The Annual Hunt for the Jerash Festival Website

As I was taking a quick round of the regular and irregular resources for events in Amman and Jordan this July, I remembered that this is the month for Jordan’s supposedly most established cultural and artistic annual event… the Jerash Festival. I also remembered that last year, a few days before the festival was due to start, their website was still not updated. But I thought, perhaps this year is different… you know, after having the website for some years now, they must’ve learned that updating it has to come higher up on their event planning and marketing agenda.

But Noooo! Three weeks before the start of Jordan’s famous festival, which is intended to draw not only Jordanians but also Arab and International visitors and tourists, the official website still takes you back into 2005.

Ahmad Humeid wrote about it two years ago in the Jordan Times, so I can just echo everything he said, adding 2 to the mentioned years.

What a shame really!!

Ramble: Floating

I’m floating… trying to clear my mind of all thoughts. But thoughts keep swarming my mind.

Floating… smiling to myself as I look at the kids on the beach and the tourists savoring the mineral mud.

Why is it that I feel serene joy when I see foreigners enjoying Jordan?

Floating… lifting my eyes up to the sky, the clear blue sky, hearing nothing but the rhythmic sound of my breath.

I tilt my neck a little, enough to look to my right in the direction of the crane and the construction on the beach. I remember a time when the only hotel down here was the Dead Sea Spa. The construction craze… I don’t know how I feel about it! Why do I feel uneasy when I drive by the construction site of City Mall and Carrefour? Why do I feel uneasy when I pass by the huge hole next to sixth circle where the two towers are going to be built?

I rest my head back on the water, and float, effortlessly. It takes me a while to pull myself out of the book I was reading – Al Tayyeb Saleh’s amazing Season of Migration to the North. My reading was only interrupted by the loud noise coming from the Arab American group whose presence in the hotel was more than visible. They’re a group of sisters who live in different states and who are gathering in Amman for the first time in years. Their children are so loud; crying, yelling, whining, and making their exclamations about the salt, mud, and water ever so noisy.

Floating, I turn to the other side and look towards Palestine. I feel a huge ball of lead resting on my tummy when the thought of Gaza comes to my mind. At breakfast this morning, I picked up the newspaper… “What do you want with the newspaper?” “You’re on a two-day vacation; just take a break from the depressing news of the world!” That’s what it is to us… news… depresses us, angers us, or flies right over our heads because we’re too saturated.

One wrong move, and a tiny splash of water finds its way to my eye!! It stings, it burns, it hurts… I lick my lip… Big Mistake!! The saltiness on my tongue feels thick and dry… very dry.

I’m still floating though… what would happen if I fell asleep here? I barely got two hours of sleep the night before. I had such good hearty laughs playing tarneeb with my sis, my uncle, and my cousin. I enjoyed talking to my sister Lara afterwards, and generally, I was happy to see my mom and aunt spend such quality sister-time together before the latter flies back to the states.

Speaking of family… I think it’s time I made my way back to see what everyone else is at. Not that I got enough alone-time; I still need much more of it, but it’s probably time to go.

It’s weird, how you can be a talkative, people-person, whose favorite pastime is sitting with interesting random people and striking interesting conversations, but you often feel this desperate need to detach yourself from everything and everyone, and be alone… and you live in a setting that doesn’t give much space for that…

Floating… I move towards the beach. The paper cut on my finger stings. I still didn’t figure out what I’m going to do with all the changes at work… with all the other choices… with all the decisions I have to make.

The rocks are slippery, but I manage not to fall. The hot sand burns the soles of my feet. Run Lina… Run.

A Ramble on Graduation and the UJ Experience

I wasn’t planning to go. I figured, what’s the point of going to your graduation ceremony five months after you’ve actually graduated and got a job and all?! I kept telling my parents – and myself – that I wasn’t in the mood, that I had half a million other more important things to do, and that it would be a waste of time!

But boy am I glad I went after all

Reason number one: Well, being the eldest, it meant so much to my parents that I go, even if that entailed for them having to sit in the sun for hours, amidst all the chaos, only to hear my name and see me walk up the stage to get that degree in Electrical Engineering.

My dad had studied medicine in Egypt. His 6th year finals were in June of 1967, yes, the year of the tragic six-day war and the Arab defeat. He still recounts tales of what it was like when their exams were postponed and when they had to come back and take them after the tragedy, in a steeping low moral and an atmosphere of depression and anger.

They were supposed to graduate in June of 1968 after doing a one-year internship. But then in March, Al-Karameh Battle took place in Jordan, and dad was so disappointed for not being at home when that happened. He decided he had to pack up and return to Jordan right away. He never went back to attend the graduation ceremony in June, and to this day, part of him still wishes he did.

Ok, back to the story of my graduation

Reason number two?? The great chance to see my classmates and friends, take lots of pictures (which I might post later), and reflect upon the UJ experience.

The UJ experience!! Ah, it’s so hard to sum it up in a post. I remember at the end of my first year at uni, I was writing with the student newspaper “Sawt Al Tabalah”, and I was assigned the article on the graduation… I was there on some of the graduation days (different faculties are paired and assigned different graduation dates), and was interviewing the graduates, asking them questions like: If you could go back, what would you do differently?

Answers varied from “I wish I had studied better and gotten better grades” to “I wish I wasn’t that focused on studying and that I had done other things during those years”. Some people said “I wish I hadn’t been in such a rush to graduate a semester early”. Some said “I wish I participated more in extra-curricular activities”. And some had answers like “there are people at university I wish I’d never met”!!!

So now, if I ask myself that question, what would my answer be? What would I have done differently??

Um…

Nothing really! I look back at 4 and half years at UJ, and I see a rich, intense experience through which I underwent significant personal growth and some tough change.

To be honest, the educational experience was not rewarding and fulfilling as you’d hope your college education to be. UJ is not exactly the “platform of knowledge, learning, and thinking”, and the place where you dig deep, challenge theories, get swamped in reading assignments, and learn to go after knowledge yourself instead of waiting for it to come readily processed, packaged, and presented for you to take as is.

Plagiarism is rampant. Students don’t even know that it’s NOT ok to “Copy and Paste” directly from the internet or any other resource when they do reports, essays, and projects. From your first year lab report, to the final year graduation project, you see the majority of students lost in “CTRL C, and CTRL V”, and getting good grades for it.

But that’s a topic for another occasion. That aside, UJ has given me the best social education I could’ve hoped for. It introduced me to the real Jordanian Society, with all its complexities, paradoxes, contradictions, and class barriers. Now there are students who, even at UJ, manage to remain in their bubbles and keep their interaction with people who are “different” to a minimum. I tried, to the best of my knowledge and effort, not to fall into that trap.

Getting involved in student activities, extra-curricular courses, and volunteer programs does so much in enriching your experience and helping you grow and discover yourself. One of the things that used to irritate me was the fact that many students walk on campus everyday without paying a single attention to announcements, bulletin boards, and walls plastered with all kinds of interesting information and opportunities. Of course there’s all kind of crap as well plastered on those walls, but it’s still worthwhile to keep an open eye and take a moment to read what’s up there. It’s also worthwhile to go knock on doors to ask what that announcement was about. Then, one interesting activity opens the door to a million others.

This post is turning into a speech and I sure didn’t intend for that What did I tell you? It’s impossible for me to sum up my university experience in one post. Some months ago I started, and promised that there will be a series of posts on that. This one counts as part II, doesn’t it?

There will be a part III, sometime and I still didn’t share yesterday’s idiosyncrasies and interesting bits.

But I’m afraid I’ll have to do that later, because now I need to go get ready for two days of relaxation and big family fun at the Dead Sea. It’s been ages since I took time off, and I mean ages!!!

Adios and Forza Italia!

Spanish Blues Concert Tonight

I know this is short notice, but if you’re interested and don’t have plans, this looks like it’s worth checking out. (click on the poster to enlarge)

Tonight’s concert is in the Balad Theatre. I really like that place. It used to be an old cinema, opened in 1952. The project of renovating it and turning it into a cultural center was a great idea, and it seems to be getting quite active this summer. They still have the old rusty cinema equipment in there, and a lot of the authentic elements were kept unaltered.

Anyways, if I go tonight I’ll post some pictures.

Glimpses

I didn’t tell you how good it felt to have the camera fixed a couple of weeks ago. I was suffering without it! Today I was just downloading pictures and sorting out the ones I took over the past two weeks, and realized that there are so many places I want to tell you about. So here, I thought I’d share glimpses until I get around to writing about each and posting the rest of pictures.

National Agenda back??

I haven’t blogged in what feels like ages; too much to share too little time… in the coming days this space will feature some of my favorite places in Amman that I want to shed some light on, a graduation commencement speech, and snippets on articles and news that caught my attention this past week.

One particular piece of news I read in the newspaper last week and felt compelled to share was that the EU is giving Jordan an extra grant of 20 million euros for the implementation of the plans outlined in the National Agenda.

I found it intriguing at first that this piece of news was tucked inside, and that very little or no attention was given to it, at least by bloggers who previously commented on the state of the National Agenda.

But then again, that’s how it has been with the National Agenda from the start. Even with the heated debate that arose regarding items it included about the Election Law and the Jordan Press Association, there wasn’t any kind of proper national dialogue or strong PR campaigns to diminish the skepticism and pessimism surrounding the reform efforts, to raise awareness of the issues tackled and presented in this ambitious project, and to rally public support.

While I always chose to be on the optimistic side when looking at the aspired reform in Jordan and the effort that came to be known as the National Agenda, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by the notion that “the masses of the public don’t know what is good for them, and if it was put to vote they will only hinder progress and reform.” Yes I agree that in many cases, political will is needed before public will to make things happen and to push for change, but it cannot remain this way. Reform cannot continue to be planned, debated and cooked behind closed doors and under a low profile. It is obvious from this EU grant that the National Agenda is not dead, and not intended to remain ink on paper. But is it going to appear as a number of proposed laws that would be rejected by the Parliament? Or it is going to wait for the departure of this Parliament that has been at odds with the proposed reform, and that has had more than the average share of controversies, scandals, and clashes whether with the government or with the public? But what’s to guarantee that the next parliament will be any different, unless we have a new law that will make some of the political development we’re aspiring to begin to materialize? Oh but what if the current parliament resists and rejects such a law? Then what? Present a temporary law while the Parliament is out of session??

Back in April Naseem commented on a news article that said:

The government will present the executive programme for the National Agenda in June, Minister of Public Sector Reform Salem Khazaaleh confirmed on Wednesday. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Khazaaleh said priority would be given to projects designed to alleviate poverty and reduce unemployment.

He also said special attention would be given to measures to attract investment, upgrade infrastructure, communications, IT and financial services and reinforce judicial independence.

I want to reiterate what Nas said in that post:

While poverty, unemployment and health are always at the cornerstone of every ‘good’ government’s agenda, I’m more interested in the actual reforming elements of the project: specifically media and political reform. I’m hoping they won’t be stage 15 of the national agenda.

So June is here, and I’m awaiting the executive program. And let me tell you, I will not settle for a small second page article in the newspaper about it. Who am I anyways, you ask? I am a young Jordanian girl who refuses to join the pessimists, who does not want to become a cynic at the young age of 23 – not at the age 83 for that matter. I’m a Jordanian girl who loves this beautiful country, and who wants to be part of making it a better place. And not just a better place where businesses prosper and where people have good jobs with decent paychecks… I definitely don’t want Jordan to turn into another Dubai where people are happy with the good money they make and the good entertainment and glamour the city has to offer, that they don’t care whatsoever about political freedoms and freedom of thought and expression. Of course I know that when people have to worry about putting bread on the table and to make ends meet, politics is not exactly on top of their concerns, but it’s all interconnected.

I found myself ending this post with “Oh well, let’s just wait and see…” but it just sounded too passive. Or may be I’m over-analyzing it now!!

Hmmmm…

Oh well…

to blog…

So as a rule of thumb when writing, the introduction needs to be catchy and relevant (duh!) to the main idea you’re trying to present, right? We also live in a fast world where people don’t have time to read long articles and posts and they just want something to skim through, haven’t we all heard and experienced that? When you have a very good idea or interesting point you want to make, don’t bury it underneath some jargon of irrelevant uninteresting talk that’s only beating around the bush…

Isn’t it great that you can break all the rules on your blog if you want to? I mean, I always find myself starting my post with something like what I wanted to start with today: “I woke up at 3:00 AM, tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, got up, had dates for breakfast, made my coffee, and am sitting here contemplating the world and what I want to write…”

Usually when I start off a ramble like that, it ends somewhere completely different and unintended, and I come to think that I need to go back and delete the silly introduction I got off with. But you know what, when you get up at 3 in the morning, while 11 other people in the house are all sleeping peacefully, you somehow have this need of letting the world know that you’re up at this odd hour.

I read somewhere that bloggers should stop blogging about blogging, hehe. How could we not? It still fascinates me, 15 months after I started, and I still ponder from time to time how different my life is now from what it was before I became “a blogger”.

“A Blogger“… hmmm… I have a wise friend who paints beautifully and who’s planning some exhibitions for his work. He says “I’m not an artist, I’m just someone who paints. Just like singing did not make me a singer, and acting did not make me an actor; I’m just someone experimenting with myself.”

So are we bloggers, or are we just people who blog? Is there a difference anyway?

Here’s another question… how much of yourself can you put “out there”? We’ve had the interesting debate of anonymity a while back, and JO magazine had a well-put little article about it in the June issue. Khalaf had struck a good note when he said “In real life I express the same thoughts that I blog quite freely. However, in real life I have the ability to judge what to say to whoever I am dealing with. In real life, my audience is not anonymous. On the internet, my readers are anonymous, and so am I.”

Do I regret the choice of blogging under my real, full name? No, I don’t, but I wonder if someday I will. Does it restrict what I blog about? You bet. If I could go back and start over would I change anything?

Well…

…

No

Books in Town

For all you bookworms here in Amman, and those of you interested in Middle-Eastern Studies, make sure you go check out the Book Exhibition that is part of the Second World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies. It’s at the Meridian, and will be closing tomorrow Friday around 1:00 PM. If you want to go though, I’d recommend you try to make it today, because the guy from the AUC Press booth told me they’re wrapping it up at 7:00 this evening.

I managed to make it yesterday at 6:30, a brief half hour before closing, not enough for me to explore every booth and read the back of every seemingly interesting book, but enough to stop for a few minutes at the AUC Press corner and buy four wonderful books that I can’t wait to dig into.

This is the dilemma though, I’m only adding to the stack of books that are waiting to be read and not managing to find enough time for them! On Saturday I stopped by Abu Ali’s and left with three Arabic novels and a publication from the Arab Thought Forum. While we were talking, he was telling how much he wished he could learn English, and I said Why not? You have all those self-learning books so why not give them a try? He shook his head and said there isn’t enough time.

There isn’t enough time?! What do you mean you don’t have enough time?

Reading is very important to me, he replied. “Between the four local dailies, Al Quds Al Arabi, Al Sharq Al Awsat, Al Nahar, Al Ahram… then all the new Arabic books by excellent authors, and the translated books… there’s barely time to catch up with all of it. There are authors, columnists and writers that I just can’t miss, and it fills my day.”

I’m jealous I want to trade places with him for week!

Taking a Risk with Democracy

Today I had a very interesting conversation with one of my favorite people to discuss politics with. We discussed the IAF, the sentiments about Zarqawi, and the state of democracy in Jordan… which is NOT looking good with the strong shift towards prioritizing security and anti-terrorism.

A lot has been said about the “group of four” IAF deputies and their ‘pro-Zarqawi’ actions and statements. There are two people I want to echo; Moi, and Marc Lynch (aka Abu Aardvark). I think it’s good that people expressed their anger and rejection of such statements. I agree with Khalaf that it’s no surprise these deputies feel this way, but what I found appalling was their nerve and how far they were willing to go in their statements! Comes to show that the stand they took against the November bombings was just a necessary reaction at the time, not a reflection of strong convictions against this terrorism.

Yesterday I forwarded the email regarding the protest in front of the Parliament, and I got this reply from a friend today:

What value would it have??, what difference would it make??, tell me!! What’s the point when you can protest when the government agrees, and cannot when it does not??…

No point, no freedom of speech in this lovely country

If you decide to protest for fuel prices, or inflation,,, please email me…

This is part of what Moi was saying. What kind of twisted freedom of expression is it when you’re allowed to protest what the government likes for you to protest, and not allowed to protest anything else?

I also think it’s one thing to strongly denounce the IAF and its stand, and another to support the government arrest of the 4 MPs. Liberals (and centrists) have to be careful of allowing themselves to become supportive of illiberal and totally undemocratic government practices just because they’re aimed at the IAF. Part of what scares me about the repercussions of this latest demonstration of sympathy towards Zarqawi by Abu Fares and his colleagues is that it endorses the already existing twisted perspective that “we’re not yet ready for democracy because we don’t want a full democratic process that will yield a majority of fundamental Islamists“. So what’s the only current resistance of the fundamentalist tide? Strengthening fragmented tribal sentiments. And that’s probably the reason behind what Roba saw at the protests yesterday, the absence of people like herself, and the strong tribal-based representation.

I want to quote Shadi Hamid here, from a post titled “When democracy and liberalism collide“:

Democracy is a moral good regardless of its outcomes. Of course, certain fundamental rights must be guaranteed irrespective of the will of the majority (i.e., no rounding up of Muslims here in the US, and no rounding up of Copts and other non-Muslim minorities in the Arab world). Having a liberal polity, however, is not a fundamental right. It is something that must be fought for – through democratic give and take – by liberals.

If liberals, whether it be here [US] or in Egypt, cannot convince the electorate to vote for them, then that is what democracy is about. Democracy’s not easy. It’s not tidy. It’s not some cure-all panacea. And it is, by no means, an affirmative action program for disaffected Arab liberals. No – democracy is messy, uncertain, and, yes, risky.

Do you think that there is widespread public anger among the majority at calling Zarqawi a martyr and offering his family condolences??!! Well think again. Four MP’s are being arrested for it but I assure you that a significant segment of society is either quite sympathetic to Zarqawi, or still doesn’t believe he actually exists. Friends of mine tell me “don’t believe what the media tells you, a fictitious character like Zarqawi does well in serving US purposes in the region!” From what I’ve been seeing and hearing, people who say that are not a minority. To me, regardless of who Zarqawi was or who his existence served, he doesn’t have to exist as a person, he exists as an ideology and a mentality, and that is threatening enough. We can’t sit back and wait for the Palestinian struggle to be justly resolved and for Iraq to be rebuilt and liberated for all our other problems to be solved. Yes the frustration with US foreign policy and the political situation in the region contributes in driving many people towards extremism, or at least creating a justification for it, but a lot of internal factors are to blame, and there’s a lot we can start doing to counter the extremist tide.

If the IAF’s actions are instigating strong counter feelings and actions, great, this is just what we need for political mobilization. Perhaps it will do us good when we plunge into democracy head-first, have Parliamentary elections that are just based on political parties and not on geographic representation and independents. It would yield an Islamic majority the first time, and then the others; centrists, leftists, liberals, neo-liberals, and even those who are apathetic, will realize that it’s time to get organized and do something… and that is NOT waiting for the government to arrest MPs who incite sectarianism and offend national sentiments.

Just my scattered thoughts. I wonder what the coming days and months hold!!

Caution; Comment Ahead!

You are invited to watch Dalia Kury’s latest film:

احذر. أمامك تعليق

“CAUTION. COMMENT AHEAD”

A documentary Film, 35min, Arabic with English subtitles

Thursday 15th of June. Royal Cultural Center, at 2.30 PM

playing as part of the The World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies ( WOCMES-2 ) Film Festival

Film synopsis:
The director of, “Caution! Comment Ahead” Dalia al kury, travels the bumpy roads of Amman to find out the social, psychological and moral complexity which makes street harassment a practiced daily phenomenon in Amman, and shares with us why she is not willing to overlook it.

for more info on the Congress http://www.wocmes2.org/