A different night out

Last night I went out with a new group of people, well not so much new, one of them is a friend of mine who I had not seen in a while and the other was a girl who does a PhD similar to mine and in the UK as well...so we went to Amigo for drinks and it was such a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends and have a great time laughing with them, and going to trips and just chilling...but what I realised last night is that I miss having deep, meaningful, politically charged, voices get loud and hands waving in the air sort of conversations. When you spend a lot of time with people, you get to know each other really well, and that is great, but at the same time one has less and less to say, there ends up being a lot of joking and just mindless banter, and I love that. But to sit with new people, and to listen to myself, and realise how much what I say does effect what they will think of me, and how much because I am so used to being around people who know me so well, I have somehow forgotten some of my social skills...but that is beside the point...what I found great about last night, is that I was talking politics, and talking about my wish to change the world, to positively effect not only Amman, Jordan, The Middle East, but the whole world. I as not being told to be more realistic, and oh Lulwa don't worry about it so much...or causing my friends to go into fits of laughter...the answer I got was, 'I believe in Pan-Arabism also'...what made it all even better was that I was told about a great idea to bring musicians, poets and just normal people together from all over the Arab world...for us to start to create a common language, a common understanding of how we want our region to be and what role we want to play in this ever changing world.
I think that what I find lacking in my life in Amman, is the chance to have these kinds of conversations with people, it seems to me that most of the time people just want to go out grab a bit to eat, a drink, and go home and sleep. Our generation of young working women and men in Amman, seem to lack the motivation to want to do something with our country, or maybe that is unfair, what we lack is the wish to talk to discuss to actually think about something other than where will my next trip be to, or what shall I buy, eat, drink, go and do tonight...I guess I am the same also, I mean don't get me wrong I am not supposing that I am better than anyone. But I just found it amazing last night, to talk about Marxism, Gramsci, Nasser, the Dolphine...also talking about the latest book I had read, what do I like reading...why do I hate reading books by men who paint a woman who is weak and unable to deal with the world, yet I am willing to read a book exactly like that as long as a woman had written it.
I loved last night, and I wished the whole time that my friends were with me, I knew that they would have enjoyed it, would have participated, and I felt bad that I had not made them come with me. But I guess there will be other times, at least I hope!