Category: Personal

Tales of Yore #7: Dramatic Landing

Haytham Essam4 Comments

So, in 11th grade they decided a good step to be taken towards widening our cultural horizons was through improvising a new Drama class. We were to choose between that or painting. Needless to say, all of them guys chose the drama thingy. This drama class might ranks, without a shadow of doubt, amongst the richest sources of tales of yore. I have selected one that involves a friend of ours that is officially declared MIA.

On our very first Drama class, the teacher thought we needed some sort of exercise, game, that would help us get started + help us meld together into a teamworking form for whatever was supposed to wait next. So, we were told to form 2 parallel lines facing each other just at the edge of the stage. It should be noticed that the class took place in what was then considered the school’s official theatre. Back to the two lines of students facing each other at the edge of the stage; a random student was picked at random and was asked to run across the stage and dive-jump in between the 2 lines.

I cannot remember who the first one was but it was kinda fun, especially when it takes place after 5 hours of routine classes. So, more people volunteered, one by one, to take the run and jump. Soonish afterwards, the heavier students were compelled to give it a try. I remember Slvador running towards us with that crazed laugh on his face and started thinking this might be getting lamer by the minute. We absorbed the shock of his crash, somehow. To our astonishment and horror, or more precisely, astonishment-by-horror we saw Deya’ charging towards us. I’m not about to describe Deya’. He escapes description through words. Few steps away from the edge of the stage, every single one of us realized that no just God would require a mortal being to concede such a sacrifice and unanimously decided to step out of the way.

Two seconds later we had a raging lump of meat panting on the ground swearing vengeance upon all those who failed to face the harrowing of the first Drama class. And thus, started the escapade of a whole class from what was later known to be Abu Sheera.

Tales of Yore#6: Flask of Eternity

Haytham Essam1 Comment

This took place sometime in our freshman/sophomore year at college. It was a hot Summer morning and I was in the company of Yanal as we strode the lengths of the science square during one of our mutual breaks. Boredom led us up the stairs of the physics department and onto its roof.

There, we found an empty flask that has been cast away for some reason and left to the tear and wear of time. Our first instictive reaction was to have a kick at it. After several gentle kicks and sweeps, we decided it qualified for more brutal beating. To our greater astonishment, the flask retained its structural integrity through the constant bouncing off the walls and ragged floor of the roof. It became kinda childish delight trying to experiment with this thing to assess its limits. Nothing we did, that wouldn’t attract the attention of those below, managed to break the damn flask!

In our thrill, we decided to name it the flask of eternity. This was a major breakthrough in non-academic activities that can be done in between lectures in such a place as JU. So, I carried the flask off the ground, walked to an area just behind the door of the roof, there to safekeep it for next rounds of joy. So, I dropped the flask to the ground just to have it splash into a multitude of tiny crystal shards.

In a sense, the Arabic crowds are similar to the Flask of eternity. Just when they thought we could take all sorts of humiliation, we burst in righteous fury.

The Flask of Eternity story is a real-life story.

Snow …. in Amman

ODIN4 Comments

I know that some of you already knows about this incident but i’m going to put it hear as a decimation and sharing.

last week, Sunday, while Jordan was waiting for snow, wind speed was like 100 Km/h.

I was planning to go to gym as usual, i can’t miss a class for Denisa, but Amr toke the Polo to university cause Tico will be Airborne, so I found my self  have to risk my life to fly to GYM in Tico or no Denisa this week, mom was worried about me so i didn’t go.first weather disappointment.

I went home to find out we lost out internet connection and TV wan’t stable. I reserved a message from Injaz reminding me to go to school tomorrow for my section. forecast  expected snow in some arias and it was like waiting for and extra day off. at 1:30 am it began snowing, and due to losing internet again + no satellite, i had a company until 4 am before I could sleep, second weather disappointment

next day i wake up 7:15 , i looked from the window to find out that no snow on streets , just light layer in cars, and sure it was cold. i was a little bit disappointed but at least i will finish another section and end my course sooner.

I arrived school 7:50 am it was strange cause everybody would be inside by now, i waited to 5 min and then went in. i saw on of my students in the yard and she was yelling at me ” teacher go away , escape, nobody came today”. my first reaction was similar to what we used to do when some guy sits on the window and yell at every student enter the main gait to go home cause no body is hear. after a second i said: wait a minute  i’m some kind a teacher now and i’m the one who suppose bring them inside. i went inside to find out that coordinating teacher is not there , the principle in not there, a teacher is talking to a parent that no one is hear yet, and some janitor is waving to student to escape while opening the door, 3rd weather disappointment.

it was a partial shock to me, i was so mad , i went home, put my bagama back  & went to sleep.

i know some of you guys could had a worst day but i liked the part when student told me to “Shalif” , back to old days.

After 7 Years

Severus3 Comments

I dont know if you remember Hussein, He was One year younger, who knew Ill meet him that far away 7 years later 🙂
seriously amazed

(I met Hussein in Palo Alto during a Business trip, while he is bio-med researcher in Stanford (Serious Science)

Tales of Yore #2: Tears of “Owner”

Haytham Essam4 Comments

This happened sometime during 11th grade. We had a basketball match against one of the 10th graders teams. It was the school’s intramural Basketball tournament and with the Tawjihi people out of the way we had a chance at getting gold. I remember the team consisting of myself, Slvador, 6am6am, Masri and 5th member which kept coming on and off. The starter was Deya2, though.

The game was happening in the school’s GYM hall with some crowd, mainly people who had miserable lives and nothing else better to do than watch a basketball game. Midway through the game, Malek came asking me to participate in the match. I can’t remember why but I kinda told him that I wouldn’t want that happening and he actually took to his heels and ran out, as I figured out later, with tears in his eyes. Apparently, some girl he was intending to impress was amongst the audience that day.

In a strike of irony, I remember 7neiti playing in some other basketball game for the exact same reason. He was a starter and after his first go, in which he failed to even hit the board, Slvador/6am6am chased him out of the hall.

I guess apologies are due to Malek. Sorry!

First Class

ODIN20 Comments

Monday, 4th.October.2010, 7 o’clock in the morning, I had to wake up at that time for the first time since a while, I washed up my face, put on my formal clothes, get my bag ready, a lot of  books, pins and paper.

Excitement and tension, when i looked at my self in the mirror i saw that little kid used to go to school 18 years ago, a lot of flash backs kept pop up that day,I headed to school and arrived at  7:45, entered the main entrance with students while the playing of the national anthem, a teacher saw me and came to me and asked to follow her, she took me to my class, told me to wait for student, they will come soon.

I still can hear the morning program, “hal t3lam” ,”7kmat al yom”, thing are not that different. student started to come and get seated, surprise look on there face for a male teacher who is waiting them in “mehani” Room. i waited until all student came, i kept asking if anyone still out there, and they kept answering yes, in the end I found my self facing 54 7th grade female student.

Thats a lot of student , i don’t have enough materials, i’m not prepared to that number of students. suddenly the teacher came in, she asked a group of students to go to computer room, others to go to yard and other places. in the end there was almost 30-35 students, she gave me the class, and threated the students for discipline.

I took a deep breath and started the lesson, explaining why i’m hear, what is INJAZ , what are we going to talk about all that kind of stuff. after a couple of  jokes, some conversation and chitchat, i had to explains some point and a quick game in the end of the class.

45 min passed quickly for me, almost enough to give them idea , but not to do every point in the hand out. I wondered how do they take math and science class with all that students in class, if 10 students have questions or need some help you will need 20 min just for them, my experience is limited in education but i can tell that 54 student class really too much, i wish people will start donate for building school more than building mosques.

My next section will be about Puberty and changes in there lives, a guy should explain that to 12 year old girls , I don’t have any idea how am i going to do it but i hope i won’t go to jail 😛

Come find me room 1227

Severus8 Comments

just got back to my room in Dublin, had a shower, and from the  fog on the shower glass door from the hot water, I saw a message written on the door upside down in a freakish way it says “Come find me room 1227”.

I got soo freaked out I’m spending the night at the lobby!

Rockn Amman

ODIN3 Comments

Saturday 2/8/2010 ,after going home from busy day in work, i found on twitter that everybody is taking about Rock band concert for “Die Toten Hosen” at 7:00 pm, it was 7:15 already and i don’t have a car. to be honest i didn’t have any idea who the hell are they and what are they going to sing, but between my choices which i prefer not to mention i decided to go.

I took a taxi to Al-Hussein culture center in “Ras Al-ain”, for some reasons in didn’t notice that it was in “Al-Hussein park theater”. after another taxi to the park , i reached the theater.I noticed the presence of security but not in stressful way, the ticket costs 3 JD which is very affordable,  I took my ticket and “spin fm” sticker, and headed to the entrance gate.

There was a rock music playing so i thought the concert has started, after all it was 8:00 pm and the concert starts at 7:00, but i found that the stage is empty , a group of guys under the stage are jumping and rolling their heads , 200-350 sitting on the theater waiting for the band. after finding a good seat and regretting  coming alone I thought about some people who would like to watch this concert but after calling  Elùne, it didn’t call anyone cause it is too late.

Suddenly “we will rock you” song was played and the audience started to react with the song, but they kept getting out of the beat, some were do clap clap dom , the other dom dom clap, and the guys under the stage still rolling their heads, I guess we need practice.

After 5 min the band entered the stage, everybody is screaming, light all over the place, a typical rock concert stared, they tried to speak some words in Arabic, it was some mixture between Arabic, English, and Dutch. but enough to excite the audience. they played a short song first in English, impressive as a start.

After a couple of songs and start singing in Dutch , i decides to go under the stage to experience Rock show rage. everybody were jumping , a lot of guys, some foreign girls and few local girls, although it was crowded enough to make you hit everyone around you by just standing in the middle, it was strange for me to find some girls in backless dresses, even for liberal people it was not the right dress for this event , i touched some places on there bodies without even trying and for the first moment it was disgusting according to the amount of sweat on there bodies.

I kept moving forward trying to reach the stage, it toked me almost 2 songs and i found that i know more than 5 different guys in the crowed, after reaching the stage and avoiding the guys who keep push each others in circles, i tried to take some photos on my phone, stage lights din’td help nor the moving crowed.

guys kept jump on the stage and jumping back on crowed, at the beginning  the guys where slim and light and easy to left , but after a while fat guys started to jump and to make it worse they took off their tops. all i know is big fat swilling guy was jumping on my way , the only thing i thought about is to cover my head and try to avoid him, after a dozen of fat guys , everybody did the same , one of them jumped to find him self hitting the ground. security intervened to reduce jumping, it was more like a swimming pool more than a stage.

after standing next to sage for a while i knew i’m not going to get anything except pain, headache, and swilling cocktail on my t-shirt,so i went back to my seat, i met another friend, and i seated with him.

nobody was singing with the band besides Ditch people, i though i was the only one who don’t know the songs but i found few locals know some songs, at least the English song. everyone else was there to cream, jump, push each other and jump from the stage. as Elùne said to me later, we have hunger for rock music, if we played  “my immortal” in a concert people still will start rolling their heads and jump. again, we need practice.

They finished at 10:00 giving us almost 1:45 concert, after talking to my friend, i left the theater.

in the end i found that i did almost everything the crowed was doing , jumping, pushing, screaming, to a band i knew a bout it 30 min ago. this not my first rock show I’ve been to, but my first real rock band, , my idea about rock shows now more like a rolling coaster than a concert.