Jonathan Mok: How should the Netanyahu speech be interpreted?

Nigel Ashton: Beyond uttering the words ‘Palestinian state’ Netanyahu has not yet conceded the creation of an entity which would have genuine sovereignty. His concept of ‘demilitarisation’ is so wide ranging that any Palestinian state created under it could not be deemed to have full control over its territory and would therefore not be sovereign. Nevertheless, he has at least conceded that peace negotiations cannot proceed on the basis of his opening position which amounted to little more than a form of economic autonomy. So there has at least been some movement in his position even if so far this is limited.

JM: It appears that the Arab world has been silent in response to Bibi’s speech. How do you perceive the apparent lack of interest?

NA: I think Arab leaders are allowing the United States to make the running at present in negotiations with Israel. The Arab peace plan is on the table and I am sure that if genuine negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians resumed Egypt and Jordan would be prepared to play their part in supporting the process.

JM: What do you think about Israel’s continuing exclusion of Hamas in peace negotiations?

NA: For nearly three decades, Israel refused to deal with the PLO and termed it a terrorist organisation. Eventually it did negotiate with the organisation so these things are not set in stone. Having said that, negotiations for a final settlement with Israel as opposed to a truce would effectively contravene the Hamas charter so there would have to be considerable movement on both sides before it would be possible to bring Hamas within the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Even before we can reach that stage, though, means have to be found of repairing the Fatah-Hamas schism which will be a considerable challenge.

JM: Some of the demands in the speech have been listed by other Israeli leaders, including Olmert, Sharon and Peres. The demands include Jerusalem as the permanent capital of Israel and Palestinian abandonment of the right of return. Would it be wise for Abbas to agree with the demands in order to speed up the peace negotiations with Israel?

NA: I think Netanyahu would be astounded if Abbas agreed to these conditions, particularly those in relation to Jerusalem and the right of return. They are aimed at Netanyahu’s domestic constituency and not at the Palestinian leadership. If serious negotiations begin, these issues will inevitably have to be addressed. There is no way the Palestinian leadership can be expected to concede them in advance.

JM: With the growing divide between the United States and Israel, what will be the role of other negotation partners, such as the EU?

NA: The role of other negotiating partners will continue to be insignificant. I don’t perceive a growing US-Israeli divide. What we have is an administration which for the first time in a decade is taking the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seriously. It’s inevitable when that happens that it will tend to put pressure on Israel to shift its position. That’s what has happened during previous phases of negotiation, most notably during Clinton’s second term in the late 1990s.

JM: Finally, how likely is it that there will there be an indepenent Palestinian state under the Obama administration?

NA: The obstacles are considerable. It will need a remarkably favourable combination of circumstances for this to happen within the next eight years, never mind four. History does not lead one to be optimistic since this conflict has proven remarkably intractable. The best one can say is that there is more of a window of opportunity now than there has been at any point during the last decade.

Jonathan Mok: Why and when did you get interested in the life of King Hussein?

Nigel Ashton: I’ve been interested in King Hussein ever since I was a PhD student back in the 1980s working on British and American policy in the Middle East during the Suez crisis. I was fascinated from an early stage by the way the King successfully negotiated a series of dangerous challenges to his position and the way in which he managed his relations with other powers in the region.

After King Hussein died in February 1999, I felt it was a good time to start researching a biography of him. Up to that point there had been no full biography written with the benefit of access to his papers and interviews with his close friends, family members, and confidants. Thereafter I made more than a dozen trips to Jordan between 1999 and 2007, carrying out a range of interviews with former political leaders and his close family members, including his wife Queen Noor and his eldest son, King Abdullah of Jordan.

Jonathan: King Hussein seemed never to employ anti-Semitic rhetoric to condemn the Israeli occupation and Jewish lobby in the United States. In fact, he was believed to be good terms with leaders such as Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. How did the King view Jews and the Jewish state?

Nigel: As far as King Hussein was concerned, the first crucial step that had to be made before one could contemplate making peace was to empathize with those on the other side of the conflict. He felt that he had to show that he understood and appreciated the historical tragedy of the Jewish people in all its parts before peace would be possible. His strategy to achieve this goal involved the offering of endless reassurance to Israelis

Perhaps the best example of this came in March 1997 when, after a Jordanian soldier had gone mad and killed several Israeli schoolgirls on a field trip at Baqoura on the border between Israel and Jordan, the King flew to Israel and personally visited the bereaved families. His gesture of kneeling before them and offering his personal condolences had a profound effect in Israel, turning a tragedy into an event which helped cement relations between the two states. So, King Hussein was aware of the hopes and fears of Israelis and did his best to reassure them.

Jonathan: How did King Hussein influence his son, King Abdullah?

Nigel: I would say that [King Abdullah] has inherited much of his father’s shrewd grasp as to how to navigate in troubled political waters. He has built on his father’s close relations with the United States, but made sure that he has also remained close to the Arab middle ground on key issues such as the peace process with Israel.

King Abdullah has also improved relations with Saudi Arabia, which had been strained during the final years of King Hussein’s reign. He has been more inclined to focus his attention on key domestic problems as well, especially economic and administrative development, which his father tended to delegate to others. So, while the two monarchs have much in common, King Abdullah has inevitably brought a fresh perspective to some key issues.

Jonathan: While King Hussein was well-recognized for his diplomatic successes, he was also criticized for failing to modernize the country. Can we talk more about that?

Nigel: Hussein himself would have seen the achievement of peace with Israel as his greatest achievement. But, in the final three years of his life, he was already becoming frustrated at what he saw as the failure to translate this into a broader peace in the region. Although he blamed all parties for the failure, he was particularly critical of the role of the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he believed had allowed the chance for a comprehensive peace, pursued by Yitzhak Rabin, to slip away.

From 1989 onwards the King pursued a program of domestic liberalization which opened the political system up to the opposition. However, this process had largely halted by the mid-1990s. The irony was that the making of peace with Israel, which was domestically unpopular, contributed to the slow down in domestic political reform. Despite this, King Hussein was certainly the most benevolent, open and fair-minded Arab leader of his generation. He dealt with opposition more by trying to co-opt it, or channel it, rather than by simply repressing it.

Jonathan: Finally, in your opinion, what lessons Arab leaders can take from the late King Hussein?

Nigel: I think the key lesson is the need for dialogue. Across the decades from the early 1960s when the King began to talk covertly to Israeli representatives he sought to resolve the problems of the region through debate, discussion and dialogue. Of course, this approach involved inevitable frustrations. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, when the King pressed hard for a broader peace settlement, his approach did not find a receptive audience in the region. But he persisted in his efforts which eventually bore fruit in the shape of the Jordanian-Israeli peace Treaty in the 1994.

The second lesson is how to deal with political opponents. For sure, the King’s regime had authoritarian aspects, but he was notoriously lenient in his treatment of political opponents, even those who had plotted against his person and his throne.

The final lesson concerns the exercise of power. Hussein understood that Jordan was a weak state in terms of its military and economic resources. But he consistently exercised disproportionate influence both through his moral authority and his subtle grasp of the hopes and fears of others. Empathy was ultimately his most useful tool in regional politics.

Rana Husseini, whom I first interviewed in 2007, is an investigative reporter and world-famous campaigner against the cruel phenomenon known as honour killing – both in Jordan and beyond. Her book, Murder in the Name of Honour, recently sold out upon its launch in Amman. Before the launch, I sat down with Rana to talk about everything from local politics to Orientalist imagery.

Natalia: So, this book was a real labour of love!

Rana: Yes. I wanted to get this one just right. I wasn’t about to let anyone sensationalize the subject matter. Thankfully, Oneworld Publications worked out really well for me and my agent, because they understood where we were coming from.

N: The cover looks great, by the way. It’s so different from the usual covers that are used on books about this region.

R: I told them right away, I wouldn’t have any seductive, veiled women on the cover! And no camels, and no sand and no menacing men in traditional clothing either! I wasn’t going to play into any of the stereotypes.

N: I meant to tell you, I have found some people to be strangely uncomfortable with the idea of an Arab woman speaking out about issues such as honour killing. It’s like they want all this phenomenon to be filtered exclusively through Western eyes.

R: Well, you can’t please everyone all the time. If we worried about what people said 24/7, we would get nothing done. There would be no progress.

When you speak about this mistrust, I can’t help but think of the Norma Khouri nonsense [Norma Khouri, real name Norma Bagain Teliopoulos, released a fraudulent "memoir" on honour killing in Jordan - a book that deal a blow to the local anti-honour killing cause]. There are a lot of people out there who still believe the lies that Norma Khouri spread about Jordan. And they don’t want those lies to be challenged.

You know, I’ve been attacked by many different people over the years. I’ve even been accused of being a government agent. This issue of honour killing has been politicized, which is why this happens. But you need to keep going, because there are women who need help.

N: Speaking of help, what are some of your goals for the book?

R: I want this book to save lives. Women in vulnerable situations will hopefully read it and see how they can protect themselves. There can be warning signs, and I illustrate many of them when talking about specific incidents. And we need to keep spreading awareness and pressuring global society to do more about this issue. God created us, and God takes us, and there is nothing defensible about honour crime when you think about it like that. More and more people must realize this.

N: Karim Kawar, Jordan’s former Ambassador to the United States, told some years ago that one of the central problems with honour killing is how certain parties view them as a case of “the family has suffered enough, so we should not be punishing them harshly.” Knowing what I know about life in Jordan, this certainly rang true. What do you think about it?

R: Based on how a lawyer presents the case, it could arouse sympathy for the killer and the family that encouraged the killer. In Jordan, we are making headway on this issue. The decision can be appealed, and I would stress that these attitudes are changing. People now discuss honour crime very openly. This wasn’t the case when I started out.

N: And what about the “it’s their culture” argument? I’ve had highly educated people say that to me when honour killing is brought up, as in “it’s their culture, you can’t change it, you’re a bigot for even thinking about it in these terms.”

R: First of all, I would say to you – violence against women is part of global culture. It’s not isolated to any religion, class or country. However, some societies develop quicker than others and have better mechanisms for coping with it and discouraging it, and people there can’t ignore the struggle going on around the corner.

We need to remember that we are all human beings, and honour crime goes against human dignity. Ending this violence means a better world for everyone.

The Amman launch for Murder in the Name of Honour had the atmosphere of a county fair. There were laughing children, balloons, lemonade. Rana sat in the center of it all, and glowed with accomplishment. She has much to glow about. The fight isn’t over, and the troops aren’t going anywhere.

The area where few dare to tread is the concept of cost/waste reduction as a means of enhancing revenues or making each Dinar count. Divining cost saving methods requires relevant experience* and hard work. It does not lend itself to slogans and is not particularly glamorous. One remembers the decision of the Water Authority to fix leaking pipes throughout the city of Amman. It was estimated that fixing the pipes is tantamount to increasing the water supply by 30%!

What is required today is a handyman with cross jurisdictional ministerial authority to do the fixing wherever it is required.

A glaring example of a leakage of efficiency is the way the Ministry of Health manages its procurement policy and structures its services contracts. An investigation uncovered that the ministry has a General Supplies Department (GSD), which buys items for all the hospitals in bulk – acquiring anything from nails to equipment to meats and vegetables.

Those items are purchased by the GSD, then stored in GSD’S warehouses and cold stores, then issued, and transported to hospitals where they are stored and issued according to requirements. One can see that items are stored twice and transported twice. It is a rule of thumb that items of perishable nature lose 10% of their freshness when they are transported 10% more when they are stored and 2.50% more are pilfered due to double handling. Let’s call this the 1st Leakage.

Furthermore, GSD, much like the State Trading Agencies of a neighboring country, are famously inaccurate and inefficient in determining or meeting the needs of markets, or hospitals in this context. So, they may over-order or under-order. This is the 2nd Leakage.

Store keepers and transporters are paid employees and even with the best of intentions will not safekeep, handle and transport these itmes as if their life depended on it. This is the 3rd Leakage.

The solution to these leakages is a change of philosophy.

What does that mean?

First, we need to outsource all ancillary services to specialists in catering, housekeeping, janitorial, landscaping and maintenance services. To illustrate the importance of this shift in approach, examine the way the ministry deals with catering services:

The food is supplied to the hospital through the GSD. There may be shortages or overages because of central purchasing as mentioned before. The labor supply contracts, which MOH gives out, are drafted to be mostly concerned with the number of personnel /quantity of laborers on the job at any point of time. No serious consideration is given to the quality or quantity of food served to patients or staff (remember, freshness of food and adequacy of quantity are not the responsibility of the labor supplier).

To rectify this situation, new contracts may be drafted where the caterer is responsible for providing the food items and for serving meals according to a set menu, with measurable quantities in a hygienic and timely manner, and at a fixed price. If the job is even done by two monkeys and a guard, and all is well , who cares?

The advantages of this switch in tactic are plenty:

1. Quantity and quality are controlled by supervisors. Penalties are applied for non performance.

2. Food ordered will NOT be more than required as the caterer’s profit and loss depend on it.

3. Food is purchased, transported and stored only once.

4. Storekeepers are audited by the way they organize their inventory– FIFO (meaning that the oldest items are sold first, and not left to deteriorate) and cleanliness rule. Their jobs depend on this.

Similar contracts can be drafted for maintenance, janitorial and housekeeping fields, where performance and not body count are the true measures of contract execution. Outsourcing those services to specialists allows both cost reduction and better performance. If MOH’S hospitals suffer due to high costs or low performance, the answer is here. Not to mention the fact that outsourcing allows MOH to concentrate on its core business: Staffing the hospitals with the best doctors and nurses for the job.

Saving money means writing new contracts with new specifications and finding different ways of supervising those contracts. It may also mean eliminating or reducing the task of GSD. It involves a change in philosophy where the emphasis is on quality and not quantity. However, it is the critical area to focus on today. I don’t believe there should be a debate on that.

Note:* A person with relevant experience is someone who, while educated in the West, has acquired his experience in the East, in the area of life support services. Particularly, this would be someone familiar with the way things are done in Saudi Arabia, where ancillary services have been outsourced with a large measure of success for the past 30 years.

The back of your head contains sweetness I’m afraid will spill,
I’m always chasing it in a crowd.
It’s like a high a young, toothless woman mumbles about,
When she accepts an offer of a cigarette and remembers better days.

She has never known sheets so white,
She will envy me as I’m flying toward you.
I have given her another gift – an empty beer bottle
That joins others in a clinking chorus in her bag.

I’ve stained the rim with lipstick I mark you with,
The ghost of a kiss is all that’s acceptable here.
You kiss me with your eyes in the street,
And other men I walk by do much more.

I would like to take all these people and wring them out;
Or make their eyes boil and burst in their heads.
They will run down like egg-whites, their fake tears,
For things they don’t know enough to be sorry for.

They’re lucky I don’t track dirt to my bed.
They’re lucky my curses are like matted fur.

Alright, some of you out there will point out that a similar election exists in Iraq. But we must say that there aren’t many in the Arab world who are ready to sing the praises of a fragile democracy that literally came on the backs of hundreds of thousands of lost innocent lives, not to mention that the war in question was brought about by a certain W, whom the world is desperate to consign to the dark corners of the brain’s memory.

On the other hand, there are the details of the Lebanese elections. And in so many of those details Arabs cannot help but find signs of concern.

There is concern that the Arabs are perhaps historically and genetically unsuited to liberal democracy. While it is common to have long-lasting political dynasties in places as far and wide as Argentina, the US and India, the Lebanese have taken the art of political succession to new heights or, more accurately, unparalleled lows!

We are not talking here about one or two political dynasties. In Lebanon, it seems that a large number of the seats in Parliament have turned into family fiefdoms. Father passes on the mantle to the son, or the son to the brother, or the husband to the wife, and on and on. And we cannot help but marvel at how the Lebanese electorate is so ready to align its support in line with wherever the movement of genes takes them.

It has to be acknowledged that many of the political acts of inheritance were brought about after spates of assassinations that have marked Lebanese history since the 1950s. While the human angle to these tragedies is heartbreaking and must be condemned in the clearest terms, it should not serve as a justification for the persistence of a monarchical form of democracy. In fact, it can even be argued that a system that honours legacy over principle is the worst form of memorial for those who gave their lives for Lebanon.

Let us survey some of the leading illustrations of this democratic system of neo-feudalism:

Obviously, world famous Saad Al Hariri has inherited both the business and political leadership of the Lebanese version of Camelot. He controls the 14 March coalition, currently holding the majority of the outgoing parliament. As for the Phalangist party, also members of the 14 March coalition, political powers have been passed on vertically, horizontally and in every other possible direction. First cousins Sami Gmayel and Nadim Gmayel, both sons of former presidents, are running in Matein district and Beirut’s first district respectively. Not to mention that Sami’s father, Amine, is still the leader of the Phalangist party. After a long successful career as university students, supporters and friends, not to mention relatives, have unanimously agreed that the time for Sami and Nadim to bring change to Lebanon has come.

Without any doubt, the star of the 2009 elections is Nayla Tueini, the political child prodigy par excellence. Nayla, 26, is crowning a long and memorable 2-year career as a journalist by running the leading newspaper in Lebanon and by running to succeed her father in Beirut’s first district. If successful, she can look forward to sharing a cozy family experience in Parliament with fellow candidate and grandfather, Michel Al Mur (running in Matein district), and uncle Marwan Hamade, running in El Chouf district.

This political inheritance business is not limited to the forces of the March 14 majority, as it applies in equal measure throughout the list of candidates of the Opposition Alliance. Names such as Suleiman Frangieh (Zgharta), Omar Karami (Tripoli), Ahmad Karami (Tripoli), Raafat Ali Eid (Tripoli), Karim Al Rassi (Akkar), Prince Talal Ursulan (Aley) and Maarouf Saad (Saida) come to mind, all having inherited their political power and right to run from their families. As for Ghassan Rahbani (Matein), he is practicing the arts of asymmetrical political succession. For his authority does not stem from family members long steeped in the world of politics, but from the sound of music.

The list goes on and on. There are no guns or tanks on the streets that impose these hereditary choices on the people of Lebanon. And it is there that the heart of the deadlock lies. The people are voting, with a free will, for representatives on the basis of name and rights of succession.

However, it must also be said that the system in Lebanon has encouraged the perpetuation of such narrow choices. The electoral system, adopted in the Doha Agreement of 2008, served to limit the districts along narrower family and communal lines.

Any observer of the Lebanese political scene would agree that it seems rather utopian to foresee any change of the current status quo in the near future. In fact, any call for a white revolution à la Obama would most likely be labeled as unrealistic or naïve.

Yet history has proven that change will come as soon people will want change. Voices calling for independent choices in Lebanon have always existed. One could only hope that our cynicism will be swept away by 2013.

I look at myself in the mirror, sullen face staring back at me, wide, empty London smile fixed to my face, hiding the torment within.

What’s causing this? A meeting I have just had with my editor.

‘Gerhan’, he told me. ‘I want you to go to Bahdobian and write about how rubbish it is.’

‘I thought we loved it,’ I asked. ‘The last five features this paper ran said it was the best thing since sliced bread?’

‘Good point,’ said my editor. ‘The pendulum swings both ways, though. We decided it’s rubbish now.’

‘Fair enough, but why do I need to go? I already know everything there is to know about the place from my friend Germaine Greer – she spent four hours on the bus there only the other day.’

‘I know’, grunted my editor. ‘But we’ve got five days’ free at one of their best hotels, provided we give them a mention in the article you’ll write. File your piece before you leave, if you like – take the week as holiday.’

I’m still in shock. How can I, with my example-setting lifestyle, manage to survive five days in somewhere so awful as Bahdobian?

At home, I spend an hour looking for my passport, which I haven’t had to use since my last travel article. The mental scars of that particular piece still haunt me. Images of interviewing drunken tourists at four in the morning at nightclubs in Ibiza fill my mind. None of them seemed to care in the slightest that they were in a town that lacked an opera house, or that they were in a country that lets people fight bulls. And that used to be a dictatorship and had some kind of civil war a while ago. Or something. These people just wouldn’t talk to me. They simply carried on drinking Aftershock and vomiting.

I fly in on Bahdobian’s national airline. 150 years ago this country had no aeroplanes – camels were used for transport. Now they operate a fleet of carbon-belching planes, allowing people to flit from continent to continent in search of instant gratification. Whilst I feel this kind of travel is unethical, it is very useful for helping journalists such as myself to get to important destinations quickly. I refuse to watch “Top Gear” playing on the in-flight entertainment. The works of Lenin and Marx shall be my only companions on this journey. I settle into my first-class seat.

‘Are you a slave?’ I ask the smiling stewardess. Katy Framione from Essex looks at me blankly as she offers me a glass of a particularly cheeky Chablis, her wide, empty Bahdobian smile beaming up at me as she crouches, shamed, at my elbow.

‘I’m sorry?’

The poor woman doesn’t even realise that she is an indentured worker, forced to slave her life away at 40,000 feet, never to return home. Behind her smile I read her mind – she knows, but cannot admit what she sees and feels. I pat her on the head encouragingly. I write down her innermost thoughts on my notepad as she backs slowly away from me. The look of fear on her face is thanks to me, I congratulate myself – I have opened her eyes.

As I fly into Bahdobian, the air provides me with a clear view of the city. It rises from the desert like a [insert turgid metaphor here please, sub editor]. I wish I had gotten off as lightly as my colleague Simon Jenkins, who managed to file his piece based simply on flying over the city. I, alas, must venture into its portals of doom.

Bahdobian takes it’s name from the ancient Arabic for ant, the ‘dob’. This is an undisputed fact. As we fly in I see people on the streets below. They look like ants from up here. Later, sitting on my hotel balcony, I see an ant. The symbolism overwhelms me.

As we land at the airport, skyscrapers surround us. Every window, every free piece of space on every building, absolutely everywhere is taken up with pictures of a Sheikh. Sheikh [insert name here – subs, please make sure you spell it right] is the absolute ruler of Bahdobian. Just 35 years ago he lived in a desert. Now he has made of the desert a city. But of this city, a desert shall once again rise. I predict.

"...and STAY on that camel!"

I enter the airport, its ceiling hung with more images of the Sheikh. Looking more closely, however, I realise that there’s one small image of the Sheikh and that the rest of the pictures are actually adverts with people wearing local dress. I remind myself to get some new glasses. It’s so hard when they all look the same.

‘Passport please,’ asks the smiling Bahdobian at the desk, clothed in cool, crisp white robes, his beard neatly trimmed. 70 years ago these people dressed in sackcloth. Tradition, it seems, counts for nothing here. He is drinking a Coke, I notice. I shudder.

‘I know your game,’ I snap back. ‘You just want to imprison me here forever, forcing me to write press releases for a living, paying me a pittance and never allowing me to return home.’

He looks at me blankly, but I read his true thoughts – he agrees with everything I say, but he cannot admit so in public. This, he senses, would be a transgression too far. ‘May I have your passport please, sir,’ he asks again, hiding his shame behind a face filled with mild confusion.

I know we’ve connected, sensed his guilt. I hand my passport over. He stamps it and wishes me a pleasant stay in Bahdobian.

As I buy four litres of vodka at Duty Free I wonder how I will manage to get through the next few days in this oppressive atmosphere.

60 years ago this place was desert, filled with nothing but Red Indians and cowboys. And tumbleweed too I expect, like in the Clint Eastwood films. Now, as I drive to my exclusive hotel, there is nothing but 18 lane motorways. Everywhere. Even the side streets have at least 10 lanes. Every car I pass is a gas guzzling 4×4, not a bicycle in sight. I weep silently.

‘Are you a slave?’ I ask my taxi driver, a bearded man from Baziristan. He looks confused. ‘I work hard here, yes, but there is little for me back home and this is what I need to do to support my family.’

He pretends to be focusing on the road, but deep inside, I know what he really feels, but he cannot admit it. It’s Bahdobian’s fault there is no work for him back home. For him to say otherwise would be, he senses, a transgression too far.

He asks me if I can help him to get to Britain. I shake my head in disbelief. How naive he is. I only have a three bedroom flat in Islington. How could I manage with him staying there for weeks on end?

I check into my hotel, a gorgeous understated place well worth staying at – apparently its minibreaks are great value and come highly recommended. You can book your stay there via my newspaper’s website.

Naturally, as a first class investigative reporter, my first destination is the hotel car park. It is here I see my first signs of the shocking truth that fills Bahdobian. A truth that no Essex expat may dare speak of.

Mohan repeats the same thing over and over – he is a driver for a local businessman and he is waiting for him to return from a lunch meeting. But I know what he is really trying to say, deep down. He cannot say it though – this, he senses, would be a transgression too far.

Mohan is clearly living in his Rolls Royce in this car park. Maxed-out, in debt, he has nowhere else to go. No choice but to spend his days sleeping in the car with the AC on. Afraid to go home, he is destined to spend his life here, in a Rolls Royce, in a hotel car park. His story isn’t unique. Across Bahdobian, maxed-out expats sleep in their cars, not thinking to sell them or to live somewhere more practical than a hotel car park, not possessing even one friend with a couch to spare in their hour of need. Sleeping in their Rolls Royce is their only option. I can read it in Mohan’s eyes.

But it’s not only sleeping in cars. The desert, 40 years ago nothing but tumbleweed, lions and tigers, now resembles a refugee camp, as expat middle managers huddle, with nothing but a Rolls Royce, Range Rover (HSE or Vogue) for shelter, nestled amongst the dunes, with nowhere to go.

That evening, I set off for my first bout of real research. Although I already know what I am going to write, I feel I should pay some lip service to journalistic standards.

I head to the only place I will get objective, honest, in-depth feedback on what it’s like to live here. I resolve to visit a local pub hosting a long lunch for a visiting rugby team from the UK.

I arrive just before closing time. People, I am astonished to note, have been drinking. In a pub!

I talk to two old ladies, just the sort of people you would expect to find in a pub aimed at the under-30’s. They too have been drinking. Drinking beer, I notice. Hiding my disgust, I order a cheeky glass of rosé and engage in conversation.

‘It’s great here,’ says Aliciana Frackmouter. She works at a local school for disabled children. ‘After a hard day at work I had nothing that would really help me relax when I was back in England. Here I relax by going to the market and buying maids to lock in my basement. Everyone does. It’s the British expat way.’

There is a common echo I hear in every one of the imaginary conversations I have with myself during my visit. Everyone has staff. Even maids have maids. Fifty years ago, there was nothing here but desert, roamed by dinosaurs. Now the desert is filled with runaway maids, sleeping under maxed-out expats’ Range Rovers, with no one to look after them but slightly more junior maids.

I leave the pub, my head spinning from one too many glasses of Jacob’s Creek – there is no quality wine available here, sadly. Feeling tired and emotional after the day’s onslaught of awfulness, I forego a night in my comfortable hotel and, in solidarity with the maxed-out expats, climb into a nearby car in the car park. I will sleep here tonight, shoulder to shoulder with the millions of others. Going back to my hotel, would be, I sense, a transgression too far.

The following morning, I wake up around midday when the car’s owner rudely turfs me out of the backseat. ‘Are you a slave?’ I ask him. He shouts at me, not realising I am on his side.

I visit a local shopping mall. Shopping malls are everywhere here. Glittering domes of consumerism, rising out of the desert like the cacti which filled the area just 20 years ago.

As I approach this brand new building, I am struck by something so few others seem to have noticed – it’s new. This new city is filled with new buildings. There is not a single Anglo-Saxon era church, no Roman remains, no Georgian terraces. Nothing built here over the last twenty years is older than twenty years. How can British people sink so low as to live here?

This mosaic is younger than my bulldog

Once inside, I wander, dazed, from dress shop to dress shop. I am a man and don’t wear dresses. With each salesperson’s pitch, my spirits sag further. Why are they trying to sell me dresses?

I approach a 17-year-old girl wearing a miniskirt, walking through the mall. She walks briskly away from me. ‘Are you a slave?’ I cry out, but still she walks away. To talk to me, she senses, would be a transgression too far.

I corner her, finally, between an ice cream shop and a fast food joint. I lower my head, overcome with disgust that people in this country might want to eat fast food, or ice cream.

I know what this young girl thinks, as I can read her mind, but before I can ask her again, I feel a firm grip on my shoulder. The authorities have clearly caught up with me – it took longer than I thought, but the secret police were bound to be on my tail.

The secret policeman is disguised as a security guard and speaks only rudimentary, broken English. ‘Good afternoon, Sir,’ he mumbles, in halting, disjointed sentences. ‘Would you please be so kind as leave this young lady be? You seem distressed. May I recommend that you proceed forthwith to your hotel, where a cold refreshment and a lie-down might serve to revive your spirits?’ I struggle to interpret his attempts to communicate, but, finally understanding, I agree that a quick lie-down might be a good idea.

He leads me, brutally, to the taxi rank. I sense he would like to cuff me, but he holds back, aware of my vaunted status as an international newspaper columnist, standing a little ahead of me, smiling encouragingly. As I climb into my cab, I see the girl looking at me from across the marble floor of this temple of consumerism. She is talking to a friend. ‘Weirdo, freak’ are the words I can read on her lips. I smile at her in agreement. She is clearly referring to the disguised secret policeman who has treated me in such a degrading manner. She wishes to speak to me, I can tell, but is afraid to. That, she senses, would be a transgression too far.

My time in Bahdobian over, I forego a normal cab back to the airport and choose to take hotel transport to the airport. I ask for a bicycle, but am met with blank looks. Clearly, environmental sensibilities have not made much of a mark here. The concierge points out that a bike may be unpractical, given my three suitcases. I give in and grudgingly accept a lift in the hotel Bentley. To my surprise it is being driven by Mohan. I congratulate him. He has clearly stolen the car and is hoping to escape this hell-hole. He tries to deny this, telling me, in halting English, that he has a new job driving for the hotel. I smile knowingly, understanding what he is really saying. He is telling me that he has given up on life and has agreed to become a slave. To admit that openly would be, he senses, a transgression too far.

At the airport, I take my last chance to speak to an expat of the horrors they experience. I signal to a cleaner, beckoning to him from where I sit on the toilet, pleading with him to join me. He hangs back, hesitant. He speaks no English at all, but I know what he’s saying. He’s trying to create a poetic metaphor about mirages, deserts, oases and that sort of thing, but can’t quite find the words.

‘Do you feel this place is like a mirage?’ I ask him. ‘A brittle rose of the desert, apparently whole, yet so delicate, crumbling when touched, yet so perfect to behold, as if buried in time, but ready to shrivel like a date in the midday sun?’.

‘Yes, sir’, he answers. I congratulate myself on pinpointing his thoughts so accurately.

My flight back is uneventful. I sit, drained, in First Class. The habits of expats have rubbed off on me, leaving me no choice but to numb myself with cheap liqour. Sharon from Manchester feeds me glass after glass of Moët. I look into her face, frozen as it is in an empty Bahdobian smile. I sense a feeling of utter revulsion coming from her as she looks at me. I know what she is thinking about – the desperate awfulness of the sweltering desert city we have left behind.

‘Another glass, sir?’ she asks. I know what she’s really saying though. She turns her heard away from me, shamed that she has chosen to live anywhere other than London.

I whisk through Heathrow’s VIP fast track. All around me I see pictures of the Sheikh. They are everywhere. Or am I getting confused with advertising boards again? Who knows? Bahdobian has left me dazed.

I pick up a copy of the paper on the way through. MY BAHDOBIAN HELL, the headline screams, my name and photo just below. Once again I’m filled with joy at seeing my face and name in print. The article I filed before leaving on holiday has been printed. Wikipedia and a quick phone call with Germaine were all I needed – she went on the Big Bus tour when she was over, after all. With contacts like these, my visit was superfluous. I had the material I needed to print straightaway, but five days’ paid for holiday is five days’ paid for holiday!

Finally reaching my pied-à-terre, I collapse onto my sofa. Looking around, I am pleased to see that the cleaner’s been while I was away. Everything is spic and span, my underpants ironed, bedclothes neatly made. That nice plumber form Poland has also popped around and fixed my blocked toilet. I write cheques to pay them their monthly wages. Should I give them a little extra, considering the great job they do? Maybe pay them the same amount I am paid for writing my in-depth reportage?

I decide not to do so.

That, I sense, might be a transgression too far.

The original version of this piece is here.

I will shake my futile fist
Or I will rip my yellow hair;
It won’t matter, it won’t come,
Once it is no longer there.

Someone shuffled in the night
Like a clumsy incubus.
Overturning this and that,
Chasing cats under the bed.

I will find a yellow tooth
Stranded in a smiling wound;
It’s too sweet and it’s too trite,
It was pleading for a bite.

Mixing henna for a bride Beit Sahour, West Bank. It's traditional for the women of a village to gather for an evening of dancing, singing, and henna mixing to wish the bride well the night before her wedding.

The majority of Palestinians living in the occupied territories are young people who have spent their lives in the shadow of a war from their great-grandparents’ generation. For Palestinians, it is not simply a matter of one, singular event that drives their situation. Palestinians mark time on an altogether unique clock; major political events designate their experience in a general sense, but for each person there are smaller and more personal events that mark each family’s own timetable.

To better understand the complexity of the term “aftermath” when applied to Palestinians, here is a general rundown on the Palestinian population: First there is the post-1948 population, those who originated in the region that is now the state of Israel. Many fled as refugees to southern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and what is now called the West Bank. Then there is the post-1967 population (which contains a large portion of the post-1948 population) that originated in the West Bank but became a mass of internal refugees during the Six Days War of 1967, as well as a population dispersed in refugee camps in Jordan and many other countries. Although separated by two decades, these two events mark the mainelements of the Palestinian Diaspora.

In the summer of 2007, I spent five weeks extensively traveling throughout the West Bank in order to photograph the daily life of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Hand stands in Hebron. The city of Hebron, the oldest city in the West Bank and home to the tomb of Abraham, used to host a thriving tourist industry and economy. Since the infiltration of radical Zionist settlers, the city resembles a cross between a ghost town and a police state. These children were so excited at the site of a westerner that they performed minor acrobatics for almost thirty minutes.

As a Palestinian American, it was important to me to be able to document all aspects of Palestinian life, from the oppression and destruction, to the domestic and mundane, to the celebratory and joyful. All too often, in the United States, the only images of Palestine and Palestinians that Americans are shown are inaccurate depictions of Palestinians as uniformly violent and angry.

The reality in fact is that Palestinians are predominantly non-violent and surprisingly tenacious given the circumstances of their lives. However, this side of their story is not often depicted in mainstream media.

Despite severe human rights violations, economic strangulation, and the slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their lands, beauty still lives in occupied Palestine. The people themselves are a testament to willpower in the face of injustice, as they have developed exceptional coping mechanisms in order to survive their circumstances.

Portrait of Bassam, with this daughter Abir, who would have been this tall. Bassam stands in the village school yard, not far from where Abir was shot in the head and killed by Israeli soldier's while walking home from school. This photograph was taken about 4 months after Abir's death. The Israeli Apartheid Wall looms in the background as a reminder of Israeli dominance.

My intent in documenting Palestinian survival is to educate people on the consequences of spontaneous and unresolved wars. I want people to understand that although the wars of 1948 and 1967 are long over, Palestinians live in a continual and latent state of post-traumatic stress.

I furthermore want the beauty, complexity and perseverance of these people to be just as attention-worthy as their mistakes and their often violent deaths.

It is my hope that through this photographic education project there will be stronger international support for the creation of a Palestinian state, so that we can finally allow these people to stop living in an aftermath society, and start living anew in a nation of their own making.

The moment of impact is black. The moment after flooded with emotion—anger, confusion, acceptance, detachment, strength—all in one rush of adrenaline. The rest of the punches all blend together; after one, ten more aren’t all that unique. I don’t remember pain or blood or the feeling of my face breaking in three separate places. The touching, the grabbing, the clawing, the choking, the screaming: clouded and surreal.

What’s vivid was my reaction. It’s the first time I have ever proven to myself that I wanted to live, that I valued my existence. It’s the first time I have actively recognized my rights, the complex role of being a woman, and the sacred ownership of my body. I took it all for granted before that day. I’ve thought about it every day since.

I went abroad to change my views. On the sixteenth day of my year-long life in Amman, Jordan, my perspective of myself, of social roles, of the world changed forever.

American women abroad – especially in the Middle East – all seem to find themselves trapped by the same stereotype: easy, promiscuous, inviting, and naïve. Nearly everywhere I went in Jordan, in Syria, in Egypt, and even in Qatar the stares, the shouts, the touches all confirmed my unwavering place in society: an object first, and a person second. It became clear to me that being a white, blonde woman in the Middle East seemed to mean two overarching things: free sex and the possibility of a green card.

For most foreign women I knew, it was something that slowly sunk in. The first weeks were too overwhelmingly exotic for much of the cultural and social norms to appear. Then began a gradual but gnawing process realizing that with every blatant stare, every rude comment, provoking grab, or lack of acknowledgement, we were different. This wasn’t America, and we were nowhere near equal. What’s more: the majority of the population seemed to accept, and even expect, it be this way.

However, my initiation was sudden. It was fast. It was painful. And there was nothing subtle about it. In the second week of my life abroad, I was abducted by a taxi driver on my way home from the grocery store. It was broad daylight, in the western, trendy Abdoun neighborhood of Amman. But that didn’t matter. I didn’t know much Arabic and I was obviously foreign. I smiled too much, I laughed too loud, I talked and made eye contact. I realized I wasn’t headed home when it was much too late.

We ended up on a dirt road on the outskirts of Amman, no houses or people in sight. In one swift motion the cab doors locked shut, the driver hurdled over the front seat to pin me down in back, and my clothes were ripped and torn. I managed one call on my cell phone before he threw it to the front seat, and we were alone. I screamed, he punched. I kicked, he choked. I bit, he hit.

It probably lasted all of ten minutes; I blank on most of it. I just remember an intense will to live, coupled with an outrage and disgust at the injustice of being so objectified. Ultimately, I remember the look of astonishment in his eyes when he realized I would not submit.

Lost in translation between the Paris Hilton images and the Britney Spears music videos, my personal empowerment, my individuality, my self-reliance had never been part of his consideration. I was not the easy American woman, the promiscuous American woman, the inviting American woman; I was the enabled, proud, and independent American woman.

Thanks to him, I am also now a much less naïve American woman.

He stopped and I jumped from the cab. I grabbed my groceries. I demanded my phone. He offered to give me a ride home, and I almost laughed between sobs. I looked him straight in the eye as he slammed his door and barreled away.

Three young Jordanian men happened to drive by soon after, finding me bloody, in shock, and crying in the middle of the road. Without realizing it, they offered me the first in a series of second looks at a culture I almost dismissed. They called the police, bought me water and ice, stayed with me for an hour to wait for help. In broken English, they managed to string together one sentence: “No worry, it will be okay.”

The next two weeks were spent between hospitals, police stations, and Arabic classes. I was contacted by the American Embassy, the UN, the royal family. Everywhere I went, with my battered face and my known story, it seemed someone wanted to apologize, to excuse, to sympathize.

An old Bedouin man found me soon after the attack. He took one look at me, shook his head, and said sadly, “There are good men, and there are bad. In the whole world. This man, he was bad. But we, we are not all bad. You understand?”

A woman, her face covered and her head down, came up to my translator as I waited at the police station for a medical exam. She said something in Arabic. My translator turned to me and said flatly, “She wants to know if your husband is beating you too.”

Everyone stared, and it was a much different stare than I received before or after my face was healed. The women stared with understanding and pity, the men stared with a mix of shame and anger. I realized that I was in no way the only person struggling in my story. While my pain may have been more recent, my situation more extreme, I was only a piece of a continuous, daily strain on society—man or woman, American or Arab.

The author in Jordan.

Going back to America never really crossed my mind; in fact, three days after the attack, I petitioned my home school to let me stay abroad the full year, instead of the one semester I had planned. I wanted to make sure that awful cab ride was the beginning of my time in Jordan, and not its definition. I consider that one of the best decisions I have ever made. The resulting year was one I’ll reflect upon indefinitely.

Still, throughout the year, my feelings about being a woman—an American woman—only became more distressing. The catcalls, the grabs, the assumed inferiority never stopped. I learned to keep my eyes down, to smile less, to speak to men only in Arabic and only when addressed.

In taxis, I used the same story every time: I was Lebanese and I had moved to Amman with my new Jordanian husband. As best as I could with my blonde hair and white skin, I assimilated.

It wasn’t until about six months in that I began to realize that my stereotypes, my assumptions of the average Jordanian woman were just as misplaced as my attacker’s thoughts of me. It took time, but I allowed myself to take another look. What I found were some of the strongest women I have ever met, women who had realized their rights and empowerment in a society where it was not an easy find. From filmmakers fighting harassment to journalists reporting honor killings; health care professionals teaching sexual education and female college students aspiring to study law in America, Jordanian women also proved that social norms and stereotypes are different than definitions.

That’s not to say I necessarily felt more empowered myself; coming back to America was a giant and much needed breath of fresh air. But I realized that I was not at all fighting the feminine fight alone. In fact, most of the time Jordanian women were fighting much harder than me.

Coming home, I was suddenly surrounded by things that had been taboo—short skirts, tank tops, male friends, individuality, and an expectation to be an independent woman with a job, a voice, and my own life plan. I felt like I was handed every social freedom for which those women in Jordan fought every day, but for the first time in my life I could fully appreciate them all.

They never found that cab driver, despite the hours I spent looking at lineups, mug shots, and impounded taxis. With over 10,000 registered taxi drivers in Amman, and probably thousands of others unregistered, it’s not surprising he disappeared.

I spent a lot of time being angry about what happened. Part of me still is, but a much larger part of me has tried to transform the experience into something meaningful, if not positive. That incident forced me to open my eyes early in my time abroad, and I don’t think I would have gained as much insight otherwise. America may provide me independence, but Jordan granted me awareness.

I probably won’t ever live in Jordan again, but I would visit tomorrow if I could. Jordan managed to become part of my identity, and I think it always will be there. Once a place is home, it’s home.

A previous version of this piece was originally printed in Abroad View magazine.