I arrived back in Amman in the mid eighties after finishing university and inadvertently stumbled into a job at The Jordan Times. The editor of the paper at that time was Al Ghad's current Editor-in-Chief George Hawatmeh who followed an undeclared policy of sending rookie journalists to what seemed like mundane assignments which the more senior journalists would not touch.
The Amman Municipality was such a beat and at the time it was no great achievement to secure an interview with the mayor himself.
As I started the interview with the outspoken mayor of the day, he sat back and laughed. When I pressed him to share the joke that amused him so much he said: "I just realised you are from the people of the 'amn al wea'a'e'."
I went quiet since I didn't understand his reference and waited till my return to the office. George laughed when he heard my question and said that the mayor meant that I was Palestinian.
To explain: Preventive police is 'amn weka'e' in Arabic but since the apparent difference between the Palestinian and Jordanian accent is the way they pronounce their "k" with the Palestinians replacing it with an 'a' he was using that nuance to highlight my origins.
During the years that followed the jokes were many. "You must be from the 5 per cent crowd" in reference to a PLO arrangement with gulf countries to levy 5 per cent income tax on Diaspora Palestinians to support the PLO. And certainly more often than not the benefits of Mansaf (the Jordanian national dish) over Mloukhiah (a green spinach-like vegetable cooked with chicken or meat typical of Palestinian cuisine although more accurately typical of Egypt).
I always knew that my family was originally from Jerusalem but somehow that didn't negate the fact that I was Jordanian.
That small incident woke me up to the sensitivities of the dual nationalism of being a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. This particular mix of identities was fraught with political nuances that were dramatically different from the Jordanian Circassians or the Jordanians of Syrian origin.
The sheer number of Jordanians of Palestinian origin unsettled the indigenous Jordanians who had to share their political advantage and their scarce resources with the new immigrants.
The Palestinian leadership's political philosophy was based on the need to separate itself from the Jordanian leadership and in fact required or demanded the highlighting of differences between the two identities, especially within Jordan.
Throughout the 20 years or so since that day at the municipality, I had become passionate about my Jordanianism and protecting my right to this identity.
This not only meant empathising with and understanding the emotions, concerns and fears of both parties to this sensitive quarrel, but also rejecting any outright denial of one or the other being or becoming a part of the one state on the east side of the Jordan River.
I personally relish the fact that being a Jordanian meant firstly that my ancestors were welcomed into this land 60 years ago and more importantly that I as a Jordanian then shared in the responsibility of hosting the other waves of refugees to this land from Palestine, Kuwait, Iraq and Lebanon.
I often argued that Jordan's legacy, more than any other, is to be the eye of the storm in the region and to embrace new immigrants with a promise of stability and a better life. I have heard many argue back that this theory serves me and those like me because I am obviously a beneficiary to this formula. In their argument there is a severe denial of the role played by all inhabitants of Jordan in building Jordan regardless of their origins.
When His Majesty King Abdullah earlier this week declared that he would not allow the resurrection of the Jordanian option to resolve the Palestinian problem, he echoed the sentiments of Jordanians (of all origins) and Palestinians alike. Both peoples fear, more than anything, losing their state in an imposed political formula that serves Israeli paranoia about the dilution of its Jewish identity.
The political task of protecting the viability of our state and advocating the Palestinians' rightful claim to their independent state is in its own right a unifying factor that will ensure that the Jordan option never receives any serious consideration internationally. Equally importantly, separating that political task from the workings of our national interaction among the Jordanian citizens from different origins will allow Jordanians collectively to rejoice in both their similarities and their differences - accent and all.
We in Jordan must work towards finding a way to avoid allowing our political fears from feeding xenophobic divisions and branding fellow citizens based on the origin of their families because the dividing line is what will ensure that Jordan remains a united and welcoming oasis of tolerance, modernity and progress while at the same time safeguarding its state borders and the integrity of its identity.
By Nermeen Murad
© Jordan Times 2008
