HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Rotary Club met for its luncheon meeting on Monday, March 11, at Watson Hall. Rotarian Henry Gartley hosted his guest speaker Rotarian Ruba Haddad Bossie.
Haddad-Bossie who grew up in Jordan. Her father is a pediatrician and her mother a nurse. She is one of four children. Haddad-Bossie excelled in her education and took architectural engineering and later earned her graduate degree in Middlesex, England. She has worked in film making and animation and participated in the Cannes Film Festival.
Haddad-Bossie met her husband, Christopher, a native of Houlton, at Kings Academy in Jordan where she was teaching at the Fine and Performing Arts Department. She now makes her home on Nickerson Lake with her husband and their two children. Gartley met her through church and wanted to have her share her stories.
Haddad-Bossie’s stories, she said, would be hard to fit in a 20-minute talk. She discovered a need to share her country while living in England as a 4-year-old when her father organized a class for her to learn English and in the end the English speaking children were speaking her Arabic language.
Haddad-Bossie’s experienced Rotary while in Wales as a 24-year-old through “Rotaract” and now she is amazed her journey led her 15 years later to be a member of the Houlton Rotary Club.
She described her parents as mixed race since her mother is half-Palestinian and half-Armenian. Her father is Jordanian and the family practices Christianity as does 5 percent of the population of Jordan. Her parents are hard working and very educated and expected the same of their children. Haddad-Bossie described Jordan as a very safe place to live. One third of Jordan’s population are not Jordanian citizens.
They are immigrants and refugees. Only Palestinians can become citizens as there is a strong relationship between both countries. The capital of Jordan is Amman and there are four million people there. Jordan has a population more than five times that of Maine and is around the same size geographically.
Amman has a flourishing art culture with museums and musical events and many restaurants. It is a city in motion located among seven hills. The second language spoken there is English and the people love to speak English with American visitors. Traffic patterns tend to be a challenging in the city.
Haddad-Bossie was born in Al Salt where her father’s family originated. There is a church called Al Khadar, historically related to her family, is a popular destination for pilgrimages because people believe that miracles can happen in the church.
Her maternal grandmother’s families are survivors of Armenia who had to emigrate to Turkey and later to Palestine. In 1967 her mother’s family had to flee Palestine and came to Jordan. Her parents met while working in a hospital and fell in love and did not have an arranged marriage. Haddad described living in Jordan as having its own challenges regarding living up to what the society expects from you.
However, home will always be home and she wants to make sure that her daughters are raised to be proud of being from two cultures: Jordanian and American.
