It seems to me that there is a growing tendency for Jordanian conservatives to pose as pseudo-scientists of late, and this is most evident in their refusal of the CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) which, interestingly enough, was not even signed within the last decade (signed in 1992) and was ratified in 2007. The uproar caused by the country’s recent lifting of its reservations on one of the three articles it originally objected to has been quite telling. It sort of opened Pandora’s Box of Medieval retardedness.

Why do I say it has been revealing? Because conservative opposition of the CEDAW bases its critique of the Convention on arguments that are comfortably called pseudo-scientific and retrogressive. To avoid using cliches as these opposition forces do, I’ll get to specifics:

1- On March 23, 2009, I was at the Professional Associations (PAs) Complex in Amman attending a session organized by the Women’s Committee at the PAs (the latter controlled by Islamists) and the Afaf Charity Association (yes, that is the charity that organizes mass weddings to help people get married). The session was about the reasons why these two parties believe Jordan should not only keep its reservations on CEDAW, but should also dump the whole Convention in the trash.

And to give you an idea of how that went, let me paint you a picture: Al Rasheed hall was full of jilbab and burka wearing women, which is understandable given that the PAs are famously controlled by Islamists. Maysoon Darawsheh (member of Afaf), speaking at the opening of the session, showed a slide of this man right here:

I’m sure you’ve seen him on Oprah. Darawsheh must’ve picked him up from there:

…much to the amusement and surprise of the attendees who all gasped in wonder and disgust at the abnormality. Then Darawsheh said: “This is what CEDAW will do to us, it will turn men into women and women into men. It will upset god’s natural system. I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan.”

Darawsheh did not mention anything about the history of the man in the picture (a transgendered Thomas Beatie) or about how it relates to CEDAW exactly. Her tactic was quite cheap: shock the masses into disgust and they’ll nod in approval at anything you say afterward.

2- Operation Shock and Awe aside (if you can cast it aside, that is), Darawsheh proceeded to show slides of the Convention’s articles and arguing against them one by one. The one thing common in all her arguments (her trump card if you will) was that “CEDAW calls for absolute equality between men and women, which means canceling any differences between the two.” She even went so far as to declare that CEDAW promotes “sexism against men” by making sure that women enjoy their same rights and obligations. She didn’t, however, detail how exactly this means discriminating against men, or why the genders being equal in the eyes of the law will be such a menace to society. Or whether she approved of the current discrimination against women. Maybe she forgot?

The one conclusion I could draw from her all-too-identical points was that she, and like-minded people, simply do not want anything to change in the Jordanian society. To them, men and women are leading good lives the way things are: women know what to do, and men know what to do. Nobody protests, nothing changes, everyone is happy.

3- To justify this conservative Muslim outrage at the Convention, Darawsheh noted that “not only Muslim societies are threatened by this Convention, as Christians are as well.” She said that they (I guessed the anti-CEDAW Muslims) are joining forces with the Vatican (the Vatican! Yes, the one with the Pope who offended them a couple of years ago, remember?) to counter the Convention’s disastrous effects on society. Holy war? What holy war? That’s religious tolerance for you!

Does the joining of forces of some Muslims and the Vatican for a certain cause make that cause automatically and universally just? Does it kill the counter-cause immediately? Darawsheh did not say, and she forgot to mention that the Vatican has lost its place in the progressive Christian world of today and does not enjoy any influence on non-Catholic Christians. Not to mention that she chose to ignore the long, bloody relationship between Muslims and Catholics and the Vatican’s OKing the Crusades. Ironically, the word “crusade” is habitually chosen by conservatives to describe what they see as malicious intrusion in the affairs of the Muslim world. Is it possible that the esteemed pseudo-scientist Darawsheh simply forgot to reflect on all that?

The sad thing is that I am not even making this up.

4- Also speaking at the session, director of Afaf Charity Association, Mufeed Sarhan, called CEDAW, “A deliberate attack on the foundations of Arab and Islamic societies through weakening the family unit.” He somehow forgot to mention that over 90 percent of UN member states are party to CEDAW, a total of 185 countries, mainly non-Arab and non-Muslim.

5- Since the whole session was organized to counter Jordan’s lifting its reservation on Paragraph 4 of Article 15 of CEDAW, I feel it’s necessary to put that here:

“State Parties shall accord to men and women the same rights with regard to the law relating to the movement of persons and the freedom to choose their residence and domicile”.

Another speaker at the session, Dr Munther Zaytoun, professor of Shari’ah and Islamic Studies, foresaw “social corruption” as a result of this “liberty granted to women to be mobile and choose their residence”, linking this freedom to prostitution, sexual crime, and “implicit obligations for women to work for a living and support themselves”.

Big words, no evidence. Again, move the crowd to a state of disgust/fear and they’ll nod in agreement. I am guessing the real fear these speakers have of this article is that young women might move out of their parents’ houses and be corrupted. That their freedom of movement will be protected by the law. They forget that for that to actually happen, the social mindset has to change or else these young women will simply be shot down or stabbed to death in the name of honor. And don’t we all know what happens then? The murderers do not get punished, and the law protects them. Consequently, this argument is actually void for the time being (and for all the wrong reasons).

As for work, I suppose it all comes down to that. Conservatives do not want women to work freely (i.e. work full-time jobs and not be obliged to have a second, unpaid domestic job entailing cleaning, cooking, raising kids, pleasing the husband) because when women do work freely, men have to step up to the plate and share the domestic workload with them. Also, when women work (and are not robbed of their salaries by either their families or husbands), they achieve financial independence which equals economic power. They can then actually influence laws and society. They can also shake off men’s control over their economic and social lives in the long run.

Consider this: a woman who works freely and is not shackled by an unpaid domestic job that saps her of her energy and undermines her potential for success in her paid job: will not approve of being symbolically bought by marriage (therefore the dowry will disappear, and man loses this key purchase power), will not burden her husband and her society by being an unemployed consumer waiting to be fed and clothed in return for her sexual and reproductive abilities, will not think of herself as a second class citizen but as a full human being and therefore will contribute to the welfare of her society.

Granted, economic liberation alone will not achieve all that as there needs to be parallel progress achieved on the intellectual level. But It is, all the same, this scenario that scares the conservatives because it shakes the very foundations of their convictions: gender roles, family, women, men, the system.

So let no conservatives fool you when they claim that freedom of mobility will force women to mutate “to work for a living and support themselves,” as that is the way things should be in the first place and the restrictions imposed are nowhere near natural. An unproductive individual is a waste that society can well do away with. The argument for keeping women dependent on men is rooted in the desire to keep them just that: dependent, incomplete, inferior.

6- Zaytoun linked the freedom to choose one’s residence and move freely to prostitution and sexual crime. Again, he did not supply any evidence, or at least a logical connection. This is a cliche: that when women are forced to work they will sell their bodies, which is why men need to turn them into “honest women” by marrying them and then sponsoring them through life, all the while enjoying their free labor at home and in the bed, and even acquiring more than one wife. Did Zaytoun mean to say that all the Jordanian women (to keep it local) who are without male sponsors and who work for a living are whores? Did he mean that the only work women are capable of doing for a living is prostitution?

I think men who hide behind these absurd claims may have a deep desire to be needed. If women work, they will only choose them instead of needing them. Then they will be unnecessary, in their argument of course and not mine, and that’s just too horrific to bear.

Zaytoun managed to forget to mention anything about spousal rape as a devastating form of sexual crime, or polygamy as a form of emotio-sexual, albeit legal crime. Is sexual crime a crime only outside the boundaries of a marriage where women do not choose where to live?

7- According to Zaytoun, “Freedom given to women to choose their residence destroys the marital relationship and puts them under pressure to work beyond their capabilities.” I am not sure how a woman’s freedom to choose where to live will break up families, and I find it quite hypocritical that this same speaker did not mention anything about the injustices suffered by women who cannot choose their domicile. If a woman does not want to live in a certain place, then she should enjoy the right to refuse living in that place. It’s a basic human right. Try to reverse the situation: a man may not choose his place of residence. Nobody would ever dream of having any legal clause saying that.

Plus, in countries where women are denied freedom of movement and domicile, such as Saudi Arabia, the status of liberties is a matter of great contention. Human Rights Watch 2008 report found that “officials continue to ask all women for written proof their guardian has allowed them to travel” and that “travel restrictions can also be humiliating for many women”. These restrictive policies did not usher in a decrease in divorce cases, as they reached 35% in recent years according to the Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs, while other sources place them at 50%.

8- While conservative Islamists in the Islamic Action Front criticized the government’s refusal to abide by the fatwa to walk out on CEDAW, they forgot to mention that they are not representative of the Jordanian people and that their hullabaloo in the media was a bunch of witchcraft-science designed to manipulate the public opinion. They also forgot to note that their staunch resistance of the CEDAW is a mask for political ambitions and a tool to embarrass the government (as if the government needs help to feel embarrassed.) Quite frankly, the government’s arbitrary dismissal of the fatwa when it normally abides by fatwas was also a political gesture.

To wrap this up, I’m introducing a new label: pseudo-care. CEDAW opposition farts pseudo-science, and the government spits pseudo-care. When the government stops enforcing laws that explicitly discriminate against women, when it stops adopting a specific religious opinion with regards to women’s civil status, only then can it truly claim it wants to achieve equality. When the government stops allocating a number of seats for women in the Parliament to impose women on a society that does not see them as capable, when it stops showing off its ministers and parliamentarians a token of equality in international conferences while Jordanian women continue to be abused and denied basic human rights, and when it stops flirting with tribal and Islamist conservatism to keep its political system running, only them can we hope for true change.

Signing a Convention is a point-scoring facade when on the ground men and women do not believe themselves to be equal because the economic relationships between them, the laws governing their lives, and subsequently their culture, tell them the exact opposite.

يومٌ دامٍ في عَمّان

هشام البستاني*

ياسر ابو هلالة صحفي شجاع، وهو بالاضافة الى ذلك مدير مكتب الجزيرة في عمان، وتعرض للضرب والاهانة، مثله مثل باقي الناس المتواجدين في المظاهرة التي انطلقت ظهر أمس الجمعة 9/1/2009 في الرابية، الضاحية العمانية التي تستقر بها سفارة الكيان الصهيوني.

لكن لأن الجزيرة تملك ثقلاً اعلامياً كبيراً، ولأن خبر ضربه ظهر مباشرة على الشريط الاخباري، ومن ثم في نشرة الاخبار، فقد تلقى على الفور مكالمة من الملك الاردني للاطمئنان على صحته، تبعته زيارة له من قبل رئيس الوزراء نادر الذهبي ووزير الداخلية عيد الفايز والناطق الرسمي باسم الحكومة ناصر جودة، وظهروا يُقَبّلونه معتذرين والابتسامات على محياهم، مُعْلِمينه بأنهم شكلوا لجنة للتحقيق في الحادث المؤسف، ومؤكدين له أنها حادثة فردية.

حادثة فردية؟ الآن نسأل هؤلاء المسؤولين جميعاً: ماذا عن عشراتٍ من الآخرين الذي تلقوا الشتائم والاهانات والضرب المبرح بالهروات واللكم والركل والدعس في البطون؟ من سيعتذر لهم؟ ومن سيشكل لجان تحقيق حول ما تعرضوا له؟ والى متى سيظل المواطن في الاردن رخيصاً الى درجة ان صلاحيات رجال الامن تشمل ضربه وسبه والدعس في بطنه؟ الى متى سيظل المواطن “حادثة فردية”ØŸ

ظهر أمس، كنت أتواجد في الصف الاول لمظاهرة الرابية، وحاولت جاهداً مع بعض الاصدقاء النقابيين (كما يشهد البث المباشر للجزيرة) ولمدة اربعة ساعات متواصلة منع الاحتكاك بين المتظاهرين المتحمسين للوصول الى سفارة العدو في عمان وبين قوات مكافحة الشغب النوعية التي أُنشأت حديثاً وجهزت بأحدث التقنيات المستوردة من الولايات المتحدة، هذه القوات التي سميت “قوات الدرك” وصدر لها قانون خاص.

كان بامكان قوات الدرك الاستمرار في احتواء الموقف بطريقة “الدفع” التي كنا نستعملها بنجاح طوال اربع ساعات، ولكن لا، فالهراوات والدروع والتجهيزات الاخرى الهاي-تيك موجودة للاستعمال على ما يبدو، لا للركن جانبا ومحاولة اجتراح طرق احتواء لا عنفية كما يُفترض في بلد يحترم مواطنيه ويحفظ كراماتهم.

نعم، كانت هناك اساءات قليلة من المتظاهرين، فبين حين وآخر كانت زجاجة ماء أو حجر يلقى من بعيد، ولكن لم يكن ذلك الا حالات منفردة وبسيطة لم تشكل أي تهديد على الاطلاق لقوى مدججة بالدروع والخوذ. ولكن هل كان هذا مبرراً لقوات الامن للتعامل بأقصى ما تملك من العنف مع المتظاهرين؟

بالنسبة لي شخصياً، انا المخلص لفكرة منع الاحتكاك طوال ذلك اليوم، فقد سقطت قنبلة الغاز المسيل للدموع مباشرة أمام وجهي، وغبت بعدها عن الوعي لأجد نفسي في المستشفى. زميلي أ.ج.ر الذي كان يساعدني في منع الاحتكاك أكل نصيبه من الهراوات حتى شبع، فيما كسرت رجل زميل ثالث (هو ج.ش) وهي تلتف الآن بكتلة ثقيلة من الجبس.

عند خروجي من المستشفى، اصريت على احد الاصدقاء لاصطحابي بسيارته الى الرابية مرة أخرى لاسترجاع سيارتي. هناك، في احد الشوارع الفرعية الضيقة، كان الى جانبها ما يزيد عن العشرة من قوات الدرك المدججين بالعصي يضربون مواطنين اثنين لم يكن في الشارع غيرهما، كالوا لهم الصفعات والركلات، واحدهم تلقى هراوة على رأسه فانبثق الدم غزيرا، وبين الكف والركلة والهراوة كنت تسمع: “يا أخو الش…”ØŒ “… أمك”ØŒ وهكذا. الحقيقة انني خفت. خفت ان فتحت الباب محاولاً التدخل، ان ينالني من الركل والضرب والسباب ما يعيدني الى المستشفى مرة أخرى. فبلعت اهانة مشاهدة آخرين ينكَّل بهم دون ان أتدخل، وطفرت دمعة من عيني.

عندما عدت الى البيت، ورأيت المشاهد التي التقطتها الجزيرة لعمليات التنكيل بالمواطنين، صارت المسألة أكثر من واضحة:

1- ماذا يفعل خمسة دركيين مجتمعين فوق مواطن منطرح على الارض ممسكا بخيمة الاعتصام الصغيرة يضربونه بكل ما يمتلكون من عنف وتنويعات الى الدرجة التي طار فيها أحدهم في الهواء ليركله في بطنه؟ كيف يُؤَهّل هؤلاء الافراد؟ وماذا يُقال لهم عن مواطنيهم ليتعاملوا معهم بهذه الدرجة من القسوة والعنف والدموية؟

2- لماذا يتم التعامل بعنف هائل فقط مع مظاهرات الرابية؟ وهل –رغم كل التلميحات الحكومية حول “خياراتهم المفتوحة تجاهها”- تظل سفارة العدو الصهيوني خطاً أحمر يُفرَم في سبيلها المواطنون؟

3- أين القوى السياسية المعارضة؟ وهل هناك تواطؤ بينها وبين السلطة لاحتواء الشارع وافراغه؟ الملتقى الوطني للاحزاب والنقابات وحركة الاخوان المسلمين غير معنيين بالشارع واتجاهاته بتاتاً في تكرار مرير لتجارب الـ2000 (انطلاق الانتفاضة الثانية) و2002 (مجزرة جنين) التي خرج الناس فيها في ذات الموقع، وبالآلاف، ضد سفارة العدو. ففي الجمعة السابقة (2/1/2009)، عندما كان يفترض ان تخرج مسيرات من الجوامع من كل المناطق، لم يجد الملتقى الوطني سوى ستاد عمان، الملعب الكبير لكرة القدم في العاصمة، ليحشروا الناس فيه لعقد مهرجان خطابي ويفرغوا الشوارع منهم. اما هذه الجمعة، فقد قررت مكونات الملتقى الوطني المشاركة فرادى في مسيرة تنظمها الحكومة وسط البلد، بعيداً عن السفارة ومشاكلها، فيما اقام الاخوان المسلمون مهرجانا لهم في طبربور، واحدة من ضواحي عمان البعيدة جداً عن المظاهرة المركزية التقليدية في الرابية.

المشهد في الاردن مغرق بالمأساوية، فمطالب الناس باغلاق سفارة العدو في عمان واعلان بطلان معاهدة وادي عربة يبدو ان لا مستمعين لها، وبين العنف الواقع عليه من السلطة السياسية والاحتواء والتوظيف الواقع عليه من قوى المعارضة الرسمية، يجد المواطن نفسه مدمياً ومهاناً على قارعة الطريق، ولسان حاله يقول: ليتني كنت أيضاً مراسلاً للجزيرة.

______________________________________________________

*كاتب من الاردن

للاطلاع على صور من الاصطدامات بين قوات الدرك و المتظاهرين يمكن الرجوع إلى مدونة ليث المجالي

A Jordanian family of men?

Nermeen Murad

Almost two years ago I wrote my first column at The Jordan Times and expressed my incredulity at my family being denied membership of the Jordanian family.

My husband and children have not only been denied citizenship, they have also been subjected to a series of what I would call xenophobic legislation and directives that certainly ensure they could never claim that they belong here.

Two years on, I have become resigned to the fact that Jordan, with its current social and political mindset, will resist any attempt from my side to add my small family’s imported name to the list of Jordanian family names. This I do with regret for my children who will never comprehend why their mother’s country rejected them outright and without compromise.

But this doesn’t mean that I will give up the fight, at least for reduced bureaucracy in dealing with the affairs of the spouse and children of a Jordanian woman, regardless of their nationality.

Hence, here I go again.

Two weeks ago, the Jordanian Ministry of Education saw fit to allow the foreign children of a Jordanian woman to enrol in public schools. I don’t want to go on about how shocking it is that they had been kept out of these schools for so long. I will instead concentrate on welcoming the positive and calling for even more movement in that direction.

Let me please describe the situation. The husband of a Jordanian woman is treated exactly like any foreign labourer and has no special categorisation that even slightly improves his standing with the authorities in the country.

In plain Arabic speak, he has no wasta! He and every other menial worker who enters Jordan are given the same treatment.

So, therefore, when he buys a car, he needs security clearance. When he buys a house, he needs security clearance. He renews his driver’s licence every single year and every year he pays the fees again. He renews his visa every year and, of course, has to go through the same procedure as the domestic helper, registering his address at the local police station and then taking all his documentation to the different departments associated with the Ministry of Interior. My children carry an iqama, exactly like the contracted workers, and my husband has the added pleasure of also carrying a work permit.

The husband of a Jordanian woman cannot simply decide to live in Jordan without work because it is the work that allows him to have a residency and not his marriage.

I look forward to making arrangements for retirement in any other country in the world that will be happy to allow my husband and I to retire in peace without an annual hassle; my country has so far not made allowances for that possibility.

In fact, an anomaly appeared the other day when we began procedures to employ a domestic helper under my husband’s name, only to find out that he has to put JD2,000 deposit as a guarantee against the import of a house helper.

This is the same treatment allocated to passing foreigners in the country and does not begin to allow for the fact that he resides here in Jordan because he is the lifetime partner of a Jordanian citizen, albeit a women.

I asked the other day at a brokerage firm whether I could create small investment portfolios for my minor children only to find out that the law had a relapse against me in this regard.

Apparently I, their mother, cannot be the guardian of my minor children, because that is the father’s prerogative and therefore any funds invested on their behalf by me is under the control of their father.

If Jordan cannot bring itself to welcome our husbands and children as honoured citizens of the Jordanian family, then let it at least welcome them as honoured guests.

Directives such as the one that allowed the children of a Jordanian woman into schools are to be commended and encouraged. But they must be followed by other such steps that recognise the special status of this sector of society and seeks to make its members welcome in their adopted home.

One-year residency should be replaced with five-year residencies, followed by permanent residency for the relatives of a female Jordanian citizen. Sale or purchase of personal property, i.e., houses and cars, should be routine for the spouses and children of a Jordanian woman.

Irregularities in the law which favour male members of the Jordanian family over female siblings should be reduced and in time, removed. Then, we can honestly claim to be home to the one Jordanian family.

Nermeen34@aol.com

Source

This is truly a slap on the face of justice.

Ùˆ على رأي المثل: طعمي التم بتستحي العين ]]> http://tololy.com/2008/09/03/%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a7%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b1%d8%af%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a9/feed/ 1 http://tololy.com/2008/08/12/jocr8-creating-an-artistic-jordan/ http://tololy.com/2008/08/12/jocr8-creating-an-artistic-jordan/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:25:58 +0000 Tololy http://www.tololy.com/?p=1228 I’ve been to JOCR8 by chance a couple of weeks ago and I was deeply impressed by the sheer energy that powers the portal, only to be contacted by the people behind it soon afterwards to write a review of the site.

About JOCR8:

JoCr8 is a portal to connect visual communicators in Jordan. This includes everyone who practices any of the visual arts disciplines; from the traditional painter to the designer to the 3D artist. It’s also a magazine with interviews and articles on visual media whether in Jordan, the region, or beyond.

There really isn’t much one can add to that except to note that the portal not only bestows a “community status” on the otherwise scattered visual artists in the country, but it also does a laudable effort to publicize their works, and it even lists available job vacancies for the people in the field!

One word: Bravo!

My only exposure to sex education during school was when in 6th grade a friend of mine had a Q&A booklet about the issue with her in class. We “sort of” enjoyed reading the booklet until our Islamic Religion teacher busted us and confiscated it, but did not inform the headmistress of our misconduct. Then in around 10th grade, we got acquainted with the very technical names of our reproductive organs, all drawn out in color in biology books. The teacher blushed during the two classes when she “sort of” explained some things to us like ovulation, menstruation, and how babies are made.

My point is this: none of the above “lessons” was memorable or useful in giving us, the mothers of the future, any sort of well-founded understanding of this pivotal aspect of our lives. The problem with that approach to sex education, being all biological because the culture does not permit further boldness, is that girls and boys will get their information elsewhere. Trust me, they will listen to anyone willing to talk about sex and they will get a really, REALLY demented version of it. I was in an all-girls public high school and I know what I am talking about. The things and stories girls told each other were unhealthy, untrue, and entirely grotesque.

On a relevant note, read this article about sex ed mostly in America.

The open-air event was well organized and I generally liked it, but I noticed the following things about the films themselves:

1- All three of them were set up in old Ammani neighborhoods, with a touch of romantic poverty.
2- All three of them featured lower-middle class to lower-class characters struggling either in love or family relations.
3- All three films’ scripts did not come across as convincing to me. There were Bedouin characters in one film where the setting was an Ammani neighborhood, and dialog in all three scripts was not true to life. For example, in two of the three movies there were “zo3ran” characters who really did not sound the part to me. I am guessing that because there is a significant class distance between the films’ staffs and the characters in these films that this was so. Plus, I know too much street language to be convinced with anything that distant from the real thing.
4- The stories, although set in lower-middle class neighborhoods and featuring fit characters, carried with them the controversies and concerns of their upper-middle and upper class makers. As such, there were some gaps in the stories which rendered them untrue to their settings.

Overall, however, I was impressed with the motivation these young film makers had and with the quality of their work. It’s so refreshing to feel that there is a cultural renaissance in the making here in Jordan, but for it to really be representative of us all as Jordanians and Arabs, it has to involve people from all classes and not just privileged upper class talents who can afford to realize their artistic visions.

I know how popular the camels are with you guys, so I took a couple of pictures with my phone for your viewing pleasure. If this sounds like I am confirming the stereotype of Arabs as camel-herding people, then let me unequivocally say that I am as amused as anyone by these REALLY big creatures being loose like this very close to where I live. It’s bizarre.

Ah. How I love books! I had a terrific time this morning when I went to the Amman Book Fair with my sisters, bookish women like me, and we spent whatever was left of our salaries on books, sweet seductive books! There were awesome deals in the UBCC stand, the Ahliyya stand, and MES Publishing stand; the three houses where we splurged the most.

I couldn’t get every book I wanted but I got a handsome portion of what I liked. My selections ranged from Orhan Pamuk to Nawal Sadaawi to Ibsen to Nietzsche to Son’allah Ibrahim. I am going again next week, and then I plan to buy works by Freud, Darwin, Spinoza, Marx, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others.

I was delighted today to realize that I am not starting with nothing in my ongoing library-building endeavors, that I actually have a respectable collection in my library and my mind so I do not have to start from scratch. That I found out by the number of books I snubbed because I have already read. Chasing knowledge is a fool’s occupation, true, but it’s an honorable martyrdom. My problem now is that there is not enough space in my room to hold the results of my bibliophilia.

Addendum: The prices at the three stands I mentioned were the best. At UBCC there are books for one-two-three JDs only, at Ahliyya I bought all of the Arabic titles for half the price written on the cover, and at MES (Al Nothom Al Haditha) I bought all the blue-covers for a little less than the cover price, and in all cases you find books for less than you would if you are going to buy them from regular bookshops. I can’t say the same about other stands though, at Collins books were more expensive than at Prime Mega Store, so you need to have an idea about prices before fishing for your wallet.

It’s one thing to be fascinated by the characters or the plot of the story as an adult (you’re old enough to decide for yourself what to like and what to dislike, and if you ask me you’ve got poor taste in drama if you like Noor, but whatever), but to have children wear pictures of some actors who play mature roles is beyond unacceptable. The trouble is that children, especially young girls, are captivated by the show as well, due to the influence of the adults in their families or through peer pressure. This is sick and it says a lot about the depravity of our society.

And for good measure, Bab Al-Hara characters also had their own t-shirts. I am dreading Ramadan…

All of this reminds me of the Cassandra mania, which was a mid-90s social obsession with a Mexican soap opera with Arabic voice overs. One of my school friends at the time wrote in my notebook “You’re prettier than Cassandra,” and she signed her words with a sticker featuring Cassandra herself, with her long black hair and shoulderless and sleeveless white top. Cassandra skirts, colorful wrinkled gypsy-type long skirts, were all over the market and most girls wore them for a year or two. Cassandra’s lover, Ignazio (?), was the epitome of masculine appeal, as is this Turkish character Mohannad these days.

It seems to me that our society is programmed to fall in love with TV dramas every now and then, and it goes out of its way to prove its devotion. Heck, Jordan even hosted Noor and Mohannad the other day! If this is not an indication of some chronic voidness, I don’t know what is.