A Camera Click

The pictures don’t do the view justice, it’s just amazing to stand up there on that roof and gaze at the light-dotted hills of old Amman…

This is the roof of Old View Café, which was managed during Ramadan by my friends Suha and Youssef… they opened up the roof daily after Iftar, offering a wonderful cozy setting for evening gatherings; simple, genuine, and laid back…

It was one hectic month for them, managing their full time jobs and running this place… so I just want to tell them, ya3teekom el 3afyeh I know you guys are eager to rest but I’m telling ya, the s6oo7 will be missed… as will Amman’s beautiful summer evenings now that winter is creeping in.

We’re changing the clock to winter time this weekend I do love autumn, I love the cloudy sunsets, the cold breeze, the smell of rain, and the blazers and warm scarves… but I guess there’s just so much that I’m going to miss about the summer, not least of which is the longer hours of sunlight…

Is it just me who always feels that summer has this air of temporariness to it (I don’t even know if the word “temporariness” exists, but the spell check here didn’t flash its red alerts )… it always feels so transient… but then again, I’ve had this persistent feeling all year-round in recent years; this feeling of “temporariness”… stuck in transition is what I would call it, but that will have to be another post I guess…

… or not…

Happy Eid Everyone

Abu Meen?

I was looking at results of previous polls on Al-Ghad’s website, and one question reminded me of an issue I’ve always wanted to write about. The question was:

Do you think that a man should continue to be called after his eldest daughter’s name even if he has a son afterwards?

41% said yes, and 59% said No

I remember when I was 10 years old, and my mom was pregnant with my little brother. It was a given that people will stop calling dad “Abu Lina”, and start calling him “Abu Laith”… it wasn’t a question of personal choice. Back then, I remember how mad I was deep down! I was so angry and jealous of the little creature who would come and take my place in my dad’s name!

I got over it eventually I suppose. But then another side of the issue started perplexing me; why should parents be called by their children’s name in the first place?

We talk about a society where you’re defined by “who you are” rather than “what you do”, a society where people ask you who your father is all the time, where people get places because of their family or tribe… but it’s interesting to think of how it’s a two-way thing. Parents are also defined by their children. When parents pressure their kids and interfere in their life and career choices, one of the reasons is because it reflects back on them, on how they are perceived by their “peers”. Parents don’t seize to worry about their kids when they get them into college; they worry about getting them a job, getting them married, paying the wedding expenses, finding them a house, furnishing it… and in many cases these days, you see them babysitting the grandchildren because both young parents have full time jobs.

As noble, selfless, and sacrificial as this all seems… it’s just not right! The family bonds in our society sure are beautiful and priceless, but we really need to find a balance. It’s a cycle, children live all their lives owing their parents so much that they cannot go against them in most choices and decisions, and parents live a life completely revolving around their children and constantly worrying about their responsibilities towards them.

This issue brings to my mind another point, perhaps not totally related. The other day I was talking to an old school friend, and asking her about her sister who got married last year and moved with her husband to the states where they’re both doing their medical residencies. She said “they’re doing well, working hard, and she’s not pregnant yet, they’re putting it off because of their studies at the moment.” And I just laughed “Oh come on you know I wasn’t going to ask if she’s pregnant!!”

“Yeah I know,” she said, “but this answer comes out of me automatically because this is what people wonder about when they ask me about my sister.”

I find this extremely irritating and intrusive… and people do it to newly-weds all the time. A few months after the wedding, they start winking and smiling and looking at the bride’s tummy wondering “is there anything yet?”

It’s like having kids is the automatic next step, completely taken for granted. Just imagine how many people have children when they’re not yet ready for it, and how it changes their lives completely without them being prepared. But of course that’s not the only thing in our lives that we do without being fully ready, it’s all part of our frantic race with time, to graduate from high school in proper time (because if you flunk one subject and end up going to college one semester late then everyone related to you would know and feel sorry for you and your parents), then you get into college and are expected to take as many credit hours as possible every semester to graduate early and start the job hunt. You either start looking for a job or you continue with graduate studies, no other option is acceptable. And then, if you get a good job… the next step for a girl is to get married before she’s outside the zone of marriageable age, and the next step for a guy is to work so hard and save as much as possible to be able to get married within a few years. And that brings me back to the point, the next step for the newly weds is to have kids. You have the first child, and everyone starts asking when are you getting the second? You get the second, and if you have two daughters everyone asks when are you bringing them a brother… you get a baby boy, and people start saying “oh a boy should have a brother!”

It’s just endless… it’s the “3u2bal” syndrome… “3u2bal” is a term used in hoping for what’s next, and they say it when congratulating you on a certain personal occasion. In every step or milestone in your life, the congrats are ultimately focused on the next step.

So I guess it seems I started somewhere and ended somewhere else in this post, but to me, both issues are connected. It’s all about what ties us down and keeps us from being ourselves, from finding out what it is WE want, from doing things at our own pace. And it really is about what we derive our identity from, our sense of security, our contentment, our social worth…

On a lighter note, next time I hear someone being called “Abu Fulan” or “Um Fulan”, I’m going to ask them what their first name is

Get Caught Reading

How many people have all the time to watch TV, play tricks all night long or spend hours and hours of their breaks between and after classes sitting in the “square”, but say that they don’t have time to read? How many people do you see in waiting rooms, queues, and around campus, simply staring at others or at the ceiling?

I’ve heard many people say that they’d rather do things that are more fun and interesting than read, or that they wouldn’t read in public because they’d be perceived as self-proclaimed intellectual snobs or nerds or simply anti-social boring people.

The whole notion that reading is nerdy, boring, and not cool, hip, nor fun is a very sad phenomenon amongst the majority of young people – not all. Thinking about this reminded me of a campaign I saw in a magazine I used to read back in my teen days; Seventeen. The campaign was called “Get Caught Reading”, and they would feature pictures of celebrities and popular figures “caught reading”. I particularly remember the posters of Whoopee Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell, and I really liked the concept of the campaign.

So today, as I wanted to sit down and blog these thoughts, I decided to Google and see if I’d find it… and boy was I excited at what I found!

Turns out it’s a project that started in the US, Canada, and Britain, before moving into Europe. Quoting from the website:

“Get Caught Reading” is a European wide campaign which promotes books and reading through various media and by a well-focused communication strategy. Already promoted in the USA, Canada and Great Britain, the project wants to focus on the fun-side of reading: personalities from the worlds of the media, sport, politics, etc. will be photographed when they are “caught reading”. The campaign is based on these photos, to be distributed through as many media as possible.

There are so many information and entertainment choices competing for our valuable time today that we often put off reading just for enjoyment.

This project wants people to make time for books and to remember how satisfying and rewarding it can be to browse through a bookstore, hold a book in your hands and discover a new world within.

My mind started wandering with excitement, thinking about how we can implement such a project here, in Jordan, and in the Arab world, and how desperately we need it. In the last Injaz session I gave, I got the girls a bunch of books as I promised for the small class library and reading program we’re setting up. The idea (again) was that they get a present for every book finished, and the person who reads the most during the semester gets to be invited to a special lunch somewhere. I was so glad to see them rush to see the books and fight to choose first. I tried this plan with my brother over the summer and it worked; he used to tell me that reading is boring, but I got him the Chronicles of Narnia (book 1 for a start) and told him that gets to pick any place to go if he finishes it. I had to go through the torture of watching “The Fast and the Furious” at the movies with him because this is what he wanted, but “the cause” was still worth it after the third book, he stopped asking me where we will go, and he just asks me what interesting books he could read =D

This brings me to another issue, which is the availability of Arabic books that are interesting to teenagers… of course there are a bunch of great books out there that people of any age can enjoy, but when you compare it to books in other languages that specifically target and suit certain age groups, you realize that we are waayyyyy behind. It’s a constant challenge for me to find books for my 8th grade girls in Arabic that would really engage them. Most of the things I’m getting are translations. Also, if you look at the print quality of books in Arabic, you feel sad… I was buying a friend of mine books in Arabic with their translation in English… and when you compare the English version of the book, its beautifully designed jacket, good paper quality, and clear print, with its Arabic version… well, I was embarrassed of what I was going to send her. Of course, I wouldn’t blame the publishers because it’s understandable that they want to cut cost to keep the book price at a minimum since it’s hard to sell the books in the first place. Abu Ali tells me that one of the main reasons less people are buying books these days is that it’s getting more expensive and the majority would rather spend the money on other things.

So back to the Get Caught Reading campaign; Checking out the posters brought to mind the issue of Role Models, which Amin wrote about earlier. A survey has been done before the youth version of “We’re All Jordan” forum, with a sample of over a thousand young people, asking them to name who they look up to in different fields – art, entrepreneurship, politics, culture, music, literature… etc. I didn’t find the results published anywhere, but they were cited, saying that there weren’t even a handful of common answers amongst all the young people interviewed!!

But, Haifa et al aside (don’t get me started), I’m sure we’d find a group of celebrities or public figures to be the faces of the campaign. My mind goes to people like Amr Khaled, Zaven, Giselle Khoury, hmmmm, some football players, athletes… think marketing! Think of people who can address as vast a segment of society as possible, with different tastes and mentalities.

What about Jordanian figures? Just a question, who do you think would work as a figure for such a campaign? Who are the people that the youth of this country look up to? I guess this is an issue for another post, but I’d really appreciate your thoughts.

And don’t forget to take a look at the testimonials from the American and the European versions.

Saudi Coffee, Saudi Champagne, and a Beautiful Gathering Space

Unlike the explosive light decorations all over Amman’s residential areas (Keep an eye on Hal’s blog for a comment on that), Roba’s family has the nicest, most simple yet creative Ramadan decoration I’ve come across. She and her mom put together a cozy tent in the yard for Ramadan evenings, complete with all the elements… and it’s just wonderful and perfect for a family atmosphere, good, relaxed time and good conversations.

Here are a few glimpses…

Saudi Coffee, light, with lots of cardamom

Saudi Champagne

What do you think?

My good friend B sent me an email this morning…

Spilt Milk

William Butler Yeats.

We that have done and thought,
That have thought and done,
Must ramble, and thin out
Like milk spilt on a stone.

Do you get it? This one is for the bloggers.

Funny it came right after I read a quote I really liked (via Al Bawaba), from a professional journalist who chose to explore blogging. He says – paraphrasing Kafka:

My Blog is the ice-axe that broke the frozen sea within me

B’s reply was: “I like Yeats better“

Feel free to throw in your two cents

Update on my "Injaz" class

Last Wednesday’s INJAZ class at the girls’ school gave me a bunch of things to think about.

But before I get into that, I promised I would give a bit of background about what INJAZ is exactly.

It’s an NGO, which started under the umbrella of Save the Children in 1999, before becoming a separate entity in 2003. Their goal is to provide economic opportunities for Jordanian youth, by empowering them with the skills they don’t usually get inside the regular classroom. They work in schools and universities, and give courses that are done in a very participatory class environment, facilitated by volunteers from the private sector. There is a syllabus to guide this volunteer through the process and what the important concepts and goals of the course are, but they are usually given the space and freedom to work around it, because at the end of the day, it is the experience of this person ‘from the real world’ that they intend to bring into the classroom. INJAZ is the local partner of an international program called “Junior Achievement“. The courses include success skills, basics of market economy, leadership skills (which includes working on a project), business ethics, and a company course (where students start their own company). At schools, there’s an additional course for 8th graders (which is when INJAZ is first introduced), called My Surroundings and I, aiming to make students more aware of themselves, their role, rights, responsibilities, and introduce concepts like dialogue, group work, expectations, volunteering… etc.

So this last course is the one I chose to facilitate, because it gives you more space to discuss issues and to add elements. Since the company where I work is one of the private sector partners of INJAZ, then I get to volunteer through them and to leave work for an hour or so once a week to go to this public school and work with the girls

So far I’ve given three sessions, the last of which has been the most interesting. Here are some random thoughts…

- In the second session, I asked each girl to write on a small piece of paper what she thought her strengths and weaknesses are. It was very interesting to read them and contemplate. Most girls said their strength is that they are very “head strong, fearless, determinant to get what I want”… the phrase “when I set my mind to something, I have to get it” popped up frequently. But then, when they shared their weaknesses, a frequent response was “I’m afraid of making mistakes”, “afraid of the consequences of my actions”, “afraid of exam results”…

- In this week’s session, we were supposed to address expectations, belonging to certain groups (like family, class, friends), and being a teenager. I was glad that we managed to establish a good way of carrying out the discussion, where they try to LISTEN to one another, and where they raise their hand before talking and not interrupt each other. This meant of course that I had to give the chance to as many as possible to talk… and we were really short on time. They said that this year, they’re more frustrated and depressed than they ever were before. They said that everyone is being too picky on them; what they were, who they talk to, where they go. They said that their teachers are too grouchy and always yelling, and that their parents don’t understand them. One girl said “I’m tired of my mother always telling me ‘I’m your friend, I’m your close friend’ when in reality I cannot tell her anything!”

- I asked them “why do you think the issue of boys is very sensitive to your parents?” it was interesting to see how they think and what answers come out. One girl said that she really hates men, that she feels they’re just out to take advantage of her, and that no one judges them… she then paused and said “I hate all men, except western singers!”

- When the class bell rang, they begged me to ask the science teacher to take her class. I told them I can’t do that, but just went to ask her if we can have 5 minutes. She said I can take the entire 40 minutes and then after that, the girls had a 10 minute recess, so they asked me to stay, and only three of them went out into the school yard. (Yes I was flattered and I don’t want to hide it :p )

The class library project is under process. I told them that we will start next week, that anyone who finishes a book gets a small present, and I will take whoever reads the largest number of books by the end of the semester out to lunch somewhere. They seemed quite enthusiastic, and we said we’d all bring books to put in our small library. One girl complained that she’d like to read but that all the books they have at home are religious stuff. Another said she likes to read novels (I’m guessing romances!! We’ll see what she brings!)

We’re also going to have a talent show, and I’m so excited about that… I asked them who paints, who writes, who sings, and who has any other hidden talents. We’re thinking of organizing a Ramadan Iftar at school with a talent show I really want this one to work.

There’s more I wanted to share about this… but I really have to go now get ready for work. I’m compiling a list of books that are available in Arabic and that 14-year-olds enjoy. If you have any suggestions please let me know.