26 March, 2006

The Chinese girl


She wasn't like all women I had ever met; her black hair was like the summer night, her dark eyes were like the forest in a rainy day, with long eyelashes like the wings of a dragon, if she smiled she could kill a thousand brave knights, if she spoke she could bring them back to life, she was whole like the tree, evergreen and tall, the sky was her home, and the ocean her bed.

I never planned to meet her, it was kind of serendipity, the first time I met her was in a local film festival, she attended as part of the Chinese Embassy representatives, she was introduced to me as the translator of the Ambassador.

I started talking to her, drawn to her because of her sincerity, and innocence, I enjoyed listening to her, she was speaking English all the time and some strange words, although I didn't know any Chinese, it sounded like Chinese to me, she told me how much she wanted to visit historical places in Jordan, I offered her my services, and she hesitantly accepted, she seemed happy, then suddenly she looked like someone who was sailing in the Chinese ocean, with a wrecked ship, expecting the unexpected.

It was Saturday, I waited for her for an hour, I might be the one, who came one hour earlier, and finally she came, I took her to Petra, but she didn't enjoyed it much, she always seemed drifted away, I tried to make her happy, but she seemed sad, after the long day I promised to take her to visit Jerash, but to my surprise she asked me if she could visit Jabal Amman, I asked her to make sure if I had heard what she was trying to say, "excuse me!" I asked, she asked again, Jabal Amman, but it's not a historical place, I said, she said that she knew what she wanted, so I took her there, she was looking for something there, we were both in the car, moving around the place, knowing nothing about where we were heading, or what we were looking for, like we lost our memories, I stopped the car, and asked her, where exactly she wanted to go, she said that she didn't know, something weird was happening there, what was I doing there?, in the middle of nowhere, with someone I don't know, I didn't know what to do.

She began crying, I tried to calm her down, but she couldn't stop, she suddenly became a woman who was crying without being able to control herself, I told her that I knew the place she wanted to see, I was lying, but I had no other choice, I took her to all places I know about in Jabal Amman, she screamed while I was driving in a narrow street, she said be careful there was a little cat in the street, at that moment she told me that she was looking for her parents house, where she used to live a long time ago, at first I couldn't believe her, but when she repeated what she was saying in Arabic, I believed her, but I couldn't believe that she was Jordanian, I told her that she looked Chinese to the bone, she smiled, and said yes, she was a Jordanian, who lived in a Chinese body.

She told me her story; she used to live with her parents in Jabal Amman, but because of her Chinese eyes and look, all people she knew thought she was Chinese, their neighbors, the students at her school, and even the pass byres, all stared at her as she was an alien who came from unknown planet, she hated herself, her mother wished she died before she saw her, she couldn't look at herself in the mirror, since she was a little child she decided to become Chinese, God created her Chinese why would she be something else, from that moment she started the journey to the unknown, she learned Chinese, and successfully had a scholarship to china to study Chinese language at university, she lived all her life a strange in a strange body, when she came home she worked for the Chinese Embassy, and since then she lost her identity, lost who she was, she confessed all that to me, she couldn't bare, but she was still crying.

That was the story of the Chinese girl, who is now the mother of my two children, a daughter and a son, who are also Chinese, but who are not afraid of who they are, or how they look, they have many friends at school, and they like being different.

11 March, 2006

Um Mohammad's dream



After a long working day, one thinks of few things, or even can't think at all, it was 7:00 pm, I badly needed to go home, and have a warm meal, I did the last minute usual checking, making sure all computers, printers, and lights had been turned off, before I headed to the hallway where the rest of my colleagues were preparing to go home too.

We were about to leave when a pretty blue-eyed young woman was shyly approaching us, hesitant she was, looked like something was on her mind or she was trying to take a decision, the moment I set my eyes on her, my heart started jumping, and the blood of my body rushed into my head, unbelievable! She was the one, the angel whom Um Mohammad told my mother about, oh my God! Could Um Mohammad be right, I didn't believe her before how could I do now? Damn! What on earth made me want to believe; Um Mohammad said she was tall, blue-eyed, and blonde, the more I looked at her the more I became sure she was the one, I couldn't move my eyes off her, there was something magical about her, I hadn't felt like that before, I was wrapped in sweeping pleasure, and joy.

She softly said something in broken Arabic; we couldn't get what she was trying to say, and she apparently noticed that, so instead she spoke in English, at that moment I was like a brave lion who jumped to rescue his lioness, unable to hide my blushed face, my stumbling words which came out of my mouth were hard to be deciphered, she noticed my embarrassment, she smiled, at the same time she was looking at the floor, before she turned to ask someone else trying to save me, quickly I answered her before any one could blink an eye, but she ignored my answer, so she asked one of my colleagues again, ignoring my existence, or at least it was how I perceived that, I got angry, Um Mohammad must be right, but that wasn't working.

Um Mohammad our neighbor told my mother that she had a dream that I would get married to a blonde, blue-eyed young woman, my mother told me that Um Mohammad's dreams always came true, what?! Ironically I asked to my mother, it seems that the young woman wasn't the same one in Um Mohammad's dream, but she ought to be, I was sure, the young woman had another question to ask, I did as I did before, I answered her before any one could, so she thanked us, and simply lift me thinking about Um Mohammad's dream, at least I realized that she was wrong this time, her dream hadn't come true as my mother told me.

We should live to make our dreams come true, and not the other way to wait for our dreams to find us.

05 March, 2006

Mind vs. Proactivity group

When I first thought of establishing the "Proactivity Group blog", the only goal was to start writing about Proactivity as a way of living, because without accepting responsibility about our lives, we will be like the leaf in the wind, but as all know nothing goes as planned, here I'm changing what I had once thought would be a brilliant idea.

Today I don't want to write about Proactivity, I want to write about something else, about us, the human beings, the motives behind our behavior, as a beginner in the world of blogging I thought it would be easier than what I discovered later, it is only writing, there is nothing easier than writing, I admit now its not as I thought, how naïve I'm! Until now it is not what I want to write about, it is how we people change over night, yes over night, we all live in a world full of distractions, which definitely affect us, more than we affect the world itself.

Let me now recount my story, my dear bloggers, when I started blogging, there was a dream as the force that drives me to write, a dream of changing the world, the world that I know about, a dream without boundaries, believing that a dream can make miracles, I started blogging, my first posts were simple, after a few posts I thought that I have achieved something great, at that time I haven't begun visiting JordanPlanet.net yet, or reading for the most famous bloggers there, but after I finished reading an article in JO magazine, about Jordanian blogs, my life was about to change, it became a daily routine to read my favorite blogs every morning, only then I began to change myself.

Never thought that reading blogs would change my motives, I thought basics were hard to be changed, unfortunately even the basics were about to change, all that began when I started visiting "Mind blog", I began to like the way the author of that blog writes, her style, her language, the way she thinks, even the pictures which are carefully chosen, an internal voice inside me grew louder, telling me that I can do what she can do, or even better, I began to become haunted by the idea over the weekends, thinking about it over and over, until it became a nightmare, the voice kept resonating inside, don't let others be better than you, you can do it, try working harder on your writing.

It began to change to a real nightmare, I was thinking about blogging all the time, I began to mix reality with imagination, a state of hallucination which I couldn't have any control over, my life was turned upside down, my brain stopped thinking.

I really need to think about this problem, and to solve it, as all of you might notice that I'm trying now, I try to wake up the voice that once was the force behind the original idea of my blog, but unfortunately it is still weak, I really don't want to be a famous blogger, this isn't what I want, I want just to blog about Proactivity, I only want to live my simple dream, I think that having the courage to confess that to all of you people, and to myself first, is the only solution to my problem, to be honest with me, and all people around, what I need first is to be me, not anyone else, so there is no more of "Mind vs. Proactivity group blogs".