Three years on, Laila Saada* takes stock of the life of Arab-Americans after 9/11 In Teaneck, New Jersey, a Toyota sedan suddenly stopped in the middle of the road. A middle-aged woman shot out of the car and charged at a van moving slowly in the opposite direction. Pointing her fingers at the young girls inside, she screamed: "Take off your headscarves!" It was 11.30 am on Tuesday 11 September 2001. Mehdi El-Afifi was behind the wheel of the van, on his way home with his daughter and eight of her friends. After the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, many Islamic schools closed in fear of retaliation, and Mariam, El-Afifi's 12- year-old, and some of her friends had been stuck inside. It was on their way back that El-Afifi encountered the screaming woman in the Toyota. "When the lady charged at them, the girls were terrified," said El- Afifi. "I tried to comfort them, and told them it was alright to keep their veils on. I locked the doors, closed the windows and just kept going." That evening, El-Afifi gathered his family together and had a long discussion about how to deal with the repercussions of the attacks. He wanted to re-assure his veiled daughter and wife and re-assert their pride in their faith and their Arab heritage. "We knew we would be targeted," said El-Afifi, who for the first few days kept his family home. "But the consensus was that now, we had an added responsibility to reach out to other communities and show them that we are not terrorists. We are families like everyone else." Together with other members of their community, the El-Afifis launched a series of talks and debates on Islam and the Arab world all around New York and New Jersey. They went to churches, synagogues and schools, as well as to women's organisations and youth clubs. Mariam was interviewed on several Nickelodeon TV shows. "One of the early shows my daughter did was called A day in your shoes, said El-Afifi, an Egyptian- born computer analyst who moved to the US with his family 20 years ago. "An American girl came and lived with us for four days. She was surprised when I took them ice-skating. Americans think we don't have fun. They think our kids don't enjoy the same things and I wanted to show them how wrong they were." The El-Afifis were welcomed everywhere they talked and the invitations soon multiplied. "We've never stopped or slowed down since," said El-Afifi. "Outreach and community building has become my second full-time job." As the third anniversary of 11 September comes around, Arabs and Muslims in America still have to deal with round-the-clock news coverage of international terrorism in the name of Islam, as well as mass round-ups, detentions and deportations, all of which feed the post-9/11 misconceptions of who they really are. But instead of shying away from their ethnicity, Arab-Americans like the El-Afifis are instead becoming more proud and united. They want their voices heard, their concerns addressed and their impact on politics felt. In the immediate aftermath of 11 September, New York witnessed a surge in activities by the Arab- American community. All these efforts had one common objective: to nurture and unify the diverse voices of Arab-Americans and to foster their pride in their heritage. According to the 2000 census, there are about 1.5 million Arab- Americans, but the Arab-American Institute estimates the number is closer to 3.5 million, 80 per cent of whom are US citizens. Despite being relatively small in percentage terms, Arab-Americans in key states can soon become an influential voting bloc. Coupled with increased awareness of their rights and rising resentment at the American backlash after 11 September, a traditionally disintegrated community may soon re-emerge as a unified and influential force. VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY: In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a growing Arab-American community has gradually given the neighbourhood a distinct ethnic feel. Scents of apple tobacco coming out of the Egyptian coffee shops intertwine with the delicious aromas of the Lebanese pastry stores on both sides of 5th Avenue. The community here has everything: Yemeni Delis, specialty stores, ethnic garment boutiques and Arab bookshops. In fact, they even have a newspaper. Inside a tiny, crammed ground floor office at 5th Avenue and 74th Street, Antoine Faysal's head surfaces from among the stacks of newspapers, as if to gulp down a few breaths of fresh air, before he immerses himself in his work again. He fights back a yawn and gazes with sleep-deprived eyes as the stacks of his paper continue to pile up. He has been awake for more than 48 hours, working on the recent issue of his biweekly Arabic/English paper Aramica. The red-and-blue logo still shines with fresh ink, its message reflecting Faysal's determination to bring his community together: " Aramica. Where East Meets West." "I got fired from my job immediately after 11 September," said Faysal, who previously worked as a marketing director. Because of his ethnic background, he was among the first to be laid off during the ensuing economic recession. "I had to find a job and I knew that being an Arab in New York at the time wouldn't help." After some research, Faysal discovered there was a dearth of media outlets for his community, even though it is the second largest Arab- American enclave after Dearborn, Michigan. "There were a few papers here and there, but they were too ethnically specialised," he said. "They had one for the Christian Copts from Egypt, one for the Muslims, one for the Palestinians, but there was nothing that catered to the community as a whole." Starting from the basement of his home with one editor, a designer back in Lebanon and an old computer that only worked when warmed up against a bowl of hot coal, Faysal launched his paper with a cover story titled: "Oh, you're an Arab!" The story inside was about the American reaction after 11 September and the ignorance that underlay the prejudice against all Arabs after the attacks. For Faysal, highlighting people's similar experiences and shared apprehensions was a crucial tool to alleviate his community's fear and help them assert their pride in their heritage. "People were sceptical at first," said Faysal, recalling how six per cent of the first 30,000 copies ended up in the garbage. The next issue, he printed only 10,000. "Now I'm back to 30,000. But the difference is, every copy finds at least one reader now. My paper doesn't last more than four days on the shelves, and I have expanded to include neighbouring states, such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut." In addition, advertising revenues have soared in the past few months. "We've calculated a 150 per cent increase since last year," said Faysal. Faysal and his fast growing paper have been featured on CNN and Fox. He has been interviewed by both the Village Voice and the New York Times. He is already working on the second major expansion of his paper since its inception two years ago. "I started with 28 pages, then went up to 32. Now I plan for 48 pages," said Faysal, adding that a growing number of groups in this multi- ethnic community are eager to see their stories in his paper. "I know that there is a need for a voice to unify the community. I want to become that voice." Last April, Faysal modestly accepted a community award honouring his work for the Arab- American community. But he recognises that it is much too early for him to claim success. Much sustained work will be needed to counter the negative portrayal of his people in mainstream media. AN ANCHOR TO FALL BACK ON: Ten blocks away from Aramica, in the basement of a small town house, the host of a television talk show called Your Private Doctor is going through the last details with his guest, a prominent Arab-American gynecologist. The cameraman gives a signal, the door of the studio slams firmly shut, and the cameras begin to roll. For the passerby on 4th Avenue and 86th Street in Bay Ridge, nothing in the look of the building gives away the buzz of activity taking place inside. Yet this is the hub from which the only Arabic television network in the States broadcasts, catering to more than a million viewers of Arab descent. Every Friday at 7.30 pm, the talk show features a prominent doctor from the community who talks about his specialty and answer viewers' questions. This is one of the various community services that TAC, the Arabic television channel, provides for Arab-Americans in New York and New Jersey. "We try to bring Arab-American experts in every field in touch with their community," said Gamil Tawfiq, the Egyptian-born owner and director of TAC. "We host lawyers, religious leaders, doctors and other professionals on our shows and our viewers can call them up and get counselling for free." Established shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991, TAC offices were originally located on Exchange Place, facing the World Trade Center towers. The collapse of the buildings destroyed the offices, along with more than $250,000- worth of equipment. TAC shut down for three days, but Tawfiq, a successful businessman who owns 13 other companies in addition to TAC, did not give up despite his losses. "I knew the loss was even bigger for my community, and I had to resume broadcasting quickly," said Tawfiq, as he followed the proceedings of the talk show from a small television screen. Five other television screens surround Tawfiq's large wooden desk, each showing a different Arab satellite channel. "After 11 September, our community needed an anchor to fall back on and rely on," he said. "And we have become that anchor." TAC's audience has soared from 730,000 viewers in 2001 to over a million by the end of 2003. Tawfiq's network has expanded in New Jersey from Jersey City to include all of Bergen County. Increasing emphasis is placed on soaps and movies that trace the glories of Arab history so as to boost pride among the community. TAC has also started using English subtitles for its Arabic movies and soaps, to help viewers whose knowledge of Arabic is weak to hone their language skills. "Teaching our children Arabic is crucial to build common grounds for our community," said Tawfiq. "By learning their language, they learn to be proud of their heritage. With the right education, they grow to become our best ambassadors to the outside world." THE RICHES WE BRING: "In my entire career with this school, I have never seen anything like this," said Professor Rolf Schwagermann, assistant principal in charge of the foreign languages department at Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. Last February, a group of Arab- American students managed to collect 400 signatures and single-handedly raised about $14,000 to incorporate Arabic in the school's language curriculum. The department already offers 10 languages, including French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Italian. Private organisations and parents traditionally provided the necessary funds for those programmes. But after 11 September, Muslim and Arab-American students at Stuyvesant felt the need to react to the backlash against them. Schwagermann, who has been with the foreign languages department for 26 years, is proud of his students. "Introducing Arabic language and culture in schools is a very important tool to show that Arabs are Americans like us. Those students did not only express their interest in the language, they actually did something about it. $14,000 is a very large sum of money for students to collect." Monica Tarazi, an American of Palestinian descent, was working in the occupied Palestinian territories at the time of the attacks. Anticipating the backlash against Arab-Americans and the urgent need for an effort to protect and represent them, she immediately returned to the States to head the newly-established New York office of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Having lived in the US prior to the attacks, Tarazi was aware of ongoing discrimination against Arabs in the media and entertainment. She knew that 11 September would only intensify the stereotyping. She realised that the community needed a spokesperson who was well educated, from the community and aware of its grievances. Sitting in her neat and conveniently located office on Wall Street, Tarazi juggles between answering e-mail queries from Arab Americans, networking with other social service organisations to expand services to her community, organising educational lectures and seminars, and monitoring the media for stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims. Her private life has become an extension of her community work. "It is impossible to separate the two," said Tarazi. "I am Arab-American, and my friends are Arab-American. Everyone now recognises me as ADC, and wherever I go, people approach me asking for help or advice. I can't turn them down." 11 September intensified discrimination against Arab-Americans. But it did not create it. A recent study by Jack Shaheen, author of The TV Arab (1984) and Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001), traces stereotyping of Arabs in US media back to the early 1920s. Starting with movies such as The Rage of Paris, The Sheikh, and The Son of Sheikh, Arab Muslims were depicted as bearded, backward and brutal desert people whose sole objective was to ruin America and seduce its beautiful blondes. Those Hollywood images haven't changed much. Such denigration has resulted in apathy and fear among some Arab-Americans over the years. "I personally feel that we don't have to be on the defensive and focus on our American-ness. We have to be proud of our heritage and what riches we can bring to our society here," said Tarazi. The 26-year-old's mother tongue is English, and she speaks not a word of Arabic. Still, she believes that her heritage is an important aspect of her identity. "We don't have a choice," she said. "We should stand tall and proud and say this is who we are. If we don't stand up for ourselves, no one will. People need to know that they have to get involved in order to achieve results." POLITICS IS THE SOLUTION: When Arab-Americans were rounded up in thousands for questioning after 11 September, James Zogby's Arab-American Institute was there to answer their pleas and bring their grievances to public attention through the media. Best known for his political activism, his weekly TV show and his regular columns in several newspapers, Zogby wants to capitalise on the rising ethnic pride among Arab- Americans to increase their participation in politics. Through increased awareness of their voter rights and providing training and support for Arab- American candidates, Zogby hopes to demonstrate to his community that participation is key to preserving their ethnicity. "Bringing the community into politics is the solution to our discrimination, the way to raise our issues," said Zogby, a Lebanese-American who was born and raised in New York. "Politics can't solve everything, but nothing will be solved if we don't get involved in politics. It is the most American thing we can do." In AAI's polls on Arab-American perceptions and needs, 89 per cent of those interviewed were "extremely proud of their ethnicity". A majority of Muslims also said that despite their anger at the terrorists who attacked the US and at the backlash against them afterwards, they were more inclined to freely express their opinions after the attacks than before. "In my brother's town, there is a small bakery where all the local Lebanese Maronite gather. Before, they never identified as Arabs," said Zogby. "After 11 September, guys would come in and say: What are they doing to us? Meaning the backlash. Except now the "them" became "us". They all became Arabs after 11 September. They didn't run away from it, they actually felt like they became part of a victimised group." Since 11 September, the number of Americans of Arab descent who decided to identify as both Arab and American increased by 14 per cent, especially among second and third generation immigrants. The fast growing Arab-American bloc has not eluded presidential hopefuls this year. Last February, when AAI organised a caucus in Detroit, all invited Democratic presidential candidates attended. This was an unprecedented response. Four years ago, only Vice-President Al Gore and Senator John McCain accepted AAI's invitation. "I believe our ethnic identity is trump," said Zogby. "Our Arab ethnicity is general and all encompassing. We all know the food, the music and our language is peppered with Arabic words. We all care about American policy in the Middle East. We all care about what has happened to people of Arab descent here (post the 11 September backlash), and we feel that we can do something about it." MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Despite their diverse ethnic backgrounds, religious differences and levels of comfort with politics, Arab- Americans have found a common thread that has woven their multi-hued community into one single patchwork. The ongoing American war on terror, coupled with security measures such as the Patriot Act, feed the community's sense of urgency to stand up and defend its rights. With the looming 2004 presidential elections, James Zogby's AAI and similar organisations around the country might, for the first time in American history, be able to give this traditionally politically placid and widely-dispersed community, energy, voice and a common direction. The 2004 elections might just be the platform for a spectacle of cross-religious, cross- cultural interplay between those groups. Whether or not they will effectively swing votes remains to be seen. But the issue for most Arab- Americans is to keep their heads high, no matter what the outcome of the next presidential elections might be. "We can raise enough voices to make a difference," said Antoine Faysal of Aramica. "But it doesn't matter if we don't succeed this time. It's good enough to know that we tried." * The writer is an Arab American free lance journalist based in New York.
