The 14-days notice: Stomping down Hay Al Qayseyyeh
What happens when you cease to exist, even while you breathe in and out. What happens, when no one feels your pain, even when you’re shouting your lungs out. What happens when the power structure in your city wipes out your existence; you have no one to go to, no place to be. My.Kali Manifesto Project, a joint project between Project: manifesto and My.Kali Magazine, attempted to address this situation occurring in Abdoun’s most controversial poverty pocket: the forgotten Hay Al Qayseyyeh.
Abdoun: the inland island of Amman where the richest of the rich live. It sits right on the defining line between East Amman, and West Amman. In Abdoun, a parallel world, most Ammanis don’t get to experience. The expensive restaurants and cafes, the houses castle like house with no sidewalks and tons of security cameras, Taj Mall that sells labels many didn’t even knew existed, the embassies, the gyms, the banks. In Abdoun the crème de la crème of the refined Jordanian community lives. Just few hundred meters away from where all those fancy cars, and their glits and glamour, is a neighborhood everyone pretends doesn’t exsists. This forgotten little corner is known as Hay Al Qayseyyeh, or the neighborhood of Qayseyyeh, and sits in the valley below. And it’s rather fascinating.
The Qayseyyeh’s agony started in 2008. There appears to be two non-confirmed stories carried around in whispers, which we will give you full discretion to take into heart, or dismiss.
The first one goes as such: when the brilliant Mr. Planner, AKA Abu Ahmad, was having his regular morning Hummus and Falafel breakfast in the Greater Amman Municipality offices, a Falafel piece fell on the ground, and while attempting to quickly catch the rolling Falafel and hindered by his fat belly, he ended up spilling the hummus plate causing a tiny stream of olive oil over the Northern Abdoun Master Plan erasing the fine boxes drawn to indicate the small houses present in the area, and right there the pure genius idea came to be: A classy ‘Abdoun Corridor’ of parks and shops that will end up earning the government half a billion Dinars.
The second story is still strikingly similar. The fat rich businessman Mr. Hussam woke up one morning with one thing on his mind, a long thin loaf of French Baguette bread with butter and jam smeared all over. However, the Mrs. knew what he was craving, and after a long speech about his cholesterol and over-eating, she ordered him with her firm vibrating squeakily voice to get up at once and swim few laps in their private swimming pool. Cranky and angry, he marched out and noticed the awfully thin man running after his sheep in the valley under his villa, and right there the pure genius idea came to be: a shinny long thin loaf tower of french international style with buttered shinny glass facades that will wipe out all the thin people around him.
The Abdoun Valley/ Hay Al Qayseyyeh
Regardless of what you choose to believe, the Greater Amman Municipality took the decision to tear down the homes of 200 of the poorest families in Hay Al Qayseyyeh with no proper compensation if present at all. After few years dragging those simple people in the legal system, the Bedaya court ruled to change the compensation sum from 80 JDs/m2 to 750 JDs/ m2. The poorest of these families who built their ‘shelters’ informally will end up with no compensation at all. Now those families are relocating to the street side walks.
Now Hay Al Qayseyyeh holds shadows of what were once were homes for the poor, transforming it to a surreal limbo. Each one of those raggedy houses holds, on average 3 families, 20 people, mostly working on collecting dry bread and metal junk, and sometimes raising cattle. When you visit, all your senses are attacked by the ‘ignored on purpose’ open sewer pipes, the kids have to cross-over with their bare feet to go to school, or play in the left-overs of a half torn building.
The overly successful Greater Amman Municipality never once gave a fleeting thought to the people of the area, while they made their decision to take over their homes and lives. Never even considered fair compensation, or a reasonable relocation plan. Never thought of a proper transitioning development project. This makes me question the value of a human, a poor human, in the eyes of the ‘system’. Those families have every legal document you need to exist, just like you and me. Their businesses permits were legal, renewed on time. Their only fault was them to be born poor.
The Hay Al Qayseyyeh community knocked on every existing door. They went to court, pleaded with the Government, protested, wrote to every politician, newspaper, blog, online magazine, public and private TV stations. All they got, is complete a blind eye and a mechanical answer asking them to apply (no promises, or good intentions) to some governmental housing projects, which builds an average of 96 houses a year for smaller families.
In the My.Kali Manifesto Project, we wanted to provoke. Words are not doing it anymore. We wanted people to pay attention, to listen. Hay Al Qayseyyeh is a place in transition of ‘class’. Money was talking, loud. So, we decided to spray paint over 5m2 of stencils of world known ‘rich’ labels over the torn walls transitioning to fancy places, and play on the irony it generates. If only you can think of the price the Al Qayseyyeh community are paying for the concept of the Diors and Chanels. The Hay Al Qayseyyeh community exists and its real. They are moms and dads who love, they are school children who solve math problems, they are grandmas who tell bedtime stories.
ala’ cramped in my tiny car with all 5m2 of stencils
Ala’ Assa’di and I working out Dior’s Pattern
لا للصليب
لا لرفع الأسعار
An already present statement that we only highlighted in red
Ala’ Abu Qasheh behind the camera
cK on what’s left of a torn down house
Long Live Dior
* this article was written for My.Kali Online Magazine, for more information click here.
The Maurice Observer 