We had just a few shawerma sandwiches from Reem and we were sitting on the curb indulging in the beefy yuminess. Reem is my favorite shawerma vendor in town, their meat is always soft and thick, and their sauce never overpowers the flavor. It also reminds me a lot of my childhood, because my mother would always get us Reem and then sit us all to eat on the sidewalk by the Second Circle, and who doesn’t love Jabal Amman?
Last night though, like most mounts of the city, Jabal Amman looked very different, its circles and lightposts almost unrecognizable circuses of a hundred million banners, posters, and other sorts of shitty promotional materials. The very men and women who are trying to catch our votes for a seat in the Jordanian Parliament with empty promises of a better future are severely damaging the one thing that I treasure the most about this city.
We ate our sandwiches in silence as we tried to take in the visual chaos. Then my partner points out to the lightpost right in front of us, which had four different campaigns fighting for our attention.
“Look,” he says. “Candidate A is just a rich guy who has allegedly made his money off of catering to the American army in Iraq. Candidate B was a member of the last parliament, the same parliament that is universally agreed upon as the worst in the history of Jordan. He was simply the government’s favorite to take over the Christian seat – a seat that at one point could have yielded a communist or a Pan-arabist with a true political agenda. Candidate C is a falafel guy, and I’m not kidding! He owns one of the falafel chains in town, and just look at his slogans, ‘For healthy food and no taxes’. Candidate D is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate.
If you were forced to choose between these four at gunpoint, who would you choose?”
I look at their long mustaches and shake my head, “Do I have to answer?”
“Of course you do, you’re held at gunpoint.”
“Ok. We’ll rule out Candidate D completely, because I’m a secular person and I would never support a candidate whose whole basis is built on religion. He also has a really hideous poster. I mean, yellow? Seriously, dude. I suppose we can also rule out Candidate A. Although if you didn’t specifically mention the American army part, I would have probably chosen him – his poster isn’t too horribly designed and his suit looks nicer than the others. That leaves us with Candidates B and C, and neither of them is really very appealing…”
“The guy running for the Christian seat is probably not even interested in your vote. You are probably not his target audience , plus how can you consider a guy who already had his shot and proved his incompetence?! If I were in the last parliament I will be ashamed to show my face in public, let alone run again!!”
“Mmm, well in that case…”
“Tell me you are not picking the falafel guy. The falafel guy? THE FALFEL GUY, Roba!!”
“Ehhh… I’m not voting for anyone. But falafel beats Shari3a. Who would you vote for?”
“I wouldn’t vote.”
“You can’t do that, you’re at gunpoint!”
“I would slip in a blank voting card.”
“You can’t. They are watching over your head!”
“I am going with the Islamic brotherhood guy. Honestly, and don’t tell anyone, I did it before. During my first year at Jordan University I voted for this guy- tactfully named 3izz il Deen al Qassam. When I was a freshman, the Shyookh-dominated student council helped me a lot. They were really organized and when voting time came I voted for this one guy who showed me around on my first day on campus. As much as I despise the approach of ‘I am the Allah-backed candidate and if you pray you should vote for me’, at least they have a political agenda and are not random ‘businessmen’.”
“Dude, you can’t vote for the Muslim Brotherhood! That’s shameful to your disclosed ideologies and tendencies.”
“Well, if they end up calling for something stupid like banning women from driving, or closing swimming pools, I would practice my democratic rights and throw tomatoes at their homes or something like that”
“Ehh… estafadna menak.”
So, the question is, if you were held at gunpoint and you had to choose between candidates A, B, C, and D, who would you choose?
