My waiting is over. The taxing days of holding my breath, keeping my plans secret, humoring distant possibilities are over. Gone, at least for now.

I was awarded a full PhD studentship by a top UK university and now I embark on a wholly new adventure. I am set to receive my MA degree in August, and to leave Jordan early October. I will be doing a PhD in Women’s Studies– fancy that!

The minute I read that email my life changed. Nobody can now tell me I cannot and will not be able to expand my horizons, for now I am mistress of my own destiny. I had received a partial scholarship from the same university last month but it wasn’t enough to give me peace of mind and I burned my brains out trying to figure out a way to meet my prospective financial needs. I also received offers of scholarships from a Jordanian university but wasn’t at all keen to take them up because they would mean I will put years of my life as unwilling hostages to my sponsors.

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Ever since my return to Amman I have become a free floater. I feel like I am floating in time and space. The reason is simple: my life is about to change dramatically. I quit my job thereby ridding myself of that commitment, I started working on a project that excites me beyond words and which I believe holds a lot of potential, and I miraculously secured familial support for an important plan for my future. These three shackles lost have freed me up to a scary degree.

Someone told me yesterday that I have lost my edge. I suppose that misjudgment came about because I am generally more relaxed now, a little more focused, a little less reckless. I am a happier person, even though I am dreadfully more politically savvy and bordering on hypocritical out of necessity. These are temporal sacrifices I must make and keep my eyes on the prize.

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I spent the past couple of hours driving around the city. This was my attempt at home-grown therapy which also takes advantage of descending fuel prices. I am practical even in my therapy.

I woke up this morning and wondered if today will be any slower than yesterday. I read the final eight pages of an Arabic novel which was resting on the red sofa next to my bed; the eight pages I couldn’t finish hours before, at 3 AM, because I was suddenly lulled by the tolerable heat and the miraculous absence of mosquitoes. I even covered myself, contrary to tradition.

I resisted the temptation to continue my last night’s blues, an otherwise chronic depression, and I sailed through the last eight pages. When I was done, I felt an overwhelming desire to shout. The novel ended well but I wanted more, I wanted something tangible.

I picked another book to read. Edward Said’s memoirs, which had been resting on my bookcase since May, and which I grabbed many times only to put down for another choice, were almost starting to gather dust. I think I was scared of Said’s elaborate English. I returned to my bed, not opening the shutters and leaving the room soaking in the dark orange light and the sleepy hotness of this morning, and I started to read the preface.

My mother knocked on the door and entered. She asked me to drive her to my uncle’s place, so I left Said on my bed and got dressed. I did as I was told, stopping on the way at the curtain shop, where my mother slipped inside for a moment and came back without the big bag of textile that she previously had with her.

When I was done with my errand, and my mother was safely inside my uncle’s house, I realized I had nothing to do today. I took the left turn towards downtown Amman, instead of going straight ahead and returning home. Nobody’s going to miss me anyway, I thought.

I do not know how I did not cause an accident. I was incredibly absorbed in thought, completely absentminded, as I stared at the shop signs that I have seen before and tried to guess where to go next. Where was that Rolex store which my father always told stories about? I looked for familiar places where I had been with my mother when I was a little girl, where she would get buttons or textiles or bridal accessories for my sister, and I found only some. Even Al Sa7a Al Hashmiyyeh no longer existed as it used to. Now it is a changed place, it is somewhat clean, and there aren’t as many Iraqi men lurking around as there used to be in the past. How we avoided them on our way to the old bus station! — that, too, was moved nearer to Mahatta.

The brain erases things you no longer use, or it pushes them so far back in the caves of your head that you no longer realize they exist. I felt these memories crawling out of their caves, yawning, poking fun at me for thinking they died. I felt like a little girl again.

Souq Mango, Souq el Sokkar, Share3 el Salt, Ahmad Awad, Share3 el Ousat, Maktabt el 3olama, Souq el Balabseh, Souq el Bokhariyyeh, Bayazeed, Souq el Dahab… My mother holding my hand and hurrying from one shop to the other, knowing exactly where her goal is, and reminiscing about the old days when her mom used to take her to these places, bragging that she used to walk all these streets and even more from home to school, so I shouldn’t complain that I am tired.

I noticed a number of new bookshops and other stores during my cruise. Some trendy-ish places opening right around Tal3et Jabal Amman. I thought it was a crime against the place. Why do we always want to ruin what’s authentic with what’s contemporary solely because it is new?

I wanted to park the car somewhere and take a walk. I was already past the Shapsough parking, which for the record does not belong to my mother’s modest part of the family, and I couldn’t find anywhere to just leave Havana and take to the streets. I wanted to buy books from the new stores or from kiosks, and I was desperate for some hot, juicy, Sfee7a, and a Pepsi. I wanted to hold beauty still for a moment.

While I looked on from the window, I realized that nobody can discern what I think unless I articulate it. The people downtown all seemed busy being idle; walking, waiting to cross the street, pausing, moving around, but not doing anything in specific. They all seemed unreal because they didn’t talk to me, images I can shrug off because they are not personal.

I saw a couple of old apartments for rent, too, and wondered how much it costs to live downtown. It either costs a lot, or little. Is it difficult to live downtown? The many small hotels with brief names and narrow dark stairs mustn’t cost much. I have always fantasized about staying in one of these hotels, but this morning I imagined it would mean having to lock the door and taking a series of necessary safety precautions, because I am female, and then my fantasy seemed devoid of romance.

I cannot say if I feel better after my trip down memory lane, or rather after using this cliché. The freshness of my thoughts and feelings seems to wither very quickly and I can never rely on it. I think I need another therapeutic session, maybe a fight or two, to return to normal, whatever that is.

I was at a familial ladies’ get-together last night, hosted at my sister’s place.

Episode I

Tololy walks around in her high-heeled black patent leather shoes, when a married cousin gasps and stops her dead in her tracks.

Cousin: WHAT are these things in your ears?
Tololy: Earrings.
Cousin: WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MANY?
Tololy: Because I like them.
Cousin: Are they real?
Tololy: Yes.
Cousin: Why, why, why did you mutilate your ears so?
Tololy: Because I like piercings.
Cousin: But, but, your ears have so many holes in them now!
Tololy: So?
Cousin: So…they’re mutilated. I bet getting them pierced was painful too.
Tololy: Yes it was, but that was OK.
Cousin: Why would you do that to yourself?
Tololy (wanting to end the conversation): These are not new by the way. You’ve seen them before.

Episode II

Tololy sits on a chair and listens to a conversation between two women, now nodding, now smiling. One of her cousins starts a conversation with her.

Cousin: Short hair suits you very well!
Tololy: Thanks!
Cousin: When did you cut your hair? I remember you had really long hair…
Tololy: Oh, it’s been this short for over two years.
Cousin: I haven’t seen you for that long?

Episode III

Tololy’s cousin’s wife is very religious. She stands up at the end of the gathering and distributes religious brochures. Tololy is handed one about Ramadan and fear of god, which she quickly turns into a fan, then a cigarette.

Episode IV

Lady: What is that in your nose?
Tololy: A nose ring.
Lady: Oh. I see.

Episode V

It is food time. All the ladies gather around the table and start to fill their plates.
Lady: Ooh…who made the cheesecake?
Mom: My daughter x made this and that, and my daughter y made this, this, and these.
Lady: And what did Tololy make?
Mom: Umm…
Tololy: I provided emotional support.
Mom: She acted as our chauffeur, you know, took us places, got the kids home from school…
Lady: Ah.

Naturally, with every kiss I planted on each of the ladies’ cheeks, I heard a wish that I would get married. They wished that the next time they gather, it would be in my house, or that the next “happy event” will be my wedding.

The older ones seemed to be particularly interested in my getting hitched soon, and it’s funny because as far as I know they’re not entirely happy in their marriages or lives in general. For that reason alone, I believe that enthusiastically wishing someone marriage is actually a facade for a malevolent desire to spread one’s misery. In the very best cases, it is a ready-made expression which renders people into annoying parrots.

Today was my 24th birthday, and despite my usual habit of moping and reflecting on the passage of time and trying to populate my “feats” to justify my age, I didn’t do any of that today.

Today I enjoyed myself and I enjoyed life. I didn’t for a single moment let a negative thought creep into my head, and I had a blast like only a Leo could.

I am lucky to have wonderful friends who love me for who I am and who never judge me no matter what improprieties I commit. I am lucky to have an amazingly insane family who, even though we drive each other up the wall on a daily basis, love me and are proud of me underneath it all. Maybe when I turn 25 they will come out and say it out loud! They threw me a very nice party yesterday, complete with home-made cupcakes and flowers and everything.

Since last year, numerous events sculpted my meaning today. I went through revolutionary times, then through mortally depressing times, then through anticipatory times, then through experimental times, then, eventually, now, I am going through another rebirth. I feel liberated but my freedom is not yet complete and I must fight until I have it all. I am at a crossroads in my life, and luckily, I am still alive to take the route I desire.

It’s an outside-self experience for me to say that I am 24. It will take me about 6 months to digest the thought, then it will be time to change the number again. But who’s counting, anyway?

Dear Self,

It’s absurd that I am writing you a note and publishing it, a blatant contradiction in terms similar to saying “I am discreet but I have an exhibitionistic flare,” but I will do it anyway because I must unload my mind right this minute or I will lose this pressing idea. You know that my ideas are generally evanescent, you can’t blame me.

I believe I am about to change again. In the series of changes that make up who I am, this one is not yet very defined but I promise it will be extraordinary. I can feel it. There is a rush to it, a certain bitter taste at first which later turns sweet then insipid right when another change comes along.

It’s an accelerating feeling of getting close to something entirely authentic. At a certain distance I will have to decide if I want to embrace it, and that moment is always the most painful. Remember the last time I changed? It took years for me to finally muster up enough courage to shed my previous skin, and it’s an ongoing process still, faced with many obstacles and far from being complete.

It’s wonderful how other people can inspire improvement. I am fortunate to know some of these rare specimens of human excellence. I suppose they are models of godliness in their capacity to breathe life into other minds. To meet someone like that is a true privilege, so you should never compromise on the quality of company you keep. Remember this bit whenever you question your life choices. Also remember that while the public does not think, there is an intellectual elite hidden somewhere who make basking in their light worth the pain of brushing the masses aside.

Now back to work.
Tololy

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.

I took the Jung Typology Test, and if you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about my personality (if my bio page did not already reveal enough), stick around.

I am of the personality type INTJ, which means that I am 67% introverted, 75% intuitive, 88% thinking, and 1% judging. All this translates to my being a Rational Mastermind. I like that title! It makes me feel like an evil little mad scientist!

Masterminds will adopt ideas only if they are useful, which is to say if they work efficiently toward accomplishing the Mastermind’s well-defined goals. Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once in charge, however, Masterminds are the supreme pragmatists, seeing reality as a crucible for refining their strategies for goal-directed action. In a sense, Masterminds approach reality as they would a giant chess board, always seeking strategies that have a high payoff, and always devising contingency plans in case of error or adversity.

That pretty much sounds like me. I am not fond of loud, bossy types who equal nothing but fluff and connections. To me, they are shallow and emotionally unbalanced people who compensate for their lack of quality by being loud and bossy. Quite honestly, I usually find myself annoyed when in the company of said people and even though I don’t normally enjoy confrontation, I find that I continuously clash with these types both verbally and intellectually. I am really loud and obnoxious when irritated, and I like how that surprises these people every time.

I am more on the calculating side of things than on the shove-myself-down-people’s-throats type. I am not boasting when I say that when I assume a position of leadership, the outcome is always stellar. That said, I usually avoid working in groups because I feel that group work usually sucks individualism away and I like to stand out and take credit for my work without associating with less-than-brilliant people. Is that uppish?

To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of “definiteness”, of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age.

This practicality that is very much a part of who I am is not always pleasant. I am both practical and passionate about certain people and things, but not enough to lose my balance, which in turn has earned me a reputation of being impersonal, aloof, or heartless. This goes for my position on relationships, work, religion, and basically everything else. It is not easy being an extremely rational person in a society that always asks you to take concepts and practices for granted. My mom calls my attitude “3anjaheyyeh,” while I call it “thinking for myself.”

To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivety.

I am not an extremely private person, on the contrary, I am ultra-friendly with people whom I perceive to be on the same “wavelength” as I am. With other people, well, I don’t see why I should be as friendly to them and so I keep my distance. This goes mostly for my behavior in a work environment and in forming new friendships. It’s very functional.

Interestingly, both Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling are INTJs. No wonder I love the Silence of the Lambs trilogy and its characters so much!

You can take the test too and post your results here. For now, this Rational Mastermind bids you adieu.

I am living proof that things can ALWAYS get much worse. As if all the suffering I have gone through since the start of 2008 was not enough, today more bad things happened.

I woke up with a badly sore throat and muscle ache all over, but I helped clear out a room that we wanted to paint. I kept going back and forth in the house to transfer objects from this room elsewhere. I hadn’t had breakfast yet because we were in a hurry to get the room ready. When the room was cleared out, my brother was dissembling a bed that remained there. I happened to walk by as he was working on the other end of the bed, and BAM!, a large wooden board fell on both my feet. The pain was excruciating. I remember leaning my hand against the wall and saying ‘it’s okay.’

When I woke up, my vision was blurry and my head hurt like a bitch. I saw my mother’s face, with tears in her eyes, and then I saw my brother wiping a damp cloth on my face and on my feet. I thought I was dreaming. My feet were killing me, and my head was buzzing. I asked them, ‘what happened?,’ and they just told me to stay still. I was very hot and I was trying to move the turtle neck I was wearing away from my neck. Everything hurt and I was very confused. Then I started crying.

Later on, I realized I had fainted and fell on the floor head-first. They tell me they thought I was okay when I leaned against the wall but that I suddenly seemed to want to stand tall and instead just dropped to the floor. When my head banged against the floor, I opened my eyes, then I was gone. Luckily, I didn’t bang my head on a sharp angle or any object. I got up after a while, bruised and shaken. I guess my system shut down because I was in a lot of pain, and the stress probably helped.

So, you see, 2008 is not my year. In addition to that early morning incident, which I remember every time I look at my blue-purple feet or try to move, I had a presentation to do at school and I did it because I did not want to lose the grades. I also learned that fixing my car will cost me 700 JD, which is obviously a fortune. Also, I have a research proposal to submit tomorrow and a midterm exam the day after.

I am extremely hating my life right now.

ANYONE who dares call me a pessimist as if it’s a bad thing will get bitchslapped by me until their nose bleeds maggots and their head becomes a hallowed ashtray for the butts of my cigarettes. That is a promise.

Lately, all the sleep I have been getting has been a series of absurd and torturous nightmares ending with my waking up struggling to breathe. That’s if I sleep at all — I didn’t sleep last night because of some stupid stupid overthinking that I did NOT ask my brain to do, and which caused me to stay home today because I could not zombie to work because then I would not have produced anything of value.

Then, amidst all that sleep deprivation and mental anxiety, I have to perform at school. I have reports and term papers to write, I have a presentation that’s worth a ton of grades to do, I have to think and write and act normal when all I want to say to all the people in my classes, professors and students alike is: Sod off! I do not care if you want to write about the social positions of students in the classroom, and I do not care if the professor thinks it’s a good idea, I do not care about the history of the American economy, and I do not give a rat’s ass about any of the babies in your bellies –you pregnant students– or your wedding plans –you engaged ones– and most of all, I do not like how bitchy uppish you have become JUST because you will graduate this semester, as if that gives you an automatic god status. So yes, don’t talk to me during breaks. I like it that way. Bitches.

But something tops all that. In the past two weeks, I have had THREE major bad things happen to my beautiful car. First her battery died, then I gave her side a good rub against a trash can I did not see while parking in the garage and thus she needs a paint job now, and today it seems I have to replace the whole transmission system which will cost me a fortune and which was not among my foreseen expenses for March. Interestingly, it all happened after a certain group of people known for their ‘evil eye powers’ saw her for the first time. Am I being irrationally superstitious? No, just stating the facts. What are the odds of your car getting thrice wrecked like that within the span of 14 days from the day a certain group known for their evil eye saw it? I don’t know, you tell me.

And let’s not forget my computer troubles. First I lost everything I had on it upon installing Ubuntu Linux. Then I couldn’t properly install it, so I had to ask for help and then it was properly installed. Then some idiot gave me a malicious command on the SUPPORT FORUMS, and he did it on purpose, and it erased everything on my hard disk AGAIN. That unjustified sick behavior really got to me, it even made me think of extreme ways to vindicate myself.

Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget that in January I lost my bellyring. I had planned to go to NYC in the summer to get re-pierced, but that is almost impossible now thanks to the above mentioned catastrophes that I have had to endure for the past three months since the start of 2008. There’s no going anywhere for me this summer. No break from social censorship, no spa for my sanity, nothing.

That’s not all. I am under a lot of pressure to magically know exactly what I want to do from now until the day I die, and I am supposed to make a huge decision which I am not equipped to make and which will affect every aspect of my life. I am even tired of complaining to people I know about the enormous shites I am facing. I see no point in talking about what’s bringing me down at a single moment, because I know in the next moment something more severe will happen to me and I will complain about it too.

I hate 2008 with all my heart, it is an anathema to me. This March has been worse than last May. As far as I see it, 2008 has been the worst year in my life thus far. And people DARE call me a pessimist with a sneer, as if I am rejecting the joys of life which are flowing into my lap at all times and choosing to be a brooding grump, as if pessimism is a disease of some sort. I call optimism in my case a disease, an obvious state of disconnection from reality. I don’t live in a bubble, you optimists you, I live in reality. Now go ahead, call me a pessimist and curl your lips, if you dare.

I discovered that the more active I am on my blog, the less frequently I write in my diary. I risk losing a lot of memories this way. I must stop before it is too late.

I discovered that I think too much. I overthink, if there is such an activity. It’s not my fault that I can overthink. Lately, I have been overthinking above my average overthinking rates, and it’s giving me difficulty-breathing nightmares and skin-picking fits. It’s not a happy state.

I also discovered that what I have been suffering from for years and years is actually a form of mania. It’s called Dermatillomania and I have it. The knowledge that there are other people who have the same feelings is comforting. The knowledge that I have a mental disorder, a form of mania, is disturbing. I guess it’s romantic in a really skewed way, but whatever, who’s got time to be romantic these days? I want it to go away. Been wanting it to go away for years. It’s still here.

I am wondering why I am still awake looking at pictures when I should have been sleeping for the past three hours. I must wake up early tomorrow to go spend the weekend in Karak. I am promised lots and lots of BBQing and Pepsi, and many siestas. Maybe a chameleon or two, if I am lucky. Maybe I will fall and crush my skull on a stone, who knows.

I want to take a break that lasts a few years. I do not want to socialize with anybody during this time. Just relax in a library overlooking a beach and have an infinite supply of flavored soda and shrimp. I also want to have a fast internet connection and a personal masseur who looks like Craig Ferguson or Johnny Depp or the guy I had a crush on during my freshman year at college.

Then there is the question of personal destiny. People assume, if you are outspoken and independent, that you know exactly where you are headed. They wait for you to make decisions pronto, and they expect you to understand them fully. Little do they know that you are playing it by ear, just learning the ropes like the amateur that you are, all of your superficial extravaganza aside.

And what do you do? You feel stuck, uncertain, unprepared. Then you moronically blog about it.

“My feelings for you shame me into silence. The truth of this and your name will never be revealed. It is you who has made me realize the failure of my life. The thought of you fills me with longing and at the same time, a burning humiliation that produces scar tissue and dead brain cells. Your existence mocks me and I am unable to confront this. You have no idea of any of this. None of this is your fault. It is completely with me. It is you who makes me see what I really am. I am weak and out of touch with myself.”

- Henry Rollins

To the people who visited us this evening:

Sod off! Your expensive car and your expensive clothes, your degrees and your social status, ALL mean nothing since they have obviously not improved your sickening attitudes towards a woman who could have, in a parallel universe, been a potential bride for your son.

You come to visit us, in our house, when you have already been told that I am not interested. Yet you come, and you make it appear like you want to genuinely get to know my family for whatever social purposes and you make it seem you understand that I am not going to be sized up like a sack of potatoes. You come and we receive you, then you dare ask why I am not present. You, old hag with a PhD, mother of a 30-something ‘independent‘ engineer looking for a wife, YOU bluntly say you want to see me so you can describe me to your son. How lowly of you! Do you think all women are as cheap and available as you once were?

Did they not teach you that women are not objects? That even if you find a 100 who are willing to serve you coffee when you honor them with your visit, and let you look at them up and down, and let you go back home and call your little momma’s boy and tell him “she has short hair, she’s petite and she has a nosering and a ton of earrings, we’re not buying”, that even if you find a 100 women letting you do that, you do NOT find that marriage worship in my house?

I know why you came. You thought you could embarrass me or my family with social crap. You thought if you came and asked for me, I would somehow be polite enough to go out and meet you because it would be socially inappropriate otherwise. In the meantime, do you know what I was doing in my room? I was studying in my pajamas and eating ice cream. You see, I do not care about you or about your little king, just as much as you do not care about my intelligence and feelings. Quid pro quo, mofos. This one is not so polite.

You wanted to see me and you didn’t. It’s offensive that you imagined I would be willing to be treated like that, but then again, you don’t even know me. Did you honestly think my family will force me to shyly parade in front of you? Or that they will shy away from telling you that I will NOT bother to see you because your king is not with you, and that even if he was, I will not see you anyway? Why did you lie then, and say that you wanted to get to know us only?

You, old hag –daughter of some minister, you must have done rounds like this before. I am sure you have a candidates’ list of all the houses and the girls you have seen for your ‘boy,’ and I am sure you looked at everything in these girls. I am sure you know exactly which one of them has a longish nose, which has big ears, which has a lisp, which has an attitude, which has boobs too small for your son’s taste; I am sure you know all that.

You expected me to join your list and be proud of it. You thought I would be happy because your son will consider me as an option, if I was lucky. You imagined that I will let you degrade me such that when the king finally decides to come do the rounds with you, to check out the candidates you shortlisted for him and size them up again, I will be on cloud number nine because, oh my god, a man I don’t know shit about is considering me for his wife.

By refusing to be another BODY on your list, I retained my value which balanced people appreciate. I am not yours to buy, and I will not be part of your king’s imaginary harem when you describe these other women to him. You do not know me, and you never will. I am above your petty list, your examining stares, your twisted sense of social conduct, your disgusting expectations. Moreover, I am kingdoms above your little king.

I am reading parts of The Edward Said Reader right now, for class.

There is brain sweat on the pages of the book.

This is exciting but

Quite exhausting.

It requires

Thinking.

Last year on V Day, I did the following:

1- Made up excuse about having to go out for something work-related.
2- Drove around Amman and felt like crap run over twice.
3- Cried.
4- Came back home to find that a loyal someone who reads this blog got me an Amazon gift certificate worth 300$.
5- Felt good.
6- Took pictures of myself.
7- Opened a Facebook account.
8- Spent the rest of the day shopping on Amazon.
9- …and complaining to my mom how nobody understood me.

This year, I did the following in no particular order:

1- Felt loved.
2- Visited sister and kids.
3- SMSed loverboy.
4- Almost had a fight with loverboy.
5- Put cheesy status message on GTalk.
6- Discovered that life has no meaning, and as such, whatever I do or don’t do will not make a difference to its outcome.
7- Enjoyed the rain as I drove around Amman.
8- Became sleepy while driving in traffic.
9- Cursed loverboy for being away but looked at thoughtful present and smiled.
10- Decided not to care for V Day ever again. I don’t believe in saints anyway!

What did you do on V Day?

I was away this morning.

Act I

9:00 AM: Mother wants to get a present we hid in my bags’ closet, to wrap it.
9:05 AM: Mother notices how disorganized and cluttered the closet is. There’s even a cats poster inside, a teddy bear called Kareem, blue bear, Animal from The Muppet Show, an old typewriter, papers in Hebrew, and possibly rodents.
9:06 AM: Mother decides that this can’t be allowed. “Must.put.closet.in.order” — she thinks.
9:08 AM: Mother is having the best time of her life. All bags are out, the poster is out, the typewriter, the papers, no rodents.
9:09 AM: Mother thinks “Oh, but what is this bulk of hot pink paper with some objects inside it? mmm!“
9:10 AM: Mother peels the hot pink paper away to see what’s inside.
9:11 AM: Mother throws the stuff away and shouts “Lord have mercy! My little girl has gone astray! Oh My God!“
9:12 AM: Mother tries to think clearly amidst her shock. “Where did she get that from? Why does she have it? WTF, dude?”

Act II

2:00 PM: I return home, put the ice cream I got in the freezer and head to my room.
2:05 PM: I take off my jacket and empty my bag. I decide I want to put the bag back in the closet where it belongs.
2:07 PM: I notice something strange has happened while I was gone. Just when did my closet become so tidy?
2:08 PM: OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD.
2:09 PM: Nooo! Say it isn’t so! No, please!
2:10 PM: Maybe I didn’t hide the stuff here. Maybe in my other closet.
2:11 PM: I start to frantically grab and grope every bag in the closet searching for the stuff.
2:12 PM: I see the bundle of hot pink paper under some bags. She must have found it.
2:13 PM: Oops!

I am eternally busted. It’s not fun.

A friend of mine told me that my recent posts are chirpy. Since the start of January, and the piercing migration episode that I had, I have sort of picked up blogging again. I am not sure why this has happened, and I do not remember thinking at one point “alright now, back to blogging regularly. Break is over.”

And the truth of the matter is; I didn’t return after a conscious decision to do so. I just had things that I felt like blogging about, and when I blogged about them, you came. It was purely coincidental. For all I know, this might not last. I might not have “returned” at all.

When I said I am taking a break, I had decided it will be for at least one year. I had (have) things going on in my life that I imagined would drain my attention and I would not be able to communicate with anyone outside my GTalk list. I was feeling exceptionally down, defiant, liberated, and hostage. They were very dark times.

I still feel this way but I think that the more you push yourself to do, the more you achieve regardless of what your circumstances may be. I don’t mean to say that this blog here is in any way an addition to world heritage, or that it makes a difference in anyone’s life, but it sure has made a difference in mine.

Perhaps I semi-returned because I realized I had lost my fight. Perhaps because I realized I have nothing to lose, maybe things cannot get any worse and so, what’s the point of not blogging about them? It’s a fight either way, maybe documenting it will help. Brooding certainly won’t.

So, people who read this blog, that was my reflective thought for the day. Enjoy the chirpy phase while it lasts :)

I was just in Abdali at the post office there, sending a bunch of documents to Canada using their Express Mail Service. It was a cold day today so as usual my hands were freezing and purple with extremely red fingertips (for obvious reasons indicated in Wishing for a Transporter).

I walked in and the lady employee there recognized me instantly since I had been to this office some three or four times during the past month alone. We did the usual; wrote the recipient’s detailed address and their phone number, my address and phone number, weighed the package, labeled it clearly, etc.

The lady got busy lecturing a new employee on how to weigh things and on the country codes used for each delivery and in the meantime I was admiring the new decor of the post office, then something caught my eye. I looked at my documents’ envelope and noticed a red, elongated blob smack in the middle of the brown material containing my documents.

I immediately knew what it was. My fingers were bleeding again, damn them! I snatched the envelope while the lady employee was looking away and quickly took a tissue out of my bag and tried to wipe the blood away. I thought the ladies would definitely think I am either weird or just disgusting having bloodied an official package like that just before sending it off. Obviously, had they taken a look at my fingers they would have thought that of me anyway, but I wanted to cheat fate.

Wiping the blood away did not work. I got slightly nervous since it had dried out already and it was not going away, so I simply turned the envelope upside down and gave it back to the lady employee at the post office, who took it and put it in a nice delivery envelope and did not see the gore I had just produced. It looked like I had murdered ten little fingers and dragged their corpses on the envelope, quite a scene.

While she was working on entering the shipment data, I got busy controlling what other damage my fingers had done. I often end up with bloodied collars, or bloodied exam papers, or bloodied bags so I was checking anything and everything I had touched. My fingers, when injured, bleed when it’s cold and always I find some blob somewhere that reveals what has happened. They don’t hurt when they bleed, so that’s a good thing at least.

I just wonder how the officials at the other end of the documents’ destination will react to a brown envelope full of academic rhetoric and semi-soaked in red-black blood. I wonder if it will clear security, actually.

It has been some time since I last published anything in Tololy’s Box. As I had expected several months ago, my “presence” in the blogging scene has dwindled to ghost status. There is a number of reasons, very good reasons, why I have not been blogging as actively as I used to.

Some of those reasons have to do with the recent personal evolution (plenty of people argue it is the opposite of that) that I have undergone. I have had a tough year, (personally, financially, emotionally, everythingally), and the past four months in particular have been quite dark. So dark they have infested me with a trend of masochism that seems to pop up every now and then when the shit hits the fan.

As a consequence for that masochistic seed, my renowned love/appetite for my fingers was rekindled and topped off with a desire to poke and tear any fragment of broken skin on my body. In September, I believe it was in September, I hit rock bottom (or was that reality?) and it was ugly.

I’m inclined to believe that my life is unfolding as a saga of sheer complexity, perversion, and romantic blurs. I think one or two people alone have access to concrete examples supporting this claim of mine, and they know who they are. The funny thing is that only I know the whole story, unfragmented, and I don’t know what to do with it. Other people would, it’s excellent gossip material.

Other reasons why I have not been very active in The Box have to do with the marriage of my best friend Mai. She and I go a long way back and we are extremely close to each other. Her departure to join her husband in another country was a big blow to my carefully-constructed Tololycentric world, and I have yet to make my peace with it. It’s beyond difficult to accept the departure of a loved one. I think I do not enjoy enough mental dexterity to trick myself into believing everything is OK, at least not now. My brain is severely overloaded and tired.

In addition to that, I have been busy planning a move that has to do with my future. I have been acting according to a plan drafted in my mind in September (the irony!), and also plotting counterplans if the original plan proves to be a failure for some reason. All this planning combined with the emotional drama have left me publically speechless. This is why I have not been blogging much.

I would like to write some more and give you details about what I mentioned above but I’m afraid my little depressing, horrorish stories will have to remain in the closet for at least some time until I have understood them myself. They are a work in progress still, unfolding, twisting and turning, and I await their next plot impatiently.

Besides, my exposing myself like that would threaten the rumor circulated in the Jordanian blogosphere that I am paranoid. I can’t risk damaging that reputation or compromising that supposed niche, I thrive on it in my hours of reflection. It keeps me going.

I think I have a brain tumor.

I have no medical evidence to support this theory but I have two elements upon which I base it: firstly, I am melodramatic and my having a brain tumor would be very poetic, and secondly, I have earth-shattering headaches frequently.

I have had these headaches for years now. They come unexpectedly and last for long hours, sometimes a whole day, and are unaffected by painkillers. When they are at their most severe; they are paralyzing. One or both of my eyes hurt and I feel overwhelmingly nauseous and I simply cannot function. I can’t read, I can’t work, I can’t talk, I can’t do any activity other than being absorbed in pain.

My headaches happen twice a week on average, and they affect my life to a substantial degree. I’m often forced to leave work, abandon class, or abort outings because of them. Yet despite all this, I never seriously considered something was wrong.
The moment of epiphany came when I noticed that, Oh, nobody else seems to have this problem. Nobody around me has this many headaches or has them this severely. That realization was not pleasant.

Urged by my mother and friends, I went to a doctor a few months ago. She said the headaches were stress-related and that there was nothing to worry about. All she did was ask me a couple of questions and pronto! Her diagnosis was ready. Now I have reached the conclusion that she might have been clueless and so I plan to visit another doctor…one day.

I’m extremely laid back and unannoyed by this, dare I call it, illness. I’m not sure why I don’t seem to take it seriously enough when it could be very serious. I probably imagine that if, indeed, I prove to actually have a brain tumor then it would be a martyr-type condition and would perhaps be fruitful in a way. Maybe realizing I don’t have much time left would push me into this sublime artistic state that would, in turn, have me write my stories down already.

Exactly how I feel:

http://www.tololy.com/2006/01/21/welcome-to-the-real-world/

Two years one day ago, I started my first real job while still in college. Before that, the bulk of what I did every now and then was freelance work and dreaming.

I sent a neat little CV as a response to a newspaper ad for a vacant post. The post was open for online editors. I didn’t believe anything would come out of it, but I sent the required anyway just to lull my sudden desire to find a job.

Five days later while hanging out around the languages center on campus, reading some book, I got a call from my future employers. They wanted to meet me! I could not believe my ears and yet, in a controlled sense of self-importance, I decided I was not available for an interview the day after. I had class, or something.

The interview got shifted to another day that suited me. It was a Monday. I went, there was an exam and I was surprised. I remember the strangest thing about that day; I had recently returned from the states and I kept talking in English for no apparent reason. It was very ridiculous especially since the lady at the office talked to me in Arabic. I must have been nervous underneath it all because I could not stop my linguistic clumsiness.

I also thought that lady was a bitch. But maybe I was projecting.

On Thursday I went again, this time for the interview. According to my Armenian lady boss*, who has since become one of my best friends, I did very well on that sudden exam. I waited for about five minutes for her to arrive, and I remember reading some Greek drama in the meantime. My very decorated “Turkey” bookmark caught her attention, and when she asked if my mother was Turkish I could sense some hostility in her voice. I said no. Of course not.

Several months later, I made the connection that explained the hostility. Armenian, Turkey, I’m slow.

When I reflect on that, I cannot grasp how two whole years have gone by already. Somewhere deep in my mind I am still the over-dressed girl reading a book and waiting for her interviewer to arrive already, still the girl who hated wearing high heels to the office, still the girl who found out how stupidly sensitive people get during the FIFA World Cup. But at the same time, I am not any of these girls anymore. They are gone, and that time has elapsed.

Is this the way I will feel about my life when I am 50? By asking the dumb question of “how did that happen?”

*Not the same lady I mentioned earlier as the “lady at the office.”

There comes a time in each person’s life where they feel compelled to be authentic. It’s a time of great distress and hardship, a period that demands enormous strength and an ability to prioritize, and it’s also a time of intense mental activity and very often ritualistic rebellion.

While rites of passage are more established as rituals than individual standards of personal expression, the latter still qualify as true rites of passage, at least in my opinion. They’re gateways to true identity, original and creative intellect, and liberation.

I am at that point in life where I am intolerable by friend or foe, unless they’re mental.

My life as I’ve known it for the past 23 years is about to change forever. I have become robotic in crossing out life goals and ambitions, and I am bringing down walls of resistance one by one with such violence that I never thought myself capable of. I am transforming into the person I should have been years ago, the person I always knew I was.

Excuse me if I sound too cryptic, but until I have completely broken free from the shackles that bind me to polite mystery, I cannot expose the details of this ongoing revolution. The bastards have put me on mute.

I will be blogging at whim from now on. I got very little that is appropriate to say to you and I am too occupied staging a coup d’etat that will overthrow the mindless, the religious, and the sexist. If that includes you, run like the wind.

This is me a long, long time ago. This was back when I drank abnormal quantities of water and caught lizards for fun. I also had a crush on one of my nonidentical triplet friends.

I’m not a kids’ person. I don’t like their brattyness and their poo, and I don’t like it when girls/women/men fake interest in their cuteness in shopping malls and during family events. I hate the stupid little sounds everyone makes at the sight of a child. To me, it’s exactly like in the Bible when the faithful handled snakes and spoke in tongues. Goo gaaa yoor so cyoooot!

So why am I posting a picture of myself as a child?
To see if I have grown any taller, which I have, thank Heavens.

Tomorrow, August 13th, is my birthday.

Older people always complain that their lives passed so quickly. I always feel that is a sign of greed, that they had their time and simply want to have some more out of greed and selfishness. But it is accurate in a way to say that our lives pass so quickly when we’re not equipped with a proper definition of life or an understanding of what it really is.

Life is more mundane and less glamorous than we imagine. It’s the three different hairdos you had so far, your family members, the x number of shits you will take before you die, your oscillating opinions, among other things. This means that everyone has plenty of life, just enough life to stay alive. Not everyone appreciates that though and when they get to a point where they cannot comb their own hair or defecate on their own, or think much, they realize it.

I love that I can do all of these things on my own, and I don’t want that to ever go away.
So I resolved to move to the Netherlands when I’m 50.
Euthanasia is legal over there.
Pot as well.

Dramatic little poems aside, I am thrilled to be alive. I feel very honored to have been selected out of millions of sperm and egg cells, to have been chanced to live.

Around the same time last year I was sinking in a state of deep depression because of the July War between Israel and Lebanon. It was one of the darkest periods of my life. I was also juggling two jobs, one I was not the least bit interested in and the other I hated with all my heart. It was pure hell.

The war was not something new. There is war everyday in Iraq and Palestine and numerous other places around Jordan. It was just that these wars had been there for some time, and time blunts feelings. The July War was sudden, highly destructive, chaotic, and depressing. It made me question my attitude towards people and politics, and it made me wonder if there is any hope at all trusting the world. As a result, I became a pessimist supreme and I effectively maimed my fingers.

At a certain point, it seemed like there was no escape from death and dullness. I felt trapped in a cycle of horrors that I could not stop or ignore. But then just as the last straw was about to slip away, things looked up.

A year later, I am now in New York enjoying myself and having the time of my life. I am meeting new people everyday, exploring NYC, shopping like there is no tomorrow, and splurging on utterly useless items sold by African and Chinese men. I can’t believe the change of mood and setting from last July to this one — it’s mind-boggling. Great living!

When I was a little girl, up to eight years old, my mother had total control over my hair. She chose my haircut and styled my hair to perfection every morning. Because she had two other girls to prep in the morning, hair-wise, she always chose to keep my hair very short to save time and effort. That is why I always appear in old pictures with my hair à la garson. In other words, with boy hair.

So to retaliate, I grew my hair when I gained control over it. It got long and feminine and traditional. Very pretty stuff — but terribly impractical and boring for a person who wears the veil and has virtually no audience or competition. It got to a crazy length because I had a goal of getting it to that crazy length. Then, poof!, why have long hair after that?

I developed a desire –let’s call it that– to want to shave my head. I realized that it would be too drastic if I didn’t consult with family first, or at least hint that they will be living with a bald girl for some weeks. So I “hinted” at it and the responses came positive. Then the thought so consumed my free time that it grew into an obsession. I kept calculating the possible consequences and imagining how I would look like, all the time.

Relax. I didn’t do it (at least then.) I realized that I had two holes in my head (translation:cuts) and that they would probably not look very sexy in the sun with my hair all gone. And then Britney Spears shaved her head at that time and just eternally ruined it for me. If I went ahead and did it then, people will not only think of me as a dysfunctional rebel, but as a Britney fan. I live with the first label but the second is just a no-no.

It seems my mother had it right all along. I have a tiny face and a petite body structure, so growing my hair turns me into a toothpick topped with a wannabee-hairball. That was my conclusion after years of exhausting combs and brushes and sweating at night. I eventually went back to my roots: hair à la (very short) garson. My gallery of earrings showed, at last!, and I looked 16, easy. I still do, yay!
I’ve had the “do” on for a considerable time now (over a year), but every time I go to the hair salon to get my hair cut/trimmed, the women there bombard me with questions and comments. Three months ago, I went and got it cut again at a new place. They called the women from adjacent places to come see the stranger, pleaded/argued with me for fifteen minutes not to “do it,” and they even shot videos of me after the hair was cut. It didn’t help that I had navy blue nail polish on, and the piercings did not help either. I felt like such a freak of nature that day.

Then there’s this strange hesitation to cut that I’ve encountered. I have to literally convince, encourage, and keep on pushing the haircutter to actually cut as much as I want her to. I think it is due to the whole cultural outlook that women should always have long hair and that it’s more feminine and desirable, that holds haircutters back. Of course, you always have the haircutter who develops a personal attachment to your hair and refuses to cut an inch more out of “love.”

Then there’s always the onlookers — women at the salon who have nothing better to do that lecture you (me) on how “your hair is so gorgeous, don’t cut it!!” and how “your hair is the crown of your beauty,” and then ask how my parents let me do this and remark that they must be very open-minded people. These women always have long hair and nail polish that’s chipping off, and they usually smoke and gossip, and I bet they think I’m lesbian.

Celebrating:

Three presentations down.
One paper out.

To go:

Faisali vs. ES Sétif Arab Champions League final.
Two papers in a week.
Three exams.
Some obscure job-related feat.

Warning: Meaningless-except-for-Tololy post ahead. Leave if this does not interest you.

Many exciting things will happen in a month’s time, or a little over a month’s time. These things I cannot reveal now because I am known to jinx plans when I talk about them (remember the book I once said I was writing, ugh, that’s still unborn). But I am very excited nonetheless and I think that this time, things will work out.

This month will be the longest in my entire life simply because I desperately want someone else to live it for me. Any volunteers? I want someone to think of, type, and print the handouts I have to give during my two presentations this week. I want this someone to give those presentations for me, not because I have stage phobia (Which I don’t have –I can talk to any given number of people at any public or private function about anything and improvise if I am not prepared, I think it’s the Karaki gene), but because I do not want to do the work and prepare for them.

Very dependant, yeah, I’ve become. I also want someone to go to work twice a week like I do and give that other presentation I have to give on Tuesday (probably) on how things are going and how the plans are working, yada yada. If that someone succeeds in those tasks, I want them to sit for my three finals due later this month, and to write the three papers that I must submit this month as well. I already wrote two papers earlier on, what do they need the other three for? What intellectual bondage! Remove the shackles! Hail the uber-academic paper-generating braniac! Bleh.

How did everything end up being crammed in May, when June is set to be the most intensely bright month of this year? And to think that I had a plan to volunteer at some animal shelter…Psshh…It makes me laugh.

Other things that make me laugh now include wanting a hamster I can obviously take very little care of at this point in time, reading my camera’s manual, finishing this side-reading fat book on evolution and human societies, taking excellent pictures, finishing at least one chapter of the mystery book I’m writing, talking someone into reading it and giving me some not-so-harsh feedback, figuring where my sense of “life direction” has evaporated to since I was around 5, drilling my bedroom wall to hang a calendar and a white board and other items, not losing my job, not failing my courses, not messing up my GPA, writing a wholesome article for Alt School Arabia, meeting Shaden and Kinzi, taking a mosaic course, having a life, cutting & colouring my hair, fattening Tsuki-san…among other things.

Now you might be wondering: Why do I do this energy-draining mental scheduling of simultaneous tasks? Because I can, I guess. Because otherwise, I’d have a dull life (and mine is drama-infested to a disturbing degree). Because the heat gets to my head and I toss and turn at night so I have a lot of time to schedule impossible tasks and jam them in one month in a sort of a silly display of self-defiance. On top of all that, them mean mosquitoes write me love letters every night, all over my body. So like in Fallen, time is on my side.

If I ever do, I shall not settle with someone who does not travel at least five times a year. The simple reason for this resolution is that during my life I have wasted numerous (literally) chances to travel abroad. They were all fully paid-for, too!

But it wasn’t “me” personally who wasted two chances to go to Italia, a chance to go to Egypt, one to go to Morocco, one to Lebanon, one to Bosnia, another to the United States. It was culture that cost me these trips and it was also religion.

You see, some people believe that it is against their religion to let a young lady (that’s me) travel alone. My family’s culture and religious beliefs pretty much goes along these lines. Personally though, I do not subscribe to this point of view. And at this particular moment, I am at the peak of my anger/resentment/irritation at this compulsory code of conduct.

I’ll write more about this later. Stay tuned for another episode of Fuming Tololy.

Now I am very upset and it’s not because of YouTube. Something to do with Havana Brown. I really should have bought a punch bag.

Double bleh.

Perhaps I should not still be listening to James Blunt. Three hours of the same song are enough to bring bad luck to anyone. YouTube is frustrating the living hell out of me at this point in time, and I am irritated.

I won’t throw a BF, I reserve those for my close circle of friends and family. I wanted to embed a video I had uploaded and to share it with you, but it seems that this will not happen today. There must be something wrong with the code YouTube generated because as far as I can tell, I am doing it all by the book.

Bleh.

Of course, my life being the drama that it is, I have “adventures,” or episodes if you like, quite frequently. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of one day during my entire life that I have not lived some sort of twisted incarnation of a soap opera.

Unfortunately (for you, curious eyes), my latest ordeal was nothing too uncommon. I have been ill for the past two days and it has been a trying time. However, and at the risk of sounding like a masochist supreme, I confess that I enjoy being ill from time to time. I said it in an earlier post-morbus entry on December 28th, 2005 (The Love You Make):

Today at the office the pain was so severe that I was mentally transplanted in my bed, receiving mother’s attention and contemplating the End of Time. By that I mean that I was not fully aware that I am in the office — I think my mind created an alternative, better-suited scenario for my situation to deflect my attention from my affliction (say that aloud five times fast, I dare you).

Games aside, it seems my situation is improving. Maybe my mind is again playing the illusionist, but whatever is happening feels better than an overheated face, a burning nose, a scratchy throat, and an aching body. I say welcome, health!

Good morning Amman!
As I write these words, I am biting on a rather “resistant”,
triangular piece of bread that I take the liberty of calling breakfast. My
sandwich has light hints of labaneh inside, but I can’t seem to feel the
labaneh on my taste buds.

Stranded in a new office, I am munching my breakfast and noting how very
similar this situation is to when I was a little girl. Being as picky as I am,
I refrained (and still refrain) from eating many types of food.

That preference prevented me from being too colorful with meals that I prepared
for myself or that my mother prepared for me, and that fact left my mother at
the edge of her wits, trying to fathom what is it that I eat and what is it I
do not eat.

Given the particular state of my aliment options, I grew accustomed to some
bare and some overly lavish cuisines. This morning, it is the former type that
I nosh my stomach with — but I’m not complaining.

“Sustenance is essentially a need, not a substance of display;”
I like to think when I feast on humble rations. What’s most delightful about
this conclusion is that I myself sometimes get fooled by it.

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Normally, my parents do not let any of us children out of the house when it starts snowing. Realizing how little it usually snows, the anti-car decision might sound a bit too serious. However, a look at the humble situation of Jordanian roads, which get flooded almost immediately after rain starts falling, and at the mentality of some drivers, the decision can be seen in a different light.

I had to leave the house yesterday morning at around 11 to do something very important. It was snowing and I got to flex my new uber-chic transparent umbrella for the first time against the elements. I discovered that it is challenging to walk with a taller person under the same umbrella if I was holding the umbrella. Hmmm.

Then, after lunch, I went to the office for the last time. My managers and colleagues were throwing me a farewell party at 5:30, and I thought it was very kind of them to propose the idea. Before the party started, at around 3:30, I decided to go out to finalize some paper work and to get lunch.

It’s splendid going out in the snow. I did that for the first time in my life yesterday, thank you parents. I bought me a nice meal, cruised around in Jabal Amman looking for a place to park, and then I found a quiet street with an amazing view of Amman. The radio was on (Ahleen FM – much love) and I was in my mobile sauna, also known as Havana Brown (the car), eating and watching white descending from the heavens.

The setting stirred various emotions in me. I missed someone who played with snow shortly before she passed away, I devoured my meal with what resembled savage passion, and I felt like a child because I was so very happy to be out in the snow away from the reach of parental supervision. One would imagine I am already out of the cocoon, but I sometimes surprise myself with how childlike I get.

The party was absolutely delightful. I got introduced to people who work in different divisions in mother corporate, and I got to say goodbye to them in the same encounter as well. It was highly paradoxical, deeply entertaining, and miserable in some measure.

Farewell party, new beginnings, Havana Brown, and snow. It is that time of the year again…

Originally, this post was a list.

A good fellow alerted me to what seems to be a coincidence or a phenomenon, call it what you want, and I decided to change the format of this post.

I do not wish to write things personal, but in the light of my current oscillating mood, I will jot down some thoughts for my future reference.

I hate ends and endings and I do not like the approach of a new year. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing jolly about a new year. As far as I am concerned, it will take me at least five months to fully understand that a new year has begun.

My cat is in early heat. He is loud and smelly and I made the mistake of not fixing him. It is December, is he watching kitty-porn?

It has been a long, long time since I last danced. Now somehow I remember the 2005 new year’s party. Ah, good times, bad times. Just itched in my memory. Who cares, yeah?

Some 2006 people were awesome. Most were just not that awesome. Rejects! – return to HELL whence you came! I sometimes wonder how can some people live with the knowledge that they are who they are. It makes me sick really.

Most Arab singers cannot sing. I am one of them. I made the mistake of sending an old George Wassouf number in my voice to a friend overseas. This friend advised me to keep my day job. I am still hurt.

I am a junk food junkie. My mother hates this, among other things, in me. Her only solace is that I have not, to her knowledge, done anything crazy this year. I find the latter notion amusing.

The world is an unhealthy place to be. For that purpose, I prefer to live in planet Google Earth. Minus the trouble. I will launch Google Tololy one day.

Why is it so difficult to find the perfect white shirt in Amman? I am on a mission impossible, a quest, a hunt… for the perfect white shirt. I would like one that fits. I am not two people, why do they make them so gigantic?

Wars are all around. This makes me sad. It does not help in restoring my lost faith in the human race. I believe in extraterrestrial life and now I have more reason to do so. The perfect man is not even a man, it’s an alien.

Stop reading this post. It is personal. You must unlearn what you have learned – Yoda.

Last night as I was doing the rounds someone told me I should get the October issue of JO magazine because my blog was mentioned there. I managed to get the issue today and, Lo and Behold!, the URL of Tololy’s Box mentioned was incorrect. My face was as straight as the next wall.

Now while I appreciate being featured under the bold title of “Best of the Web”, I certainly find no sense in directing readers to my old blog (http://tololy.blogspot.com). There was even less sense when I read the paragraph concerned and discovered that it was about my post on the Pope’s speech.

I cannot quite digest the chronological order of events here: I wrote about the Pope’s speech only last month but I stopped using my old blog earlier this year. Why would someone who actually read last month’s post direct people to my old blog?

An honest mistake, I reckon, or artistic suicide.

On a slightly lighter note, I enjoyed today tremendously. It was an epitome of fruitfulness. I received a message from Janet, whom I miss and who in turn misses Eid in Jordan. I also met an old professor of mine and found him healthy and happy and still as delightfully (?) talkative as I recall him. A friend lost since the days of Italiano Uno phoned to wish me and the family a pleasant Eid.

I wrapped up a thicket of official paperwork and paid a little fortune in the process. I went to the library and returned then borrowed some books and, last but not least, I worked for a living and spent time with my family.

If that isn’t a fruitful day, I don’t know what is. What did you do today? Oh and Eid Mubarak to everyone!

I have noticed a growing trend in my latest posts; a tendency towards posting entries that lean toward being personal to some degree. If anyone should know how dangerous that is, it should be me. I had resolved not to turn the Box into a place where I narrate what goes on in my life and where I have an anonymous audience enjoying my story and thinking “Ah, but you should have done this instead of that”.

My resolution still stands, I think. I reflect on matters and post what I make of them in my Box, that makes it all personal, no? Yes. The truth of the matter still stands though, some things are more personal than other things.

Beyond the usual I-have-been-busy-lately cliché’s, much maturity was dug up and acquired by yours truly over the past weeks. Someone said during those strange times: “If you are lower class, the only way you can socially advance is by getting an education. But how far can you go with your education? You can reach lower middle class, maybe if you’re very lucky you’ll get to upper middle class, but you’ll never be upper class”, and I thought it was so sad.

Then during another discussion, a person said that communist China was true to its original principles and it still is. I asked if there were no exceptions in China but I didn’t hear the person’s answer.

I think of a revolution as a means by which the majority of people achieve something. The smart rich get richer when they channel the inferior classes’ anger and passion towards the revolution. The educated middle class and the idealists get to chase their ideas with more enthusiasm, and often fall to the belief that they have materialized. The poor get to vent at first then they retire to misery.

Perhaps my pessimism is taking shape these days. Perhaps it is affecting my views in politics and culture, making me regard things as trivial, unworthy, and fake. A very interesting transformation. I wonder, is it part of maturity?

I try my best to keep my personal meetings with bloggers on the discrete side. Not only because I fancy the hush-hush workings of minds, but also because I regard these encounters with as much respect and privacy as my personal space. Consequently, do not expect a list containing the names of bloggers I have personally run into to appear any time soon.

Today was an apex in awkwardness on my behalf, I think my brain waves either carried the wrong messages or were damaged because of the heavy thinking I have engaged myself in for the past two weeks. At times, I honestly wonder what demons possessed me to do certain things.

I was at a certain location today, casually walking and thinking, feeling utterly lost after a blow of intellectual clash with reality, and I spotted someone I thought I had seen somewhere. I walked on for a short while, now focusing my entire effort on remembering who that person resembles, and then I went back. I knew the person, it was a blogger!

That person was heavily in thought, or boredom, or both – it seemed, and I was somehow floating in my ideas (actually, I was trying to stay afloat) and I thought it would be nice if I came up to the person and surprised them. It was a moment of vague reflection, I do not know what prompted it.

And so I did. I walked up to the person in question and I said hello, they looked up at me with puzzled eyes, but shortly afterwards we started a good conversation and there wasn’t an idle moment of awkwardness. Why lie? There was one moment of awkwardness at the beginning of the encounter, when I had mistakenly shaken the hand of that person, forgetting they do not appreciate that.

I truly regret that, person. I hope you read this and forgive me (I am bluffing, of course).

The awkwardness did not stop at that. In the evening there was a function organized by my employers and, marvel of all marvels, I thought I heard a familiar name introduced to the crowds. It seems I was on an awkward-self-introduction-frenzy this entire day, because I went up to that person and went right ahead and introduced myself after asking about their blog.

You have to understand the reason why all of this is alien to me. I am not the type that introduces one’s self without an occasion or a purpose, or an interest to that matter. I reckon my purpose today was to create some intelligent conversation (and I had missed that lately), because I knew those people were capable of delivering just that. Still, I cannot come to terms with the fact that I intentionally picked out complete strangers from massive crowds and talked to them, just like that – impulsive behavior.

My approach to social life is much more calculated, selective, and sometimes plain bizarre. I joke about attracting the weird folk like flies but it is a fact of life, but to imply that my own actions have gone a bit too off-beat is really original. Here is another originality: I am publishing this.

I have just found my muse, I believe…

What I am experiencing at this minute, as I type these words, is exquisite – it is of satisfaction still unachieved but oh, so near, and it is of accelerating beauty and of a divine nature. I cannot quite tell what it is, there are no words befitting this sensation.

A little less than a month ago I decided to follow my bliss, as Campbell put it. I stayed up until all night was consumed, listening to Campbell talk of love and divinity and great myths – truly phenomenal. A gift from overseas sent by a person I have never met ,as token of a friendship that has grown and grown, this gift had me stay up all night, one summer’s night, and it urged me to focus on what really matters to me – my bliss.

Then as I have always known, the pre-hero has to die to the world as it knows him, to be resurrected as a true hero. All in the name of bliss and in all great myths alike. I am no heroine, my life is not a myth, but I am hunting for my bliss. Of course, I could be a heroine, this could be a myth, but there would still be bliss to be sought after.

Sometimes when I am inspired I lose my touch with the physical world, even words do not come to me. I float, dip, dive in a state of absolute ecstasy and only this can help me to that sublime level. In this very instance I am fighting an undeniable urge to pour out my stream of consciousness, as I trust nobody would understand my stream of consciousness and I disliked The Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man.

Beh. Very few understand this.

I am going downtown this evening to roam the streets and look for antiques. I intend to spend money on things useless in every aspect but in appealing to me, that is their prime function. My room is Japanese akasen meets style-lacking minimalism, and that has got to change. I am most inspired by a certain someone’s flat and I plan on indulging in this moment’s fantasy that maybe I can turn my room into something remotely alluding to that flat, in spirit not style.

I am staying up late at night to write. Last night I wrote two passages only after juicing my brain for two hours – quite distressing. This is promising though, two passages are better than none…but really, I am not an optimist supreme. Quite frankly I do not write out of optimism, my statement is not all too positive, I daresay it is not even real.

Do not ask what that means – I think the stream is flowing.

This morning as I watched Tsuki-san lick himself, I wondered with what face would I meet a certain someone who has given me two novels written by an Italian Jew to read, well over four months ago. I have not touched the two books…They lurk in my drawer virgin, what am I going to say this time? That I was too busy? That I had no mood to read? That I was busy deciding how to follow my bliss? I can picture the dissatisfied look on his face, and I cannot convince it away.

I ended up buying myself Sophie’s World after all two days ago, but it must wait for now. I am engaged to Plato, although he is not entirely my type of fellow. I do fancy his dialogues, however, but is that ever enough? It’s page 42, out of 368 pages, that I am frozen at. What with the construction of argument, and the various points of view, and the messages I keep getting on my cell phone, and my own arguments with Plato; I am frozen at page 42.

When I am inspired certain music does not agree with me. Sometimes the slightest sound does not agree with me, sometimes just some songs by a certain singer don’t agree with me. This is how illusive and demanding my muse is, my mother once thought it a devil.

Now I just want an old radio.

One of the most entertaining gigs about cyberspace and the blogosphere is the way you can study people without ever meeting them. You learn a lot that way, maybe not everything, but a lot.

For instance, I log on to chat with strangers and somehow there’s this one person who’s got wits and who throws in some intelligent remarks. It proves to be fun to word play with this fellow then at one curve of the conversation: “Are you veiled for real? How come your English is so good then?”.

How is what I put on my hair related in any way whatsoever to my linguistic abilities? Maybe they expect me to tie my English-speaking tongue to the veil (A self-professed Arab liberal’s fantasy).

Then the conversation shifts in a way as the stranger tries to fathom how in good heaven’s name I can be a girl, veiled, open-minded, and speak English all in the same package. I used to want to understand how so many people make the false connection (or disconnection) between said elements, then I realized it is just the way they think. Crooked.

This Veil versus English and Veil versus Thinking stereotype is absurd and is ironically promoted by the self same people who announce all the time, whenever they get a chance, that they are against stereotypes and are liberal. It seems to me they don’t understand what being liberal is all about, and I find it glaringly obvious to everyone else how shamefully blind they are.

I was once looking for a place to sit down and read by the U of J’s Languages Centre. I went to the spot where I always “hang out” and I found this girl and guy talking just beside it. I wasn’t really bothered by that as I had an exam I needed to study for. The couple seemed your pick of hip, stylish, and modern youth, and they were talking in English. As I approached I heard the girl say “It’s OK, she’s veiled so she won’t understand us“.

And I speak five languages, Ms.Shallow. (My French is kept in check)

Now the Languages Centre at the U of J has this reputation of being the ultimate hangout for the liberal lot (how stereotypical!) but what’s so hilariously pathetic about the affair is that most of those who sport the image are absolutely clueless as to what it means to be liberal and they do some serious damage to it.

Then of course you have the good old blogs where polarization is the fashion in all seasons. You find the awkwardly and excessively religious maniacs (Who oppose girls being online for example and call for a mass massacre of the infidels in the Land of Electronica), and the foolishly and seemingly-liberal (Who unleash their hounds on you should you object to their views and would brand you a backward religious cave man/woman in a second while still maintaining they’re liberal).

The way I see it, it is this black – white distinction that is harming us all. It’s this “I am right, you are wrong” attitude that prevents so-called liberals from accepting veiled and yet open-minded and educated girls, and their opposites from accepting the same specimen. It’s almost like Russia and the US back in the day. I am right, you are wrong – end of discussion and let the world burn.

When I meet people who say they hate the veil, I ask them why they hate it. They often answer on behalf of someone else using stories of girls forced to wear it and stories of girls who are shallow and oppressed for wearing it.

When I meet people who say a woman must wear a black tent from head to toe, I ask them why she should. They often answer on behalf of someone else using stories of girls who were raped and lured into sin and stories of catastrophe to come if women don’t wear tents.

Do you see anything missing in the equation?

I am a veiled girl and they do not speak for me. It is me they are telling stories about and it is me they are fighting over.

Now stop it, take your tags off my back and fight over someone you “own”. I can speak English and I can speak for myself.

A very honest poem – November 27th, 2005

My sister is so talented with foods and sweets, she’s just gifted! Everything she makes is ultra yummy and super cute. Check out those pictures of what she made for my birthday, I love! (She takes orders by the way)

It’s my birthday today, I love the attention (of course, I’m a Leo!) and the warm wishes of friends and family, and the presents too! (I still don’t understand the passing of time but that’s a topic for another day).

As part of the ongoing fiesta in Tololy’s Box today, some really awesome features were added and some of the errors are magically gone! We at The Box love our readers- Feel at home and join the party!

Today, I celebrate my birthday with my cat buddies who are throwing me an out-of-this-world bash right here in The Box, please join us as we rock the house…

This post is particularly uninteresting for most refined tastes. Muse needed, apply under The Contact.

It’s odd how most bloggers expect to be read and expect, generally without a pinch of doubt, to receive comments on their posts. I for one seldom leave comments in other people’s blogs because I either cannot add to comments already there (therefore my comments will be redundant) or do not appreciate the topic in question, or, which happens quite often, I am enveloped in reflection over what I have just read.

But isn’t all that selfish, utterly and purely selfish?

The answer to that question does not interest me all that much actually, it will not force a change in my habits or in anyone else’s. At times asking the right question is more valuable than receiving the right answer.

I had a hard time sleeping last night, why I am telling you this I do not know. It’s an interesting event to share, I reckon, since I never have trouble sleeping. And the irony of it all kicks in. This marked the second time I have had a bad dream about a fictional, but not too fictional, character that my brains have invented. I dreamt horrible, horrible things involving pictures of Tsuki-san, my blog, and my inbox. I was petrified to the extent that I could not bring myself to wake up, to interrupt that penetrating fear. I tried my best to scream during the events of the dream but all I got was a repressed moan that eventually drove me out of scaryland.

It was all the stranger because I almost never dream and know it. Specialists insist all people dream all the time but not everyone can recall their dreams or the act of dreaming. I happen to be one of the latter type and to imagine that I, single-handedly, have created a haunting character that has stayed true to its malicious ways for two dreams is alarming.

Following that absorbing experience I placed my hand on my heart and the beats were racing so fast I could promise my heart was going to pierce through the skin and come out of place. Imagination is a beautiful thing.

To my amusement, the Egyptian lad who works in this building also had trouble sleeping last night. I found him this morning resting his head at the reception desk with eyes as red as The Box. Vibes, vibes, vibes.

Of course, the events of late last night made my stomach uneasy. I have food laid before me as I type these words, therefore, now we feast.

So today was my official graduation day. I was done with school in January but university policy has it that the ceremony is held in June. On Monday, June 19th, we (students of the faculty of Arts and the faculty of Law) had to go for the graduation rehearsal.

Needless to say, everything started late on Monday. We got there at 8:30 AM and had to stand with the masses to get a card with the seating number and such and that took around two hours. The rehearsal itself started at 11:00 AM and ended at 1:30 PM which translates to : Burn baby, burn.

Those are some pictures from Monday:

Today was fun although I totally hated Ziad Marzouqa for not coming (he was fun at the rehearsal but he skipped today and I had to small talk with someone I don’t exactly like), but the guy is ill so I’ll forgive him in some other life.

My mother, father and sister attended the ceremony and it was nice to see them seated perfectly in front of me as I had instructed them. So many other students were clueless as to where their families were, but I knew exactly where mine was and what they were doing: they were right there for me to watch the whole time.

My sister did an excellent job at taking nice pictures and capturing video and she even got me some balloons! I tried to have the university photographer guy take as many pictures as possible of me and my friends, tomorrow at 8:00 AM I will camp in front of the main gate of the University of Jordan to hunt for my pictures. Pray for me.

This entry comes your way because A- Amino let the cat out of the bag (thanks, you’re so nice 3an jad) and B- Qwaider asked why I haven’t mentioned anything about the whole deal, and C – sharing is caring. So there, hope you will enjoy the following shots:

There really is no way around it. Some times you just have to choose something and let something else go. It’s precisely like Pirandello said “Ogni scelta è una morte” – Each choice is a death,and very much unlike Queen’s “I want it all and I want it now”. It just doesn’t function like that, Queen.

Lately I had to make a decision that should alter my priorities and my lifestyle for some time but before I finally made up my mind about it I just wandered for two hours, not doing anything, just walking, thinking (while trying desperately not to) and hoping some miracle would deliver me. Divine intervention, that’s what I needed to have someone right then and there making my mind up for me.

But providence did not reveal itself to me at that time, and there came no man with a long white beard to tell me “This choice is better than the other, O Tololy. Go for it”.

It was a living nightmare, nowhere as romantic and polished as I make it sound now. I sat on benches, got up, walked a bit, and sat down again. I closed my eyes, opened them, held my head in my hands, stretched back and forth, walked again, shuffled my papers, wrote things down in a notebook, put pros and cons and tried to balance matters out. By the end of that I was mentally drained, physically tired and the sun did not help.

This? Or that? But maybe this is better. No it’s not. But it could be, right? And that other thing is good too. What do I choose? Why is this so hard?

Three little yellow-and-orange fat cats and one blue elephant greet me each morning when I come to the office. I tell you the truth, they are my “support squad” and I don’t know what I could have done without them.

Then there’s my monitor, he’s taken to blinking lately. He’s always adorned with multitudes of small sticky notes and just recently I added two yellow face stickers to him: one is wearing shades and smiling and the other is somewhat upset.

She said she was troubled when she logged on in the morning and found no entries. It made me smile.

Proceed at your own risk and refrain from advice comments.

Oddly enough, I think I almost have tears in my eyes. Nobody I love is missing, I did not see Tsuki-San engage in a street showdown with Abu Suleiman (the leader cat in our neighbourhood), and there can’t really be a more pleasant morning than this. I am suddenly sad.

An expert who’s been in town for around six days in all just said goodbye to me and I was touched. They normally leave without getting involved in such personal scenes and voila! – this man actually came to my office and delivered a heart-warming speech about Jordan, life, work, and everything in between.

It must be the element of surprise that drove me into this teary state. I am quite speechless, certainly not entirely speechless but almost there. Now I wish I’d bonded with the kind fellow before he left.

Arranged according to the chronological order of their time of purchase, the waiting list of titles to be understood grows, expands in one direction with each visit to a bookshop.

- Enrico IV – Luigi Pirandello
- War And Peace – Leo Tolstoy
- A Passage to India – E. M. Forster
- Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
- Krondor Fear of The Gods – Fiest
- Orientalism – Edward Said
- The Republic – Plato
- Mansfield Park – Jane Austen

The past few months have been quite hazy and disorderly for my book reading fashion. Rules were broken, time was not properly managed to best benefit the books and my head, and I paid several visits to bookshops. In those months I managed to take in a poetry collection for Nizar Qabbani, the complete works of Al Tayyeb Saleh, The Three Theban Plays of Sophocles, Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, a Heart of Darkness for Conrad, “Awlad Haretna” for Najib Mahfuz, a story for Taha Hussein, some plays for Wilde in my spare minutes at work, and some random internet readings.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
- Oscar Wilde

There was one book only that I shunned: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

It’d be a perfect lie to say I am totally satisfied with my lines of work and the office settings I live in and what not. Those are not the things I am about to put into this entry, however, but I will rather tell you about the war I have to fight every single day at one of the offices.

You see, there’s this person I work with that I do not quite get. I do not understand his motives and his behaviour, and I always seem to fail to comprehend his malice when, as a consequence, I pay the price.

I perfectly understand competition, and I am quite a competitive little person myself – ask anyone, but this sort of twisted scheming I am not used to. It shocked me time and again how this person stabbed me in the back, for no obvious reason but to hinder what progress I would be making.

Then I could not tolerate it any longer.

I am not loud. I think being loud is such a vulgar thing, but there was this one time when I yelled at this “person” for a straight 15 minutes. The look on his face, his mumbling to himself in confusion, and his reaction as a whole were priceless. Since that day on, I have had little or no hassles at the office.

Think not if someone is polite that they lack in voice. Revenge is a sweet dish best served cold, so say some and so pray some.

I was just browsing the archives of my Box, and I often do that to return to former times when the experience of blogging was different from what it is now. I return to my previous blog, too, sometimes, to find out how my way of expressing myself has changed over time. It is an eye-opening journey, definitely.

You’d be surprised if I told you I debate shutting down the Box, on a daily basis. It’s this pressure of life in general that makes me think such “horrible” things, these things that are both crazy and perfectly logical. Do I hear you tagging that as a crime against humanity? Nay, that is just my imagination.

Why I debate shutting down the Box, every single day, is quite a complicated deal. It is true that many a time I meet a very nice muse who guides me from darkness to light, and that this self same muse helps me generate the very interesting concept of the term “original content”, but I get bored of this muse quickly, too. Creating this blog was, in principle, a challenge of commitment, with what difficulties I face with the latter word and,now that I have reached the point I desired, this motivation is growing thinner by the minute.

I have had some people contacting me about the quality of my entries, and their content. Be their comments positive or negative, I thank them sincerely for slicing out some minutes of their days to voice their opinions, which I hold nothing but respect for. This said, I should have formed some alternative sources of motivation to keep the Box up and running. Maybe I have, I am not sure, maybe I just do not know it yet.

I believe the nicest part about this Box of mine is the chance it offers me to really pick my brains. This is a tedious task, rest assured, and it is time consuming. Particularly when you have two jobs, two projects,a family you wish to be with, friendships to maintain, languages to polish, study programs to search for, a cat to trick into a shower, a book to write, and yourself to worry about. I was reflecting on the frequency of posting, perhaps publishing an entry every other day, but that could absolutely murder my thoughts. My brains operate in a funny way that I do not expect others to understand, you see.

Sitting here, with my yellow blouse and pants, a detail you did not ask for, I am asking myself “Why am I telling the world all of these things?”. Good question. Because I can, and because I feel it is my readers’ right to be informed about the happenings in Tololy’s Box. I think I am not flattering myself when believing that there are some minds out there who enjoy reading some things I write at times, I think I would be endlessly honored if I found out that some smart and totally uncalled-for remark here or there made someone smile, and that is part of the reason why I made this Box public. I respect my readers, therefore I want them to learn what is going on in here.

This is such a depressing entry. I never intended it to be so, believe it or not. The answer could be “doing less”, and yet that seems very difficult. The other day I decided I wanted to cut down on the length of posts in the Box, but to satisfy my insatiable appetite for letters, I created UTN. So much for less work. Now I have two blogs to look after, it’s nobody fault, really, don’t blame it on anyone. The funny bit about UTN, in comparison with Tololy’s Box, is that the author over there never mentions this place. UTN is somewhat like the family secret everybody knows and yet nobody wants to talk about, but that’s what makes it special. I want it to be that way.

It is getting late, I should end this entry and, what better way to terminate it but by delivering mushy, yet very honest, thanks for the support from the supporters, and the demolition squad’s efforts to turn the Box into nothing but a wrinkled paper in a trash can. I am indebted to all of my readers, and the “my” is too posh, don’t you think?

Khalidah was so nice as to tag me. Here are my answers:

Declare 5 facts about yourself:

1- Butterflies terrify me.
2- I bite my fingers and they usually bleed because of that. Sharp teeth.
3- I do not like Jilbab or Abaya.
4- I love jet black and blood red nail polish.
5- I adore longhaired bad boys, tattoos, piercings, the works.

State 3 things you like in others:

1- Being intelligent enough not to try to change me or convince me of every point they make.
2- Laughing at my old nasty jokes.
3- Saying “Thank you” when the need calls for it.

State 3 things you don’t like in others:

1- Irrelevance and/or stupidity.
2- Believing that every single debate has to end with a “triumph”.
3- Being slow or confused pedestrians.

Tag four bloggers and comment on their blogs that they have been tagged and direct them to your post: I would like to pass the joy on to Malhas, Dusty, Lulu, and Wael.

I hope nobody reads this. Really. I am writing this for myself.

The Tololy is prepared to be self centered and to come clean with those haunting notions in the mind. Conflicts they generate and no rest they give her, therefore she has decided to jot them down. Spill them on the monitor using five fingers. Note the persona changing.

I am having all sorts of sad feelings when I think that I am done with studying, for the time being. Being at college was one of the most profound experiences of my life, it taught me a lot, and I am certain it did not mean it. Coming at a crucial time in The Tololy’s life, a time rich with experiments and various currents of thought and belief, it goes without saying that it itched a warm memory.

Just thinking of this time, in previous semesters, made me cry. I have come to discover that I am highly sentimental about places, locations matter to me. I think I might be a bit too loyal and fragile in this regard. I am attached to the very campus of the U of J, it holds so many of my personalities.

Sometimes when I am trying to get from point A to point B, I see a spot and I instantly get back in the mood that I had once entertained or suffered in that location. The people I was with, the chronological frame, previous and post events; all those come back to me in a flash.

At the end of each semester I cry. Why I do that I am not sure. I may sound like your choice of a nerd when I say that I even bond with professors. They tend to really like me, and I am not making this up. I bond with the books, too! The end of a semester means the end of a special relationship with an atmosphere, the closure of a state.

I would like to name a few of my professors, those who have had strong influence over the mechanics of my years as a student. Dr.Jihad Shuaibi, who always had an amazing amount of faith in me. He never, not even once, put me down, and was supportive at all times. Prof.Ubaldo Lugli, who taught me how to appreciate literature and history, and who always had superb views about everything. His encyclopedic character had a major impact on my line of thought, and because of him I read more. He had this way of knowing everything, with dates -mind you, that made me extremely jealous and hence triggered a yet crazier thirst for knowledge within this mind of mine. Those super-intelligent conversations we used to have for hours on end after official class time is up will forever remain with my intellect, treasured moments of enlightenment.

Not to forget Prof.Maria Laura Iasci, who was pretty tough on everyone inside class and yet managed to be everyone’s best friend outside. I would never forget the uncertainty I felt every time I sat for an exam of her design, but her classes were one of the most beneficial. My Japanese language teacher, Kobayashi sensei, was the sweetest face to see at 8 AM, someone who teaches something considerably difficult and yet makes the lesson such an enjoyable experience. She brought light to my eyes about many of Japan’s fine arts and cultural facades, and her birthday party was splendid. I got to try original O Sushi, Wasabi, Sakura, as well as other things.

I would never betray Dr.Hassan Hassan’s memory. He was my Hebrew language teacher, and for the two levels of the language that I took was serious and kind at the same time. I love the fact that he greets me whenever we meet on campus, and every time he asks about my schooling and such. He is a very intelligent instructor and truly caring.

Tonight I passed by the university’s premises, and I was suddenly gasping for air. This is so sad. It’s this stage of my life that has been, up until now, the most fun, the most insane, the most rejected, and the most emotional; all in one! I cannot seem to be able to bring myself to accept that it is over, I have closure issues. Disgusting.

From hanging out with hardcore metal heads, to the Adiga corner, to the pavement of the street dubbed as “The Vulgars’”, to the coolest spot by the Business Administration faculty called “The Square”, to the “Square” right in the middle of the science faculties’ section of campus, to the Languages’ “Square”, I grew into totally different people in such brief periods of time.

Those dark phases of depression that I used to live quite frequently and the days on which I was giddy after a dose of orange juice, the sacred oversized turkey sandwiches, the explicit words I would use on slow pedestrians, the numerous crushes on guys who never even knew I existed, the following someone just to bug them, the girl I used to hammer every time I saw and the getting my friends to do that to her too (not nice), the smart verbal fights with this girl who thinks she’s oh-so-hot, the everyday fashion shows, the twisted alien presentations where I would wear a silver jacket and shiny purple shoes with them odd accessories and the weird head thing (because I am talking about aliens, you see), the editing job at the campus journal, the failed attempt to donate blood, the cancer centre with the beautiful children, the sign language course with the Saudi man who likes to play with his dirty feet in class, the hordes of professors who teach English or Italian and yet speak a language of their own, the bookshop where all the world’s printed words’ seduction exists, the bits of volunteering I did here and there, the ceremony where the Rector of the university and the deans gave me and others some awards, the being written about in a newspaper (with a colored picture!), the harshly cold winter days where folks try in vain to get me to drink something hot, the being an outcast to the limit of the title due to unseen-before dress codes, the being defiant and rebellious, and the rest of what I was.

Those are my memories. I keep them in my heart, and sometimes there are pictures to speak of them. I enjoyed every second of being a university student, I terribly loved it, and those gloomy days in particular have shaped me into what I am today.
I have said much, this does not qualify as a blog entry to some, but language is inadequate. Truly crippled.

All for good reasons,and as unusual of her, Tololy failed to publish as (little?) as a word of late. She has been severely sick for the past number of days, call it purification -as she likes to coin it-, it was a purgatory contrary to Dante’s, in her own bed.

The smell of illness still lingers in her three-holed nostrils, the hair, the clothes, the bed. The feel of weakness was humbling, very humbling. That–that indescribable sentiment of insignificance and defiance at once still visits her now as she recovers. She can at least get out of the bed without feeling cold and dizzy, she can walk steady and say a few words after being silent for this past period -something she is not used to and does not practice willingly.

Much time she found at her disposal to think, of many a thing. I would certainly rate it strange had she not spent her time thinking, she did not sleep at nights and stuck to that damned mattress, silent, under the sheets and the Paris wool hat during the day. What else could she have done, really? Mayhaps the fever had something to do with the hallucinations, the so-called visions, it’s your body heat Tololy. Nothing more, nothing less.

Crippled and static she recalled the beggar she did not provide change for, the innumerable sins, The Beloved… Yes, she remembered The Beloved only when she managed to snooze for a bit. It was something like a sweet summer nap, yet she awoke with the taste of humid salt on her lips, shedding precious tears for the loss of her.
Then she felt she was going to join The Beloved in that other realm, a moment of revelation; both tragic and joyous. Fever was at its best at that hour, deep in the garb of dark, and she literally wanted to have her back, as always, but now more profoundly, more solemnly. Proximity to death is healing.

But she was spared and did not turn into a metaphysical notion, a name recorded by a circle of kinsfolk and friends. She was touched by the warm concern of Niwhsa and Sabri Hakim, and she wishes to thank them from the very bottom of her heart for their thoughtfulness and care.

Illness provides one with an invaluable chance to reflect on matters. It gave her a minute of alleged wisdom, a gift it is being able to value health, and not giving mundane affairs more weight than they deserve. A time to read as well, she managed to conclude three works of literature, and she is not complaining.

An amazing spectacle by the old Languages Centre at the U of J. The names of those who are set to graduate this semester, and mine among them! This is the story.

I’m casually walking by, looking for some buddies to catch cold with on this harshly cold day, when I am dressed in a less-than-satisfactory-manner, and I see two of my friends.

So I smile, I go over to say salam, and they ask me if I had seen my name.

Friends: Have you seen your name on the paper?
Tololy: What paper?
Friends: Your name is on that paper hung on the glass door of the centre!
Tololy: Seriously?
Friends: Yeah!
Tololy: What for?
Friends: Go check it out, and congrats girl!

So I go, and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Had I not seen those two friends I would probably have not known about this in, say, two weeks’ time. A buddy comes trotting and finds me looking at the wrong paper, they’re all the same -those official papers- you know. He shows me where to look and I see my name, there! On top of the list! My friend congratulates me again and ,again, I do not know why I am being congratulated.

Then I understand it all. I am an honours student, and my GPA is the highest in the Modern Languages Department! Surreal!I am euphoric, absolutely euphoric about this. I set myself a goal in 2002 and I have managed to reach my destination, I really have, that’s the most sensational bit about the whole thing. This is an amazing feeling, I am genuinely proud of myself and I feel a little less guilty about my crazy shopping crusade of yesterday.

I call Mama, my sisters, my friends, and even my lady boss-friend. She tells me additional good news about work and this day could not get any better! (well it could but I just love it as is).

My first goal secured, I am good to go to the next one, two, three… Infinity.

This is an introspective entry, to some degree. I am in a most bizarre mood,and I pretend I know what it means. I will skim through scraps of today’s mind.

My Creative Writing professor is ill, he did not show up for class this morning. This pains me, because I like the guy. I think he is pleasant and I was hurt that some girls in class were jolly because of his absence. The poor fellow is suffering and they are celebrating, I do not understand this. But then again, not everybody likes him and it would be silly to expect everyone to have a generic taste in people.

I was casually using the internet at some lab at college, at about 9:00 AM, and some girls walked behind my chair and pushed me. Why they brushed against my chair, and head, I do not know. It was not only one girl who did this, it was a whole bunch
of them. The first brush was, well, understandable. Then came the second, and the girl’s bag was literally resting on my head. A third shortly followed, and I felt an elbow on my shoulder. I am fussy about my personal space, I do not like it to be invaded like that, you know. More hits followed, and I felt like such a pushover so I grew seriously annoyed and, seeing this, one of the girls apologized. No more hits followed. I think I could’ve hurt them girls had they not stopped, but luckily they did and no damage was done.

Is it possible that I was invisible at 9 AM this morning? If not, then why on earth would anyone -who has never, ever, met me before, or at the very least read some sarcastic remark of mine- want to push me as hard as they did?

This is another dilemma. Or perhaps it isn’t so perplexing, I am petite, and size matters. I am no match in size for those females, and they used their sheer size to their advantage.

The third, and most critical situation in this day so far, is my work. I am supposed to be working now, people expect me to be “producing”, generating revenue to feed someone’s bank account, but in all God’s frankness, I do not feel like it. I have this gum, flavoured cinnamon, in my mouth, and it burns. The tip of my tongue feels like a little flame, but I enjoy that. I think it has something to do with lack of desire to do something serious. Cinnamon is just too playful, it’s not for serious people. I love it.

I am without a diary because my third one ran out of paper and I still haven’t bought myself a new one. This means that I did not record my having gotten a “normal” job and such, I feel aweful about this.

I have a highly selective memory, and I do not know what criteria it uses to store certain events and dispose of others. That is a great chunck of the reason why I need a diary; if I do not jot things down I am likely to forget them. And I hate forgetting life events, it makes me feel so confused and lost when someone mentions something later on in time and I fail to recall anything about it.

So back to the point of the post’s title. This has been a hectic week, I am exhausted. I think it’s been like that because of my starting a new job as I still, frequently, attend to university lectures. It is probably more psychological than physical since I do not really involve myself in physical, manual labor, anywhere.

It is possible that I think too much about the two major balls I have in the air, without realising that I am infact managing superbly. I am not lagging behind as far as studies are concerned, even though I am a bit detached. And I am perfectly able to do my job the right way. What is this recurrent stream of thinking set to do, then? and more importantly, why should this interest you and why am I telling you about my week?

I think a good number of my readership read a previous post concerning my job hunt, so it follows logically, and out of respect for my readers, to update you on my status in that regard.

Tololy is hired. No more details will be provided as I do not see the need for additional particulars. Thank you kindly for taking a minute out of your day to jump in the box.

On October 13th,2004, which happened to be a Wednesday, I posted this to my previous blog. I am amazed at the way my writing style has changed. It is fascinating to see how I moved from Miss.Uppish Angry to,well, the present. I leave the title blank because I do not wish to speculate. Mood: Cheerful.

10:37 p.m.
Crippled Ideas

So people keep asking me this question : what does tololy stand for? what does the word mean? who came up with it?and to all the curious folks out there , i say : BLEH.

Like when i tell someone, a new friend of mine for instance : “hey! people who are close to me call me tololy, i’d like it if u called me that too.” why,oh why, does that person HAVE TO dwell on the fact that such a word doesn’t exist in any language she/he knows? lol doesn’t that person
see the flag ? i am telling her/him that i consider her/him to be a close friend and that i want to
reward her/him by letting her/him call me sth special.

As time passed by, and i got to know more people, and had to live with numerous questions concerning the ever mysterious “tololy”, i developed an answering formula. I’d always reply to those who ask me what it stands for :
“OH, it stands for ME” . and I’d have this arrogant smile on my face, because i am telling them that i have 2 names that have absolutely nothing in common. Therefore, by some twisted formula, i am better than all those who only have one name. And i am also better than those who get called “common” names. as in, say, Mohammad becomes Hammoudeh. what is that? it’s not unique.

Someone once asked me to elaborate on the “it stands for me” statement. so i said : ” Tololy is me, and I am Tololy. This word exists with a single meaning only, me. in the whole world there exists one tololy and that one tololy is sitting right here with you. this word represents me as an individual and you will hear it nowhere else”. that person drooled.

Another interesting question i hear alot is this: ” so who came up with the name? who invented it?”. I always say : ” I dont know”. Oh but I do know.

As far as i can remember it was my eldest sister,i was still at school at the time, probably 5th or 6th grade. and she kept singing a catchy song from a TV ad, the ad was about some sort of chocolate called Tivoly or sth similar. Then, by some odd chance or game or call it what u may, she called me Tololy. The 2 words rhyme. not funny at all, so wipe that smile off your face
you!
The name caught on, and by time everybody in the family started calling me Tololy or Tolol. And i loved it. Coz well, HELLO!, my real name is a true legend in length. lol very unique though.

There came a time when nobody called me tololy, then it was brought back to life by me.
Nowadays everybody who knows me well enough knows what to call me when they want
something. Tololy. that’s the key to my heart. One last thing before I stop blurting, I think they call a super fast train in Japan tololy. and some other thing in turkey, i forgot what that thing was. hehehe i always stay updated about what happens with my UNIQUE name, it’s been a while though since i last checked it out. oh well… im still super kewl. cheerz

I realise that a good number of people would talk about the return to studying at Jordanian universities and all the debris of thoughts and impressions related to it. And being an undergraduate student myself I figured I could jot something down as well even though I am not entirely sure I want to.

This being my grand finale I admit to having been reluctant about actually getting to the university campus, since any such step could ruin the so-called prestige of a senior student. But once I found myself wide awake at around 9 a.m., the damage was already done.A nice little parade was, obviously, organised. Following is a picture I took while swaying to the music. I must say this was one of the things I enjoyed the most.

On another note, I have come to fully understand the importance of my right shoulder, or my two shoulders to that matter. I have been rubbed against, bumped and pushed by several physically better-endowed females. I apologised for being elfin. Ironically, none of them was verbally sorry or expressed any regrets as to having overpowered a smaller specimen of the female gender. I would like to believe they sincerely wanted to but could not due to chaotic pedestrian traffic.

I also do believe that due to my petite stature and the recurrent calls to and from my cellular phone revolving around the vital yet minimal question of Where Are You I was mistaken for a freshwoman. One would think I was pleased at such a potential label seeing as I previously expressed my frustration when people think I am older.

Regardless of the labels and the illusionary status, it’s good to be back. I am eager to start my usual discussions and be inspired by the intellectual climate that I hope I will manage to find.

Among an array of phobias,I have this fear of dentists. I do not fear the people themselves as much as I fear their machines,and the working of their hands. I think the reason for this fear was a negative experience from my childhood. I was a first grader when I had my first tooth pulled out at the hands of a cruel dentist, it remains an ugly memory of an ugly time.

After close examination, an expert decided I needed braces. I had the fangs of a vampire, like Claudia from Anne Rice’s “Interview with the vampire”. That sort of image, a child vampire who,when she smiles, instills fear instead of love in the hearts of those who behold her. This is not putting it too dramatically, my fangs were scary and distorted any pretty aspect to my face, no colorful dresses or girlish hair accessories could divert one’s attention from them.

So it followed that certain steps be taken to adjust the shocking state of my teeth,and the process was nothing less than painful. I used to give dentists a hard time, so they eventually pulled out two of my teeth in an operating room. They made me wear that light robe that patients wear,and they told me to count to ten as I gently inhaled that pleasant anesthetic that sent me off to dream land euphoria.
Some time afterwards, I had the upper and lower braces installed the same day and I remained sleepless and famine-struck for three long days.

Having removed the torturous instruments that deprived me of gum and seeds for a year, I resolved never to visit a dentist again. I licked the now smooth surface of my teeth and smiled proudly, I wanted to show everyone how I can smile and look nice as I do it. I decided to take care of my teeth in a manner that would make visiting a dentist a distant possibility.

I kept my word for seven years. Today at 10 am I have to have a dentist take a look at my teeth and I may sound silly but I think this will be a night that boldly recalls the three nights following the installation of the braces.( It is 16 minutes past midnight )

I do not like the sound of the machines, they are too “mechanical”. Maybe they can make them sound a little less so,and more on the friendly side. Then again, perhaps it is my mentally associating them with pain that makes them sound so horrifying.
I have tried but failed to like the positioning of one in the chair. It makes me feel completely helpless and I do not like to be helpless. It generates an image in my head of my surrendering to a stranger with a multitude of machines exploring an intimate part of my face. My mouth is a sacred shrine to me, I do not appreciate having it explored by strangers’ machines.

Will this visit prove to be my version of “The Appointment in Samara”? I am ever so scared. This is the story:

A certain merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market to buy some provisions. A little while later, the servant returned looking white in the face. In a trembling voice he said, “Just now in the market place I was jostled by a man in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Mr. Death. He looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Please lend me your horse, because I want to go to Samara where Mr. Death will not be able to find me.” The merchant agreed and lent the scared man his horse. The servant mounted the horse and rode away as fast as the animal could gallop. Later that day, the merchant went down to the market place and saw Mr. Death standing in the crowd. He approached him and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” “That was not a threatening gesture,” said Mr. Death. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samara.”

I should be heading home in a couple of days… and time can not move any slower. I think it will take me around 13 hours since it’s a direct flight but add to that the time I should spend at the airport beforehand and you will easily get some 19 hours or so. Tragic,I know.

It’s funny how much I miss some seeminlgy insignificant bits of my life in Amman. I do miss my family & friends,that goes without saying. But I also long for my mom’s superb cooking, and for the olive trees. Weird? One would think I wouldn’t miss that since I’m in a place noted for its beautiful nature. I am literally surrounded by trees and lakes and I still miss the blessed olive trees. I haven’t seen not one olive tree during my entire stay here and I tell you it’s just not perfect without olive trees.

I came across a brilliant site the other day that is basically a gallery (or galleries) of pictures taken in Jordan. I had to cage the tears in my eyes and I enjoyed feeling close to my corner of the world once more. Here’s the link to the site : http://www.pbase.com/mansour_mouasher/amman&page=all

The person behind the lense knows what he’s doing and he does it right.Two thumbs way up! And since we’re at it, I would like to share with you the featured picture of this entry, a picture I took tonight of a toy sheep that I seated on a little chair. (It sounds more twisted that it really is).

I should note that I will not be able to add any entries during the coming few days simply because I will not have access to the internet. *sigh*