The honor of a lady is the honor of all men

It is not clear to me whether men’s protection responsibility for women in their lives is a natural instinct that defines the sexual relationship between the two sexes or is it a social construct that is build around worshipping masculinity where a man’s masculinity is measured by his strength and ability to provide safety for related women and children.

It is also clear that the majority of women are drawn to men with superior physical attributes where they would feel safer about men whom they subconsciously believe can protect them. For some women, it isn’t a matter of physical strength, as a strong character of a man is a major turn on for a woman that proves his ability to take up such responsibility.

And while women around the world, especially in the west, and due to the modern life advancements, are grown more and more independent of their need for men’s protection in a society where physical strength is no longer a mean of power, you can see that in a less mature societies the major dynamic that dictates the relationship of women and men is protection

It is more clearer in the Arabic teenage communities where it reflects in an extra immaturity what is going on in the Arabic societies at large. At schools, the rules of the state are not applied as it is applied outside schools borders.

This talk reminds me of a major fight happened at my school when I was in 11th grade. The reason ofcourse was the honor of a lady who was in 10th grade and was dating a guy in her class. While I am not sure what really happened then, but it is something that an 11th grade student tried to hit on the lady where she ran to her boyfriend for protection, and because if her boyfriend didn’t act in a *manly* matter, which is kicking the other guy’s ass, then he would lose his honor and status at school.

The story ofcourse doesn’t end there. We all know how our Arabic societies love grouping. We all like to fight, after all dying fighting is a major attribute every Arabic man dreams of for the sake of his honor, and we all look for a certain bond with other people in order to fight with, if it isn’t a blood bond then it is a religious one, and if it isn’t a religious one then it is race one. There is always a bond. And at school, our bond was classes! Like 11th grade class have all something in common, 10th grade class are one group also, and so and so.

So in no time, each one of the two guys at odd were able to group the entire males of his class. All little men stood infront of each other ready to prove their loyalty to their class and fight the battle of their lives for the sake of the lady’s honor (it became their own honor now).

Ofcourse your humble writer didn’t want anything to do with it. It is just now that I realized that since my childhood I have never allowed any type of bond to push me into hurting someone I barely know and who happens to only be at the other side. Humanity has been my only bond and peace has always been my blind choice, and even at that time, watching all those guys fighting each other fiercely while teachers unable to control them, I stood their in between trying to help breaking them apart. And when someone got really hurt, as he got a serious injury at his shoulder, I went insane and started to shouting here and there for them to stop this insanity.

I have never been able to comprehend the amount of hurt we human beings can inflict upon each other. Life is hard in itself, a lot of other things are doing enough damage to us, and the last thing we need is us hurting each other. It becomes more absurd when many men get hurt for a single woman’s honor.

Finally I made it to Toot!

When I first started blogging two years ago, my eyes caught Toot. With its beautiful user interface and the quality of blogs it aggregates, I wanted my blog to be added among them. They have a very tight rules for adding blog based on the blog quality, frequency of posing, hits, and wasta as well. So unfortunatly, my blog didn’t meet their requirements for sometime, and as a result, I was so disappointed in them where I stopped even visitng their aggregator, preferring other ones that are open to everyone.

A few days ago, I got an email from the Toot team telling me that they have added my blog to the list of blogs they aggregate. It was a really happy news for me because altough I tried to ignore Toot’s existance, I have always questioned my blog quality and the reason for them to deny it.

Being on Toot is like a quality certification to this blog that I feel proud of.

Check Toot our here:
http://itoot.net/

‘I promise God to sacrifice a lamb if I die’

My grandma wished death to come quick on her last days. My father, in an attempt to raise her morals, joked, how would you sacrifice a lamb when you are dead?

After struggling with cancer for two years, and after more than two months being stuck to her bed without being able to move and serve herself, pain and tiresome got to her where she wished death to come quick in order for her to rest.

With all of her pain and struggle, she never lost her faith in God. She kept on praying till her last days and hoping for God to release her pain. Three days before she passed away, she had the communion bread and blood of Jesus, she raised her head and said “God, in you hands I rest my soul” and then she went directly into a coma.

A saint, she has always been. Her faith in God has always been too strong. Her father was a priest, and she was raised on strong christian values. Coming from a very wealthy family, she never looked for material fulfillment. Even when her family lost all of their wealth and land because of the Israeli occupation, she remained untouched. She never moaned or whined for the lost wealth. She lived a poor life, but kept her soul richness. She has always rich with her content and love for people. Her muse was helping others, and her only comfort in her last days was the visits of people who loved her. Whenever a person visited her, she wanted him/her to come near and hold her hand. Her human love was unmatchable, and it came all back to her with her husband, 6 children, 19 grandchildren, and another 19 grand-grandchildren all praying for her and crying from her leave.

A few weeks ago, she dreamt that she was cured and that she is running in the street celebrating her health while asking my grandpa to bring sweets for all the family and friends to celebrate this moment. When she woke up, she realized that it was a dream and started crying.

But I guess that it wasn’t a dream, it is most probably a vision where she is now walking and running in heaven, celebrating her life with the God she always believed in and prayed for.

May you soul rest in peace my grandma. You know how much we all love you.

“The best love is the one you find while searching for something else“
Absurd, isn’t it?
That is what I used to think
until it happened to me
and which was accopmanied with my sigh lying on
Ahalam Mustaghanmi novel
Fawda Al Hawas (Chaos Senses)
Where she wrote a whole novel around this line
and her love for a fictional man
whom she found while searching for another one

but isn’t that what always happens?
Ok, don’t shoot me, most of the time (so not to generalize)
where people build all of those expectations
for a fictional lover
certain hight, body type, eyes color, skin color, characteristics, financial assets, age,..
and spend their whole life searching
searching and searching
when suddenly
and out of no where
another person comes into their lives

Someone that you didn’t draw in your imagination
and haven’t colored his/her details
Someone whom you would ignore
because he/she doesnt match what you have in mind

but this someone
shakes your entire reality (imagination)
and wake you up on a new ground

this someone refuses to accept the drawing in your mind
and takes a pencil of his/her own to draw a new reality
a reality where happiness is manifested in a new shape
and where a wake up of a dream
brings you to a better one
a reality
where NO body shape, eyes color, or any other line
can explain the attraction hit you on your face
and the love that swept you off your feet
while you were looking to the other direction

and suddenly you realize
that Ahlam Mustaghanmi was 100% right
and that the best love
is the one you find
while looking for another thing

Another kind of reality that life teaches us
One that I have gladly learnt

Love you…

What’s going on in Amman?

Trash babies and inflation of prices are making the headlines on a daily bases now leaving us in wonder of what is really going on. The other day I got scared reading the newspaper, every single economical sector announces a raise in prices for its services, from food to medications, from necessary items to luxurious ones. Everything is going up and that is even before the big raise of fuel prices that is coming this month.

Since the first news of the first trash baby few months ago, news of other babies found in trash are making the headlines every couple of days. So now, every single citizen in Jordan is asking himself, what is going on? It is a weird situation to move from a state where no trash babies at all to a situation with one every couple of days, isn’t it? If we are going to believe the news, which we have to, because there are people who follow up on those cases, then we owe to ourselves an answer to the question of : What has changed?

Of course people come up with various logical and illogical explanation of what has changed, from blaming domestic workers supposed freedom of movement, to an assumed increase of poverty, and an increase of moral corruption of our youth. In reality, domestic workers haven’t gained any more freedom for ages, in the contrary their slavery conditions are getting worse every day. And according to governmental statistic poverty hasn’t increased in the past few years. That leads us to the moral corruption of our youth, in which there seem to be a moral shift of being more tolerant to pre-marital sexual behavior for our society at large, it doesn’t explain the phenomena of abandoning those babies.

For me, I am not sure how far would I be from reality if I reason the whole situation to be due to our cultural love of copying. We love to copy each other. When someone fart, we all fart! Just look at the amount of shawerma and saj places in Amman. When the Day3a hit a big success with their arabic shawerma meal, every other single shawerma place copied it, and many others opened even next to their shops.

It is the same with reporting business. When the first reporter covered the story of the first trash baby which hit the news at large, other reporters became more active to report such incidents. This is quite scary to realize that trash babies is not a new phenomena, but reporting it is what new, isn’t it? It makes me wonder about the amount of babies who have died in trash for their parents abandonment.

The same goes for prices, it is becoming like a fashion thing. Everyone is raising the prices of his services, why don’t I? This is the exact reasoning people are following, each on his turn. The problem is that it became like a cycle and those raises in prices are becoming periodic rather than special cases.

Yesterday I went to Zaatar o Zeit for dinner with my friend. To our surprise, it turned out that they themselves have raised their menu prices (just few months after their opening). Their prices haven’t been low in the first place for the kind of food they serve or the type of restaurant they run, and if the raise was for few amounts, we wouldn’t have noticed or protested, but we seriously were shocked. For some items the raise even reached 60%.

‘I am not taking this’ me and my friend told each other. This is too much. It is one of the things that we can make a choice about and refuse. Fortunately our lives are not dependant on Zaatar o Zeit, and thus we took ourselves and left the restaurant knowing that we would never visit it again. The waiter wanted us to meet the manager to explain to us their reasoning behind raising their prices, but we refused to wait.

But what is really going on around Zaatar o Zeit? Now their Valet parking service is mandatory if you are to park in their parking lot because the other day someone tried to park himself and ended hitting another car, so their brilliant solution was to force their clients to pay for valet parking.

Another incident that is causing rage in the Ammani community occurred around Zaatar o Zeit premises. A young teenager was hit by a hammer in the middle of the night. The boy died instantly and the hammer driver, where rumors say that it was a ‘She’, flee without anyone being able to catch the numbers of her car’s plate.

The poor parents of the victim are at rage, and everyone in the country are waiting for the police to catch this woman. We do have a big faith in our police. They have never failed us and I know that in few days, they would reveal the identity of that woman. It isn’t hard counting the number of hammers in amman, or is it?

To tell you the truth, I feel bad for the boy’s parents as much for the woman. Guilt and fear must be killing her now. The boy is not the only one who lost his life in this accident, she lost hers as well because of her car speed.

There should be stronger regulations on speed and driving under the influence of alcohol. Such accidents occur a lot lately and some actions are ought to be taken in order to prevent them.

http://en.freefouad.com/