Army Times
Arab-Americans At Home
Kelly Kennedy
Monday, February 8, 2010
Book covers 40 years of immigrants’ history in U.S.
As the shooting deaths of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, sparked yet another wave of anti-Arab behavior in the U.S., Alia Malek has come forth with a book that reminds us why Arabs of all faiths chose to immigrate to America in the first place: They wanted a better life.
Just like generations of British, Irish, Polish and Chinese immigrants before them, they wanted to raise their children in a safe place. They wanted a chance at homes and cars and stability. And they wanted freedom from religious and ethnic persecution.
Malek, a civil-rights lawyer turned journalist, tells the
history of 40 years of Arab immigrants’ in America by choosing an important event – such as the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church that killed four black girls or the election of George W. Bush or the 1991 Persian Gulf War – and writing about how it affected an Arab-American’s life.
She also tells the story of a Marine whose parents emigrated from Yemen.
The book, “A Country Called Amreeka,” comes as today’s blogs fill with misunderstandings: that all Arabs are Muslim, rather than a diverse assortment that includes Christians and Jews. That all Muslims are militant, rather than a tiny percentage. That all Muslims are, by nature, anti-American – even though many are proud enough of the nation’s values to help fight its wars.
These are just three of the narratives with which Malek deftly illuminates the individual and collective lives of Arab-Americans in the U.S.
Discrimination
Ed Salem, whose father came to the U.S. from Palestine, played football for the University of Alabama and in the NFL before opening a hamburger drive-in back home in Birmingham.
His family faced discrimination similar to what the African-Americans in his city stood against.
In September 1963, racists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church as Salem and his family sat in services at St. George’s Melkite church. Salem and his family mourned the little girls, but Malek deftly makes an ironic connection that brings the story back to Salem’s restaurant.
Political struggles
In 1998, Maya Berry, who worked for the Arab-American Institute, stood stunned as President Clinton appeared before a crowd at the Arab-American National Leadership Conference. Though presidents had been invited in the past, this was the first time one made an appearance.
“I’m honored to be the first president,” Malek quotes Clinton, “but I’m surprised, frankly, and also a little disappointed, because the Arab-American community has made an enormous contribution to this country with basic values that made us great: love of family and belief in hard work and personal responsibility, and a passionate devotion to education, which I hope we will see engulf every single ethnic group in America today.”
Malek uses Berry’s story to tell of the political struggles in Israel, and then flips it to tell of the political struggles in the U.S.
In 2000, Randa Fahmy Hudome met with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to talk about Arab-American issues and how to win them over in an election.
During a presidential debate, she listened triumphantly as Bush talked about Arab-Americans as if they were, for the first time, an important part of the electorate. And he made a promise.
“Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what is called secret evidence,” Bush said. “People are stopped, and we have to do something about it.”
In those two tales, Malek presents the Arab-American community as fully engaged in, and trusting in, American politics.
Fighting for home
Another story focuses on an Arab-American in a different context: the military.
The Marine, Lance Cpl. Abraham al-Thaibani, joined the military because he remembered the yellow ribbons that laced through his neighborhood during Operation Desert Storm – and he had wondered why his family didn’t have one. “Abraham had realized he didn’t even know anybody in the service,” Malek wrote. “He simply could not understand why he didn’t have anybody.”
He joined the Marines in 1998 and then served in Nasiriyah, Iraq, in the early stages of the war. Malek skillfully tells the story of a young man whose fellow Marines saw him as just that – a Marine – but whom Iraqi civilians saw as a fellow Arab. Things went badly, such as the day Marines opened fire on a vehicle that refused their order to stop. Two girls died and al-Thaibani was left to explain.
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” their mother yelled at him. “You are Arab. You are coming to an Arab country to kill Arabs?”
But he knew his fellow Marines felt just as bad as he did about the deaths of the children – that they had, in fact, “adopted” a young deaf girl. And Malek acknowledges that al-Thaibani is bound to his fellow Marines as brothers: “Serving his country became about his friends, his brothers, and their commitment to each other that they would all return back home on their feet.”
Al-Thaibani found himself between the two worlds, trying to help when he could but understanding the needs of the military.
When he returned to New York City, al-Thaibani again fit in: He was home.
A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories. By Alia Malek.
Free Press, 320 pages, $25.
