Poetry Reading in Darat Alfunun, Mourid Barghouthi

Today was a fine day for poetry! I arrived at Darat Alfunun few minutes late. never-the-less they started 10 minutes after my arrival. The place was kinda easy to reach without a car! just go to Al-webdih Service line and let them take you there (or you can enjoy a 15 minute hike!).

Dar Al-funun is a very small place, it got crowded with the 50+ people that were in before the evening starts! It took us few minutes to go around the building and sit in the other room (usually designed for the audio equipment and logistics).

The poet Mourid Barghouthi is actually one of the known Palestinian voices in modern literature. His recital was very good and the poems were great. He presented a collection of his poems through his 25 year old experience. Some of his famous poems where included such as: صنمٌ رخاميّ (A Marble Pagan) and فكرة أعدائي (My Enemies Thought). The audience seemed to enjoy the poems that directly talk about the Palestinian cause. But his last recital, the best one in my opinion, was his ode to Mahmoud Darwish it it was a grand finale. I certainly hope to hear it one more time.

To sum things up, it was a decent evening. It could have been better if it was more publicized (I only knew about it from a friend and 7iber. This guy certainly deserved to read in the Roman theater. I know that Darwish - Whom the evening was dedicated to - would be happy about it.

Earth hour in Amman

Couple of weeks ago I read in some Jordanian Blog that Amman is going with the trend of turning the electricity off for an hour on the 28th of March. Between 8:30-9:30PM, all participants will turn of their lights as a sign of awareness. the initiative web site reads:"For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009."

The Jordanian official side decided to turn the lights off on few streets and to organize a candle march in Rainbow street. This event went unnoticed by most people and many environment advocates were disappointed. And most of the population knew nothing about it and probably won't participate even if they did.

Should we get disappointed by this outcome? You shouldn't!

Jordan ranks around 85 in the world consumption of energy per capita! So why would a Jordanian man turn the light off and use a candle (probably a more expensive thing to do) just to be involved in this global Hippocratic lets-share-the-guilt kind of act? The first way to solve a problem is to find the real causes, and in this case it wasn't us, then you need to use effective ways to solve it. Most of the nations involved are Democratic nations. So their leaders will only listen to their votes, in their national elections. Not some symbolic - immeasurable - act of turning your light off at night (many people sleep at that time by the way!).

Jordan needs environment awareness of its own problems such is recycling and water preservation. And if Jordanian pro-west and West-Amman based intelligentsia couldn't realize that, then they ought to be...disappointed...