Estrella

I write this message after I recently resigned from the State Department. I served as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar for the past two years. For 12 years, I have tried to attain where I am now only to realize after the fact that being a diplomat is not what I really want to do.   In the end, I must thank the pandemic for helping me get back to my true passion: writing. During my time when I was working from home in the summer of 2020, I had a lot of extra time for writing. I began regularly journaling, writing fiction, and even joined a virtual writing group. I finally felt in my element. I knew what I was supposed to be doing. But how did I get so off-course from my original plan of being a writer? It began at the crossroads of decisions in my senior year of high school.   How It Began   In the Spring of 2009, when I was deciding on colleges and majors, I watched how the Great Recession and the electronic revolution forced many major ne...

Born and raised in Jerusalem in the second half of the twentieth century could confuse one’s identity. Palestinian versus Israeli. Muslim Arab versus Muslim Israeli. The longest and most fought-over city in the world was the location of the film Miral . Miral was the name for the red flower that grew on the side of the road in Jerusalem. This flower was a witness to lots of the pain and change in the lands of Israel and Palestine like Miral, the film’s protagonist. Image from Google Images Miral was born to a mother who underwent sexual abuse as a child and an imam father who loved her mother despite of her pain and addictions. Miral came of age in an all-girls school. The school was the product of one woman’s desire to help orphaned Palestinian children during the 1948 war. Each subsequent war brought more orphans and more girls. After Miral lost her mother, her father decided to send her to the girls school for her education and well-being because her ...

I have started watching films based on the war motif. I kicked off the war series with Red Tails , a heroic portrait of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew in combat for the U.S. against the Nazis during WWII. Real characters of men came to life as well as the hurt of segregation and racism and the pain of losing men in war. But war is hell, and my second film showed a much more visual and guttural graphic of that saying. In the Land of Blood and Honey was Angelina Jolie’s first directed film, but I know that it won’t be her last. As much as Jolie is embraced and embedded into American Hollywood, her underlying skin breathes for international conflicts, hoping to bring peace to them. In another life, I see her being a diplomat, an activist and a reporter. In this life, her efforts to meet with other distressed people in the developing world in international conflicts has made her all three.   The Bosnian War was noted as “the worst war in European histo...

Tomorrow, I will leave Jordan and the Middle East, but insha’Allah (God-willing) - not forever.   I have developed so many friendships and bonds with people from my program as well as with my host family.   Life will not be the same without returning home every day to see my two host sisters’ lovely faces or entering my host family's home to find a large hot bowl of ‘maglooba’ (a Jordanian rice dish with chicken) waiting for me. Although I leave Jordan with many souvenirs, I feel that I am lacking one intangible aspect of my trip that I wish I had better cultivated while here: more relationships with Jordanians.   In the Middle East, it is very hard at times to talk to natives, especially if you are female.   It is a cultural taboo to talk to men other than your relatives, and Jordanian women are usually not as open to talking to foreigners, except the few liberal Jordanian women.   When I do return to Jordan, I hope that I can work or...

It's dusk in Jordan, and the young boys are out in the street with a football, kicking it around.   You catch one as he the moves the ball in and about his feet effortlessly, taunting his opponents to take it from him.   You go up to his father and ask a very important question: "Which is better: Barcelona or Real Madrid?"   He responds, "Barcelona, of course."   This is the language that all common men speak in this country - in this region - in this world when they can't speak any other common language: the international language of football. I live with a host family in which the father is the goalie coach for the number one football team in Jordan: Al-Wehdat.   Football was his childhood and is his adulthood, and it will be his future.   If there is something that brings all men together in the Middle East, it's football.   My host dad is also the head coach for one of the police department divisions in Jordan, so he gets t...

Last week, I spent seven days in Istanbul, Turkey with my dad.   For a moment, I thought I was in Western Europe, and I was literally on the European continental side most of the time while I was there.   Yet, the tall, winding minarets of the mosques reminiscent from the Ottoman Empire and its magnanimity reminded me that this place – Turkey – was different from Western Europe, most assuredly because of it’s dominant religion – Islam.   We met Muslim Turks that drank wine as well who prayed daily.   This behavior can also be found in other Islamic culture states, but it seemed to be more accepted in this state.   Turkey is 98% Muslim, but they are also very nationalist and proud of their Ottoman history and former President Ataturk's achievements in secularizing the nation. This new culture wasn't Middle Eastern culture but not Western culture either.   That's the beauty of engaging and encountering a new culture – it changes y...

Recently, I visited Istanbul, Turkey, and I committed a cultural faux pas of extending my hand to a Muslim man before he extended his hand to me.  I was with my dad in a carpet shop, browsing as a tourist, and I became so comfortable to extend my hand to shake one of the shop owners’ hands after he shook my dad’s hand to be confronted by the comment, “I can’t.  I pray.”  I understood completely why he did not shake my hand, but of all places for this to happen, I did not expect it to be in Turkey. This cultural faux pas was not a major cultural faux pas, but it took me aback, especially in such a secular country like Turkey.  I had been living in Jordan for the past three months, and I had been such on guard and a cultural awareness of appropriate and haraam (forbidden) customs in the country and religion.  Yet, when I became a tourist, I seemed to forget cultural mannerisms in a new country especially which was contributed to the fact that I did n...

Honor: it is what holds together tribes in Jordan as well in other parts of the Middle East.   It is also the reason that some kill for.   According to Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini, honor crimes are reasons for male family members to persecute and kill their female relatives for dishonoring their family.   It is in a woman’s virginity and modesty that the family honor lies.   When that specific honor is violated, then the woman’s family believes that the honor is lost. Honor crimes are not particular to any culture or religion.   There are many cases of honor crimes that happen in Arab and Islamic society, which is largely a tribal society tracing back before the time of Islam.   In Jordan, however, approximately 20 honor killings happen annually.   That’s a small number compared to the hundreds of honor crimes that happen in Yemen or in Turkey.   Many of these crimes are not mentioned to the authorities actually bec...

People in the Middle East are concerned about the future of democracy and the economy in this region.   So are Americans, and Jordanians see this.   A main topic in today's news in Jordan is what is the U.S. going to do about the rising tension between Israel and Iran and the escalating conflict in Syria?   Both issues are actually interlinked. Many Jordanians look on as the U.N. does little to intervene in Syria because of Russia and China’s choice to veto certain provisions and actions.   Yet, every day more and more refugees from Syria pour into northern Jordan, and Jordanians become more concerned as the conflict heats up between Israel and Iran, making threats at each other of bombings. Jordan earned the nickname “a rock in a hard place” because of its politalic stability, even in the midst of the Arab Spring, and its regional location between other politically unstable and threatened places.   At this time Jordanians can only s...

Some say that it's okay to be who you are wherever you are.  You shouldn't have to change your identity for the sake of societal pressures.  This expression is a product of Western culture, but the world is changing, and there more circumstances of "tolerance" in places outside Western culture.  What I would like to discuss in this topic is the acceptance of and non-discrimination against people that identify with the term LGBT or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender in Jordan, particularly Amman.  While some believe that homosexuality does not exist in the Islamic world, it does, and many people are living their lives in an “in-between” life here in Jordan.  They are no instances of "gay bashings" or "violence against gays" because the subject is not talked about in Jordanian society.  Yet, many of those who are gay can continue to live and work without discrimination in Amman as long as they do not openly flaunt or speak on their ...

My CIEE college counterparts consist of students from many U.S. states and a few parts of the world.  Most of us have the same goal of learning Arabic and becoming versed in U.S diplomatic relations with the Middle East.  More than half of the students live in a home-stay residence like mine while the other half live in apartments.  This type of living is like the high school experience where one spends most of his time at school and then returns to his house after school and activities before curfew. Many of my college counterparts in my host country are students ranging from Jordanians to Asians to Europeans and other people from Islamic states.  Although I do not take classes with University of Jordan students, my observations have indicated that they are very academic-focused but also sociable and willing to make new friends. University of Jordan students who are Jordanian seem to be very focused on academics, but their religion and fam...