I have been following closely the dialog about the sudden and seemingly unlawful closure of establishments like Books@Cafe in Amman the past couple of weeks.

The best place to follow this conversation is Madian’s article at 7iber.com Closing of Books@Cafe

My first reaction was utter anger mixed with despair and reminder of why I am in so much conflict with the place I live in. Today, only the anger subsided. A very complex issue this has become, and my discomfort of these events comes from different angles.

Simply put, I am not for systems where majority rules and minorities get oppressed as a result. I am not for systems that allow individuals to act outside the law. And I am defiantly not for systems that are confused to the level that they have to decide who to please and who not to please at any given point.

Celebrating Ramadan should not mean squashing all “those” who choose not to fast. Let tolerance rule and everything else will follow suite.

My colleague Ibrahim made a documentary about this dialog and did a great job including a good spectrum of opinions on the subject, yes I was one of the interviewees.

To my surprise later, I was the only Jordanian woman who accepted to participate. Astonishing, really, again women for all the reasons there is for them to participate more in the life in Jordan they choose not to in this one.

http://ikbis.com/Ibrahim/shot/134769

(Embedding videos from IKBIS doesn’t work on my wordpress.com based blog!!!)

We went to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and registered a trade name for Questler, since it had to be Arabic and we couldn’t use “كويستلر” then we had to come up with a unique name and we didn’t want it to take ages to check against their database. Our first option was “Blue Star” – “النجمة الزرقاء”, and oups, it was taken.  The next option was Blue Lemon – “الليمون الأزرق”  and the registrant lady wents into a big laugh, sayine “come on guys, Blue Lemon!!! what kind of software company gets called Blue Lemon. Then she made sure we sign that “we will not translate that name when we write it in English” Here is to you lady, a blog post called Blue Lemon!

So the company behind questler is -so far- called “Sharekat Al-laymoun Al-azraq lilbarmajeyat” – “شركة الليمون الأزرق للبرمجيات”.

And much to our surprise later, is our icon!

I know, Not really a new discovery and not only in high-tech BUT its still a bugger, YES!

While I think Amman is the Silicon Valley of the Arab world, we don’t get that much attention from the real Silicon Valley. And my previous post on this proves it.

Yet our infamous neighbor,  gets soooo much attention as if they are actually there. This might sound like a very confusing and highly debatable subject, but can we at least the people in the high-tech industry in Jordan learn few lessons from the Israelis or is this yet another wall we create to alienate our selves from the fact that that although they are successful but they are the enemy and we just don’t want to learn anything from them?

I was wondering why I keep reading posts about startups from everywhere in the world at the most popular tech/web blogs, but none come to mention Arab ones. So I did a search on the following keywords in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable:

Arab, Arab startups, Middle East, arabia, Maktoob, d1g, yamli, ikbis, watwet, and of course my own startup questler.

and here are the results:

In comparison, there was a long post on ReadWriteWeb the other day about German twitter clones as a phenomenon. Korean startups, Canadian ones, China of course, Philippines, Spain, Portuguese.

So I tell you, cloning or lack of real innovation is definitely NOT the problem here, So is it because of:

• That the words “Arab” and “Middle East” are synonymous with Internet censorship?
• No interest?
• Not many startups to make the news?
• Bad marketing?
• Worse of all, low self worth, that many Arabs suffer, thinking that they won’t make it big anyway so they don’t contact these people?

I was shocked and scared the other day when a friend of mine told me that a 25 year old woman who was hanging out with friends at Books@Cafe; was forced against her will by the police to go back to her parents place which it seems she fled few weeks ago!

Seemingly, if you are a woman in Jordan, your father OWNS you until he transfers the ownership to your future husband. Care to have a life of your own? Nope. You are not an adult, there will always be some male in your family responsible for you. No sorry, if you kill someone, steal something you still will go to Jail, your male family friend can’t be responsible about those actions.

HELLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

We don’t know anything about the girl in question, only that against all tries of the owners of the cafe, the police still took her while she was screaming and saying “I don’t want to live with you” to her family. Destination of course is a hospital to check her virginity. Failed attempts to check if they killed her or not. As it seems there is nothing anyone can do.

SAD SAD people are Jordanians, me included. Here I am a 33 year old, a career woman, a business owner but no, according to the Jordanian law, i have to have, “waly amer” to control my life. Where was my “waly amer” when I registered my company? or applied for a new passport? What the hell is this?

Outraged.

I am copying and pasting my answer to kim’s Quest on Questler

So here are my predictions for 2008:

1. Lebanon will have a new president (do they have one already???)

2. George Bush will give us another disaster decision before leaving office.

3. It will be more and more expensive to live in Amman.

4. People will start having negative feelings about Google.

5. Republicans and Hillary will lose the presidential race.

6. Questler will hit big everywhere (ok, this is wishful thinking:) )

7. Microsoft will announce that office 2010 will be completely a web app!

8. New search engines will become more popular (Spock, Riya…etc)

9. Palestinian occupied territories will still be called the same.

10. last but not least, real estate prices in Jordan will start declining by end of year. (Wishful thinking?)

A fried of mine passed by today and told me that she was so disappointed that they wouldn’t allow her and her brother to enter the Children’s Museum today because they didn’t have a child 13 or younger with them! Read her post at When Your Inner Child Doesn’t Count by Shalabieh

This is outrageous,  I mean why can’t adults be allowed to enter? A public space built by our tax money and you can’t enter?!!!

If you have not heard of Yazan Rousan or any of his songs, then as an ammany you are definitely missing something BIG!

I don’t think I want to call his songs “songs” because his lyrics and the way he sings them is just wildly amazing, some are out of nowhere and some hit home big time. He definitely has a style of his own with his dark glasses, and cynical sense of humor!

Yazan, Agwa noo3 indeed! (translates to “best kind” oh well!)

I just finished Wa7sh el 7ara, the personal visual commentary about the Jordan Gate buildings in Um Otheina, Amman. They do disturb me still, at night more than day. It has polluted my visual outlook while driving in my neighborhood. I wanted to do this for more than 6 months, so I happy i got to do it before the end of the year!

Thanks to Lubna for the sound design, perfect music to fit the story board.

So watch and enjoy! and of course do tell me what you think

Last Wednesday, my longtime friend and a community icon, Rana Hussieni received a royal medal for her contributions to the advancement of human rights in Jordan. http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=3117

Though recognizing Rana in Jordan took years to happen, she is the proud holder of many international awards and a worldwide feminist icon referred to in conferences and women studies programs worldwide.

Rana makes me and lots of people I know proud. Her determination and dedication to reporting the so called “honor crimes” cannot be described but courageous and daring. Two very important characteristics every reporter should have, thus she shines amongst the Jordanian and Arab journalists for that.

Being recognized with a royal medal only signifies the level of support Rana is getting in Jordan. The highest possible. And that gives us hope that change will be forced sooner than later where those criminals are thought of as murderers and not as defending their so called honor.

For the past two years, Rana was busy writing her book “Murder in the Name of Honor” which is to be published next year. All of us are waiting anxiously to buy it and read through it!!

Congratulations Rana and good luck

I just got the news that the Jordanian government represented by the Print & Publishing Department will extend its sad and frustrating laws onto online websites, most probably the vast amount of web-based blogs and press sites. Very frustrating, I don’t know if my blog on hosted on WordPress will be included as well but it doesn’t look like it. So this is a downer for all Jordanian blog based services like Maktoob and others.

From reading the article in today’s Al Dustoor, a number of people are threatening legal action if the government starts to actually implement this.

In my opinion, this is a weak ‘s man try at controlling something that is obviously out of their control. Insecure and totally ridiculous to even talk about. How will Jordan be able to actually advance economically, socially and technologically ever if we prohibit people to think and express freely!

From not allowing atv to air yet, to this. I think we have two big forces fighting for our future, one wants to take us back to stone ages and one wants to take us forward.