What are Jordanians angry at?
It seems to me that we Jordanians are angry at something, something that makes us so furious, but what is it? Seriously what made smiles abandon the Jordanian face?
In the middle of this mysterious state of anger we are looking for someone to expose our anger and spell it on that person. Look closely and you will notice that everybody is staring at you for no reason; it’s like that they are scanning you trying to find that victim to rage in his/her face.
You could be a normal guy wearing very normal clothes with a regular haircut and walking in an ordinary way but still you are the star of that neighborhood, everybody is staring and examining you. Drivers, bystanders, shops owners, kids, old men, women, and even pets they all are looking.
After finding their stress-ball its time to expose the anger, if you are driving and someone cut you off, don’t even think to press car’s horn or object, cause the mistaken driver will start shouting and cursing you even that its their mistake, its like he/she will pull a shoot gun or bazooka and shoot you, you are his/her long-time enemy.
Ibrahim told about his cousin and I felt so bad for him, the law in this country is way too stupid, if anyone through their selves on your car, even if they fall from the sky and landed on your parked car it’s your fault, you are a criminal now.
And this stupid law encouraged Jordanians to leave their children playing and running around in the streets without any monitoring, streets are made for cars not a children playground, not a place for a walk, many times I came across couple of Jordanian men walking in the middle of the street, and when you press the horn they look at the car surprised: its a car!!!!!!!!!
I understand that a child is precious, but if it is really precious you wouldn’t leave him running at night in the street. Now Ibrahim’s cousin is the long-time-waited enemy of that family and will have spend some time in the jail; if not years just because some kid was playing on the highway and his father found it outrages that a car was running on that highway where his kid used to play.
Your life could be screwed up just because you live in Jordan, while you are driving you could be heading to a problem that might destroy your life. Even living in this country can drag you into problems, once I had a neighbor who constantly tried to occupy my parking spot and the problem is that he is a lawyer, a man who is supposed to defend the law not to break it, for no reason he wants to hurt me.
Whether its work related, financial reasons, stressed relations or whatsoever Jordanians are furious and there is no room for forgiveness… I guess.
Do we really hate each other and can’t stand each other?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 11:15 am and is filed under Jazar, Jordan, Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on April 18, 2007 at 1:04 pm Arabi wrote:
“And this stupid law encouraged Jordanians to leave their children playing and running around in the streets without any monitoring,”
If the government builds spacious and accessible gardens for family use, and if the government forces developers to build wide-sidewalks (we are a fucking desert with gazillion empty space for chsrissake), and if public schools offer after hours activities for children, and if community clubs open up and keep children busy,… but the fucking government bastards prefer to spend money on making their villas spacious for their kids and to live in areas with fancy gardens and send their kids to schools who can afford extra curricular activities, etc. remember the nice park that is now hows to the stupid towers behind Amra Hotel. OF ALL THE FUCKING EMPTY SPACE WHY THE FUCK THERE IN THE MIDDEL OF CONGESTION AND ON A LAND THAT RESIDENTS USED TO FREQUENT SO OFTEN. FUCKING AMMAN MUNICIPALITY. WHAT PREDATORS. IT’S ALL ABOUT KICKBACKS.
Man I visited so many Arab countries, rich and poor, and in every community there is a garden in the middle that’s guarded, cleaned, and available for community use. Jordan used to be this way up until the 80s and then what the fuck happened? Look at Lwebdeh and how community friendly it used to be. Now the government fuckers are just turning all these community spaces into construction sites and leaving some narrow strip of grass open and they call it a garden just so when they have to submit reports and go to international conference they can lie and count them as a gardens when in fact it’s a tiny parcel of land hardly enough for kids to throw a ball. fuck those government retards. fuck the greedy developers.
SO PLEEEEEEZEEE STOP BLAMING JORDANIANS FOR THEIR GOVERNMENT’S FUCKUPS!!
on April 18, 2007 at 1:26 pm XYZEE wrote:
Let me get this straight. You are sympathetic to a guy who ran over a kid, when he had the full power to drive slowly and avoid the killing, yet you blame the dead kid and his family. If you were a judge, you probably would send the murdered child’s family to jail. And for the driver, that poor tortured child killer, you would probably send him to to get counseling for the emotional trauma this criminal child caused him. You know, I have met some nice Jordanians and some interesting Jordanians on the web. May be JO magazine or Living Well should do a piece on drivers who are victims of stray children. May be we should start an association called Innocent Drivers Against Stupid Children. Jeeeezeee man.
on April 18, 2007 at 1:27 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Arabi I know about the gang that control the government, but the municipality started during the last few years to establish fully-fledged parks all around Amman like AlHussein Park and many others in Marka and eastern Amman; everyone can enjoy if.
Children need supervision from their parents inside houses so they don’t hurt themselves, what if we were talking about streets.
on April 18, 2007 at 2:27 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Or lets stop driving cars in Amman and make streets playgrounds for children.
The point is if the driver was speeding (meaning he was driving faster than the street’s speed) or drunk he is criminal but if he was not speeding and not drunk, totally aware then its not his mistake, while you are driving and there are parking cars any kid can jump between these cars and you hurt him even if you were driving at 40 km/h.
on April 18, 2007 at 2:43 pm XYZZ wrote:
I am one of those angry and narrow minded Jordanians. Angry when I see callous and cruel people like your friend and his child-murdering friend try to justify the crime of running over and killing a child. I am narrow minded because I would make running over a child, intentionally or otherwise, a crime with mandatory life sentence. And for every child killed on the streets, I would also jail the mayor of the city for 6 months then bar him from any public office for life, because an incompetent SOB does not deserve to make a living off the taxes of people whose children he is getting killed because of his bad leadership. Actually I would go higher than mayor but I don’t want to get killed or tortured for making such statements. And if I were in charge, and if the only way to stop people like your friend from killing children is to close the roads and ban driving, then be it. I would not even stop here. I would make it a crime to utter words of sympathy for child killers. thats’ more useful than criminalizing holocaust denials. If your friend was standing right next to me when he started rationalizing the murder of the child, I would tell him in his face that he is a fucking retard.
on April 18, 2007 at 2:49 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Why don’t you sue Mercedes-Benz for manufacturing a car that can speed and kill children, let them make cars that doesn’t exceed 50 km/h so that children can play in the middle of the street.
on April 18, 2007 at 3:35 pm Mama wrote:
I sincerely doubt your child-murdering friend was driving at a reasonable speed when he killed the poor child. There is an invention called breaks which is known to stop cars before they run into things.
There is something fundamentally wrong with people who defend criminally reckless drivers who run over children. I bet your friend’s father is a high-ranking government official. Because most of them exhibit the same level of sensitivity and compassion. The higher the rank, the more callous.
on April 18, 2007 at 3:52 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
When someone jumps in front of your car out of nowhere by the time you press on the break and the car stops its too late.
Those people are normal people trying to live in this stupid town.
on April 18, 2007 at 6:23 pm Mohanned wrote:
Samer,
I totaly agree with you, the child is not responsible for his acts, and the guy who ran him didn’t mean to do it, maybe its the parents and the driver fault, but when driving in neighbourhoods in amman I always look around 360 degrees, it is the most stressful experience one can have..
it also the fault of the stupid system that didn’t build park for the kids..
on April 18, 2007 at 10:07 pm Nido wrote:
govt built “AlHussein Park and many others in Marka and eastern Amman; everyone can enjoy if.”
bullshit! the whole point of neighborhood and community parks (the way amman was zoned until early 80s) is that at any time the kid can walk to the neighborhood park to play with other kids. kids want to play everyday. it’s absurd to expect all parents in amman to drive their kids daily to school then drive them to a park to play. amman, outside of rich areas, is the most child and senior citizen hostile capitol in the Arab world. ohh! but we are cleaner. whoopee! ok for children and old people to get run over by your friends but not ok to clear sidewalks and make room for neighborhood parks. what a retarded government. 7′ara 3ala haik 7okoomeh. from corruption to incredibly dumb planning and spending priorities. But that’s what happens when people with low IQ run the country. I tip my hats to fellow Jordanians. They managed to build a decent country despite the government thugs.
on April 18, 2007 at 11:06 pm Yugi wrote:
There are so many stupid laws in this country, but our traffic code is the worst in the world… I’ve myself seen 5-year old boys walking alone in the streets, the problem is not that children are ‘criminals’ as someone commented, in fact, drivers are not completely guilty in these situations, the law should punish the parents first, they are directly responsible of anything can happen to their sons if left alone, it’s too easy to threw the children in the street and blame on other people… Aside from children, in other countries pedestrians are responsible and, for example, they are fined if they don’t cross over zebra markings.
I think that providing fair laws, to force people (pedestrians and drivers) to respect rules of the road, and make several pedestrian safety campaigns, is more realistic than that foolish thing of “closing the roads and banning driving”.
This is a link of the highway law in UK, it shows some rules for pedestrians, are they applicable here?
on April 19, 2007 at 12:14 am Gamel wrote:
in a civilized society the burden is on 1) adults when children are involved 2) drivers when pedestrians are involved. But in jordan we have people who want to reverse that because they want to turn the streets of jordan into their personal race tracks. Before traffic laws we need civility and compassion, so when a child is run over and killed, we sympathize with the parents not call for their punishment and then demand compassion for the killer driver. what twisted logic.
on April 19, 2007 at 12:55 am Samer Marzouq wrote:
Well, if you have a baby will you leave him/her around electricity or a hot iron? If they hurt themselves while they were inside the house who will you blame?
If a child got hit by a car I guess his parents are part of this incident. If the car driver is accused for carelessness I guess child’s parents are more careless than the driver for leaving their child in the middle of street without supervision.
My question where were the parents of that child when he was hit the car?
on April 19, 2007 at 9:45 am Mohanned wrote:
1) adults when children are involved
2) drivers when pedestrians are involved.
From this we can conclude logicaly that adults are involved when children is in danger, but who are those adults?
I would say the parents, because I wouldn’t let my kids out without supervision..But if the driver was careless then he must be punished to the toughest extent..It a care issue on both sides the parents and the driver, no twisted logic or anything it is just plain facts..
on April 19, 2007 at 9:54 am Samurai wrote:
you have got to be kidding me samer.
electricity or hot iron are not known to have the intelligence to shut themselves off when they see a baby coming. a Jordanian car driver has the intelligence (we hope) to avoid running over a child and to drive at a speed of his choosing.
on April 19, 2007 at 10:14 am Samurai wrote:
your logic sounds like the israelis when they shoot and kill Palestinian children. they say why did their parents leave their children go out.
I don’t knew of a family that locks its children up or keeps an eye on them 24 hours a day. not here and not any where. you can’t put a child on a leach or lock them up like a dog in a small apartment.
but what we hope for is that we live in a civilized place (which we don’t) where ADULT drivers have enough intelligence and decency to drive carefully so in situations where old people or children have to cross the road those drivers slow down instead of speeding up to cut off the pedestrians. god forbid the driver has to slow down and break his acceleration.
i have seen many pedestrian get run over in jordan and in ALL cases it was the fault of the driver. but I am sure your friend is the exception
I never met a murder who admitted guilt, lest of all a child killer. i say they lock your friend for life so he becomes and example for other jordanian drivers. as for the parents, if there are any lessons, i am sure the loss of their child is enough.
I am a bit troubled by your defense of a criminal driver and your attempt to shift the blame on the parents. I can only guess that you are hiding the other part of the story. Let me guess what are you hiding. did you or your friend use the “hang the parents” argument to scare the family to drop the law suit against the killer? is this what it’s all about? if this is the case, you guys need help, but the sort only god can offer.
on April 19, 2007 at 12:16 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Thanks Mohannad for this resonable comment, but it seems that some people just want to argue for no reason.
So Samurai you want to leave your kids playing in the streets while there are what you called “lots of careless criminals driving their killing machines in those streets” and then when your kids got hurt you will ask for a lifetime jail for that criminal, which will not bring your kids back, is that what you really want?
To me I prefere to lock them inside the house rather than losing them.
on April 21, 2007 at 10:23 am Bilal wrote:
A friend of mine hit a man on a highway in another Arab country, and the man died immediatly, when the police came, they just made an accedent report, they calculated the aproximate car speed from the tire marks on the road, took my friend to the station to take his statement, then they released him, why? hebecause the man who died was crossing a highway, a place where CARS are supposed to be driven, not a place for some one who is running in a suicidal way trying to cut the street.
While in Jordan if you are driving on the airport highway, where the speed limit is 100, and you are driving at 80, which is less than the allowed speed, and a child from those families who are picnicing on the sides of the road ran on the street and you hit him and killed him, it is your fault, why? you are not speeding, you are not drunk, you did not do anything wrong, while on the other hand this child parents did a CRIME by letting this child playing few meters away from the road without keeping an eye on him to make sure he will not get himself hurt, but if this happened, you will be the criminal in the eyes of the law, and you will have to ask for mercy from those careless parents so you do not spend the rest of your life in jail, why? because the law has a really big problem, they see the driver is wrong no matter what the situation is, and this is really wrong.
Now if someone goes on top of a building and through himself and he died, can his parents sue the owner of the building for that? Off course not, because the man was commiting a suicide, and I do not see any difference between a man who is jumping from the top of a building and between a man who is running infront of the cars on a highway while few meters away there is pedestrian bridge where he can cut the street safely.
on April 21, 2007 at 1:11 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
I totally agree Bilal, unfortunately people here in Jordan prefer to let their kids playing in the middle of the street risking the lives of innocent kids and the future of a person, rather than paying a little bit extra attention on their kids or while they are crossing the street.
on May 4, 2007 at 8:06 am Hala wrote:
I do not think kids should be left alone to roam the streets and be in danger. What I know is: You have kids, take care of them.
I do not think the driver was speeding, maybe he did hit the breaks, but you know, it might have been too late. Let us not forget the stress of the situation! Again, it is not the kid’s fault, he is only a kid. But where were his parents?
The most important thing here is: Where the hell is the government and why are they not abiding by the law? This should be solved in court! Since when do such matters get to be handled by 3asha2er? I know they have the power and the authoriy, but it is not fair! This actually shows me how wastat work in Jordan. Can someone tell me how things would have been if the driver himself were of another 3asheereh? What a mess!
on May 4, 2007 at 3:15 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Thanks Hala for your comment. Its a big problem but what can be done this is the current situation in Jordan and I guess the government is not willing to change it.
on May 28, 2007 at 4:00 pm Radi Radi wrote:
The law in Jordan is different from any other country, here there is no way that a pedestrian can be blamed for anything. Kids can go to the desert highway where the speed is 120 and jump in front of cars and they will most certainly get killed.
The cars’ drivers will be held accountable even if they were doing 80 on a 120 road. 80 is a hard speed to brake from.
The law empowers the family tribes to demand ridiculous amounts of money from people who did nothing but obey the law.
About gardens and streets, the municipality of Amman recently announced “some” new parks and removal of trees from sidewalks. They also announced they will add more zebra crossings and bridges and tunnels for pedestrians.
I understand that this may help. People have no way of crossing streets in Jordan, there is a tunnel or bridge for pedestrian only every a couple of kilometers.
Statistics in Jordan show that Hit and Run in Pedestrians is much higher than most of the world, it is because you will be blamed, unlike anywhere else where it would resort to commonsense and law.
Still I don’t think that kids should be monitored 24/7. i wasn’t monitored and I turned up great, I had areas to go play in though.
Before you start attacking me think of this, you are driving at a speed of 40 KM/h at a street that allows you 60Km/h and a kid from the side walk jumps to run and cross the road, it takes you 0.5 second to press the brake which amounts for 5 meters and then the car slows to around thirty in the next 2 meters, you hit the kid at THIRTY km and he hits his head to the floor and dies.
Who is to blame, it cant be the man doing the speed limit, and it can’t be the kid who saw the car was 7 meters away and saw it was relatively slow and thought the driver could stop. it couldn’t be the family, they didn’t have money to put him in a private school or club, and his “7ara” has no empty spaces for him to play because of the recent construction boom.
It was definetly the municipality who didn’t provide enough crosswalks.
on May 28, 2007 at 10:52 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Radi I agree, it is really devastating but this is the situation in Jordan. That guy I talked about is in prison for 2 months now, because a kid hit his car from the side at night on a highway. The driver didn’t even see the kid who was running and hit the car from the side.
Anyway thanks for your comment, and may Allah bless us all.