I can’t remember exactly my first crush
Unlike the calm teen years for The Observer, mine were *very* wild
More like a roller-coaster
lots of guys
lots of emotions
lots of dates, and fun, and tears
I have to admit, my hormones were at rage!
Thank God Mom kept me in check
I hate it back then,
but now I realize that she most probably saved me

BUT
What would you expect?
I reached puberty at the age of 10
Becoming suddendly the tallest person at class
among girls and boys
With a beautiful sexy figure
and excellent size well rounded boobs
which added to my self confidence
at an immature age where looks is everything

Unfortunatly, a full body figure at such age is not really a bless
Men are predators!
The time a girl reach puberty
They don’t leave her in peace
Whether they are little macho men trying to immitate their seniors
or old DIRTY men
They know how to make you feel *uncomfortable*
and SCARED

And while those who you don’t know personally harass you shamelessly
Those who approach you in a respectable way usually turn to be after
SEX (as well)
But for the latter, you feel like a princess enjoying the attention they give you
and you get to decide how much to give them

Anyway, back to my crush
I have seen him while going with my mother to visit grandma
I was 13, and he was 22!
But that didn’t prevent him along with his friends standing on the street to follow me with their eyes in a gesture of respect to my beauty
I didn’t know how old he was at first
He didnt know my age either
But, like a lot of other girls my age, I loved the attention of an older man
Those classmates of mine at school where just like babies for me

He winked
and I smiled
and then he dropped me his phone number
and I was bold enough to actually call him

Our relationship was merely a phone one
I fell in love with him in no time
Feeling myself much older than my age
and enjoying the attention this man gives me
I don’t know what would have happened if mother didn’t interfere
I keep this affair as a secret
only telling my close friends
and I came up with various lies in order to be able to go out and meet him in public place.
I only managed to do that once with a cousin of mine.
But who knows what would have happened if I didn’t get that phone call

It was another woman on the other line
Angry one shouting and threatening me
She claimed to be his fiance
and threatened to tell my parents if I didn’t cut my relationship with him

I felt so SAD and BETRAYED
I was hurt like never before
and lost all my respect and trust in men
He denied knowing this woman, but I didn’t believe him
and cut that relationship instantly

A few years later
I discovered that it was all a play from my mother
and that one of my friends betrayed my trust
and warned my mother
Whom didn’t know how to handle this
except with a master plan of taking my trust in him
and breaking my heart in the process

But at the time I knew about her scheme
I was mature enough to realize
how bad it could have been
and how, without her interferance
I would have lost a lot

9 years older than me at that age?!!
What was I thinking?!!
You parents MUST be careful
and keep an eye on your teenage children
because there are many predators out there
who may very easily
strip them out of their innocence

This morning, and while the city of Annapolis hosts the Arabic leaders along with The Israeli Prime Minister and the US President in a summit to bring back the life to the Arab-Israeli peace process. I sit down, infront of my computer screen, with a slight hope of a better future while my real player plays Firuz song ‘Zahrat al Mada’en’ (The flower of all cities).

When the city of Quds fall… love moved back… and the war became a resident in the hearts of the world… the baby in the cave…and his mother Mary… two crying faces.

For an entire decade, it wasn’t just the baby Jesus and his mother Mary who have been crying for the blood shed taking place in this holy land, but also thousands of copies of a manifested Christ and Mary in the image of every baby and mother had to go through the ugliness of this war.

On the other hand, Satan had his best joy in this game. Playing on the land, race, religion and cultural cards of the poor people who have been struggling to keep some hope in the mercifulness of heavens.

When those leaders meet, I can’t help but wonder how much can they really do? The question that keeps on hitting my head without a real answer is: Is it really a matter of a leader decision to achieve peace or not? and if it is, and everyone is talking about it, then what is holding them?

Away from political and power plays, those leaders carry a burden of long history of cultural, religious and race conflict, while at the sametime, carry a burden of a long future that would define the lives of two races who even if they achived peace on papers, their history wouldn’t let them to keep it at their hearts for a long time to come.

We have been there, done that, and while I would like to think that this summit can be different. With a clearer messages from all parties that they are more willing than ever to achieve peace, I can give myself the luxury of raising my hopes and pray for Al Quds to raise up again and kick off war from the hearts of this world.

I remember my first crush in my teenage. I was around 15 years old when I noticed this beautiful girl at school who happened to be 2 years younger than me. Her brown hair and angelic face granted her a special place in my eyes – and heart – where she was like a different flower that stood out from all the other girls at school.

It was purely a look crush issue as I have never been able to come close to her and explore her character. Maybe it was the teenage nature that converted a simple look admiration into an obsession after a year or so of following her with my eyes everywhere she went to during our school class breaks. She became like a magnet to my heart, unconciously following her – with a big distance ofcourse – where ever she went to.

At first, and after a couple of months of noticing her, I knew that she had a boyfriend from another school. It was a bad news for me and a call to keep my distance. And so I did, I never tried to approach her till I, one day, found that she had broke up with her boyfriend. I was so happy then, and decided to move on and get closer to her.

I managed to let my sister introduce her to me, and for several days, it was a hi-hi kind of relationship. There was this *fashionable* way for girls at our school to introduce themselves to guys by begging them for money. “Hi, do you have a shelen (50fils)? aw bareezeh (10fils)” and then starting other talk. And she happened to be one of those girls using this technique. I remember the day she came asking me for money, and instead of giving her a bareezeh, I gave her my whole allowance, half a JD that time, and guess what? I felt good about it!

Unfortunatly, things never goes the way we wish for. The time I started hi-ing her. Another classmate of mine, who never heard about my crush, started dating her. His approach was more direct, and they, to my surprise, started dating (walking togather the whole time of our class break).

Out of respect for my classmate, I had to step aside. I was disappointed with my crush and got really down for sometime. With that misrable state of mind, I shared my misery with a somehow close female friend of mine at that time. Her sister happened to be a classmate to the girl I love, and I guess my friend had a crush on my classmate who started dating the girl I love. And so, (this was one of the first asafeen (back stab) I have ever got in my life), her sister went to my crush and told her that I am in love with her and want to talk to her in class break!

Ofcourse the girl I love went directly to the guy she was dating and told him that I love her and wanted to see her, and thus he was angry with me and came to talk with me. It came as a surprise as I haven’t did so, and wouldn’t want my affection for her to be declared in such a way. She even came with a smug look on her face and asked me what I wanted to tell her.

Their dating didn’t last long but what happened killed my dream of having anything with her. It highlighted my first love disappointment and a sweet memory of my teenage years.

Sorry Manal for taking this much to answer your tag, but here you go. Hope you like this story 🙂

In a previous post I have discussed the feminine face of God. For some, the idea itself wasn’t so appealing because that inspite the sexless nature of God as a spirit in the Abrahamic religions, it is still represented as a male entity whenever addressed in the Bible and Quran.

And while the Abarhamic religions is still dominating our world and has been for the past 3000 years, looking back in history books, one would find that things weren’t always the same. Going back in time, and before even the intorduction of several Gods as in the old Greek and Egyptian civilizations, the female Goddess represented by nature has been the first to worship. Despite its current state of affair, femininity was sacred because of the symbolizm of life coming out of wombs – women wombs.

In Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello Chapter “Antoine Lacadour, Seventy-Four, Historian, ICP, France” he emphasizes on the concept of the Mother Goddess and the shift of people’s interests around the globe towards her.

people are becoming more interested in pagan traditions.Why? Because God the father is associated with the rigor and discipline, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos

There is a big hype in the media about the importance of going back to natural means. Nature are becoming back more and more sacred than ever. People are tired of the Church’s dogma and the infinite amount of disciplinary rules they have to follow in order to control their own desires provided by nature.

In the worship of the Great Mother, what we call “sin”, usually a transgression of certain arbitrary moral codes, ceases to exist. Sex and customs in general are freer because they are part of nature and cannot be considered to be the fruits of evil

With the woman sexual revolution in the 60s of last decade in the US, along with the introduction of the feminism concept, sexual behaviours outside rigid marital constitution is becoming more and more of a norm. Sin concept is no longer valid with the worshiping of nature and surrendering to its rules.

According to pagan traditions, nature worship is more important than reverence for sacred books.

God’s definition is complicated. Having no clear cuts of the entity of God and him being omnipresence, it draws some questions of whether God is only a creator who is no part of this world, or he is everything that is represented in all the creation.

God is the creature or is all the creation- Buddhism and Taoism make no distinction between creator and creature

His masculine face is represented as only a creator, while his feminine face is represented by creation which contains everything in this universe including our ownselves being a part of God rather than creatures of him.

The distinction between the two concepts are bending towards the feminine Goddess. People are making an unconsious choice between:

The God who controls the world and the Goddess who is part of the world

The concept of Control versus love takes me back to Saint Paul words of the husbands being the head of his wife.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Ephesians 5.23

Masculinity is associated with control and discipline of our human bodies, while Femininity is associated with love and nature. Maybe that is why Saint Paul said those words. Husbands control, while wives love.

The control of the Father God is shifted towards a more loving world with a Mother Goddess at the helm. Maybe it is the shift we need at this stage of life so that the body of God keeps on moving in harmony

Haya:

Actually I am kind of disappointed with the results. With an unprecedented number of female candidates in the elections and with the amount of talk about the need of having more women representative in the parliament and the whole hype about women rights organizations working on gaining more acknowledgement for women capabilities in being in authoritive roles, I did expect better results.

In truth, only one woman (Falak Al Jam’ani) made it without the 6 guaranteed quota seats. That is in no way a new achievement. Toujan Faisal had made it before to the parliament 12 years ago and without any quota.

Aside from the results, what is more disappointing is the mainstream perception of the effectiveness of women in authoritive roles. The Observer discussed this matter with few female friends of his, and while he was at it, I felt like jumping off his head and shake them up. How do you think people?!!

Absurd excuses ranged from claiming the lack of efficient female candidate, to claiming the disability of women in politics. Some took the last parliament as a base for their argument that the 6 women representative in the past parliament didn’t do anything. They failed to see that those 6 where among another 80+ men representative in the past parliament and which many of them – if not all – were not efficient at all.

When I pushed The Observer to present an example of inequality that the last parliament failed to remove, as of having Jordanian women the right to pass their nationality to their husbands and children. They act in a weird way, like it doesn’t matter to them, and that they would never marry a foreign man. And when he challenged their argument that who knows what would happen, they say that what does it matter to have the Jordanian nationality anyway!

When I told them that their father or brother can easily shoot them to death and get only few months jail time under the honor crime law, they also act as if the matter doesn’t belong to them.

What strikes me is the lack of support of women for their own sex. If they don’t believe in their own sex capabilities, then how would they expect men to do so? They fail to see that if some women didn’t pioneer going out and working out side their homes 50 years ago; they wouldn’t be benefitting from the financial independence many of them having today.

We are yet to achieve equality between us and men in this society. There are a lot of social constraints that are standing in our way, but we have to work togather in order to remove them, one by one. Ultimately we will succeed. 7 representative are better than nothing.

Hope they prove to be as efficient as some people dream them to be.

Congratulations for those who won – especailly Falak Al Jam’ani.

Recently there has been much talk about the bad conditions of domestic workers in Jordan. Human rights organizations along with many Jordanian social activists have raised an alarm against the slavery living conditions and abuse inflicted on foreign domestic workers in Jordan.

While reports highlighted physical, emotional and sexual abuse against young foreign domestic female and male workers, and while the prominent aspect of sexual abuse that is usually addressed is a forced non consent sexual act, merely no one addressed the abuse of human rights by imposing restrictions on others sexuality.

Bring on the table the sexuality of domestic workers in Jordan is not a matter of only a human right, or a luxury from my part, but it is also a matter of awareness that should be highlighted for an aspect that is a source of many problems, and in which, and like most of other problems regarding sexuality in our society, we always try to ignore, treat in secrecy or claim it to be inexistent.

Being a conservative society, and with a strong religious constraints on sexual behavior, we developed a shame culture with a focal point on sexuality for moral judgment. We perceive our moral belief system as an absolute, and thus while we try to abide with endless constraints against our biological sexual needs, which we have every right to do so, but we extend our expectations to impose our own laws on domestic workers working for us.

While an employer and a worker has the right to set their own rules. When it comes to abusing the basic human rights of the worker as a part of the employer set of believes, then it becomes more of slavery.

One can’t ignore the fact that most of domestic workers in Jordan are between the ages 20-40. Most of them come without a spouse. And all of them have different sexual needs that they try to cope with.

The scene is quite complicated. Some employers don’t even let their house maid go out the house alone so that she may not get into a relationship with the other building house guard. At the same time, their twenty something young sons, who are equally sexually deprived as of the maid, in a horney state, can easily impose himself on the poor maid and have sex with her against her will.

There are many stories floating around. Young men or even their fathers having sex with the house maid, is something that you commonly hear of. Pregnant house maids, and while are rare cases, do exist. House robbed because of a relationship between the house maid and another man from the outside happens at a wide scale.

It may not only male sexual abuse to their female maids. Widows, spinsters and even some gay men impose themselves on their young male house guard for sexual benefits.

Our society hides a lot. As long as everything happens in secrecy, no body cares. In fact, what would be expecting? Those imported workers are as human as we are. They have sexual needs that ought to be addressed. Unfortunately with a messed up situation of multiple constraints on everybody, those needs are just released in the wrong way, inflicting unnecessary pain that can be spared easily by acknowledging our humanity.

Sometimes, at a very rare sweet moments, I feel that weird feeling of a great love of humanity and people around me. There is a sense of bond, a familiarity, and a belonging that give a feeling of safety that diminishes any lonliness thoughts.

At moments of sanity and calmness I feel a great desire to become a healer. The divine love, and in contradiction with my faithless nature, manifests itself in my soul. I personify Jesus Christ. I personify his nature and his love to humanity. Whether it is a higher state of serneity or a divine impulses it doesn’t matter.

It just opens my eyes, and my lips – as well -, in a beautiful painting that reflects what human faces meant to embrace. It makes me want to reach out. To touch others souls and bodies. To ease their pain and struggle with passion and love.

Somtimes I wish that I have a magic wand. One that I can use to free struggling souls. One that can remove the madness and restore joy and happiness.

Humans are beautiful. Whether it is their eyes, forehead, hair and cheeks, whether it is their movements, face expressions, and temper. Or maybe you can add their reasoning and competitveness nature.

It is all cute… to an observer… who sits in silence and enjoy the beauty of you

There is a wide agreement among us to consider nature a good thing and thus when we want to compliment something, we say it is natural as of giving it more credit. On the other hand, when we want to condemn something we accuse it of being unnatural. In both cases, we usually don’t have a precise definition of what natural really is which leaves us basing our logical argument in a false assumption.

Lets first check out what wikipedia defines nature:

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, or the environment, physical universe, material world or material universe. “Nature” refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general.
Read More..

“The phenomena of the physical world” Does this mean nature is everything contained in the physical world? and as a result we can define natural to be anything derived from this physical world?

In the general mean of the term natural, any complicated intelligent creation of human beings are excluded. For instance, it is awkward to say that a car is a natural product. Although if you go back to the definition, a car is a production of the minds of human beings. Human beings are a product of nature, and the materials used in building the car, while being not directly manufactured by nature, it is part of the physical world and result of its interactions.

Nature has done an amazing job. Eventhough it took a *very* long time, but it is kind of miraculous to produce such complicated creatures – aka human beings – starting from a couple of lifeless atoms. One might look at the wonderment of this world thinking that with such strength of nature, its products must be perfect.

The truth is: Nature is FAR from perfect. Human organs for example, and while being quite robust, is subjected to getting worn out with time. The process of production is not well controlled. While it is nicely codified by genes, it still produces much defects where a lot of people are still born with genetic based diseases.

The other day on MBC channel, they broadcasted a show about the development of the fetus of human beings. The nature survival order seems to work even in the human womb. It seems that twins phenomena isn’t as rare as we think it is. In the womb it is more probable for two fetuses or more to develop where all fight for resources while ending up with one – who were able to get the best of resources to survive.

There is a lot of waste in the natural production process. Natural quality control seems to take a backseat for the sake of quantity. Although with time, Nature learns how to improve and correct itself, we are still subjected to deal with such defects.

So next time you want to condemn a left handy, alcoholic, disabled, or a mentally diseased person. Take a moment to think and re-evaluate your judgement. You may have been lucky to get your parts done right, but you may have also still unaware of a certain defects that will reveal itself to you with time.

Nature is good, but not as perfect as we like to believe.

So now people start asking about me!
Wooohoo
I bet The Observer is dying of envy
I am gaining the hearts of his fans
Maybe most except no-angel!
I have no idea what is his problem with me?!!
and I don’t care to know!
It is not like I am going to marry him!
hehehe, speaking of marriage
I got a marriage proposal (Thank you Hani)
(Roba isn’t the only one who met her fiancé through blogging)
But he doesn’t seem to be serious as he ran away the minute I asked him to meet my parents!
MEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is HIS LOSS

(Hi Tammer, Hi Hamza)

What is all this fuzz about homosexuals?
Why don’t you people leave them alone?!
Live and let live
and on your way out leave us alone
as of WOMEN!

No seriously we are no better of than homosexuals in this society
We are just more prominent
because of our boobs!

I have always wondered
How did we end up so messed up like this?!
How did society reach this place?
Everyone cherish nature but no one is ready to respect its basic rules
SEX!
Maybe it is because those rules only suit the straight man
Whom dominated us for ages! (crying now)

Check how ironic is this
The other day at work
I had a phone call from my boyfriend at work
(okay guys, I let it out – I have a BF, sorry!)
and I had to talk to him as if he is a girl!
Just so that my co-workers don’t know that I am in a relationship
so that they won’t look down at me as of being immoral!
At the same instance
My closeted gay friend
Got a phone call from his boyfriend
(yeah I have a gay friend as well)
and guess what?!
He talked to him as if he is a girl too!
LOL
I am telling you
Our society is so messed up!

Although I have no problem with gay men
I have to admit
I feel disgust of lesbians
(Now The Observer would frown)
It is cute to see two men in love
but two women?! NO NO
Hamza, don’t you dare go there
I know you guys love fantasying two women having sex
PERVERTS!

You know what?
The most man that a woman can feel safe being around
is her gay friend
It is weird how nature works
It is like it stripped from them their sexual attraction towards women
but yet
kept their male protection instinct
Don’t ask me how!

As for the anonymous who seems to hate The Observer for defending gays
I bet that he has either been sexually abused in his childhood
and thus connecting Pedophility with Homosexuality
or
He is homosexual himself
and don’t feel at ease with his same sex attraction
Either way, he carries a lot of anger
That is why I advise him to see a phsycologist
NOW!