I normally set the alarm on my cell phone to wake me up for work at 7:45 AM, two days a week. This morning, a certain someone sent me a morning message much earlier than that, I’d say at around 7 AM. Since I have a Motorola phone, it kept beeping every five minutes or so to let me know I had an unread message.

The phone was right next to my pillow, upon which my head was resting in a mass of crazy hair. I wished, time and again, for the phone to shut up and let me enjoy my final 45 minutes of peace, to no avail. My bed was so warm, thanks to my being in it for 12 straight hours, and I did not want to move my hand from under the covers to reach for my phone and hush it. Eventually, the alarm went off and I reached for my phone and silenced it.

Quickly, I recalled my hand to come back under the covers and enjoy the warmth. My room was freezing, as was most of Amman this morning. The weather has been cruel lately, very unforgiving, as fellow Jordanians have noticed as well. And seeing as I have the room that I have, extensive heating is necessary every hour of the day. I use everything from central heating to sobet gas. Lately, I have been demanding that my dad install a sobet bawari in my part of the Arctic (i.e my room). It’s that cold.

This got me thinking of the thousands of people who can’t afford to stay warm in their own beds and in their own homes. Jordan is undergoing a lot of changes, the most major of which is the liberalization of the market. I am all for open markets and the free moving of goods and labor, and for a minimum role of the state in shaping the economy, and all that. But our government has yet to play that minimum role. The powers to be want to liberalize our market to give us a competitive edge and to encourage investment, but they are not following through with their end of the deal.

If government is a social contract between the people and those who govern them, then our government is not keeping the interests of the majority of Jordanians in mind and thus is breaching the terms of this contract. My impression of our government’s role in our current situation, where prices have skyrocketed and will increase even more and where people’s incomes have not increased to match this inflation, my impression is that it should A-monitor prices, B-enhance people’s incomes both in the public AND the private sector by exerting reasonable pressure on employers, and C-create the infrastructure that will enable a country as small as Jordan, and a people as modest, to cope with the dramatic changes taking place.

I am not an economist, but I am a Jordanian citizen working in the private sector and struggling to get by and I do far better than many other people. This, if nothing else, should grant me credibility. I live by Woody Allen’s definition of economics: “Economics is about money and why it is good.” Problem is, like old women say, there is no “blessing” in our money, meaning that it gets spent on the bare necessities and then Poof! — it’s gone. That’s called inflation, and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

But let’s put all of that on the side and get back to my story. After I woke up, I resisted getting out of bed for about ten minutes. The room, like I mentioned, was super cold and my bed was super warm and I had a very difficult time convincing my body to abandon ship, so to speak. After these tremulous minutes, I got out of bed and got ready for work.

To protect myself from the cutting cold, I put on my puffiest puffy jacket, the purple one, and went running outside to start my car so that when I am ready to leave to work I would find it as warm and inviting as my mother’s womb once was. I came back in, had my meager strawberry-yoghurt breakfast, and then left to work.

Just moments ago, a colleague of mine called me a Ninja Turtle because I would not take off my puffy purple jacket. That’s the title the cold and the government have earned me. To add more insanity to this magical day, I am being interviewed by a reporter at four. So there.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.