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.

Do we ever really know the people around us? Do we ever know who our partners are? Yes, surely we know how they talk and how they behave, but that is only true for what they choose to reveal to us. We know only that much, and nothing else.

Many people lead double lives or have secrets they do not share with anyone no matter how close. Wouldn’t it be naive to expect anyone to be who they appear to be? Don’t we all pretend to be someone we are not, every single day? Don’t we smile unwillingly just to be pleasant, or nod in agreement when we disagree, or go to a job we hate? Isn’t that acting? Aren’t we all actors?

The foolishness of expecting people to be who they appear to be reveals a pattern of stereotypical thinking which is completely illogical. Nobody is ever just one person. We think we know that, but we constantly fall for the illusion of this one persona and feel betrayed when we find out the multi-layered truth.

I believe that we purposefully live in duplicity. We keep secrets and expect others not to have any, we act and expect others to be honest, and when we find out that they are actors just like us we see this simplistic conviction crumble and fall. We then act surprised because how could they?

I also believe that nobody really wants to know anyone for who they truly are. Polished and well-thought out acting is best and blunt reality is never in demand. Isn’t that why so many partnerships end with divorce, or continue in resentful boredom — their actors short on fuel in the overwhelming presence of everyday reality?

I, for one, do not need to know anyone for who they truly are. I don’t think it is possible for anyone to know who I truly am either, because I myself do not know. I am a good actress and a good muse, and I try to keep the company of like-minded people. No expectations, no shocks, we improvise and act life out. Our hardest fight is to keep the offensive truth at bay and to sing its praises at the same time. What is truth but a distant tease, anyway?

While attending a seminar last summer at the Socialist Thought Forum, about women and the Left, I was genuinely captivated by the eloquence of the speaker — a Palestinian activist. She knew her stuff and she spoke so well that I almost couldn’t breathe. I had found it, I knew I had found it even though I didn’t know what it was.

In the Q&A session that followed, a man with side parted hair stood up. He demanded to know if women had a “special condition” that would call for “special treatment.” The man with side parted hair was wearing a white shirt and grey pants, he had grayish hair even though he was young. He was clearly emotional as he made his case against the separation of man and woman, his arms moving restlessly and his voice a tad louder than necessary.

The man didn’t even attempt to conceal the sarcasm in his voice as he demanded to know what women thought was special about them that would authorize them to designate a part of the struggle as their own. Anti-imperialist, anti-zionist, anti-capitalist — his anti-’s were so many I thought he wasn’t pro-anything. He argued for “collective struggle” by “liberating man and woman alike.”

As I watched the agitated man try to dismiss the unique condition of women, and the others present nodding or staring with empty eyes lulled by the evening warmth, I felt a burning sensation crawl to my stomach. This man wants to rob us of our individuality? Melt us in the anti-capitalist pot? Strip us of our legitimate struggle against injustice under the pretext of socialist revolt? Free men first, he said, and women will be free… Men first.

A friend slid to my side across the two vacant chairs next to me and whispered: “Won’t you answer him?” At the same time, the speaker addressed his comments. My friend slid back to his chair and I listened with enthusiasm to the response furnished by the lady. She really knew her stuff. She gave him Marx, Castro, Beijing, and solid evidence of feminist socialist activism.

The other day, I was talking to a political analyst and professor about this same issue. The minute I mentioned women his lips curled, his eyes rolled, and he sat back in his chair with an impatient sigh. He said he didn’t believe that women had a “special condition” that required “special treatment.” He argued that this “dichotomy” being shoved down everyone’s throats by feminists was not good for anyone, and that it, in fact, backfires. What’s the point, he asked me? Then he answered that we should strive to free men first, and then women will be free… Men first.

My father agrees with these men. What’s so special about woman to make her demand justice tailored specifically for her needs? Why can’t woman stay put for a while until capitalism, socialism, or Islam deliver a Utopian society where man is liberated to a degree that allows him, in turn, to liberate woman — a liberty tinged with the flavor of the delivering ideology? Let’s focus on liberating men first, and women will follow.

This begs the question: why men first? It is, of course, an implicit admittance of gender monopoly of power and resources in society. It is as well a millenia-old pattern of thought and behavior which follows from this monopoly: men lead, women follow. Tell that to anyone and you risk being called a man-hater, even if you love men to bits. There’s nothing new there, we all know that telling the truth is not without consequences.

Liberate men first, for how can you have a free woman if her father and brother are not free? — that’s how the argument goes. The idea is that woman is dependent on man, even in freedom, and cannot be completely liberated without his participation. The opposite is not true: man can be free with or without woman’s participation, and freeing woman is at his discretion; a privilege he bestows or denies at will.

That, precisely that, is the “special condition” of woman. The sum of woman’s life experiences differs immensely from the sum of man’s, as while the first is treated as a woman, the latter is treated as a man in the social, economical, religious, psychological, and biological senses of the two labels. The reality of men’s monopoly of power renders any parallel calls for studying “the special condition of men” void. After all, we all live in “the special conditions” set by men.

Tradition holds that woman is thought to be dependent on man even if she really isn’t, inferior to man either implicitly or explicitly, and consequently denied many of the rights enjoyed by man. At the same time woman undergoes a process of brainwashing that starts from infancy; a process that teaches her where “her place” is and prohibits her from trying to change it. Almost miraculously, all the forces that shape human consciousness take part in this process: religion, society, economy, etc., and it’s a vicious cycle.

The “special condition” of women is the expectations and assumptions made by society about women: they affect women’s psychology, perceptions, behaviors, and aspirations. For centuries, women have been largely meeting these expectations and assumptions because they have been programmed to do so. Now that they are attempting to define who they really are, not necessarily as feminists but as freedom seekers, they are told to wait, let’s liberate men first.

My aunt was an example of the “special condition” of women which is so often denied. None of the difficulties she had to endure, none of the injustices she had to suffer would have been remotely thinkable if she were a man. She was married off to a stranger at 12, had to satisfy this patriarchal society at her own expense until the day she died, and spent her entire life under surveillance from the numerous holier-than-thou chauvinists — men and women who thought they had the right to monitor her life because society disadvantaged her.

None of the hardships my aunt lived through would have been applicable if she were a man. That is the sad fact in Jordan and in most other countries where a biological difference means a completely different life, different rules, different priorities, different everything. She has been dead for six years already, and it was only after she died that I realized how oblivious I was to her story. It was only after she died that I had to confront societal demons not unlike the ones she had to confront in her lifetime: 3eeb, honour, reputation, duty, expectations, propriety, womanhood.

I can’t compare my life to hers because hers was considerably more miserable and her situation a lot more disadvantaged, but what I can say is that I am doing what I am doing for her. She couldn’t speak up and she couldn’t fight back because she didn’t have the tools, but I can, and I do. She was too eager to please everyone and to go with the flow, because she knew no other alternative and was never allowed to consider herself or her life as separately significant. I know there is an alternative, and I am determined to pursue it.

Until women are treated as human beings, granted every right known to man, not objectified scandalously or conservatively, there will be no true justice. How can anybody expect justice to rain down from the sky without sacrifice? In my life, my aunt’s sacrifice was enough to prompt me to question, think, learn, and revolt. This was counterintuitive: the idea was to have all the women in my family dread such a life by submitting to whatever was thrown at them. The exact opposite happened, at least to me.

Justice knows no gender, like it knows no color or race. Why then are we constantly supposed to believe that the only domain we are not to probe is this one, and none else? Why is racial discrimination universally abhorred, while gender discrimination is still a matter of discussion, nay, denial?

In Jordan, if you express a hint of a desire to want to fix what’s broken in the gender balance, you are accused of man-hating, blasphemy, or self-loathing. If you do so much as pose a question on the validity of the definition of honor, you are most likely to be the object of suspicion. If you criticize tribal practices leading women to be held in “administrative detention” for fear on their lives, while their male sources of threat remain untouched, you are considered a cultural outlaw. If you dare to contest patriarchal power, in any shape or form, you are seen as a woman who has gone astray and every measure is taken to restrain you.

As long as this continues, and it will continue for a long time, we will remain stuck in the intellectual equivalent of the Middle Ages. As long as we do not recognize that women do go through extremely different life experiences that shape their lives, we will have ignorant men and women who will find no shame in dismissing the fact. Finally, if we do not call things by their names: injustice as injustice, not a feminist luxury, we will have those who stand up and arbitrarily demand that we liberate men first.

We need a healthy dose of philosophy so we may be able to exercise our minds a bit, step beyond our mundane thought patterns– maybe even shock ourselves with our audacity. Imagine letting go of all of your preconceived notions and floating about naked in intellectual wonder. That’s what we should do every now and then: float about naked, uninhibited, unleashed, child-like. It is only then that we begin to learn who we truly are.

Thus spake Tololy.

A lot of what is being said about the situation is emotional. That’s understandable. It’s hard to restrain your emotions when you see your people being maimed by Israeli bombs, dismembered in the streets and killed in mosques, and when you hear the aggressive occupiers dismissing their crimes as if they were nothing. The damage does not stop at the physical destruction in Gaza, but is carved deep in the minds of everyone who sees it: this lust for blood which our “neighbor” periodically displays both frightens and angers us. The international official silence and our leaders’ utter failure to act burns deeper still.

How can you not be emotional when you experience all the shame and shock in the world; shame because you are part of the problem, and shock because the world is not doing anything to solve it?

For years we have prayed, we have quoted Quranic verses promising us victory or preaching Armageddon as endgame, we have bought the lie our leaders told us that “peace is the only option” and forgot that we are in no position to negotiate, we have signed peace treaties and have kept mum when Israel did not keep its part of the deal, we have shut our eyes blind to the glaringly unbalanced clauses in these treaties, we have let the dream of peace take over the reality of what’s happening on the ground. That’s how bad we wanted this 60-year-old nightmare to end.

“Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

- Nelson Mandela

No matter what treaties we have with Israel, we should never lose sight of the fact that Palestinians are our priority. They are our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our people. Western, primarily American, media bias in favor of Israel should not make us forget that Gaza has been under siege for about two years, during which the people in Gaza (Hamas and everyone else) were starved, humiliated, isolated from the outside world, and asked to die silently. Isn’t Israel’s request for the rockets to stop a plea for Palestinians to shut up and die silently? Do Israeli children live in a greater degree of fear from Hamas rockets than Palestinians children do with no access to healthy food, electricity, good education, or contact with the outside world, while being threatened with death, and now literally facing it?

“While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.

Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.

Gaza is one of the world’s most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made rockets.

Call it a prison riot, writ large.”

Source

For years we have pretended that the Palestinian people can solve their problem with Israel on their own. We chose to ignore that it is our problem too. We chose to pursue peace individually as separate states and left Palestine under Israeli mercy. We chose to buy defeatist peace rhetoric so we can clear our conscience and live our lives normally while the people next door were being humiliated at every checkpoint. We chose to abandon Palestine, and the onus is on us to wash this shame away.

Change starts right now. It simply cannot come from others to change the situation in Gaza and Palestine, it has to come from us. We are as responsible as Israel for the bloodshed in Gaza, because we let it happen. Praying and lighting candles do nothing, sending aid and donating blood do more but not much in any account, and clinging to blissful defeatism is the worst danger of all.

It’s about time we thought long and hard of what we are doing to alleviate the pain in Palestine. Our roles as classic sympathizers, eager aid-senders, chatty case-defenders, religious doom-preachers, liberal peace-advocates have all proved to be futile in the face of organized, US-backed, propagandist Israeli actions.

When the frustrated people took to the streets in Arab capitals, their governments listened. Their demonstrations were not interrupted. Nobody was prevented from expressing their opinions. This spontaneous anger must turn into organized action to stop Israeli atrocities in Palestine and it must teach us a lesson: our governments have ears, we just need to shout loud enough, maybe squeeze them a little, to get results.

Change starts from within. Our governments must cooperate to exercise leverage on Israel and its supporters, because individually, none of our Arab countries can affect any mentionable pressure. Far from it being a call for unity, a dream long abandoned, it is a call to practice group work for once. It is a simple demand to translate the attitudes of Arab people into collaborative action by their governments. If our governments fail, yet again, to represent us and to speak in our name, the contract that binds us with them, if any other than fear, must be annulled. After all, a monkey can impose taxes if trained.

Take concrete steps today to tell your government that you are not pleased with its reaction to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Form a group to protest official silence over the attacks, in whatever country you live. Email biased media outlets and back your argument with valid evidence. Abandon facebook groups that exploit your justified anger just to boast of large membership numbers. Do something.

Once again, the onus is on us to affect change in our attitude to the Palestinians question, and to make our leaders acknowledge and act upon it. They should understand that we have had enough of them being toyed with by puppet masters and paid big money to sit on the fence, and that for once, we are ready to avenge our true honor and wash the shame away.

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.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

- Source

In my childish mind then and up until today I can’t get over how tragic that story is, how morbid and heartbreaking. This is a cute character for children who is first seen smiling and then falls off a wall and shatters into pieces, it dies right there in the rhyme and nobody can help it. I have always found nursery rhymes to be generally inappropriate under the excuse of achieving music.

That said, I now love the metaphor in Humpty Dumpty. Think of Humpty as a negative concept of your choice, let’s say dominance or monopoly of power, then think: the fake image shatters and “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” cannot put it back again. That’s why fragile people like Humpty Dumpty should not sit on walls.

The Circassian flag, used in Nart TV logo.

The word “nart” means chevalier or horseman and it’s the name of one of my cousins. My own parents (both of them, which I find very cute) always have the tv on Nart to watch either dancing, or traditional cooking, or even to learn the language. My mother, albeit Circassian, did not receive a solid linguistic instruction from her mother or father. Living in the heart of Amman at the time, right around the Roman Amphitheater, she was brought up to speak Arabic rather than Circassian. She understands it though, and can speak it if spoken to, but she never could make a serious effort to teach us her language.

This is heart warming really. I think what the young people at Nart TV are doing is a commendable effort, and a large part of it is actually volunteer work. Another one of my cousins is a volunteer there, and very much encouraged by his family, as I imagine all the other Adiga youth in Jordan are, to help the channel any way possible. I heard they had a bazaar the other day to support the channel. It’s all good.

They should also enlist the help of the talented Circassian “visual artists;” be they graphic designers, art producers, photographers, or others. The Circassian community in Jordan -at least- boasts of an impressive number of these talents and they would do well to help educate young generations about their culture. I also think on the long run they have to have solid partnerships with well-to-do Circassians and corporations, or to generate substantial funds through ads and other endeavors, in order to remain in business. Even if it’s not a for-profit project, it still needs money to function.

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.

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.

Source

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 Exhibition

Carlos 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 Bazaar

Traditional 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 Concert

Sho 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.