Love: An Introduction
A new column by visual artist and writer alma khasawnih will explore the untold stories of ordinary people in Amman, and the depth of the most profound emotion: Love.
Words by alma khasawnih.
LOVE. MY INTEREST IN the word and its meaning consciously started after I met a man in Detroit whose only topic of conversation was love. He talked about it with a serenity of a monk and with the obsession of an addict. He couldn't talk about anything else.
I was intrigued by his focus, and since meeting him I have begun reading, talking, and writing about love. Mainly, I have been trying to define love and loving. In Arabic there are 14 words, maybe more, for love in its different stages: al hub is the opposite of hate; al mahaba is the excitement in the heart when seeing the beloved; al jawa is the transformation of love into a chronic illness, and the most extreme form of love is al hiyam which is the stage of love that makes one insane.
I do not believe that the number of words in a certain language is indicative of how much love there is in a culture; my aim here is to point out how much love consumes of our lives.
When I type in “love” on Google, I get 1.9 billion hits in 0.25 seconds. When I type “love songs” I get 42 million hits. “Arabic love songs:” 1.8 million hits, “Hindi love songs:” 9.8 million hits, “revolutionary love songs:” 7.4 million hits. As for “love movies,” there are 109 million hits. Even Braveheart, with Mel Gibson, is about his love for his wife and his need to avenge her death. Bloody, bloody love. Wikipedia offers definitions of love, the “Love Calculator” tells you if your love is doomed or if you should work on it. Then come the images of drooling hearts, then some videos, then singles dating sites, then a site on “how to love.”
When I ask people to define love, most say love is not to be defined. They insist that it is an emotion that just takes over you, captures your heart, soul and mind, consumes your being. You cannot control it.
But in her 2001 book All About Love: New Visions, the post-feminist social critic bell hooks argues that not being able to define love makes us accept acts that are devoid of love as love. A husband hits his wife and then tells her he loves her; a mother belittles her son because she says she loves him; a friend overly criticizes another because he wants the best for his friend. All these are acts that have no love in them, but we accept them as “tough love,” or part of what love is.
Until we differentiate between these dysfunctional forms of love as love, hooks argues, we will not be able to experience the real thing. I wonder if that could be true? And if so, then how do we explain the experiences of love that we felt, which we believed to be true and real? Think of a love you’ve experienced in your life, and recall how intense your state was.
Now imagine what it would have been like if you experienced that love without emotional and psychological abuse, without the nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you are being judged, that you aren't good enough, that you don't work hard enough, don't make enough money, etc. Wow! I wonder if hooks was on to something.
A year ago I learned that St. Valentine was killed because he united in marriage individuals who were not allowed to marry in society, like persons of different religions and classes. Until last year, I didn't celebrate Valentine’s Day. Now I do.
We, as a people of the world, are obsessed with love. We want to be in love. We want lovers. We want to get lost in love. We look for it every day, in much of what we do. I, like my friend in Detroit, am obsessed with love and loving (though sometimes I do talk about other topics, such as swimming). In this series of writings I will explore and write aloud about love with you. I believe that love is an immensely important act or feeling. I believe Emma Goldman, who almost 100 years ago wrote in her book Anarchism and Other Essays that love is “the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny.”
I am in love and I am loving.
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