Wall Completely Surrounds Bedouin Near Jerusalem

http://www.imemc.org/article/50659

Al Kaa'bnah tribe confined behind the Wall

Tal A'dasah, of Biet Hanina, north of East Jerusalem was turned into an isolated island by the Annexation Wall that surrounds the area and totally isolates the town after closing its only outlet to the nearby town of Bir Nabala earlier last week.

The residents of Tal A'dasah were forced to set a tent behind the Separation Wall that is constructed on the main road of Bir Nabala to be a place where twenty four children will be able to learn after being unable to go the nearby schools of Bir Nabala and al Jeeb villages.

Mahmoud Ka'abnah, member of al Ka'abnah family and principle of al Ka'abnah elementary school said; "we set this tent out of fear that our children will lose their educational future, after closing the last outlet in the Wall.

They were deprived from reaching their schools" Al Ka'abneh added and said that the residents are now living in a big prison inside their eight barracks of metal and wood where 63 members of the family are imprisoned in without any justification or guilt .

more amira hass

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908880.html

"The norm is "calm," even if it means constant government violence. The mass protest against the oppression is a disruption of order and calm.

The word "calm" was an automatic reflection of how most Israeli Jews and their media see the constant, 40-year Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is the norm one thinks of when the Palestinians disrupt the calm."

Travel Restrictions and People in the Office

Please read the Amira Hass article linked below, and keep it in mind as I write something about the conversation I just had with the woman who cleans the office. It is impossible to encompass in one piece the massive effects travel restrictions have on the lives of individuals in Palestine, and Palestinians in Israel. There are, however, many small stories and conversations that I can write down to start to build some illustration of how massive and invasive into people's lives and history the restrictions on travel are.

After sharing a ride with Um Faris for a week and basically exchanging niceties, she started talking to me today when she came up to my part of the office, asking me where I was from. It turned out that she is from Jenin. Oh, I've been to Jenin! Her father, she explained, was from Shefa Amr, but he fled to Jenin in 1948, and she was born there and grew up in the refugee camp.

She went to school up to the 12th grade. She wanted to go to university, but Israel shut down the universities in the West Bank in 1989, so she did not. She ended up marrying a man from Shefa Amr, and so, now she is here inside of Israel, married and with children in Shefa Amr. She spoke to me in English at first, what English she remembered from school. She speaks Arabic, but as she grew up in the West Bank, she never learned Hebrew.

Now, married to an Israeli citizen who is Arab, and having had children who have Israeli citizenship, she is still in some type of uncategorized category. She is not allowed to travel outside to Jordan, to Egypt, or on Hajj.

Um Faris has applied three times for a passport, and all three times has been told to "learn Hebrew, and then come back."



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905563.html

As a result, the ministry's head, Hussein al-Sheikh, had already announced the happy but false news on Tuesday: Students from Gaza would be allowed to go through the crossings to study abroad. There are currently several thousand Palestinian students who have been accepted to universities abroad, but cannot leave the strip through Israel to attend.

A Palestinian official said that no more than 100 students have been allowed to leave since June. The Israeli authorities had agreed to allow 700 students to leave, but the remaining 600 are still waiting.

Some of these 600 students arrived at Erez Tuesday, expecting to be allowed through. One of them, call him B., realized something had gone wrong only after getting there. Eventually, he was told to head back home.

click here for the full article http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905563.html

eid as-salib

so, in a few villages in the galilee that have christian populations, they celebrated eid as-salib (festival of the cross) on thursday night, adding to the start of ramadan and rosh hashanah. it basically involved every christian family in the town setting off fireworks until 2 in the morning, successfully disturbing the sleep of its residents, and muslim neighbors breaking fast. it also involved at least five bonfires on the hillside that i could see, and my landlord firing 8-10 rounds from his shotgun into the air, ignoring the fact that bullets come down.

it is celebrated because when the people were searching for the cross upon which jesus was crucified, they agreed that whoever found it would light a fire.

side effects of celebrating eid as-salib include loss of hearing and mild to severe sulfur burns.

Iraqi kids finally allowed to attend school in Jordan

http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=1672

It's about time...

More than two years ago now, high school kids in Jordan started a tutoring program where they themselves taught Iraqi kids after their own school day. Another school in East Amman was started by Christian missionaries from the states, where the kids were kept off the streets, but where the education was substandard and they got no formal certificates. A thirteen year old girl I met attended the classes for women held at a community center in Sweileh because she hadn't been to school in years. It's really about time these kids were integrated into the public system. And it's about time the US stepped up...

my letter to asra nomani

Dear Asra,

I just finished Standing Alone, and wanted to thank you. I have spent the past year in Jordan studying, and though I am not Muslim, I feel a personal connection with your words and was inspired by them.

Seeing and learning of oppression and control of women in some poignant instances in Jordan, I've struggled with the internal conflict of whether it was my place to speak of oppressions in Islamic society- my last wish is to deepen the divide, perpetuating a negative view of Islam in the West, and providing fuel for those who view women's rights as Western infiltration and corruption of Islam. You will appreciate that at the same community center in Amman where I learned of many of these oppressions, they have a weekly class with a sheikh who instructs women of their rights under Islam. Here, Islam plays a crucial role in empowering women who find themselves in abusive relationships, enabling them to demand their rights with support and education.

I've personally chafed against strict gender separation and unequal access to Ramadan activities and classes at the Islamic Arabic school called Qasid I attended where, ironically, the American Muslims who ran the place used "cultural sensitivity" to justify their requirement of the hijab for non-muslim students even well outside the physical boundaries of the school. As you know, Jordan is a multi-religious society where no one dress code is enforced anywhere, and Jordanians were unanimously offended when we told them of the school's rules. I compromised by throwing a scarf over my head in the street before the gate of the school, and then fixing it properly inside, but not in front of a taxi driver or in my own neighborhood where it would have offended people, and where I would have felt I was misrepresenting myself as well as detracting from the choice of other women who consciously take up the hijab.

In Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine I've been allowed to enter many mesjids as a guest to appreciate their beauty, and historic, cultural and societal value. In the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, I experienced gender segregation as something that allowed me equal access to view a relic when guards instructed men in the designated women's section to move out of our way. That mesjid is a place where families relax together in the sun, and children run and play in the open area. In Tripoli, Lebanon, just an hour from where my great-grandparents hail, a very rude man in his twenties barred my and my friends' access to enter and view a Byzantine church-turned-mesjid, though we were wearing hijab and long-ish coats, and our male Muslim Iraqi-American friend tried unsuccessfully to negotiate our entry.

The experience that has stayed with me most intensely is the time I finally entered the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. I'd been to Jerusalem several times, but had never been allowed, as a non-Muslim, to enter the Haram outside of the short tourist hours, even if I covered respectfully. Once, I went with a Muslim American friend who felt horrible entering without me, but I sat and had a nice chat with the Israeli Druze soldier who stopped me from entering and simultaneously apologized for doing so. A second time, however, I went with another friend, also a Muslim American. This Israeli soldier, upon seeing our hijabs and after I let on that I spoke Arabic, became increasingly hostile and physically threatening. My friend was saying that despite my name, I was a Muslim. The soldier yelled at us saying we needed to bring an ID saying I was a Muslim. After looking at my name, he patronizingly informed me that "We know who you are." I informed him that in the US we do not have our religion on our ID cards. My friend now engaged him in the ideological battle of whether all of her (actual) Muslim friends with non-Muslim names would receive the same treatment from him simply because of their names. This was the door for Muslims. The soldier tried to separate us, telling my friend to enter here and me to go around to the tourists door, and when we both walked away, threatened to arrest us both if he saw us inside the Haram.

His hostility was truly enough to make you shrivel inside. At one point he yelled at me, ordering me to remove my hijab. "Ishlahi! Ishlahi hay!" Take that off! How dare he, I thought. He did not know truly whether I was Muslim or not. I could easily have been any of the white Muslims I knew. I had bristled in Amman at having the hijab imposed upon me to study, and now here I am trying to be respectful in a holy place as I was in all the other Islamic holy places I'd visited, and this soldier who did not know me was ordering me to remove an article of clothing. I didn't even have the nerve to answer him back. My friend was doing that for me. I just looked at him.

We left, removed our hijabs in a private area, and entered through the tourist door, whose hours we had just caught. Inside we redonned hijab and proceeded to be grilled at the entrance to Al-Aqsa as to whether I could recite the Fatiha, this time by Palestinians. My friend told them I was a Muslim, but when I failed to get past the first few lines of the Fatiha, they told her she shouldn't lie. She stalked past them into the mesjid. They later told her we should have split up and viewed our own religious places separately. But she protested that she had enjoyed seeing the churches! When she was finished, we went up to the Dome. This time I told the truth to a kinder Palestinian man who offered to be our guide, and he asked me to wait outside and told me not to worry about the Israeli soldier. (We were nervously looking over our shoulders, fearing we'd have to call our mothers to say we were arrested.)

While I was disappointed I could not see inside, I understand the limitations imposed by the political situation. I believe tourists were allowed inside the Dome and Al-Aqsa before Sharon took his walk that incited the Second Intifada. While I waited outside the Dome for my friend, a young boy asked me if I was Muslim. When I said no, he ran to bring me a chair in the shade. Then he asked if I wanted to see the rock, and led me to the windows to peer inside with him. He led me around the compound, explaining the relics and the views. He gave me an experience of hospitality and kindness, and at first refused money when I tried to pay him as a guide.

If all of this seems horribly mixed up, I apologize. I suppose it's because I'm trying to make sense out of all of it and don't want to censor or edit out any parts to draw either a wholly friendly or hostile picture. I've experienced extremes of both sentiments entering Islamic holy places, sometimes at the same time.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the experience of reading your book and the ways it has encouraged me to think.

Respectfully and sincerely.

Hedges and Al-Arian article in The Nation

"Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished."

read here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

bob

i think we're getting bob a girlfriend today. bob is our canary.

last week lillie went to one of the many petstores just to shop around, and told the guy there that our bird was SO loud. he chirps at the top of his lungs really shrilly, it started in the spring, and has made people not want to come to our house.

petstore guy said, "he needs married."

couldn't have said it better myself.

i have officially been shocked yet again by our washing machine. i felt it go all the way up my arm and couldn't move it for a split second.

remind me to put a giant sign for the next people who live here saying, "UNPLUG before removing wet laundry!!"

muDakhkha?

We get water delivered to our apartment in Amman. It's not that the drinking water isn't safe when it is delivered to the houses, it's that it's held in a tank on the roof all week, and you never know how clean or unclean the tanks are. It's fine for washing, showering, and brushing of teeth, but it's a better idea to buy purified water for drinking. Also it tastes like metal. (I think one day a few years ago, there was a mix up and the water delivery trucks accidentally delivered water meant for irrigation instead of drinking water to people's houses. Basically, people used to drink their tap water, but one day it turned brown, and they stopped.)


When we run out of water, which we pump out of the several-gallons-large plastic barrel tank with a plastic water pump, we call the water delivery guy one street over. If we're lucky, he delivers that afternoon. We have a little coupon book that we paid for ahead of time, and we put out the empty barrel with one coupon, and he exchanges the empty one for a full one, just like a milk man.

Much to our dismay, our water pump broke this week. So I called for water and tried to eplain that we needed a new pump as well. I had looked up the word for pump but was not entirely sure how to pronounce it. Our conversation went something like this:

me: We need a new pump, too.
water guy: A what?
me: A water pump.
wg: A what? You need a notebook?
me: Pump! Pump! You know the thing that pumps on top of the water?
wg: Ohhhhhh a PUMP!
me: Yes.
wg: We don't have any now, but we can get you one after a week.

(note: in arabic, pump is muDakha and notebook is daftar.)

Of Classism and Getting Boxes

So a few weeks ago, Talia asked me to help her pack up her books to go home after the really long time she's been in Jordan. As buying Arabic texts is considerably cheaper here than in the States, and as she'll use them for her own research and career, she had a ton to pack. Therefore before showing up I went to Mukhtar Mall near her house and went on a sturdy cardboard box hunt.

In Mukhtar Mall I managed to gather two or three boxes after going to five or six stores, before being told that to really get boxes i should go down to the parking lot level. I went down on the elevator, and behold, there was an entire dumping site for empty cardboard boxes that some men were busy flattening and organizing for disposal; it was really a cardboard box mountain that these guys were just slowly chipping away at. Boxes galore!

There was a security guard, and so i told him that i was there to get boxes and was that alright, and then proceeded to ask the box guys to hand me appropriate sized boxes over the metal fence surrounding the box mountain. I think i asked for three. "Three?" they said, "You can have twenty!" I pointed out the size that i thought would be good for boxes, and they very obligingly handed me several of them.

At this point, mission accomplished (or so i thought), i took out my cell phone to call Talia to let her know i was coming and make sure she was at home to let me in. Before I can get a hold of her, the security guard has come over to me and said, "What else do you want? Are you done? Do you have a car?"

"No," i said, "i don't have a car. I'm calling my friend."
"So you don't need anything else. Khalas. Go. Go away." He waved his hand at me as if swatting at a fly.

I wasn't aware enough to be offended. My mind was on getting to Talia's. So i picked up my boxes and walked toward the elevators. I found the rude guard in my way.

"No, you can't go up the elevators. Go out that way. Go." He pointed toward the back entrance, where he wanted me to leave.

I still wasn't quick enough to realize how rude he was being. I was confused. No, I needed the elevators to get to the level where i can go to the street to get a taxi. I wasn't about to walking around the parking garage to find the exit and then walk all the way around the building.

Then he changed his tune:
"Here, you need to wait here. Here, sit down." He offered me a chair since I am a woman and he was now deciding to make me wait. Into his radio, he said, "There's a girl here taking boxes. Do you want to come check her out?"

At this point I just stood up and made for the elevators. This was ridiculous. He stood in my way and told me I had to wait. Everything up to this point had been in Arabic. I decided to bust out the English. "I don't understand what the matter is," I said purposefuly and kind of angrily in a low voice." I am getting boxes for my friend to help her move, and I am going to go up the elevator." I walked calmly to the elevator in front of three or four other laborer guys who were just watching silently. I pushed the button, waited, and then took it up and left. The security guard said nothing else.

Believe me I got to Talia's fuming mad and had half a mind to call my old host dad and ask him to go with me back to the mall to get that guard in trouble. Or Mehdi. Or my arabic teacher. It's incredibly, incredibly rude that someone would wave their hand at me, send me out the back entrance, then decided to call his boss to come find out what i'm doing. GETTING EMPTY BOXES, you bored piece of shit. No one deserves to be treated like that. And when you're trying to go out of your way to help out your friend? And when you're a paying customer of the mall?

Besides the rudeness, it's what made him stop being rude that is telling of the way things work here. The moment I opened my mouth and yelled at him (I didn't even yell, actually, just spoke angrily in a low voice) in English, he had nothing else to say. It was when he thought I was either Arab, or maybe Russian or something that he was so rude to me. I think he thought I was Arab, I didn't say enough or make long enough sentences to give myself away to him. So he thinks no respectable Arab woman would go down the parking lot to dig through empty boxes by herself? Oh, I forgot, any respectable Arab woman would surely have her husband/brother/doorman/father/maid go and dig around for boxes. Anyone who does it themselves you have full authority to treat them like shit and tell them to go out the back entrance and detain them for using the elevator with boxes. Surely if they are getting their own boxes that means they have no status in life.

Then ENGLISH! Oh well holy shit, ENGLISH changes everything! I thought you were a completely unrespectable woman with no status who i could use to prove what a responsible guard i am by harrassing as you scrounge for leftover cardboard. ENGLISH changes EVERYTHING! I can't place you now! I'm not sure anymore where to put you in this hierarchy we've got going in our country, but it sure is higher than where I originally thought. I'd better hold my tongue and let you do as you wish. You want to go up the elevator like normal respectable customers? Well go right ahead. I don't know what i was thinking.

I should have gone right upstairs and asked to talk to the director of security. I wasn't gutsy enough or present-minded enough. Oh well. Maybe i'm a bigger person for walking away. But no one should be allowed to treat people like that!

The reason I'm posting this encounter, other than because it made me angry, is because I believe it is telling about classism in Jordan in general. Security in most institutions is rather arbitrary. As a woman, especially as a white woman, I get waved into many hotels without being properly checked for weapons. At the border, bureaucratic issues that the Jordanian soldiers get hung up on or question can often (well, the small ones, like Kamleh's transfered stamp) be taken care of by explaining to them assertively that everything is in order even if it's not readily apparent, and how. The same is true with police. I was once told that if I ever get into any trouble and the police are involved, do not, no matter how good i am at Arabic, try to show off my language with them; speak strictly English with law enforcement authority figures if i want to make things easier for myself. And it is true. I make things very easy for myself in this country by understanding a good deal of Arabic, but by speaking English when I need anything from authority. It is very arbitrarily easy for me to deal with police and security. I suspect, and the story above gives evidence to this, that things are just as arbitrarily difficult for people who are not in my shoes.

I suppose this post is really an extension of Kamleh's Dirty American tales, with a nod to the extremely annoying classism of Jordanian society. Part classism, part hospitality, and part colonial legacy means English gets me out of all kinds of trouble that bored security guards would otherwise impose.

And I won't elaborate here too much on this last point, but I would just like to point out that this is one major reason i find Palestine so refreshing: the classism junk that gets in the way of talking to nearly everyone in Jordan, I find to have disappeared in Palestine. It's so much easier to have real, honest, unpresumptuous conversations. And mostly, I think, because they live in a situation where everyone has to deal with the occupation. It doesn't matter whether you are the garbage man or the Minister of Information for the PA, the Israelis will stop you both at the checkpoint all day, and control whether you receive a permit to go into this or that area. Therefore, the minister greets the garbage man with respect, and the garbage man feels like he has something to say to the minister and expects him to listen.

Anyway, moral of the story is that respectable women DO go into parking garages to collect empty boxes sometimes. And they should be treated with respect, whether or not you think they have enough money to have a doorman do it for them.

In case you were wondering...

جنان حصلت قلبي
فما ان فيه من باقي
لها الثلثان من قلبي
و ثلثا ثلثه الباقي
و ثلثا الثلث ما يبقى
و ثلثا الثلث للساقي
فيبقى اسهم ست
توزع بين عشاقي

The garden has my heart
So that whatever is in it
Has two thirds of my heart
And two thirds of the remaining third
And two thirds of the third that remain
And two thirds of that third are for the gardener
Leaving six shares
To be divided between my lovers.


26/27 of my heart are for the garden.
2/81 of my heart are for the gardener.
1/486 of my heart are for each lover.

Bil'in, and how the dirty american does not always get you so far

Hello,

I want to write you all an email that would express to you all what I've experienced in the past week at a conference I went to, and also help me formulate some of it so I can create an article for the paper at home, but I am not sure where to begin. My hand and arm are scratched up a bit, and my quads are killing me. I should have known to be in better shape before going to a demo in Palestine. I got scratched up (and also lost a shoe) while running from rubber-coated bullets in Bil'in. I read later that they were also firing machine guns into the air. I can't recognize the difference in the percussions, I didn't grow up hearing them; all i remember is that when the guy from Jenin says, "Oh my God, they are shooting us," you run.

Kamleh and I had gone to Bil'in to attend the Second Annual Conference on Popular Resistance, April 18-20th. The conference speakers included the likes of Italian and French Members of Parliament, the French Ambassador to Israel who is a concentration camp survivor and who took part in writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Mustafa Barghouti (PA Information Minister), Amira Hass (Haaretz journalist), Ilan Pappe (University of Haifa professor and self-proclaimed failed product of the Israeli education system), and Jeff Halper (Israeli Committee Aganst House Demolitions). The speeches were focused around the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israeli Apartheid that has now been called for by Palestinian Civil Society. Amira Hass mentioned that whenever she writes in the paper about someone getting denied a permit to go to their father's funeral, or to go get medical treatment in Amman or Israel, the next day all of the "security" issues have magically disappeared, and that one person gets their permit. Israelis don't want to know what is going on around them. And when they DO protest inside Israel, nothing happens. They have the right to do so, and so they do, and then they go home and meanwhile Palestinians are harrassed at checkpoints and separated from each other, and more land is confiscated, and occupation, the catchword to describe so much more than a literal occupation, expands and deepens. As one Palestinian woman who spoke up at the conference said, "We need you to stand in front of your soldiers." There are groups that do this, such as Mahsoum Watch (Checkpoint Watch), Israeli women who go and sit at checkpoints to observe and record and ameliorate by their presence the behavior of the Israeli soldiers. There was also some good discussion about the word "Apartheid." Jeff Halper made the point that even though what is happening in Palestine is in many ways actually more insidious than Apartheid South Africa, even though the equivalent word for 'separation' in Hebrew is actually a very accepted word and part of the popular peace movement's campaign, and even though there is a better word in Hebrew meaning 'displacement/dispossession' that describes much better what is going on, Apartheid is the best word to use. It gets across the separation and domination that are integral parts of the word, and there is simply not time to coin a new vocabulary while the displacement and dispossession is ongoing.

Bil'in itself is a village to the northwest of Ramallah, that has become something of a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Apartheid wall. The wall is built through Bil'in's agricultural land, from which the village makes its living, confiscating the majority of the land on the western Israeli side of the wall. The wall in this area is actually about 30 meters of fence, ditch, road, electric fence, road, ditch, and fence. Orchards on the other side belonging to the village have been bulldozed and Israeli colonies built on the land, the most recent colony, Matityahu East, erected in 2002. The work on the Apartheid barrier here actually began in February of 2005, and popular demonstrations including children, elderly people, internationals, and women occured daily in the beginning. The village has continued since that time to hold two non-violent demonstrations a week, one of them every Friday. The forms the demonstrations take are creative, and often include group prayer in the road on holidays, women on Women's Day, and handicapped on the Day of the Handicapped. These non-violent demonstrations have been met with semi-automatic rifles, sound bombs, tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets, high-pressure water hoses, and live ammunition, not to mention the soldiers' invasions of homes in the middle of the night to beat and arrest children and youths out of their beds because they took part in the demonstrations, and shooting 10 and 12 year olds in the head. There has also been some other direct action, such as a family moving into one of the houses that was built in the colony, showing the legal deed to the land, but being evicted after five hours, and also legal action in Israeli courts. The demonstrations continue, and the example of Bil'in's non-violent regular and multi-faceted resistance is beginning to be imitated in other parts of Palestine, most notably in Beit Sahour near Bethlehem. (http://www.bilin-village.org/)

The demonstration on Friday, April 20th followed in the tradition of Bil'in's regular display of resistance. The demo was part of the conference, and was attended by internationals, the PA Information Minister and also the Vice Prime Minister and other officials, Israelis, and Palestinians from Bil'in. I was disappointed that many of the Europeans and Israelis who had spoken the previous two days did not stay for the demo. Mairead Maguire did stay, however. She is a 1977 Nobel Peace Price winner for her work in Northern Ireland and while she kind of annoyed me because she was preaching quite a bit during the conference about how they succeeded in Northern Ireland in connecting with people through loving one another, and preaching interpretations of violence in islam and otherwise reminded me of really happy church ladies, she was hardcore enough to stay for the demo. She later got shot in the leg by a rubber-coated bullet. (http://www.imemc.org/article/47925)

There was a press conference near the wall in the morning, and while the Israeli soldiers were busy surrounding the press conference, an international kid somehow in an act of some kind of incredible bravery or stupidity, took a giant Palestinian flag, crossed the 30 meters of Apartheid wall/fence/road, climbed the Israeli communications tower, and put the flag waaaaaaaay at the top of it. At the end of the day we saw him still sitting up there and a bunch of soldiers hanging out at the bottom of the tower waiting for him to come down. I think he took food and water up there with him. It was actually some kind of awesome. ( http://www.imemc.org/article/47937)

We marched all together from the village to the wall, internationals at the front. When we got somewhat close, maybe 20 yards, and the soldiers were pointing their guns at us, we all raised our hands high into the air and just stood there. Mohammed, Kamleh and I were staying all together. I was not allowed to lose Kamleh, and Mohammed would not lose us. So somehow the Jenini ended up squatting in front of me after stopping a few yards back saying, "They will shoot me!" I yelled at him under my breath for coming so far and went a few more steps with Kamleh. Two foreign women in their 60s were standing in front of me. We were all just standing with our hands up. Then suddenly the soldiers started firing, and the women in front of me were hit with something. I started shouting for Mohammed, thinking he's the one who has medical training what the hell am i gonna do if this woman is shot? I looked at her stomach and it was just a bit pink. A rubber-coated bullet had bounced off the water bottle of one of the women and hit the other in the stomach. Then, they started firing more and Mohammed said "Oh my God, they are shooting us." (This was apparently when they started shooting machine guns into the air.) There was also tear gas but I didn't see it. So, we ran. I made friends with a rock, and then made friends with the guy from Bil'in who was making friends with the same rock. He gave me some onion for the tear gas. They continued firing, and there was an even bigger sound that we couldn't recognize and that Mohammed guessed was some kind of cannon, and so we ran back to the village. I lost my shoe, got it again, and skinned my hands. Some PRCS emt's ran past us with a stretcher, and on the stretcher was an international kid who'd been shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet and was unconscious and bleeding from the head. That can kill you.

That was the scariest part of the day. We went slowly again toward the front, but I didn't go again to the front front. I'm sorry to say I was not gutsy enough to put my body there again. We would walk forward (Mohammed, Kamleh and I), watching what was happening and learning how to look up to see where the tear gas is going to land. For a long time they fired one tear gas canister, one rubber-coated bullet, gas, bullet. At one point the gas canister fell in between Mohommed and me, and Kamleh who was standing about 12 steps ahead of us taking pictures. She fell and so breathed a lot of it, and injured her leg on a rock. She couldn't see for about 20 minutes after that and was trying not to throw up but otherwise that was the worst thing that happened to the three of us. We saw other people getting carried by on stretchers who were vomiting or couldn't breathe. Tear gas is not so bad when you're some distance from the source, but it's quite effective in making people scatter everywhere and causing chaos. I am a little bit disappointed in myself that i didn't go again to support the people in the front, but i felt like it was a bit futile. I didn't want to be stupid. Every time people regrouped, they fired more rubber-coated bullets. Move forward, fire, run. Move forward, fire, run. There needs to be something more creative. I'm at a loss as to what. It didn't matter where you were standing with regards to the gas, though. They fired it to the back of the demo and to all different places in between. I've heard from others who have spent more time in the villages that it's a problem because the Palestinian women attending demonstrations are most often at the back behind the men, where most of the tear gas lands.

So that afternoon we went back to Ramallah, made arayes, and went out to get knafe and coffee. We were all three better friends after that day, unsurprisingly. I can't help but think, though, that there is something incredibly wrong with the fact that the demo was met with that kind of violence, of course in general, as we were standing with our hands in the air, but also that day in particular. People said it was the worst military response in two years in Bil'in. What is wrong when they save the worst military response in two years for the weekend that has over 500 internationals and Israelis present? What is wrong when they save that response for all the media (well, more media than usual) that comes with Nobel Peace Prize winners? Why do they calculate that it is in their interest to show their power and brutality to the internationals by shooting old ladies with rubber-coated bullets? There is something really, really wrong here. Maybe they are calculating that essentially people like me will not be as willing to stand in the front, to come to demos or villages where the wall is. It worked, for now. Our embassies don't care when their citizens are shot for peacefully protesting. The media doesn't care, either. But the entire premise of the international presence is that our passports give us a protection and a certain power. Protection in that they can't shoot us and get away with it so we are effective human shields, and power because when the soldiers see our passports, they won't be as nasty because they don't want us telling the world what they do. My Palestinian friends look at my American passport as if it is something more valuable than most things you can get in life. They tell me that when i show it to the soldiers, it will be very easy for me and they will also be nicer to other people there because they don't want to show me their nastiness. That is the idea. But clearly, it has limits that reveal themselves when rubber-coated bullets strike the stomachs of old white grandmother ladies from about 20 yards or less. It was less than that actually. Did i mention there was also a high pressure water hose? Just like the pictures of the civil rights era.

So, this is what I'm writing for now. That was the conference. Don't worry, I don't intend to put myself in those kinds of situations excessively Tear gas is fine but I'm personally opposed to being shot by any metal object, rubber-coated or not. I didn't expect it to be as bad as it was actually. I was in the same village a year and a half ago and the demo was like a party, mostly because it was Eid and the Israeli army likes to make itself feel good every now and then by respecting a holiday and putting off the home invasions for about a week ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/eaa7/sets/72057594062490859/). Also, this weekend was literally hundreds of internationals. I did not expect it to be this bad. There is a lot more I need to write about what it was like to travel together with Kamleh. Both of us have American passports. But her name is Arab Muslim and mine is lovely Arab Francophone. Thank God my ancestors were Francophones. Based solely on my name, my father's name, and my grandfather's name, I have incredible freedom of movement. But based on our names, the asshole police (a less strong word would not be appropriate) tried to separate us and make us go through different doors even as tourists. Separation is intense. The same day, before the demo, we went to find the hotel where Kamleh's grandparents got married and took pictures. It was lovely and sad and i need to write about it but i also need to go to bed now, so i will send this for now and write later about other things.

Just Peas Please, (i know, i know)
Emily

3adee

word of the day: amatory

Yesterday, Amanda and I were sharing a cab from Shmeisani to go and get the lamb for today's Easter dinner, which, by the way, I'm currently smelling as it bakes in the oven. Before we got anywhere, the cab pulled over because SMOKE was pouring out of the dashboard inside the car onto the driver.

I knudged Amanda to get out, while the driver hopped around to lift the hood and inspect the damage. As we got out, the driver implored us to get back in, saying, "3adee, 3adee, 3adee." (normal, normal, it's ok...) I was thinking, are you kidding me? "La, mish 3adee!" I said (No it is not normal!!) We paid what was on the meter and got another cab that was driving out.

Did he seriously think we were going to get back into a smoking cab?

3adee.

oo the lamb smells really good.

More Taxis and Misunderstandings

I'm very proud of myself for being able to navigate cabs here now without stirring up too many questions, although it still happens as people are naturally curious about my accent. I suppose it is good for me to have to experience this, because being a person who is read as a white woman in the states, I've never had to feel what it's like to have people treat you like you are completely and utterly stupid because you look like you are from somewhere else.

I'm talking about how it feels here when i open my mouth and utter maybe one or two words in arabic and the person near me exclaims, loudly, "YOU SPEAK GOOD ARABIC!!!!!" (Imagine someone in the states exclaiming to an asian-looking individual, "Oh you speak such good Engliiiiiiiish!!!") Or when they otherwise assume that I don't know my way around the city so cannot possibly know a faster route than they do, even though I've taken it every day for the past six months. It is so incredibly annoying. I've become bitchy about it. Depending on how loud and obnoxious they are in the context, I either say thank you, or more and more often just a curt yes, i live here.

I understand that it is not a common thing for people to encounter white foreigners here who speak colloquial arabic well enough to get around, and that is to a large extent due to our own arrogance. I hardly imagine that historically, encounters with British and French colonists, and now, American state department employees, etc, are encounters of mutual respect and curiosity. They take place in a context of power. And hyper-sexuality. I'll talk about the hyper-sexuality later. The power means that the westerner can come and go as he/she pleases, and without having to make any effort to learn the local language. So most of them do not. Most of their posts are only for a couple years or less anyway, so what is the point? Jordanians, on the other hand, all are required in school to learn English. Even to get a good job in Jordan anymore, you need almost perfect English.

More examples of the kinds of power differential that these meetings take place in are the fact that as US citizens, we can travel to Jordan, to Palestine, to Israel, and essentially where we want. However, people of various nationalities here such as Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, are far more constrained in terms of movement. I can go to visit my old host family's elderly aunt and uncle in Jerusalem, while they haven't seen them in more than 20 years. I can go through check points in Palestine and Israel without too many questions, while Palestinians cannot. I can leave Jordan and come back freely, while Iraqis and Egyptians cannot. I can enter Syria with the proper visa, Palestinians cannot. The list goes on. In terms of work and class as well, I have a certain power in most interactions. I'm here studying on a stipend that equals most university professor's salaries.

So, when I meet a random person, they think something about me. What they think is something very close to: rich, able to study, privileged in upbringing and mobiligy, ignorant about what we go through every day, is sexually loose, does not know about God or morals, has an American passport, and possibly will be able to hook me up with a visa.

So, this is the first thing to keep in mind when reading about stuff that happens here. There are other things that i'll post later. This post is about what people think when they see us, foreign women hopping around Amman. There is also a ton to say about what the random western person thinks of the Arabs they meet here. And there is a ton to say about the context of male-female relations etiquette here in which these interactions take place, and what that means for the conversation.

THAT SAID:

*********************************

Taxi Convo #13: (contributed by Lillie)
Taxi- Are you married?
Lil- Yes.
Taxi- Is your husband here or in America?
Lil- He's in America.
Taxi- That isn't a marriage.
Lil- Yes it is, we talk on the phone.
Taxi- Do you have kids?
Lil-No.
Taxi- You know why? Because you can't do it over the phone!

Taxi Convo #14: (contributed by Tiffany)
Taxi- Silicon wala tabee'y? [silicon or natural?]
Tiff- Shame on you!!! [horrified look on face, as what ELSE could that possibly mean??]
Taxi- Okay okay, tabee'y.

Deportations

Iraqis are living in fear of deportation from Jordan as it struggles with a massive influx of refugees.

so one of the guys who works at the crazy arabic school i went to was taken into detention at mecca mall (giant upscale amman mall) because he didn't have any id on him. they held him for a couple of days because they thought he might be iraqi. (he's palestinian-american and speaks with an egyptian accent) they let him go eventually after calling the school, but what a disaster had they decided to deport him to iraq...

IDs are lovely. passports are lovely. (the right passports are lovely) the iraqis here now have a situation where their passports are no longer good to get back into jordan on. there is a doctor we know here, who is stuck until her family can get her the new kind of iraqi passport (they're in iraq), then she can leave jordan, get the new passport, and come back. but from what i understand the old passports are no longer good for border crossings. so, people are stuck.

Taxi Convos

So I'm sitting up late watching an Egyptian movie on Kuwait tv. Our water heater exploded today so there is no hot water. And the water tank is sitting on the roof with the snow so there REALLY is no hot water. Zamana is on a greyhound to nyc to catch the flight here, inshallah. Maybe one of our nice friends will let us get showers at their place on saturday night.

I thought this was a good a time as any to record some of the 856 silly/ridiculous/weird/humerous conversations i've had with taxi drivers here.

Taxi Convo #1-5:
-Where are you from?
-America
-How can I get to America?
-I don't know. You have to go to the embassy.
-What if I marry an American?
-Then you get a passport.
--silence--
-Would you and your friend like to visit me at my house in Madaba?

Taxi Convo #6:
-Where are you from?
-America
-Take me to America.
-I would if I could.
-Take me in your bag!

Taxi Convo #7:
-Are you from France?
-Yes [to self: shit shit what if he speaks french]
-France very good. Chirac. How do you say Welcome to Jordan in French.
-[think think think] Bienvenue

Taxi Convo #8:
-You are from Britain?
-Yes.
-I could tell. Where in Britain?
-London.
[thus ensued an extended conversation about university in london, about which i know nothing]

Taxi Convo #9:
-Are you married?
-No.
-Do you want an Arab or an American?
-It doesn't matter, either.
-You should marry an Arab. To him, family is everything. Once you are married, that is it.
[ironically, Amman is the male entertainment nightclub capitol outside of the gulf.]

Taxi Convo #10:
-Are you married?
[none of your business]

Taxi Convo #11:
-Hello, how are you.
-I want to go to First Circle, Rainbow Street please.
[driver proceeds to speed up and then pull the emergency break to skid down the hill, looks at me in the rear view mirror and nods at me with impressed-with-self expression]
-why??? don't do that.
[i refuse to look at him for the rest of the ride, we get to books@cafe without further ado, and i pay and get out]
-see you, byebye!

Taxi Convo #12:
-Are you married?
-No.
-Why? You are pretty!

More to come I'm sure. Not that all cab drivers are insane, these are just a few of the more memorable. Others have been memorable for other reasons. Once, we rode with a guy who was a lawyer and drives a cab. Another time, a friend here rode with a guy who is a public school math teacher and who drives a cab for 12 hours every night.

Unemployment is high, fuel is expensive (rent and fuel have more than doubled in the past two years, no joke), and people have to run around from morning to midnight trying to pay rent and feed their families. It's the main reason why there is essentially no political life here. People are just too busy trying to maintain their lives.

Tales of a Dirty American

We always hear stories about how horrible Americans can be in foreign countries, refusing to adapt to the culture or respect differences. They think that since they are Americans they can do anything they want. They tend to stick out like sore thumbs (who thought of that analogy? because it is seriously weird), either by their shoes or their cultural faux paus.
Being the cultured, world traveler that I am, I've always hated the way Americans act in foreign countries. When I was in Mexico I actually heard a girl say "whatever, I'm American I can do what I want," and I wanted to get up and smack her. I've always tried to fit into the culture around me, even if there are certain things that are just so difficult to adapt to.
Americans also hear that the rest of the world hates us and we should try to hide the fact that we are Americans while in other countries. I for one have often lied and said I was Canadian in situations where I didn't think it appropriate to say I'm American.
However, the past 6 months of living in Jordan have changed my tune. I have, I am ashamed to say, become a dirty American. There are just times when I cannot conform to the culture around me, and show my touristiness with my horrible habits. And I'm not about to change that. Because damn it, sometimes I just couldn't care less.
For instance, I'm not giving up wearing my blue airwalks. I don't care that the effect is basically the same as running down the street wearing an American flag as a cape, they are comfortable. And when I want to walk long distances, I don't want to be in nice shoes. I want to be comfortable. Also, I know that women here generally don't eat on the streets, but sometimes I'm in a rush and am hungry, so I'll eat my shwarma sandwich while walking to the bus stop wearing my headphones. Sure, it shows that I'm a foreigner, but golly they're gonna be able to tell anyway when they hear me speak.
Sometimes, I turn into that girl from Mexico. She'll never know how right she was, because in Jordan, being an American really does mean you can do whatever you want. In fact, for a region that supposedly hates Americans so much, flashing my passport sure does get me where I want to go faster. You can cut to the front of lines at customs. Your car doesn't get searched at checkpoints.
Pretending not to speak any Arabic also gets you farther than you would expect. The other day I needed to get into a building. I still have no clue why this guard wasn't letting people in, but when he tried to explain to me what I needed to do, I just said "I'm sorry, I don't understand you." He looked me over, and let me pass. I play that card a lot. "I'm sorry, I don't understand you" gets me whatever I want. It may be a horrible way to do things, but sometimes you've just got to. For the sake of my own sanity, sometimes I've got to be the dirty American. Try it, you'll see that you too want to be a dirty American...

haramdotcom, woot!

ok, so i'm a lazy bum sitting inside avoiding the snow, and figured this was my chance to finally post something to the venerable haramdotcom.

so let's see... what sort of haram things have happened to me lately. well, frankly i think the constant haramness of the men is sorta making me crazy. lillie and i were talking the other day about what would possibly make the men STOP acting like this. we even discussed, when they call to us like a cat, turning around and growling at them like a crazy tiger, thinking they'd be so shocked maybe they'd go away. this idea was an amusing one, but not something either of us would ever do. until the other day i was walking down "culture street" (which by the way contains nothing at all of any cultural value... mostly banks and fast food chains), and these young guys are lounging around just doing the cat-call thing to every girl that walks by. when they did it to me, i thought "why not?" and turned around and growled at them! they looked at me for a second, shocked, and then i couldn't help it and burst out laughing, as did they. i don't think i helped the cause that much unfortunately, but i don't know. i couldn't help it, the looks on their faces were just too priceless! idiots.

but i don't know... in my "arab women writers" class the other day, the professor was talking about how the best way to combat those men was through silence, and through ignoring them... if you respond, she says, they win. normally i'd agree, but after spending 7 months here i must say that i can't say she's right. every woman is silent, everyone just sits back and takes it when they're demeaned and leered at in the streets... and it's NOT helping! it's not doing anything! maybe if fewer women were so silent, something would actually change... maybe if many women went up to them, as i'm tempted to do sometimes, and just said "i'm a nice girl, i am not an animal or a prostitute, so why do you treat me like i'm one? you just ruined my day, how do you feel about that?" they'd stop. i don't know, maybe they wouldn't... but the status quo is just not something that should be upheld in this case! it's not amusing, it's not ok, and this ubiquitous "boys will be boys" excuse is just repulsive! ugh.

i heard this great story from someone the other day (maybe even a haram.com contributor, i don't remember) about a girl in egypt who had to walk home from work every day past the same group of guys, who would catcall to her every single day. one day she'd had enough and decided to do something about it. when she reached the men she took off her galabiyya (that black cloak muslim women wear around here) and beat every one of the men up. kicked their asses! when she was interviewed by a surprised newspaper reporter, she revealed that it was really no surprise she could take on all those men-- she was the top-ranked tae kwon do champion in egypt! haha.

now i don't know if that's true or not, but i certainly hope it is. man, how i'd like to be able to pull that off!

but anyway, i could go on for hours about that, i have on certain really bad days. as for right now, i'm going to end my first haram.com post. and go try to clean up the house before a certain few arab boys we've gotten hooked on kings show up!

~amanda haRAMnnoosh

p.s. stay tuned, because one of these days you are going to see a groundbreaking video tribute to the qasid institute of amman on this very site, made by myself and lillie!

it's shitty out. (pun intended)

hace frio wa thelj wa shita wa frio kemaan. ana bil bait.

al-3aaris wala al-arz?

I think i'm getting sick. And it's rainy out. I'm inside drinking za3tar tea and posting.

Amanda requested the telling of this story. So here goes.

I went out with Lillie one day, she on her way to Qasid and i on my way to find the Jordan Association for Family Planning and Protection main offices at the Medina Riyadiya area. I was following the directions i had written down as given me by a professor that i'm working for. As such, i told the cab driver that i wanted Hotel Al-3aaris.

Lillie looked at me and said, "Are you sure? Isnt' that Funduq Al-Arz? Why would they put two hotels with almost the same name right near each other?" I had been convinced the hotel was 3aaris, because that's what i had written down when the professor gave me the directions. However the cab driver, as well, confirmed that there was no such Funduq Al-3aaris.

This would be an appropriate time to include that 3aaris is dangerously close to the arabic word for 'pimp' ('3rs' but with a hard s), and that Funduq Al-Arz (Cedar Hotel) is known to be a brothel.

[Pause: I just burned off all my tastebuds with my new cup of za3tar tea.]

So when we get to the neighborhood, the taxi stops in front of Funduq Al-Arz the brothel, and the driver looks at us, expecting us to get out.

"Actually," I say, "we need to find the organization for family planning that is around here. We don't want the hotel itself." Not only are we foreign women looking for the brothel, NOW we are foreign women who need the family planning association.

The taxi then proceeds to ask passersby where we can find the family planning association, and they direct us just a few blocks up the street, where I do find it and get my interview, albeit at the cost of making quite the haram impression of ourselves on the poor cab.

bussing it

I have decided that I pay way too much money on taxis going to the same places, so recently I embarked on a quest to figure out the bus system. I use the term "system" lightly, for it is more organized chaos than anything else. But during my quest I have discovered buses going to my two favorite places from my circle: Abdali and the university. I am extremely proud of myself, and would like to share with you out there a little bit about what it takes to take the bus:
I live by 7th circle, about a 15 minute walk from the circle in fact. At the circle and around the circle there are random groups of people that stand around waiting for their bus. The only way to ever find out which bus you need to take is to just stick out your arm and ask the driver where he is going. In doing so, I found out that the Madaba bus goes from past the circle to Abdali. I can then trek up to Webdeh or take a cab/service. Depending on my mood. Usually to get to the university I would take the Madaba bus to Abdali then switch to a Sweileh bus. The entire trip took an hour, but heck, I've got nothing but time and I'd rather spend an hour reading on the bus and only spend half a dinar going where I need to go.
Today, with the help of Emily, I found out that there is a bus that goes directly to the university from my circle! how exciting. However, I have no clue when this bus comes and goes. And since there is really no set schedule, and no set numbers, I just know to look for the yellow bus, it will take some time to figure things out. And there will still never be any way to figure it out except to stand on the corner for multiple days and see what it does. I think I will switch my Fulbright research to figuring out the bus system!
Riding on the buses is in itself an adventure. As the bus passes you by you flag it down, ask where it is going, and then hop on. Before you can sit down they have taken off. They all sound like they are going to break down. It's an adventure every ride. Then when you want to get off (since there are no designated bus stops) you yell at the money collector man that you want to get off. And they stop the bus and off you go.
There is an unspoken rule of bus edequite: men don't sit by women unless there is NO WHERE else to sit. That's right men, stay away from me! You can stand for all I care. And, if a man is sitting by a woman and another woman gets on the bus, he should get up and give the other woman his seat by the first woman. I personally think that should be a rule everywhere, because us women deserve to sit every once in awhile. Sometimes, things get a little out of hand and the buses get too crowded and in an effort to keep the women seperate from the men you have sections form: the men to the back of the bus and the women up front. It is a pretty common occurence that the buses get too crowded and this segregation forms. Amusing to watch.
Today's bus adventure reached a new level of haram
Emily and I were chillin on the bus, sitting behind this woman wearing hijab. And then the bus gets too crowded and a guy gets on and there is no where else to sit, so he sits by the woman in front of us. This guy was quite the slimeball. First he won't stop staring at the woman, but heck, we all have to deal with that. For some reason it seems a bit more ridiculous and haram for a guy to be staring at a woman in hijab than it does for him to leer at me and my scandalous showing of hair. So there he is leering at her and then he decides that he doesn't want to follow the other unspoken law of don't touch a woman if you don't know her. So he's slowly edging closer to her. Then, on the seat in front of each person there is a handle bar (the bus version of an "oh shit" handle). So this guy, to stay balanced I'm sure, grabs hold of the bar in front of the woman instead of the one in front of him. Fine, he's invading her space but not too bad. Slowly he starts inching his arm over into her bubble. And he gets farther and farther and farther. I'm watching the progress from my seat as if it were a sporting event or something, wishing I had popcorn and wondering when the ref was going to throw up the yellow flag. Finally, his arm is completely perpendicular to her chest and right in front of her and he is leaning over onto her, and I'm about to smack him in the face. I know she notices because she keeps glancing at him sideways like "what the fuck is your problem man?" It took her awhile to get up her nerve and by this point he's practically on top of her (or as close as one gets in this country) and she looks over at him, politely but sharply says "low samehit!" (if you please) and kind of pushes his arm away. Then she puts her own arm up to hold on to the handle bar, creating a kind of barrier between the two of them. I wanted to applaud her bravery. It was about freaking time. Seriously, that guy was acting like a pre-pubescent boy.
It was the kind of behavior I expected from the actual pre-pubescent boys that were standing next to me, not the full grown man in front of me. what a joke.
And all I have to say to that is:
HARAM!

Kamleh

haram dot fraud

Author of fake honour killing book exposed in new film

By Paul Tate

AMMAN — Three years after Norma Khouri’s bestselling book on her friend’s honour killing was exposed as a fake, the Jordanian-born writer has taken to the silver screen to clear her name, but her efforts to salvage her reputation spectacularly backfired.

Khouri’s book, Forbidden Love, told the story of her childhood friend Dalia, a Muslim from a conservative family who was murdered by her father after he discovered she was engaged in a secret love affair with a Christian army officer.

The book, published in 2003, proved a big hit, selling half a million copies in 15 countries and turning Khouri into a self-styled champion of women’s rights.

But Khouri’s new found status was short-lived when it transpired that her story was fabricated.

read more here

This is disturbing on a couple of levels, and makes me appreciate journalist Rana Husseini even more. Husseini brought honor killings to attention in Jordan by covering them in the Jordan Times. I've heard her speak and she deals with the topic by speaking very frankly about it as a human rights issue that needs to be addressed, and by Jordanians themselves. At the same time she forestalls the xenophobic attacks on Arab and Muslim society that this issue often fuels by making clear that the people who commit such crimes are not religious or following Islam, and that honor killings are not confined to one religious group, region, or culture; they are known to happen in Christian communities, in southern Europe as well as South America, for example.

What Norma Khouri has done by selling a fabricated story as truth harms the campaign against honor killings, and is a setback for the positive work of people such as Rana Husseini.

P.S.

haram is pronounced "ha-raam"

as in 3aib, as in SHAME ON YOU

Ahlan wa Sahlan a Haram Dot Com!

The purpose of this blog is to serve as an online forum for a few students living and studying abroad in Amman, Jordan, to reflect, share, and otherwise vent regarding our experiences and encounters with ridiculousness and haramness of all sorts. Inshallah we'll also be joined by reps from Haifa and Cairo. HARAM.COM!