On The Palestine in Mind (BAPD)

This is my first Blog about Palestine Day post, and as I honor it, I honor the memory of past generations of my family: those who lived and died in Palestine, and those who despite leaving it forever physically; never really did, nor did she leave them.

My Palestine is a promised land; to me, not to those who claim it by divine intervention or historic precedence proven with systemic ethnic cleansing, it's a promise I bear in my blood cells, in my genes, despite the time and space between us, the borders and soldiers that separate us, and despite her forced estrangement from her offspring. But like all mothers, she instinctively recognizes her children; from their gaze, their smile, and their ancient pride, even if they never saw her face; the one made to wear a hundred and one masks of foreign identities, to hide her angelic beauty.

I've always felt, even believed in a romantic mythological way, that my father's family, like all families upon their forced mass exodus from Palestine, had their collective baptism in the Jordan as they crossed East, an accidental but none the less willed blessing from a God whose compassion and wisdom surpasses our own comprehension and understanding, He blessed them in their time of misery, and in their patient hope of eventual return, promising them inner peace; a peace I saw in the eyes of my grandparents, as they grew older, wiser, and more patient.

My Palestine never was a political game of affinity, but rather a loyalty of blood, like mine to Jordan, as the blood that runs through me is like the River Jordan, running through one land. I never saw myself as one or the other, I'm both, and they unite in me, like they do in millions, and any chauvinistic attempt to separate me from myself, from one side or the other, is an attempt to kill me, as I'll never split in two, even if some among us have split personalities, making foes of family, and warriors of windmills, chasing shadows of imaginary enemies that only exist within them, neither side belongs to them, nor they to either.

As I mark this day of displacement, I honor people who died in their fight to prevent the replacement of peace with peril, and right with might; young and old: Palestinians, Jordanians, Arabs, Muslims and Christians, who believed that this Holy Land is where the heart should lay, where the head should rest; Forever. And where their lives began as they ended, surrounded by angels in flight and prophets in worship, confirming that Palestine is not a relic of a distant past; but a Future as certain as sunrise after darkness and sunshine after rain, and declaring with heavenly praise, that the noun "Palestinian"; will never refer to an extinct existence, but one as constant and enduring as time itself.

And as I mark this day of displacement, I remember those who witnessed it, and lived it until they passed: the little girl who was old enough to be my grandmother, and her rock; my grandfather. And for them both, and with them, their Palestine and mine; I recite a prayer.

On The Hidden Laws of Probable Outcome

Sometimes, I tend to see life as a train ride, you travel across valleys and plains, stopping at stations along the way, meeting new people, strangers who might become friends, and friends who might have become strangers.

What amazes me most, is how strangers become acquaintances, and how acquaintances become strangers; a philosophical loop, that explores the edges of human behaviour, and defies even the simplest rational discourse of reason, but that's one of the wonders of humanity, to say the least.

When you're somewhere you've never been before, it's like people living there were imaginary until you got there, they didn't exist to you until you really felt their existence, until you saw them with your own eyes, heard them with your own ears, even smelled and touched their surroundings with your own nose and hands, even if you knew of their actual existence through other -non imaginary- people to you. But until that moment of time, when the imaginary crosses paths with the actual, and through it, the stranger crosses the thin line to becoming familiar, until that rendez-vous of realities, the two independent worlds of existence are nothing but possible interpretations of actual being, with the influence of imagination, which shapes them the way we please, rather than the way they really are.

London, to me was an imaginary place, until I went there, Paris was as well, until I stood on top of the Eiffel tower, and strolled along the river Seine, and listened to that beautiful French music coming out of those small cafés. Even Amman has an imaginary side, as it's full of strangers, who despite their apparent familiarity are nothing but imaginary passers by, alongside my train ride, as they go in the opposite direction, to their own "somewhere yet unknown".

The interesting twist is that, even if this rendez-vous of realities turns out to be just a short stop at a foreign station along the train ride to somewhere yet unknown; life goes on, and that process of transformation: from stranger to acquaintance to stranger again, that round trip, would in turn become closer to an act of imagination, as time passes, even if it was very real -according to all the laws of physics- due to its short lifespan, and the striking example of this, is the life of a butterfly, which has a lasting effect on everything and everyone in its surrounding, but not a long enough life to prove its one-time existence, it's a corollary relationship of the purest form.

The train ride of life marches on though, taking you somewhere else, to make other strangers who still don't exist to you, possibly the most familiar people in your coming life; the one still unknown to you, to the point of it being as imaginary as that passing butterfly. Those, my friends; are the hidden laws of probable outcome; and we all, live by them.

My -that- Jordan

My way of celebrating Jordan hasn't changed much since I posted about it on the first Blog about Jordan Day last year, but this year, I'm wondering why Jordan seems to age much faster than it should, as signs of early dementia are creeping into the collective psyche.

See Jordan, isn't a cabinet position, and loyalty to Jordan, shouldn't be measured by how many government positions are held by a clan, a city, or a cardinal direction. Jordan isn't a farm, not a principality, it's not a bank or an ATM machine, not a supermarket, not a postcard, it's not a hotel, and it certainly isn't a never ending chain of intellectual experiments, I'll leave the corresponding examples to each category to your board game leisurely pleasure.

I'm still seeing those children celebrating the opening of new shiny schools on the edge of the desert with state of the art internet connections and brand new computers, but with no running water in their own homes; and yet, their minds and hearts only belong to that desert, and her secrets. I still see the little girl in a small village combing her hair into pigtails and walking to school every day, and in her sleep dreams of living in the distant utopia called Amman; and in the morning, lilies bloom in her path as it's blessed with her daily pilgrimage, and her eyes brighten up at the sight of the flag waving over her school. I still see people in transit, their belonging is subject to the fashionable -yet failed- rules of the market, and despite their apparent -elaborate- physical existence, those are invisible to Jordan, as it is to them, despite their same elaborate physical existence on its soil.

My Jordan isn't that of hesitance or denial, it's not the hollow skeleton of modernity or pragmatism, it's one that knows the value of belonging: to its past, to its present, and to its future. And those -contrary to the modern interpretations of old theories- aren't subject to special prices or two for one offers, as nature teaches us that the highest of all trees, is that with the deepest roots, and roots; go in every direction, without looking in a compass.

As it's a celebration of Jordan, I bring you a rare recording of a musical play made in 1977 about the Jordan I know, it's called Birjas; the play and lyrics are by Haider Mahmoud, and the music is by the Lebanese composer Zaki Nasif, with the incorporation of Jordanian folkloric songs and tunes, some of you might recognize a piece among them, or maybe more, Enjoy.

On The Arrogance in Ignorance

"Turning from the attributes of God to the actions of God, where he delineates his view of creation, Ibn Rushd in his Tahafut al-Tahafut clearly deals with the charge against the philosophers' doctrine on the eternity of the physical universe in his polemic against al-Ghazzali.

Ghazzali perceived that the philosophers had misunderstood the relationship between God and the world, especially since the Qur’an is clear on divine creation. Ghazzali, sustaining the Asharite emphasis on divine power, questioned why God, being the ultimate agent, could not simply create the world ex nihilo and then destroy it in some future point in time? Why did there need to be some obstacle to explain a delay in God’s creative action? In response to this, Ghazzali offered a number of lengthy proofs to challenge the philosopher’s assertions.

Ibn Rushd, merely replied that the "Eternal" works differently than the "Temporal". As humans, we can willfully decide to perform some action and then wait a period of time before completing it. For God, on the other hand, there can be no gap between decision and action; for what differentiates one time from another in God’s mind?

Also, what physical limits can restrict God from acting? Ibn Rushd, in the first discussion, writes about how Ghazzali confused the definition of eternal and human will, making them univocal. For humans, the will is the faculty to choose between two options, and it is desire that compels the will to choose. For God, however, this definition of will is meaningless. God cannot have desire because that would entail change within the eternal when the object of desire was fulfilled. Furthermore, the creation of the world is not simply the choice between two equal alternatives, but a choice of existence or non-existence.

Finally, if all the conditions for action were fulfilled, there would not be any reason for God not to act. God, therefore, being omniscient and omnipotent would have known from the eternal past what he had planned to create, and without limit to his power, there would be no condition to stop the creation from occurring."

This discussion, took place a thousand years ago, in Cordoba, in Arabic, and under the rule of Islam; not the one of negative stereotypes of the 21st century, but that of the virtue of seeking knowledge and enlightenment, even about the nature of God.
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The title is not directed at Them Then, but at Us Now.

Jordan and Palestine in The Early 1900s

I've had some photographs taken in Jordan and Palestine in the early 1900s sitting in a file on my pc for a while, and I've thought of printing them and framing them to hang them at home in Amman, which I will, but I also wanted to hang them on my blog's wall.

The photos were taken in the period between 1900 and 1912 and include photographs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa, Nablus, Amman, Jarash, Petra and probably Hebron. You can see the Dome of the Rock, with its dome still made of wood, before it was covered with lead, and later with gold.

Enjoy.

p.s: Try watching it in full screen and in high quality, it's a much nicer mental trip.

إشتقنالك

On Hope in Change

The ripple effect of Obama's rise to power is still taking its effect on people around the world, certainly in parts of the world where as one blogger put it, the legacy of the administration of he whose name we shall not mention caused much destitution and pain in the past 8 years.

There's a flare of light within us all, that seeks betterment, to ourselves -in its basic selfish form- and to those in our immediate sphere of existence, and beyond, since their betterment; or its reactions, would reach us in its eventuality, as the idea of 6 degrees of separation suggests.

There's a mysterious power that charges our souls into looking forward to change, even if that change is someone else's; it neither belongs to us nor do we affect it, but the mere feeling of hope in the possibilities of change transcends time and place, and is passed on around the world to be picked up by people whose need for change might even be more acute than that of those causing it.

The hope in change is an underpinning sentiment in human behaviour; people's lives and their fates are often driven by the hope in change, as Hope and Change go hand in hand when the disappointment in the monotony of the present suffocates our free will, even if our free will is tamed willingly under the rules of each and every one's own social contract with the rest of society. And often, Change is what we fear, as the Arab proverb suggests: What -or who- you know is better than what you don't know, a damning thought for repression and surrender to the present tense however frustrating, while Time in turn, in its basic physical state, never seizes to change.

This conclusion is reached as a result of the taming of Hope, the shrinking of the collective outlook of the future due to continuous disappointments in the perceived Hope with every dawning Change in our history, for the better part of the last Millennium. What remains in the end though, is the raw feeling of Hope in Change, anywhere and to anyone; as it sets an example to those among us who are either suspicious, pessimistic, or unwilling to believe in its inevitability, bearing in mind that Change; in its collective form, is only possible when Change in its individual form is achieved.