to whom it may not concern …

Back in the good old days, we used to spend most of our summer vacations at our grandma’s houses in Jordan. For some reason, me and my siblings would call my mother’s mother ’Taita’ and my father’s mother ’Jiddeh’. This one is about Jiddeh.

Jiddeh was an extraordinary woman and … well I just realized that trying to describe her in few words would be an exercise in futility. But anyhow … Jiddeh got married when she was 14 and gave birth to 16 boys and girls, 2 of whom died bil “taljeh el kbeereh” [the big snow storm], which apparently was one of the most important incidents that took place back in the 40’s or 50’s of the 20th century, to the extent that people used to chronicle events according to the date, such as a baby’s birth, so if someone was asked when he/she was born he/she would answer either before or after the big snow storm.

Our favorite part of the day would begin when Jiddeh finishes her chores and have us gather around her so she’d tell us one of her tales, and boy were they amusing! And every tale she told had a moral towards the end of it which we had to figure out on our own and we (being the spoiled brats that we were) never got most of them. I still remember some of her tales, and I honestly can’t wait to have children so I’d tell them to them. One of her witty tales that took me ages to get (which has a similar Frog-scorpion version of it) goes like this:

Once upon a time, a turtle was sitting at one side of the swamp getting ready to swim to the other side, when a scorpion saw him and stopped him by asking: “Dear turtle. I’m a scorpion and I can’t swim, but I need to get to the other side of the swamp. Can you please carry me on your back to the other side?”

“Get lost scorpion! I know you’ll sting me if I do that and then I’ll drown and die”, said the turtle.

“Oh you naive turtle! If I sting you, we’d both drown and I’d die! Does that sound make any sense to you?”, convincingly said the scorpion.

“Well honestly, you do have a point there. Ok then. Hop on my back!”, said the convinced turtle.

The scorpion fastened himself onto the turtle’s back and they went off to start their short journey. But as they were coming closer to the other side, the scorpion slowly raised his venomous tail and quickly drove it through the turtle’s back, releasing his venom into the poor turtle’s back.

As they both sank down the swamp, the turtle despairingly said: “You said it wouldn’t make sense to sting me. Then why did you do it? Why?”.

“Yes, it doesn’t make sense at all,” the scorpion said as he was drowning. “But I’m a scorpion and that’s just my nature.”

It wasn’t until a decade or two later that many of her tales (which me and my brother were recollecting today) started making sense to me. Allah yir7amik ya Jiddeh … you were so simple yet so witty, so wise.