Amr Diab sang it and did not know that he was writing the annual report for Jordan:
Living and not living!
There is a subtle difference between resilience and fatigue.
The resilient stand because they have decided to stand.
The weary stand because they don't know how to fall with dignity!
And Jordan — at this moment in its history — is closer to the latter than is acknowledged in any official speech.
The International Monetary Fund issued its assessment. Praised. Commended. Described Jordan as a model of resilient stability. Then added in the next line — with the calm characteristic of those who deliver bad news in a neutral tone — that the growth is insufficient to raise income levels or reduce unemployment.
Translated from the language of funds to the language of humans: You are living and not living!
And when you ask the Jordanian citizen how they are, they respond with the sentence they've memorized by heart: Thank God, getting by.
Getting by — meaning things are moving but not sprinting. Breathing but not living. Standing but not uprising.
This isn't a reassuring phrase. This is a deferred death certificate renewed every month with the paycheck!
In the last week of April 2026, the Jordanian scene looked like two paintings drawn in one day with colors that don't meet.
In the first painting: The national water carrier signed for five billion eight hundred million dollars. And the Aqaba railway contract for two billion three hundred million. Broad diplomatic opening. And economic growth announced as though it were a victory.
In the second painting: A citizen calculates the electricity bill before the food. Thirteen billion dinars in household debts to banks. And youth unemployment — if honestly estimated — exceeds forty-five percent.
Qutaiba — the Jordanian youth with a university degree searching for a job for two years — neither sees himself in either painting.
The distance between them is not just numbers — but a different way of understanding the meaning of survival!
Major projects cannot be summed in a single sentence.
The national water carrier is not just an infrastructure project — it is a decision to not let water remain hostage to regional fluctuations. For years, part of Jordan's water came through arrangements conditioned by the mood of politics. The carrier — if completed — is an answer that needs no speech: The water you own is not up for negotiation!
And the Aqaba railway — if it moves — will directly connect phosphate and potash to global outlets. Liberation from a logistical dependency that lasted longer than it should.
These two projects deserve praise. But they also deserve an honest question.
The Aqaba railway will be partially financed by investment funds linked to social security — workers’ and retirees' money. At the same time, the social security bill is still under discussion, pulled back for reassessment, with its proponents waiting. Qutaiba is financing the future with savings whose rights in it are not yet decided.
The great project being built with people's money before their rights in it are decided — a question that needs no speech. It needs an answer!
And Qutaiba, living on five hundred dinars, cannot wait until 2030. He is living in 2026.
Jordan is situated in the heart of a region that does not grant its neighbors peace for free!
To the north: Syria is rebuilding itself on foundations whose features are not yet clear.
To the west: Ongoing escalation in the West Bank, repeated invasions of Jerusalem, and a determined effort to impose new realities on the ground — all of this on Jordan’s direct borders and within its conscience.
To the east: Entangled balances make stability closer to an art of balancing than to a permanent state.
To the south: Relationships based on shared interests — but shared interest does not always mean equal partnership.
And in the sky: the Jordanian military intercepted 261 rockets and drones in our airspace since the start of tensions.
Jordan pays the price of regional stability with its security, focus, and resources — and this price does not appear in any announced budget.
The role was outlined by geographic and historical circumstances prior to any government's decision.
In the same week, the Islamic Action Front Party dropped its name to become the Nation Party — adapted to the stage. And the government completed its negotiations with the IMF. And the House of Representatives adjourned its session with major files being decided elsewhere.
Three scenes: An organization adapts to survive. A government presents numbers to continue in support. And a council concludes its term.
And above all this: A leadership opens prospects and outlines a future — while the executive apparatus manages daily motions and fails to create vision. A gap between the ceiling of aspiration and the floor of execution — it's the wound that does not appear in any report.
Survival always requires a price. And the question not asked: Who pays it?
What makes Jordan resilient — not in speeches but in reality?
Not oil. Not size. Not just geography.
What makes it resilient is something harder to measure and quicker to deplete: The social capital of patience.
A citizen's patience who accepts living with less because he looks around and gives thanks. An institution's patience that contains anger before it turns into something else. A state's patience that manages highly complex relationships — and comes out of each round with less than it entered, but it comes out.
But social capital is not an endless well.
When it's drained without refilling, no statement is issued about its depletion — it is discovered at a moment no one expects!
Jordan is not on the edge of collapse.
Jordan is on the edge of something more dangerous:
Acclimatization!
Acclimatization to salaries not sufficing. Acclimatization to opportunities for those who know, not who deserve. Acclimatization to complaints changing nothing, so silence — not satisfaction — becomes the language of the streets.
Acclimatization to projects announced and forgotten by collective memory before they are completed. Acclimatization to things moving along — getting by.
Qutaiba no longer fears the edge — he has learned how to live on it without looking down.
And this is the real danger — not when people fall, but when they learn to stand on the edge and call that stability!
Jordan deserves a question not yet clearly asked:
The stability it provides to the region — praised by capitals and signed for in billion-dollar projects — does it sufficiently benefit Qutaiba and his likes to feel like a partner in this stability, not just its fuel?
Many want Jordan stable. And those who want it to think with genuine independence — a completely different list.
Because the Jordan that owns its water and delivers its phosphate by itself — begins to think more freely. And free thinking bothers those accustomed to a dependent party!
Therefore, every step towards self-sufficiency — in water, energy, or the economy — is fundamentally a step towards deeper sovereignty than that declared in signing ceremonies.
All this is answered by Qutaiba.
He answers in silence — as he thinks of his suitcase.
Not because he hates the country. But because the country he loves has not yet found a way to tell him: Do not emigrate, Qutaiba!
He is not asking for the impossible. He just wants to truly be living — not living and not living!
He wants to ascend.
And this — for those who want to read the real indicators before the indicators read them — is the most accurate measurement of what is happening.
