Emad Daoud
When the Crown Prince announces a project to build the national narrative, he doesn't ask us to celebrate — he asks for our participation. And real participation doesn't begin with applause, but with a question: What kind of narrative do we want? And how can we write it honestly?
The Jordanian narrative is not merely a project to be announced, but a moment of confrontation with an unbearable reality. A written identity as a fixed achievement turns into a lifeless monument. However, an identity understood as a daily decision generates silent strength. Jordan has survived not because it narrated its story — but because it decided to assert its place when all other stories fell apart around it.
The problem has never been a lack of events, but a lack of defining meaning. The history of this country has been a tale told in the margins of others' books or summed up in the moment of founding the modern state as if the period before the Emirate of 1921 were merely a prologue of transient civilizations. This narrative void was not innocent — it left us vulnerable to others' narratives about us. The most dangerous thing now is to fill this void with a complete official narrative, for a complete narrative does not allow for revision, and an identity that does not review itself starts to defend its image rather than develop itself.
First: The Question of Internal Diversity
How do you write a narrative that encompasses citizens whose memories are divided between the two banks of the river? Between someone who sees the 1948 catastrophe as the start of his personal refugee story, and someone who sees it as a significant Arab event but not foundational to his Jordanian identity? The narrative is not expected to solve this dilemma with a final answer — decades of dialogue have failed to do so. But it must not ignore it, nor treat Jordanian diversity as an obstacle that can be overcome by silence or vague generalities. Jordanian diversity is not a stigma — it is a demographic and social richness, and a narrative that does not embrace it will remain incomplete, and perhaps divided against itself.
Second: The Question of National and Ethnic Identity
Modern Jordan was born in an Arab context rebelling against colonialism, dreaming of unity, rejecting partition. This birth has left Jordanians with an acute sensitivity toward any emphasis on national particularity, fearing it could be read as a detachment from the surroundings. However, bitter Arab experiences have proven that building a strong national state is not a betrayal of Arabness — but rather its essential condition. A strong Jordanian identity is the only one capable of genuinely carrying the Palestinian cause, because those without a homeland cannot protect another's homeland. This equation demands a clear narrative formulation that leaves no room for interpretation while still embracing the Jordanian specificity and the organic belonging to the Arab nation.
Third: The Gap with the Everyday
When the state narrates a tale of seven thousand years of civilization, while the citizen is preoccupied with rising prices, job opportunities, and worsening services, the gap between text and reality widens. Seven thousand years of civilization and a loaf of bread searching for its dignity — this is not a comedic paradox but an existential problem that the narrative must address rather than ignore. If history does not transform into an ability to improve the present, it becomes nothing more than a symbolic burden.
Fourth: Who Writes the Narrative?
If the project remains confined to official committees and appointed experts, the result will be a document we take pride in at occasions and then return to the shelf. A living narrative is written by many hands: by the angry, the dreamer, the fearful, the optimistic, by the peasant, the refugee, the Bedouin, and the urbanite, by those who fought at Karameh and those who were displaced from a camp and those who emigrated then returned. Here, the Crown Prince's vision in adopting the project becomes more important than its executional details — but personal adoption carries the risk: the project might be read as a royal narrative, not a national one, as if it were a directive from above rather than a horizontal dialogue. What is required is a precise awareness of the limits of the patron's role and ensuring ample space so it does not remain a guardianship but turns into public property.
Fifth: The Geopolitical Context
Today, Jordan faces existential threats under the banner of reviving the "alternative homeland" slogans in Israeli right-wing discourse. In this context, the narrative project becomes a preemptive defense of existence. But real defense does not require a perfect narrative that hides vulnerabilities — it begins by acknowledging reality and building knowledge-based immunity grounded in honesty.
The hero of the true narrative is not the statue of a hero that makes no mistakes and never tires or questions. Its hero is the complex Jordanian: proud of their Arab army and worried about their children's future, who keeps Jerusalem in their heart and dreams of a job opportunity, who takes pride in their ancestors' history and mocks bureaucracy. An identity that fears its diversity fears itself — while a confident identity recognizes that difference is not a threat but a condition of maturity.
Identity is not a statue erected in a plaza, but a river that redraws its course whenever the land changes — yet it remains a river, not a swamp. The crucial question this project must answer is not: What do we say about ourselves? But: Are we brave enough to hear what Jordanians say about themselves?
