Being Asian in the gulf Middle East

When I was 8 years old I watched my mom get pushed into a kitchen at an Arab wedding and ordered to serve drinks to the guests. The mother of the bride didn’t realize that my mom was a guest. She was, in fact, personally invited by the bride (a former student of my mom’s), who wanted her favorite teacher to be there on her special day. The reason my mom’s sequined scarf and make-up went ignored is because my mom is Malaysian.

Let me take you back. The years my family spent in Kuwait are littered with uncomfortable incidents like the one described above. We moved to Kuwait about a year after the Iraqi invasion was over, and shaken from the war, Kuwait was hugely xenophobic in the early ‘90’s. My parents were working in a village called Batu Buruk (Ugly Stones), Terengganu on the east coast of Malaysia before they were offered better-paying jobs as instructors in the Middle East, and as Muslims with a romanticised idea of the region that gave the world the Prophet (swt) and the Quran, my parents were excited that their kids would grow up in such a privileged environment. They packed up their three girls (ages 1-5) and flew to Kuwait University, Shuwaikh.

My village Malay gave way to a gulf Arabic accent in school, and one of the first teases I got was for being “yabaneezy” (Japanese). When my mom came for PTA meetings the teachers would give surprised looks and tell my mom her English was good. My mom’s first couple of months as an instructor at the Sharia’ College for Girls was rocky with repeated explanations that she was the teacher. No she wasn’t the tea lady, no she wasn’t the cleaner; she was the teacher. “Mudarasa” my mom would say in Arabic and the students would continue to give her wary looks. Luckily my mom was a great teacher, because it would only take a couple of weeks for those same wary students to become enthralled by her classes and her zany humor. “Miss wallah I love you, you must meet my family!” On days when I visited the office with my sisters, a hail of black abaya robes would descend on us and leave lipstick streaks across our cheeks. “Ya Allah Ms. Jenifah you have many children and you are still so small mashallah!” They’d look at my almost-five-feet mother, mousy in her own baggy abaya and wonder how they started out with such different assumptions. It was unfortunate that not all Kuwaitis could be in my mom’s classes.

The same could not be said for my dad. At 6-foot-6-inches, blue eyes and as white bread as Iowa makes them, my dad was regarded as the big American hero who fought the Iraqis (which, as an instructor from Ugly Stones, he hadn’t). Kuwaitis didn’t trust any foreigners or other Arabs, but if you were American you were given rockstar treatment. Shop clerks would smile at you, people on the street would go up to you, and if you were an instructor at the University, the women would swoon.

And swoon they did. My dad would come back after teaching to his office and find that love letters had been stuffed under the door and a few giggly girls in abaya waiting outside. My dad received offers for a second or third wife on a regular basis. At first my parents would laugh at these gestures, but the overwhelming attention bolstered my dad’s ego while the tactless prejudice bogged down my mom’s confidence and self esteem, setting what was once a stable marriage onto a rocky patch of misunderstanding and injured feelings.

Eventually the racial attitudes towards our family and the lack of affordable good schools drove my family to move back to Malaysia. After a couple of years of settling down, my parents received job offers from the Middle East again, but this time in the Emirates. My siblings and I refused to go back, but after being assured that we’d be going to international schools this time, we relented. We were happy to find that racial attitudes in the Emirates are much improved from the ones in Kuwait. For one thing the Emirates is more cosmopolitan, and the university my parents teach at is a hodge-podge mix of local and expatriate students. As American-Malaysians we found our niche among the other halfsies and 3rd culture kids of Emirati-Iranian, Polish-Greek, Egyptian-Philippina, and the Lebanese-Cypriot types. We were finally not weird: we were just like everyone else.

My mom still encounters a few awkward situations in the Emirates, but nowhere near the scale that she had in Kuwait. Recently with Obama’s election we can see that racial attitudes are slowly shifting in the US as they do in my mom’s classroom. Justice Sonia Sotomayor once said that “stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in society today,” and we found that to be true, but it’s also true that this insidious problem can be dealt with—from the students in my mom’s classroom to the attendees of President Obama’s speeches. It’s not enough that anyone can be a good teacher or president in theory: Sometimes a country needs to see the black president at the White House leading, and sometimes people need to see the Malaysian woman in hijab standing at the white board teaching. Perhaps the change isn’t as big or as radical as most of us would prefer it, but if one person can change the way they think of other races, it makes that much of a difference when they respect people like my mom who expect discrimination.

My mom continues to teach in the Middle East, only this time she’s armed with experience, that same zany humor, and hundreds of students and friends that love, respect and admire her.

Movie Review: Dwindling Drops in the Sand

It all started on vacation during a drive through Damascus. Sama Wareh’s uncle thought aloud to himself about God’s mercy, Syria and droughts. It grew into self-funded vacations to Syria, ritual oaths that she wasn’t a spy in return for interviews and a little sprint from the Syrian Secret Service. It resulted in a Masters’ thesis documentary, “Dwindling Drops In the Sand” (DDS), which won the Best Thesis Award in Wareh’s graduate class of environmental studies at Cal State Fullerton.

“DDS” shows you the cracks in Syrian soil, the retardation of the forests and the disappearance of rivers. It is a simple documentary by a student film maker, but despite its simplicity, it connects its audience with the human aspects of environmental changes. It touches softly on the Syrian country and the 4,000 years of continuous life within its capital of Damascus. “DDS” asks you to not forget this side and how, through drought, pollution and carelessness toward the environment, there may soon be an end to this land.

The water problems’ root causes are shrouded by purposely distracting issues, such as the Palestinian struggle, human rights’ violations, and an ethnic rivalry between Persians and Arabs. Wareh strategically chooses to ignore these and other similar deterring issues in her documentary, allowing us to see a more well-informed global view in which natural resources are being depleted causing tensions to rise.

To understand the Middle Eastern, especially Syrian, water issues and territorial struggles, one must understand the following:

-Israel invaded Syria in 1967 and took over the Golan Heights including Lake Tiberias, one of the major water sources for southern Syria.

-Turkey has built the largest damn in the world on the Euphrates; trapping much of the Euphrates’ water in a mountain range in Turkey before it gets to Syria.

-The United States invaded Iraq causing the Syrian population to grow by 700,000 refugees onto an already maxed out water supply.

- Sometimes water in Damascus is only on a couple of hours a day.

-There is a major drought on top of this.

Water is both symbolically and literally sinking away from the people of Syria. It was once only 10 meters from topsoil a generation ago, when Wareh’s grandparents could simply dig for it with their hands and shovels. It is now 300 meters from topsoil.

According to Wareh, the reality is that Syria used to be a place of plentiful water and the forests took up 30 percent of the total land mass; today, the forest takes up 3 percent of Syria. This has caused governments in the Middle East to start thinking that water wars may be necessary and not just a good movie plot.

–

Read Wareh’s interview with Cal State Fullerton’s Public Affairs Office.

Building Ourselves in America

As far back as I can remember, my family’s life has stretched across two parts of the world: America and the Middle East. We tore our hearts in two and buried them on opposite ends of the globe, traveling between them as we chased after a higher cause my dad labeled i’mar al-ard. Although the phrase doesn’t translate very well in English, it means something like “building the world,” and was my dad’s way of dedicating his life to doing something – anything – that would leave a positive impact on this planet he called home.

As he taught us later, building the world was a simple cycle in which we learned as much as humanly possible about the world we were in, while simultaneously working to make that world a better place. It was a wonderfully vague life plan that could adapt to any dream, take root in any soil. It would propel us around the globe, where we would meet all colors of people, and would (at least I hope) make us quite colorful as well. But my dad would never have dreamed, as he lay on his balcony in Syria watching the sky like a teenage Ché Guevara, that it would take him and his future family to America.

In preparation for his bit of building the world, my father spent his youth chasing knowledge the way he used to chase soccer balls in the alleys of Damascus. From the clutches of his family he ran to college in neighboring Halab. From a war that rained bombs in Halab he ran to Saudi Arabia to explore the uncharted territories of computer science. When machines didn’t satisfy his curiosity about the world, he set his sights on a place across the globe that was said to have enough libraries to satiate even Averroes. He and his wife packed all of their belongings in two suitcases, grabbed their two infants and jumped across a few continents and an ocean before landing in the middle of Chicago. They had nothing but those two suitcases, three thousand dollars in their wallets, and countless prayers to God – who they called by His Arabic name, Allah – that things would turn out alright.

My parents, when they set out, had no idea what was waiting for them in the country that was home to Hollywood and the White House. They would have been shocked to hear that they were going to stay there for over a decade, rather than the five years they had envisioned. They couldn’t foresee the Muslim communities that would take them in as long-lost cousins, my mom’s discovery of teaching and addiction to Burger King, my dad’s multiple lives as student, car dealer and activist, or their children’s mastery of English at the expense of the language of the Quran.

They didn’t know that a few years later they would make another life-changing trip, this time halfway across the continent, after my dad discovered an unmatchable political science program and a liberal Islamic Center in Los Angeles.  They would fall in love with the San Fernando Valley, which eased the pain of homesickness with of all the Muslims it held in its lap and with its mountains, sisters of the mountains that encircled Damascus. I only understood what they were talking about years later when I drove through Damascus for the first time, and felt a sudden pang for the LA home I’d left when I was fifteen.

By the end of my freshman year of high school, we had decided to move to the Middle East, this time to Dubai. With two master’s degrees and a PhD under his belt, my dad felt that the time for his formal education was over. It was now to be the era of building. Building bridges between the two parts of the globe dearest to him. And as for us kids, it was time for us to formally meet the other half of our hearts – the annual summer trips we’d taken back to the Middle East were not enough to make us Middle Easterners. So we carted ourselves off to Dubai, not knowing whether to laugh or cry the whole way there.

Years later in the Middle East, my family is still under the spell of i’mar al-ard: that endless cycle of learning and working. And we’re still torn between our two halves. My dad makes trips back to the U.S. once or twice a year, my brother and I are doing our undergrad at a local American university with our eyes on New York for work and grad school, and my mom is a lover of all things organic in the best tradition of California culture.

But while we’re each busy trying to build our own world, it’s important to stop and recognize what built us. Among the many forces in our lives, America had no small role in helping us with our i’mar al-nafs, our “building the self.” It is the privileges, challenges and pleasures of American life that made us who we are today. And from the many lessons America taught us, perhaps the most important one is this: new worlds can always be created from those already existing. It’s a lesson we hold tight to, no matter what part of this Earth we find ourselves in.

–

Editor’s Note: Minority Dreams asked its readers and writers to submit personal immigration stories, explain why it matters and how it has shaped them individually. Nour Merza is a regular contributor at Minority Dreams and keeps a blog at Crisscrossing Borders.

Breaking Homes and Hearts in Jerusalem

If home is where the heart is, then the hearts of countless Palestinians are being shattered as Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.

Last Friday, the United Nations released a report on Israel’s demolition plans for another 1,500 homes in East Jerusalem, based on Tel Aviv’s claim that the homes were built without permits from Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

There are lots of issues with Israel’s claims about what it calls a “planning crisis” in East Jerusalem. First of all, Israel’s control of East Jerusalem itself is not recognized by the international community, as it illegally annexed the city after the 1967 war. But although Israel’s control of East Jerusalem is unlawful, Palestinians have to deal with the facts that it created on the ground, applying for permits to build their homes on land that has belonged to their families for generations.

This brings us to the second issue: the Israeli authorities have only set aside 13 percent of East Jerusalem for Palestinian residents. Much of that area is already crowded, and with the Palestinian population jumping from 66,000 in 1967 to 250,000 today, Palestinians have been forced to build their homes “illegally,” according to the Israeli government. And finally the third issue comes along, namely that few Palestinians who apply for permits within the designated Palestinian area of East Jerusalem are actually able to obtain them.

If the Israeli government goes ahead with its plans for solving its “planning crisis,” at least 28 percent of all Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are at risk of demolition. That’s at least 60,000 Palestinians at risk of becoming homeless. Recognizing the situation that could arise from these plans, United Nations has called on Israel to immediately halt its demolitions, and provide real solutions for the housing crisis in the Holy City.

The international community must put pressure on Israel to end this inhumane eviction of Palestinians from their traditional home. It is both illegal and a serious obstacle to any progress on the peace process. Arab newspapers like the secular, pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi are calling Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem “ethnic cleansing,” indicating the level of anger felt on the Arab street. Similarly, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the demolitions “unhelpful,” and EU diplomats have described them as illegal and said they “fuel bitterness and extremism.”

The Palestinians have fought, and continue to fight, for their rights under the state apparatus of Israel. But this is one fight that they cannot win on their own. All those who claim to support human rights and international law must rally together to bring an end to Israel’s unlawful demolition of Palestinian homes. That way, the Palestinian people can focus their energies not on picking up the pieces of their shattered hearts, but on working towards the peace that both they and their counterparts in Israel so desperately need.

Read more on this issue:

• End Palestinian demolitions in Jerusalem, UN tells Israel (The Guardian)
• U.N. Seeks End to Razing of Homes in East Jerusalem (The New York Times)
• UN calls on Israel to end evictions (Al Jazeera English)

–

Credit: Nour Merza, a 21-year-old freelance writer whose family’s globe-trotting tendencies have allowed her writing to be influenced by places as varied as Saudi Arabia, Chicago, Los Angeles and the United Arab Emirates. She also enjoys singing and improving her Arabic. Currently, she’s studying International Relations at the American University of Sharjah. Find more of her work on her blog, Crisscrossing Borders.

Obama Engaging (and Embracing?) the Muslim World

Building a Movement

Since Dec. 27, 2008, unrelenting violence has been unleashed in the Gaza Strip. Death tolls keep climbing with no end in plain sight.

Regardless of creed, race, age or beliefs, people are protesting, raising funds and educating others to show solidarity with Gazans and those suffering around the world.

Minority Dreams found powerful examples of activists making a difference in styles that suit them best.

Mark Gonzales: Human Writes Project

Renowned educator, poet and passionate advocate of human rights, Mark Gonzales, 33, had humble beginnings in 1996. It was a simple idea that took place in a friend’s garage – read personal poems, freestyle and invite friends and family to listen.

“I started writing to address and express all the pain, confusion and frustration I had growing up and [wanted to] make sense of the chaos,” he said.

The people came in numbers and the once small spoken word sessions grew.

“It really spoke to the need of people to have a community that spoke to their reality, beauty and pain,” said the Alaskan-born Mexican American.

He founded the Human Writes Project in 1999, an ideology that uses culture as a vehicle to push for social change and justice.

“It’s a philosophy under which educators, artists and organizers gather and create arts or performances [for] a new community and new identity based on real and shared experiences,” Gonzales said.

Through this belief, Gonzales helped organize many educational events including “Get Down for Life and Lyrics: Get Down for Gaza.” Held on Jan. 10 at Juanita’s in Highland Park, the fundraiser helped bring in between $1,700 to $2,000, which was donated to Islamic Relief, one of the only two charities allowed to work in Gaza.

“It was successful because it created community,” he said. “It wasn’t just about Palestine, it was about indigenous land and the global struggle for indigenous land. It was about women’s and children’s rights. [Also] the right of a people and the right to live.”

While he believes protests and demonstrations are important, Gaza needs direct support in the form of medicine, financial donations and basic necessities like blankets, he said. The idea behind the fundraiser encouraged small donations from working people of $5 or $10. The crowd, which reached over 300 that night, often gave more.

His inspiration in life comes from a deep love for people, Gonzales said.

“I’ve looked at what I’ve gone through in my life and the experiences I’ve had and remember pain and frustration when things and acts have occurred,” he said. “If I’ve felt that much pain, how would I feel if I was bombed, [too]?”

View a video of Mark Gonzales from ‘Get Down for Gaza’

Marcy Winograd – LA Jews for Peace

An ace in multitasking, this progressive democrat has juggled teaching in a Los Angeles school, protesting in the city’s streets, running for Congress and co-founding an anti-war, Jewish-American group – but she’s not done yet.

Raised in a strongly zionist community, Marcy Winograd believes history cannot be that simplified. “We know the narrative of Israel as a refuge is a powerful narrative,” she said. “But there is another and that is, this homeland [also] belongs to someone else.”

Although members of LA Jews for Peace are divided on zionism, they are dedicated to diplomacy in the Middle East, an end in Israeli occupation in Palestine and an end in American military aid.

“We call on all Jews of conscious to stand with the Palestinians [and] to stand with those who are victimized and say, not in our name,” Winograd said.

She co-founded the group after losing in a heated battle for Congress against fellow democrat, Rep. Jane Harman in 2006. Made up of a handful of core members in their 40s and 50s, Winograd hopes the group will also attract a younger generation.

“I think young [Americans] have been very active in the anti-war movement,” she said. “This issue may be intimidating in its seeming complexity but our hope is in the youth because they will look at it from fresh eyes.”

It helped organize a mock funeral and demonstration in L.A. on Jan. 11 for the children killed in Gaza and candlelight vigils.

Besides the visual affect, the events’ purpose was “to pose a different face of the Jewish community in L.A.,” she said. “We’re reaching a tipping point and as horrible as this hour is, it provides an opportunity to learn.”

Mahmud Ahmad – Al Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

He’s an advocate of social justice who, amid the realities of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict, believes in a peaceful future in the Middle East.

Mahmud Ahmad of Al Awda – the Palestine Right to Return Coalition believes that people of the world will not stay quiet forever and that in historical terms, the conflict will soon end.

On Jan. 10, Al-Awda co-sponsored the National Day of Emergency Mass Action – Mass Regional Protest in Los Angeles along with the ANSWER Coalition.

Thousands of activists rallied near the Federal Building in Westwood that day in response to Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip.

“[The protests are] showing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Palestine,” he said. “We stand firmly against injustice wherever it happens. [Also we're] mobilizing people [and] building a greater movement. There are new people getting involved.”

He hopes their events will get accurate media coverage including pointing out Israel’s faults.

“When it comes down to covering local protests, they [the media] present the Palestinian version but everything is edited and it’s in line with what they want to put forward anyway [then] countered with Israeli’s point of view,” he said.

“My [problem] with that is that if it were any other state or country committing that kind of atrocious activity, it wouldn’t be presented as a point of view. The Israeli government should be charged with war crimes. Gaza is in genocidal proportions.”

In addition, he hopes that President-elect Obama will speak out clearly against the attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Al-Awda, a democratic, non-partisan grassroots organization, is dedicated to public awareness of the legal and human rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, gain restitution for their property, gain freedom and equality.

Ahmad is also the co-founder of the Free Palestine Alliance and the National Council of Arab Americans and a member of the ANSWER Coalition.

View a slideshow from the L.A. protest, ‘Let Gaza Live’ by Mike Chickey.

–

Thanks for your help! Minority Dreams gives special thanks to supporters and those who helped with research, photos or contacts including photographer Iman Al-dabbagh.

Credit: Urmi Rahman

*The individuals and the organizations profiled here vary in their views and are in no way related to one another. To learn more about each group, please view their individual websites. - MD Staff

CORRECTION: This article published Jan. 17 incorrectly reported that the LA Jews for Peace sponsored the Jan. 14. chain-protest. The event was sponsored by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network - Minority Dreams regrets this mistake. (1/23)