It’s odd for me to hear Letterman ask if Jordan was “foreboding.” I keep forgetting that many Americans view the Middle East as a generally horrifying place. It’s really unfortunate, particularly in the case of a country like Jordan, because it’s so beautiful. And yes, it was tough as hell on [...]
February 6, 2010
Categories: Good News, Harem, Jordan, fandom . Tags: the hurt locker . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 4 Comments
The original title of this post was “2009 Sucked.” But then something odd happened.
I suck at making resolutions, though there are definitely people and things I’d like to say goobye to. Mostly to you and you. And Madeira. Holy crap, I am never drinking that again. I am also never standing on icy bridges, hurling [...]
December 31, 2009
Categories: Good News, Jordan, Personal Essays, Pictures, Ukraine . Tags: 2009 . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 5 Comments
Anne Applebaum annoyed me with her clueless stereotyping of Russian women, but she downright freaked me out the other day when she went to bat for Roman Polanski. Her subsequent defense of her comments is even worse – Applebaum has the nerve to call the victim’s testimony “salacious.” I don’t even know what to say [...]
October 2, 2009
Categories: Friends & Neighbours, Idiots on Parade, Jordan, The F-Word, Work, Writers . Tags: hijab, roman polanski, zombies . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 14 Comments
Leave it to me to be inspired by a Cracked article about how certain mental conditions could potentially get a guy laid (hey Cracked, when are you going to start helping ladies to get laid? Just sayin).
Nabokov had it. Tori Amos has it. Yours truly has it, though she’s not nearly as awesome as [...]
August 30, 2009
Categories: Dork-Out, Jordan, Personal Essays . . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 14 Comments
When something like this happens in public in Amman, I think it highlights one of the main reasons why the so-called honour killing law has still not been changed. Family is turned on its head, and the reverence for family becomes a reverence for psychological and physical abuse.
Of course, the situation described is also very [...]
August 29, 2009
Categories: Bad News, Friends & Neighbours, Jordan . Tags: domestic abuse, family . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 4 Comments
Women get stabbed to death for much less.
The post-mortem virginity tests on the bodies of honour crime victims are just another kind of violation, methinks. It shouldn’t matter if a woman was having an affair or not. Her precious life was deemed worthless, and that’s the only thing that matters.
Jordanian society is lopsided to the [...]
August 27, 2009
Categories: Bad News, Jordan . Tags: honour killing, sex . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 23 Comments
When my brother left for camp earlier this month, he cleaned the flat out of headphones. Seriously. The one pair I could find is weirdly deformed and does not allow me to listen to my iPod unless I hold it a few inches from my face. Instead of listening to, say, Tori Amos’s new album [...]
August 24, 2009
Categories: Jordan, Music, Ukraine, Videos . . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 2 Comments
This is good weather for staying in to work with a cat hanging around in your general vicinity. The sun comes and goes, and never stays long enough. I recently fished out this picture taken with Fanty in Amman, shortly before leaving for London earlier this year. There’s something about it. That entire “photo-session” completely [...]
July 27, 2009
Categories: Jordan, Music, Pictures, Ukraine, Videos . . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 2 Comments
Recently, I was talking to a friend about feminism when she said something that made me feel sad. We were talking about clothes and make-up and she mentioned how the tension surrounding these subjects is probably not going to go away any time soon. I forget what my reply was, if any, but I did [...]
July 7, 2009
Categories: Friends & Neighbours, Jordan, Kultur, Pictures, The F-Word . . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 33 Comments
“I like the sweet life and the silence, but it’s the storm that I believe in.”
I could launch into a long monologue about the Eternal Feminine right now, but I’m not going to subject you to that. It’s a beautiful, breezy Monday in Amman, I’m going to Ukraine at the end [...]
July 6, 2009
Categories: Jordan, Music, Ukraine, Videos . Tags: love . Author: Natalia Antonova . Comments: 5 Comments
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