JO Magazine

Shady Salah is tired of people who get what they want, and then talk big about how lousy it all is.

Words by Shady Salah.

AWHILE AGO, AN AMERICAN friend of mine asked me to go to the American Embassy to pick up his son’s passport, so I took his receipt and went. As I stood in the line outside, waiting to be allowed in, I noticed something. There were more than 18 applicants standing in that line, and they were all behaving themselves. No one was smoking. No one was talking on his cell phone. None of the people standing in the line tried to take someone’s turn, and everybody was polite!

My turn came and I went inside, passed the security inspection, and walked up to the main building. As I entered the waiting hall I was impressed again: I have never seen applicants so disciplined in my life. Every single person there was sitting quietly, waiting for his name to be called. You will never see this anywhere else in Amman. Even in the hospital, there will be people smoking. In any government ministry, or even in the police stations, there will be people pushing each other to avoid standing in the line, crowding around the windows, yelling and making all kinds of noises.

So what makes these applicants behave themselves in the American Embassy? What’s the secret behind this major change in their mentality and manners?

At first I thought maybe the Americans put some kind of gas in the ventilation system that makes people polite. You know, like in the movies! But I think the real answer is much simpler. Most of the applicants sitting in that waiting room came to apply for a visa or a green card; they want to go to the United States, no matter what it takes. To do that, they need to present the best image they can of themselves; they want to try to prove that they are good people, and that they deserve to be allowed to go to America, the land of opportunity that everybody dreams of.

Some of them pass, and they get the visa, and they go to America. They tried hard to get there, and the first thing they do when they arrive is look for a job. But when someone is working in a foreign country he will not often get the same job he was qualified for in his native country. So when Arabs go to the US they work as sackers in supermarkets, or busboys in restaurants, or flipping burgers in some fast food joint. No one goes to a foreign country and works as a company manager, at least not in the first 35 years there.

Every few years, these Arab-Americans come back from the States to visit their homeland. Curiously, though, they don’t mention anything good about living in the US. All they talk about is how they don’t like the American mentality, they don’t like the weather there, they don’t like the American government. If they don’t like it so much, why do they still live there? Why did they make all that effort to get the green card? And why did they stand many times, for hours, at the gates of the American Embassy?

Last week I picked up a couple of guys who were going to see the performance of a Palestinian-American poet, who dedicated her poetry just to criticizing the American government, and talking about how she was always mistreated by American people. So, these passengers that I picked up were actually willing to pay money, and buy a ticket, just to listen to a girl whining about living in America.

I was confused, because I couldn’t decide who was more stupid: this couple who are wasting their time watching this whining performance, or the Arab poet who doesn’t like living in America, but she still lives there, coming back to the Arab world occasionally to tell us how much her life stinks!

If I don’t like how Russian people treat me, well, I won’t go live in Russia, because I’ll be seeing them everywhere. If this poet hates her life in the US, then she should come back to the Middle East and quit complaining. I'm so tired of hearing Arab-Americans, who went out of their way to act so nice and quiet and deserving when they were in line for their visas, sitting in my cab whining and moaning about how much they hate America. There must be some reason you're living there! So either thank God for getting your green card, and keep their mouth shut and stand quietly in line, like you did at the embassy—or come back to your homeland, and live like a normal person, and complain about whatever you want.

Then again, maybe the only person who should be blamed for their behavior is the one sitting behind the counter in the American Embassy, issuing visas to these ungrateful people.

Love it? Hate it? Send comments, questions and angry notes to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The opinions in this piece are the columnist's own, and do not represent the views of JO magazine. We never complain about the US government...