Last week, my family and I went to the Dead Sea to spend the weekend in one of its 'fancy hotels'. As usual, my parents wake up early, drink their morning coffee, relax for an hour or two then wake us up to eat breakfast. My father got some towels and reserved a perfect place at the pool to watch my youngest brother swim. Everything was good and we were ready to go and enjoy our weekend swimming, but to our surprise this happens: A foreign lady (I won't mention her origin) and her children were chilling on our reserved place and were already using our towels. My father politely asked her to look for another place since this is ours, and all she got is a disgusting attitude saying that he had nothing but towels on the sun beds and that he's such a rude and disrespectful person for telling her to move. As a daughter, I cannot tolerate a loud lady talking to my father that way, so I laid down on the sun bed beside her since she had nothing but 'a towel' on it to see how she would react to the same situation we were put in. Sure enough she starts screaming, trying to push me away but when my father reaches out to me, she starts screaming accusing him of harassing her and using his force on her (he didn't even touch her) threatening to track my father down and get all his details since she's a 'diplomatic citizen'. She talked a lot and offended me, my parents and every Jordanian when her tongue slips those words: Are you guests? What type of people are you, do guests act that way? This was my moment of realization that we truly lost respect even in our own country, am I a guest in my country? Do diplomatic citizens have the freedom to offend me? Did our extreme hospitality empower her rudeness? My answer to this woman and every person who lacks respect to the country that serves him/her and its people is: Please, leave. I won't accept to reach a point where we're no longer treated the way we should. This woman literally occupied my place in my country and threatened me, then the security of the hotel made it look as if we were wrong. Which really reminded me of the bigger picture of this situation since this is a simplified example of what's really going on in the Arab world. The question is, where did we go wrong? Is it by our extreme respect to those who deserve none, or is it our fear of using all what we have to forcefully take what was forcefully stolen from us? Katreena Halasa |