Last Thursday, I got back home around 12:30 PM at night. I wore my pajammas and went to bed. I grabbed “The Piligrimage” book of Paulo Coelho next to my bed and opened it to the page where stopped last time.

I was so tired after a long day. I could barely comprehend the wisdom in Paulo’s words. In fact, I could barely see the lines I was reading. My eyes fall on my hand, my finger that were holding the book. I noticed my skin. I noticed the way I am grabbing the book.

I stopped for a moment. I realized that I am still alive. I realized that I have been rushing around since I woke up that day. I do so every day. Worrying about everything in life where I don’t find the time to stop, to feel my breath, and enjoy being alive.

I worry when to wake up in order to have enough time to have my breakfast before work so that to do the right thing for my body. I rush into the bathroom. I rush to dress my cloths, and rush to reach to work at the right time.

At work, I rush to check my emails. To chech my blog. To check what tasks I have for the day. I have to check on my email buddies from time to time. I have to read others blogs from time to time to keep myself updated and enjoy others writings. I have to sign in MSN in order to chat with my other friends.

like everyone else, I have to manage my social contacts. I have to manage my body needs. I have to manage my brain needs. And I have to manage my income and allowance needs.

While I do enjoy it sometimes doing all of that. Like taking a shower. Going to the gym to keep my body fit. Eating the right food. Talking to a friend. Exchanging ideas with someone. Reading. Writing. Painting. Watching Tv. Working.

That night, I felt that need to stop it all. For few moments. I just wanted to look around me. Move my eyes around the room. Looking at the window of my room. The curtains. The walls. I wanted to feel my eyes taking the shots. I wanted to feel the air coming into my lungs. I wanted to drink some water to feel it running through my mouth. I wanted to stop the auto-pilot that has been running me throughout the day and feel my life.

Unfortunatly I was so tired. My brain cells were too exhausted. I felt them sleeping. I was sure some of them were already asleep. The others were falling in turn. I couldn’t enjoy my moment. I had to obey my body needs once again.

I put my book aside. I closed my eyes. And I slept.

Without enjoying my moment – the moment of being alive.

I loved this debate between Saadna and Devil’s mind about Corporate discrimination as responce to my polls results of the Tazaj employment advertisment in the news paper where they requested explicitly veiled women to work for them.

Both Saadna and Devil’s mind made excellent argument.

Devil’s mind argues that discrimination is a basic human right. That the employer has the right to choose whomever he wants to work with him because he isn’t opening a charity. He also said that we do dicriminate in our daily life. Friendship and Love are based on discrimination.

Saadna argues that discrimination is a molestation for human rights. She says that we can’t compare discrimination of love and friendship to that at work-place.

While I still can’t form a solid stand, here is what I think of this so far:

I think that there is nothing absolute. Discrimination is accepted in places and isn’t accepted in others.

It does sound hypocritical, right? But I don’t think it is. Business associations discrimination is a glorified kind of discrimination than of individual ones.

While both is not right in my opinion, the effect of enterprise discrimination is much more damaging to a society than that at a personal level.

In addition to that, we can’t control personal choices, but we can try to empower equality between citizens.

On personal level, I dont think it is right to choose your friend/lover based on his race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. This depends on how mature the individual is, and how much perception he has in this world to understand that all of those attributes don’t make a person a worse or better of a friend/lover.

I would love to gather others opinions on this.

What do you think?

Prophet David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel (c. 1011 BCE – 971 BCE). He is depicted as the most righteous of all the ancient kings of Israel – although not without fault – as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician and poet (he is traditionally credited with the authorship of many of the Psalms).

Jonathan was a prince of the Kingdom of Israel, son of King Saul. Contrary to popular belief, most biblical chronologists believe him to be far older than David, approximately fifty years to David’s twenty.

Reading the Old Testament books of Samuel, and comparing the relationship between David and Joanathan to what we hear currently of gay relationship one has to wonder whether Prophet David was really a homosexual, and how God whom according to the Jewish Scholars and Catholic Churhc opposed homosexuality while still granting such grace to David and having him a prophet and a king for Israel.

The versus in the bible don’t describe an explicit sexual same-sex relationship but it does describe a great love and passion that we don’t see in a normal brotherly relationship. In one of them David states that his love for Jonathan surpasses anything he has with women.

Here I copy some of the versus:
“And it came to pass, when he [David] had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” (1 Sam. 18:1).

That same day, “Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul” (1 Sam. 18:3).

Can this covenant represent a first kind of gay marriage?

Jonathan removes and offers David the rich garments he is wearing, and shares with him his worldly possessions: “And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.” (1 Sam. 18:4).

When Jonathan is slain on Mt. Gilboa by the Philistines (1 Sam. 31:2), David laments his death saying, “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” (2 Sam. 1:26).

Read the entire enterpretation of the story on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_and_David

It has been almost 2 months since I posted this question on my blog. Since then I have got only 33 votes of different people.

The Question was:

Does the employer have the right to advertise a job opportunity for only ‘veiled’ or ‘unveild’ women?

The Answers:

22 person voted for “No, it isn’t fair” while 11 person voted for “Yes, it happens all the time”

Percentage speaking 66.7% voted for No, 33.3% voted for yes.

That means around 1/3 of the people voted is with discriminating in work places according to what women wear. I thought it would be a lesser percentage, but unfortunatly it isn’t. I know that this Poll doesn’t give a good indication because of the small size of the votes, but one can wonder if it does give any indication of how people’s think or not.

Unlike many others, I have been a calm kid. I have always been calm and content. I have always listened to my parents requests. I have always been pleased of what I have and I have never felt the need to break the laws in my childhood. To my parents, I have almost been the perfect child.

I don’t know why I have been that good. Is it because my parents have provided me with much love and protection? My siblings benefitted from the same treatment but they were not as calm as I have been. Was I a coward kid who feared to do wrong because of punishment? No, I don’t think so. My parents rarely punish me. I was so sensitive in my childhood where I used to feel so bad when I see a single look of upset on my mother’s face. I feared her saddness more than her punishment. Were my parents strict? No they weren’t that much strict. My mother may have been over protective but they haven’t been that strict on us. Besides being over strict do backfire most of the time. Was it just me? Maybe it is my hormones, my body, genetic structure. I have never had strong urges for anything. That doesn’t mean that I have never had feelings, but I have always been able to handle whatever my body asks for. I have always had this control over my actions and my mind.

As a teenager, I had to go out from the shelter my parents provided me and face out the world. I am not saying that I had to leave home or work and handle my own life, what I am talking about the ability to go to the street, meet another young people of my age, and do some decisions of my own.

Being the calm, well mannered, self-protected kid that I was, I didn’t really fit with the need of exploring, being self-independent, mocking up grown ups, and breaking the laws that other teenagers have. I was very cautious. I have been cautious all my life. My mother tells me that when I wanted to get the ball from below the bed, I used to get my legs under it first instead of my head just to be sure of the risks. When my teenage friends wanted to do anything new, I was always reluctant untill I get the know the risks. I wasn’t a risk taker back then. I have changed a bit in this area.

We used to live in Al-Webdeh, in the street of the church next to Canvas. At the time, Canvas was a neglected park. It was forbidden to me to go there. My friends used to go there and smoke. We were around 12 years old. I once broke the law out of my need to join my friends and fit in. They smoke. I didn’t.

My friends, like most male teenagers, used to curse a lot. I wasn’t. I used to use little words for insults like calling people animals and stuff instead of the big words they used to use like the F-word and other words related. They used to make fun of me because of that. Not until several years later when I decided that it is okay to curse big words infront of other men in our society.

My friends used to sneak into a neighbour building in order to have a good sight on another neighbour house which had a big window and where they could look at the beautiful lady sitting in her house wearing a short! They didn’t tell me about it at first because they knew I would object but I later figured it out.

My friends used to sweat talk a neighbour young girl to play with us hide and seek so that they would altenrnate turns and hide close to her in order touch her! One of them went mad when another one told me what where they doing. They knew that I wouldn’t agree with that kind of behaviour.

Like a lot of other male teenagers in Amman (I have no idea about female teenagers), my friends were fascinated with porn movies. I didn’t know what porn means at that time. I knew that it is something wrong and so I never accepted to join them in watching. I did once, but didn’t repeat till many years later. Now the situation is different.

I have always tried to stop them of doing wrong. I have always tried to make the right thing. I have always sticked to the rules. That is why they once called me “The Alley Conscience”. I didn’t know whether to like it or not at that time. Now it just makes me remember old days and smile.

I am sure still have many attributes of “The Alley Conscience”, but since then, many things have changed in me.

Hope that you like my teenage history…

How many times have you heard the phrase “The American Dream”?

Plenty of TV Movies were built on that idea. The dream that most American believe in, which is the potential everyone of us have inside to excel and succeed in this life.

Just few days ago, Oprah was hosting Will Smith to discuss his latest movie “The Pursuit of Happiness” which is build on a real story of a homeless man who fought hard in his life and ended up being a millionaire. Oprah claimed that this can only happen in the US. Will Smith nodded in agreement. They both cheered for the American dream and for the real model they have at hand.

Thinking about globalization, and the way America has dominated the world with everything, and how much Jordanian way of life is getting more and more Americanized in every aspect, I can see that we have also reached a state where we can be proud of our own dream. The Jordanian Dream.

We have many success stories that we don’t emphasize on like in other countries because of the lack of decent media outlits especially TVs station.

One can look around him and admire the experience of Nuqul’s Group, National Paints, Jawico and others as of successful factories who were started by Jordanian people with a dream.

One can look at the success of food chains like Al-Kalha, AL-Dai’a, Chili house, Falvours, and others who were started by Jordanians.

One can admire the success Diana Carazon, Fadi Ghazawi, Tony Qattan in the music fields.

One can admire the courage of our designer Haitham Al-Daoud who made it to the mission fashion in his attempt to pursue his dream.

One can admire this country and the potential it gives for those who believes in themselves, for those who can dream, for those who can measure themselves with the vastiness of their dreams.

One can never know how much he can go high untill he spreads his wings.

It is good to acknowledge that we have our own dream – The Jordanian Dream

Me and my friend are planning to start a small business in the upcoming few months. We have been planning things in the past couple of months, we did our research about the materials, location, costs, and other stuff required for our business.

Now as we are about to start implementation, we decided to go and check what are the requirements of the government for starting such a business. We had a previous idea about the beraucrecy of the governmental institutions but we didn’t expect this kind of attitude from the employers working at the Municipality, especilly male employees.

Female employees were more friendly. We approached 3, and all of them answered politely and with patients to all of our inquiries. In the other hand, male employees were very negative in their responce. They didn’t smile. They didn’t want to give us any information, and they let us feel that we are not welcomed at the Municipality and that we better leave! They were so rigid. We tried to be patient and nice. We kept smiling. Asking in a polite manner, but nothing has worked.

I don’t want to generalize. I am sure that there are male employees there that have a better attitude than this, but I have to wonder if it has to do with some social old value of men having to be rude while women can be nice and helpful?

Another thing that I have noticed. It is the lack of proper hygiene by some of the males. One of them did really smell bad. He was smoking his cigarette while talking to us while the ashes of it dropping on his shirt without him even bothering to get it off! Isn’t smoking prohibited in governmental work places? I am not sure it is.

My eyes caught a brochure placed on the top of someone’s disk. Obviously it contained the URL of the website of the Municipality. I am not sure why no one of the employees mentioned it! When I asked for the procedures they didn’t say that they are available online. It would have saved us much hectic!

Here is the website: www.ammancity.gov.jo

This is the final page of “The Nude man” short story. I think this last page is quite long, I didn’t want to divide it into 2 pages as I want people who are following it to get done with it. Hope that you like what I wrote. I do appreciate if you leave my a comment telling me what you think. Thanks.

Read first: Page 1 – Page 2 – Page 3 – Page 4

A short story: The Nude man – Page 5

Like someone who has just been born, he rushed into the beach the very minute he arrived to his hotel. He didn’t take time to relax eventhough he were tired, he didn’t take time to eat eventhough he were starving, he didn’t take time to go to the bathroom eventhough he was about to shit on himself. He only had time to take off his clothes, and throw them around, his shirt on the bed, his pantalon on the floor, his under wear on the TV… etc. He ran into the beach like a bird fleeing his cage.

He felt like in paradise. This is what he always dreamt of. This is how it meant to be for him. This is heaven. It is his utlimate freedom. Everyone is nude. There is no clothes. This is the real thing. The truth. No hiding. No shame. No pretending. Everyone is comfortable with his own body. Everyone is enjoying his natural state that he was born with. It just feels like home to him. A home that he has never had.

He wished that time would just stop. He wished that his hands could reach the sun moving at the horizon to stop it. He wished that he has the power to freeze everything. He doesn’t want anything to change. Everything is just perfect now. It is his ultimate content. No more desires. No more dreams. He doesn’t need anything else. This is more than enought to him.

Unfortunatly, things doesn’t always go as we desire. His week on this beautiful island has come to an end in no time. He first planned to stay for three to four days, but then he couldn’t leave and so extended his vacation for another three days. They had passed already. He wished he can postpone it his return again, for another couple of days, a week, maybe a month, or even forever. He can’t. He has to go back home to his wife, to his sons, and to his work.

This is a nightmare. He never imagined that he would feel this bad going back to his normal life. It is like he has fallen from heaven to hell. Whenever he wear his suit now in order to go to work, he feels like someone has slapped him on the face hard, real hard. A slap that keeps him angry. It keeps him frustrated, bitter and depressed.

It is hard to smile again. No matter what his wife tries to do to cheer him up, it doesn’t work anymore. The memories of his free days kept on haunting him. He feels like being sentenced to a life time behind the bars. The bars of social boundaries that stops him from being himself. It is like someone is strangling him. He can’t breath right. His health has gone down. Anti-depressent pills are not working anymore. He is going insane.

His wife tried over and over again to push him out from this state. She tried everything she could imagine to make him feel better. She never knew what is the real reason behind his depression, but she got fed up with his attitude. Their argument gets heated more and more everyday. She no longer can understand him. He seems to pick on every tiny detail. He keeps on picking up fights with her, with his sons, with his neighbours, with his co-workers, with everyone. He became unbearable, unlikable, and even dispised by everyone.

One day, and after a heated argument with his wife, he gone mad. He was pushed to his limits. He took off all his clothes and started screaming in the house. Screaming like never before. His wife opened the door and left. He left after her. He left after her naked. She knew her husband has gone mad. She didn’t know what to do about it. She stood on the street looking at him in shame. She screamed on him to get inside and wear something. He didn’t hear anything. He only heard his rage. He only wanted his freedom. He ignored her. He walked in silence across the street. He kept on walking and walking. People were looking in shock. Some ran away. Some turned their heads in shame. Some shouted on him. Some threw jokes. Some threw stones. He kept on walking.

Finally a couple of policemen arrived. They put him under custody. They moved him into a mental hospital. His depression was so severe. His wife abandoned him. She filed for a divorce. His sons were so ashamed of his behvaiour. They never talked back to him. His brothers and sisters placed an ad in the newspaper dismissing him from belonging to their family. He got fired from work. No one want anything to do with him anymore. His worst nightmare comes true. What he always feared has happened. He lost everything. He attempted suicide, it didn’t work.

He felt lonely like never before. He remembered the time he felt on top of his life. The time of his vacation to the Greek Islands. He remembers that he met a nice woman there. A woman who shares the same passion for nudity with him. He searched for her phone number and called her. She was so upset to hear what he had to go through. She sent him some money, she sent him plane ticket, and she sent him an invitation in order to get a visa to Greece. She became his saver. She picked him up from the lowest point of his life. She convinced him that he can’t live any longer in his country. He has to be true to himself. They can live togather on that Island. They can get marry. They can share their life and support each other.

He had no other choice. He wished he can fix things with his sons, but he couldn’t. He left to Greece.

He started his new life on the nude island. He felt like he was never living before. This is where he belongs. It doesn’t matter if people can’t understand you. What matters is to be true to yourself. To love the person you are and live with what nature gifted you. His desire for nudity caused him much fear and pain in the past, but it has also pushed him to search, pushed him to learn, and pushed him to percieve life in a better light. He is now aware of what is important in this life. Things are meant to be as it meant to be. Nature is stronger than us. He needn’t fight his urges. He should have accepted his difference and others differences. Life can be much easier on us if we just accept our uniqeness and stopped fighting each other for something we all know is out of our hands.

The End

I have been reading “Million Little Pieces” by James Frey for sometime now. The journey of this young man in the rehabilitation center fighting his Alcohol and Drug addiction is heart wrenching. There are some points in the book where I couldn’t read because of the amount of hurt and pain the writer is describing. It made me wonder about the hell he and other addicts go through in which it is to me hard even to just read.

I have known before that alcohol addiction is a disease. When I heard it the first time, I didnt comprehend it. It doesn’t look like other diseases we are familiar with. We commonly distinguish a disease by some kind of a virus or bacteria that attack our bodies causing an upnormal effect. When I did understand it, my views about addict changed. I had been affected by how our society look at addicts. We percieve them as losers. Immoral people who deserve what they go through because of their lack of ethics. We percieve them as weak people who can’t hold themselves from fulfilling their addiction.

Science has proved otherwise. It clearly says that Alcoholism is a DISEASE. There is a strong indication that it is a genetic related disease. The exact gene causing alcoholism hasn’t been discovered yet. Alcoholism is a non curable disease. It can’t be cured. An alcoholic would always be an alcoholic even when he doesn’t drink.

People in Jordan would claim that we don’t have a problem here because Alcohol is forbidden in Islam where Jordan is a Muslim country. In reality, Alcoholism doesn’t discriminate. We all have equal chances because it is a gene related disease. In concept a person who never tried alcohol wouldn’t get addicted, which is true, but how many Muslim people have never tried it even for just a little sip? It is available everywhere, and even for religious people those who has the disease can get hooked to alcohol by just taking a small amount.

Some other religious people would say that those addicted deserve what they go through because they dis-obeyed God by taking that little sip in the first place. But looking at it from another perspective. How fair is it to be punished such a cruel punishment for making a single sin while there are many others around the world who can drink as much as they want of Alcohol and stop it when they want because they don’t have the disease?

In his book, James Frey talks about the rehabilitation center and program addicts have to go through in order to be able to control their disease. They can’t be cured, they can only learn how to control it. And it ISNT easy to successeed in that. According to his book, the Twleve-step Program has proven to be the only possible way to control your addiction. Unfortunatly he also says that the success rate is only around 15%. This means that around 85% of addicts are doomed.

That percentage, rehabilitation center and 12 program is in the US. I think that it is applied in other western countries as well. What concerns me is here in Jordan. What kind of facilities do we have to help Alcohol and Drug addicts control their addiction? If it is 15% success rate in the US, how much less could it be here in Jordan knowing that we are behind in many aspect regarding this issue.

I think that we have a rehabilitation in Abo Nser in Amman. It is called “Al Rasheed Hospital”. I have no idea how good it is, what facilities it provides and what is the success rate in helping addicts. If anyone has a link to a website that carries any further information please post it under comments.

Read first: Page 1 – Page 2 – Page 3

A short story: The Nude man – Page 4

With that piligrimage experience, his hatred for clothes grew larger and larger. He convinced himself that his needs are not wrong. He convinced himself that they are harmless. He started to believe that Allah creates us nude because he wants us to be nude. Allah wants us to be equal, to be pure. Nudity is a sign of honesty. It is a sign of truth. The more clothes you put on your body the less honest you are. Clothes are masks. They are covers. They cover our bodies the way lies cover our minds.

He found himself argueing with people about nudity. He couldn’t share his secret needs, but tried to convince others that nudity isn’t bad. Most look at him as if he went insane. Some agreed to continue the argument, but no one agreed with him. He searched on the internet. He figured out that there are places in the world where people can lay nude. He figured out that there are other people who believe in nudity and that they call themselves naturists. For the first time in his life he felt that he isn’t alone in this world. There are people who can understand him. There are people that he can talk to, and share with them his struggle. There are people who wouldn’t look at him as if he lost his mind when he shows his true self. Unfortunatly those people are not his family. They are not his wife. They are not his sons. They are not his friends. Not his parents. Not his brothers. Not his sisters.

When he first started his search on the internet. He got overwelmed with the results he found. As he simply typed Naturist in the google search bar, thousands of results appeared in seconds. Apparantly there are many people around the world enjoying their nudity without fear. There are hundreds of nude beaches around the world, North America, Europe, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central/South America, ..etc. There is an international Naturists association. There are nude clubs. Nude internet groups and communities. There are people who are not ashamed of their beliefs. People who are not only courageous to admit it, but also to fight for it and try to convince others to adopt their views.

The more he read, the more he got convinced about his case. He no longer thinks of himself as a sick man. He no longer sees his needs as immoral. History shows that nudism existed since the dawn of time. There is a strong argument that natural condition of early humans was nude. He learned that in ancient Greek athletics was practiced naked by its participants. The word ‘gymansium’ comes for the Greek word ‘gymnos’ whick means ‘nude’.

He felt at peace with himself for the first time in his life. He knows now that he can practice his dreams without guilt or shame. He is still aware that he can’t share this with his wife. She just won’t understand. He wants to go and try those nude beaches. He wishes he can take his wife with him. He knows that he can’t, she will go mad, and would scandalize him among their extended family and friends. He decided to keep to himself. He will plan for this alone. No one would know about it. No one.

And so he picked up a nude beach at one of the Greek Islands. He told his wife that he is going on a business trip.

He was so excited, he kept on comforting himself everytime he leaves to work wearing his suit that next week he will be spending it naked, without any clothes, nothing at all.

To be continued…