Love In Jordan: ‘Dress Western But Act Oriental’

The Media Line Staff

Amman, Jordan (TML) – In the corridors of the University of Jordan, young women sway their hips in tight jeans, embracing the latest fashion trend the West has to offer. Their male counterparts seem no less committed to showing off their looks, nor to a deeply rooted urge to catch the attention of flashy girls.

This is one of the few places where young people can mix in a country built on strict gender segregation. Despite the superficially Western influenced culture, many young people express exasperation with the traditional mentality governing most people.

But girls and boys, like in many Arab societies, often break the taboo and engage in a romantic relation. But the fate of most romantic adventures is in the end determined by family more than the lovers themselves.

“This romantic relationship is veiled with secrecy, fear and deception,” admits Ehsan, a fourth year engineering student at the university of Jordan who says he must keep his family in the dark over this relationship if he wants to one day marry the girl.

“My family does not know I have a girlfriend. Her family might kill her if they know,” he said.

For this young man and many others, the only hope of marrying his girlfriend is through an arranged marriage supervised and given the stamp of approval by his family.

“Soon I will ask my mother to visit my girlfriend’s home to have a look at her,” Ehsan said. “My education, qualifications and the name of my family is enough to secure the approval of my girlfriends family, provided they don’t know about my relation with her.”

Ehsan says he resents arranged marriages, but concedes that most young men resort to family choice to escape responsibility.

“Some of the young people refuse old tradition and want to make their own choices,” he said. “But this culture needs time to grow.”

In Jordan, the majority of the 5.6 million population is made up of young people, with a ratio of two females to every male.

The kingdom continues to struggle to assimilate waves of cultures and traditions brought by successive immigrations into the once barren land.

Despite the seeming porousness of the country’s social and religious barriers, due to a colorful social mosaic of Cherkasians, Armenians, Chechens, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, the reality is in fact quite rigid.

Professor Hussein Al Khouzahi, from the University of Balqa said the influence of western culture did not reach the level of choosing one’s own partner yet. “When the relationship gets serious young men resort to the family to make a decision on their behalf, men rarely have the courage to break out of family control,” said Khouzahi, blaming the widespread phenomena on the protracted period girls and boys spend with their parents before moving out.

“The family builds boys and girls to be dependent on parents and senior family members,” he said. “Moreover, lack of communication within the family helps breed this culture.”

Proponents of arranged marriage insist the rate of divorce is less among those who embrace this sort of marriage, compared to western ways of marriage but many women say they feel betrayed by the unjust social system, where men, educated or not, get to pick girls like vegetables on a rack.

Eman, 28, took the unusual step of going against the social current and searching for a husband by herself through a matrimonial agency.

Now the ground is set for Eman, a school teacher from Amman, to finally tie the knot with a Jordanian expatriate in the gulf who is 15 years her senior with three children from a previous marriage.

But the package with which the future husband comes does not bother Eman, admitting social pressure forced her to seek alternative means to join the marriage cult.

“Two of my sisters are not educated, but when people came knocking for brides, they selected them due to their good looks,” she added, admitting that dating, however appealing it appears to be, is something to avoid in this country.

“If word goes out that a girl is dating, she can write off her chances of getting married, if the family spares her life,” said Eman.

Eman met her fiancé through a local matrimonial agency in the popular city of Ruseifeh, 30 km east Amman. She had to pay JD 20 to have access to the organization’s record of suitable grooms.

For Eman turning to the help of an organization was a risk she had to take.

“People would immediately think negatively about me if they knew I was getting married through the Internet,” she said.

Saeed Abul Ruz, manager of the society, said his job is to help young people find their partners as the society expands and traditional methods are no longer effective. He is also targeting unmarried Jordanians in the oil rich gulf who wish to marry women from back home.

Khourizi said people refuse to acknowledge new methods of marriage and wants one of the basic pillars of society to remain within the control of the family.

For Eman, the freedom of women is not about being able to work or engage in politics, but to freely make her own choice about the person to accompany her through her life journey.

“What we see of western influenced culture is only a façade,” she said. “People here have a long way to go before we can say there is freedom for girls and boys to make their own choice. For now, most are content look western and act oriental.”

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