40 years of resilience

I passed by The Jordan Times a couple of years ago to ostensibly discuss something about the column I wrote each Monday for about six years, but also to see if the place still held the strings to my heart. 

I stood at the front desk of the Jordan Press Foundation, home of the JT and Al Rai, like a stranger waiting to be allowed in. And I did think at that time how strange it was that the walls, halls and offices of the Jordan Press Foundation could be so integral to my being and the formative blocks of who I am today, but that the people and the faces that passed by me were so unfamiliar and far removed from anything I remembered from my time there.

Earlier on in my life, I spent more than 10 years at The Jordan Times as a reporter/editor. I started working there in 1984 as a freelancer after meeting some of the JT “young celebrities” at a party and immediately fell for the promise of this work opportunity.

In my early 20s, I had just returned from the United States where I was experimenting with higher education and seeking a definition of how to turn who I am into something workable and adult for the next phase of my life.

I was a rebel against the patriarchy of my Westernised but conservative family, beginning to realise the dichotomy in my identity posed by my Palestinian origin and completely fascinated by the prospect of taking my “liberal” attitude from the shenanigans of young adulthood — which I certainly put to the test during my college years — to political and social systems that were rooted in idealism, democracy, pluralism, classlessness and, most importantly, global humanity. 

Within days I was tapping away at a manual typewriter in a congested room with other idealist 20-somethings shaking with anticipation for when the editor would proclaim whether our stories made it to page one (the most coveted), page three (the second most respectable place to land with your story) or become buried in obscurity on other pages and especially the dreaded page two.

We stayed out of our homes till the early hours of the morning, working away, collecting information from our “sources”, but then pressing ahead with our social gatherings where we smoked, drank and discussed what will happen next in the democratisation process, in the peace process, in our relations with Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

We were in the middle of this whole debate around where the country was heading, not only politically but also in art, music and literature.

We were important and we were contributing. We had passion that we fed day after day, living in that idealist bubble, believing and often convincing our “sources” to believe with us.

We were all aware that in the background, the editor of the paper continuously negotiated our presence and navigated an existence for us with the government, power brokers in the country and, most importantly, the management of JPF.

On almost daily basis he needed to explain why we were needed in the country, not only as a mouthpiece of the government speaking in a foreign language that diplomats can read easily (which is how they saw us) but as a national project with credibility and a necessary liberal and reform-driven voice that must be heard.

The Jordan Times was never embraced, never given support, never allowed to strategise forward, never given a break. 

For 40 years, it fought for its existence with limited financial resources and lack of recognition from its owners and the change-resistant and sarcastic “system” that permeated — and continues to permeate — the ranks of journalism in Jordan.

This is all relevant not only as a personal testimony by an old Jordan Timer on the 40th anniversary of this most amazing school of Jordanian politics, but in celebration of the resilience of The Jordan Times and as a reminder that it remains a liberal, reformist voice that — if allowed to manage its growth strategically and with vision — fosters hope and passion in a wilderness of dark extremism, intolerance, warmongering and hate.

I cannot think of a time when The Jordan Times is needed more than today.

The writer is currently leading the first Jordanian Gender Programme funded through USAID and implemented by IREX. Previously she worked as director of the Information and Research Centre - King Hussein Foundation and the Jordan Media Institute. She worked as a reporter at The Jordan Times between 1984 and 1995 and again as a columnist in 2006 and until 2012.