong direction too.
Al Ghad published a report on road humps, which are so annoyingly common in Amman that drivers deliberately take alternative routes to avoid them. The report says that “citizens” value the humps and urge the municipality to increase their numbers (what citizens? can I punch them in the face?). It also says that the municipality does not install humps which are over 5cm in height, or which are unpainted or unrecognizable. That’s a glaring lie and everyone knows it — plenty of trick humps in Amman and other cities. The municipality is supposedly working on fixing the problematic humps which technically can ruin people’s cars and cause accidents themselves. I suggest they remove them entirely.
I also suggest authorities fix the streets and patch up the numerous random and invisible holes and mend the water drainage holes which lie about 5-10cm below street levels and make our cars dip in them and almost run into either the pavements or other cars trying to avoid them. I suggest the municipality award street building bids to reliable and professional contractors, instead of the random connected engineer who commands a sea of untrained Egyptian workers and then, surprise surprise, the tunnel or bridge chips after the first drops of rain it receives and the street dough cracks and peels. I suggest we stop the wasta tradition, starting with the municipality staff and engineers, and ending with driving coaches and testers, and then we won’t need road humps anymore.
Another piece of news was about the death of a four year old boy in an accident. The boy was run over by a car and passed away, and his father was pretty badly injured. Other similar stories were covered previously by all Jordanian newspapers in an almost press-release format over the past few months. While the tragedy of losing human life to recklessness is obvious, it’s very interesting to me to note that car accidents in years past never got the same attention they are getting now.
Previously, only when 5+ people died in a massive and horrorish accident did we read about that in the papers. Now, whenever an accident happens, it’s right there in the papers. This trend started with the death of Hikmat Qaddoura and the subsequent noise over the accident, including the march and the road safety campaign launched by his family and friends. At that time, I started noticing how the unprecedented buzz generated in the papers about this particular accident touched a sensitive nerve in many people who noted that since the deceased belonged to a wealthy family, his passing away got the kind of attention no road-killed kid from a less affluent family ever got. They argued that kids die every day in Rusaifa and Wihdat, and nobody bothers to publish anything about them.
I am guessing authorities received these notes and digested them well, and from then on, we read in the papers about some unwealthy, often disabled, commoner dying in a road accident. I remember not too long ago there was a story about a blind man’s son, or the blind man himself, passing away after being hit by a car. Today there was the story of the four year old boy, and the trend is obvious.
It’s absolutely fascinating how class differences affect people’s perception of issues. The common Jordanian was angered by the attention to the Qaddoura case on the basis that common kids never got the same attention. The Qaddoura case started things going with a march and an awareness campaign. Now suddenly the Amman municipality and road authorities care about road safety and the media bombard us with pictures of mothers crying over their deceased kids’ coffins. They also make us feel like we’re roaming killers instead of recognizing their faults and the faults within the system. The whole affair is disturbing for the following reasons:
1- Roads suck.
2- Drivers get their licenses a la wasta. No wonder they can’t drive.
3- Driving coaches make so many mistakes and illegal errors themselves when they don’t have their students with them. I see that every day.
4- Amman Municipality is capitalizing on the Qaddoura case and the subsequent attention to road safety to blame everything on us drivers. Again, patch the roads.
5- Sob rhetoric is lame and ineffectual.
6- Class differences will increasingly underscore people’s attitudes towards significant problems.
7- Road humps do not solve the problem. They create angry drivers and broken cars.
And that ends my rant about road safety in Jordan.
I am currently reading Pillars of Salt, by Jordanian writer Fadia Faqir. The novel was recommended to me during my college years by Maria Laura Iasci, one of the best teachers I ever had and a reader of this blog (ciao professoressa!) during a class in English-to-Italian translation. I remember we were a class of about seven, all female, and we were assigned passages from the first chapter of the book to translate into Italian. I remember the task of turning the rich English of the text into comprehensible Italian was very challenging.
My then-professor, now-friend, Maria, recommended Pillars of Salt with enthusiasm. I had never heard of Faqir previously, and quite frankly I never heard of her afterwards except from Maria herself who, only a few months ago, recommended yet another book by Faqir. She emphasized that this was a Jordanian writer who treated issues such as honor and gender inequality in this society. Her being a woman was an instant plus as well.
Two days ago, I finally found Faqir’s Pillars of Salt at Prime. I started reading the book tonight and I have not yet finished it, but I was so moved by its realism that I felt compelled to write about it here. I do not know how the story will develop, I do not know if I will enjoy it in the coming pages as I have so far, but I do not think that would alter my reception of it so far.
Pillars of Salt is not only a novel about Jordan, the Bedouin Jordan and the developing Amman, it is a historical account of the situation of Jordanian women, a situation that has remained static for the most part. It relates the story of two women, one Bedouin and the other an Ammani, during and after the British Mandate. In doing so, it reveals the injustices, the myths, and the hardships that clouded and decorated the Jordanian scene.
That above was a brief summary of the novel. My own impressions upon reading it are not different from my sentiments when I used to hear my late aunt recount stories of her childhood in Karak. The stories she told of her father, my grandfather, riding a horse with a jinnee, the stories of men hunting at dawn and sleeping in caves, the stories of women giving birth as they participated in harvest (my grandmother included). Pillars of Salt also relates, but in a more limited way, to my mother’s upbringing in Amman as a Circassian. My mother tells me stories of Cinema Philadelphia, of Syrians and Bedouins flooding the old markets in Amman, and of a girl losing her hair while looking through a drop of oil in a coffee cup to uncover the location of an ancient treasure with the help of jinn.
There seems to have been a common historical fabric that united this Jordan together, and women seem to have been a vital part in this union, albeit in a repressed way. Faqir’s novel taps into that but refrains from making judgment. It recounts the events and seems plot-less precisely because it is so smooth and revealing, and it leaves it to the reader to observe and judge. While reading the novel, I feel like Faqir is narrating my own familial history, which to me has always been the history of the women rather than the men.
To put it in a word, this novel is captivating. Perhaps it is because I can relate to it to a large degree that I feel this way about it, but I believe it will be appreciated equally by others. I do think, though, that people from other cultures would be more taken by the religious-mythical-romantic theme the book has rather than the actual events. It might seem to them that the constant religious remarks and mythical references in the book are tools of style used by the author, but the reality is that these occur in reality exactly like they do in the book. I could hear the characters speak in Arabic Jordanian, although the book is in English. That is a sign of a successful, honest portrayal of Jordan.
Read this book is you’re interested in learning more about Jordan and its mentality and culture. I strongly recommend it and thank Maria for bringing it to my attention. You can also check out Fadia Faqir’s website by clicking here. I do hope this post preaches Faqir to you, she is a truly brilliant writer, and it’s a shame that such Jordanian writers do not get the attention they deserve.
