From the melting pot into the fire?

Americans of Arab origin there have always been -- only in recent decades have they stood out as Arab Americans. Fatemah Farag traces a journey through history
Looking back on that crucial passage in his life, Lebanese immigrant Mikhael Naema wrote: "Beskenta, Beirut, Alexandria, Napoli, Marseille, Paris, Cherbourg and New York! A trip by sea and land that took in days and nights over 30, and covered almost a half of the planet earth ... My brother thought my breath would be caught in amazement when I first saw New York from the sea."
Naema arrived in New York in 1903, along with 6,000 of his countrymen. Though it is generally agreed that Arab immigration to the United States began around 1870, there are still other accounts; stories and legends that indicate Arab presence on the continent well before that time.
One such account dates back to 1539 and concerns a Moroccan Arab named Estephan, who was chosen to guide a Franciscan commissioned by the viceroy of New Spain to explore the American southwest. He was allegedly killed by a Navajo arrow and never returned. Another tale tells of an Egyptian named Nosredin, who came to settle in New York and fell in love with the daughter of a Mohawk chief. Nosredin apparently bet a Dutchman that he would win the woman's heart. He lost the bet, and in a bout of frustration killed his beloved and was consequently burned at the stake.
More scholarly recordings do exist. One such case is that of a North Carolina family by the name of Wahab, included in G Orfalea's book Before the Flames: A Quest for the History of Arab Americans. This family can trace their ancestors in America back to an Algerian shipwreck in 1779; their account concurring with evidence from 1790 of other Arab travellers from North Africa settling in the Carolinas.
Another story begs to be told. Haj Ali, who was apparently born somewhere in North Africa, set out for the US at the age of 28 on a mission for then President Jefferson Davis. According to Orfalea, Jefferson was keen on creating a strong link between Texas and California -- the only problem being the Arizona desert. The answer: camels. Yes, camels, which were to form an expressway of sorts between the two states and overcome the gruelling trip across the desert. Enter Haj Ali, who arrived in the US in 1856 with 32 camels.
The camels, alas, did not take kindly to the Arizona desert and the project soon failed. Haj Ali, however, did take to the US, where he was given the name "Hi Jolly", apparently because he would smile every time someone said "hi" to him. With the onset of the civil war, Ali went to work for the union army and also headed out in search of gold. He married Gertrude Sirna in 1880 and changed his name to Philip Tedro. He eventually returned to the Arizona desert, where he was known to heal animals. He died in 1903 -- the same year that Naema arrived in New York. Oh, and the proof that he lived? How about the stray camels that continued to show up in mid-western towns for years to come and scare people out of their wits!
But back to what is generally referred to as the "first wave" of Arab immigrants: predominantly Lebanese -- or, more precisely, people from the area of Mount Lebanon in the Ottoman province of Syria. These immigrants were mostly single men who then found their way around the mid-west toting suitcases -- called kesheh, according to Naema -- filled with dry goods and small commodities. They moved from town to town selling their wares.
Because the Arab community was such a small group and there was so little knowledge of Arab culture, Arabs at the time were often falsely labelled "Turks." According to immigration records, until 1899, and even in the census records up until 1920, Arabs were grouped together with Turks, Armenians and others under the category "Turkey in Asia." In fact, prior to the 1980 census, no official demographic data is available on Arab Americans, who are a relatively small ethnic group. Further, smaller ancestry groups did not directly benefit from the reports and analyses provided by the Census Bureau.
It is unfortunate, as far as many Arab Americans today are concerned, that their ancestors' history was not better documented. In the words of Aida Hassan, whose grandfather travelled from the West Bank in Palestine to the US in 1912, "It is unfortunate that [early Arab immigrants'] their existence in America was not correctly documented, or even recognised, since they, too, were a part of American history and society so long ago. My grandfather witnessed major changes in American society during his lifetime. Arriving in America when people still travelled by horse-drawn carriages, he lived through Prohibition and the Great Depression, travelled by the first and oldest street car in Chicago, and saw the development of some of America's greatest skylines -- those of Chicago and New York."
In spite of a clear lack of documentation, the trend of the early Arab settlers seemed to have gone as follows: those who succeeded as travelling salesmen moved to metropolitan areas like Chicago and sponsored the immigration of others from back home. As more and more Lebanese were able to earn enough money to establish general stores, they began to send for their families as well. With the advent of World War I, and the final demise of the Ottoman empire, Lebanese immigration peaked.
The first wave is characterised by a drive to assimilate into American society -- to disappear within the wider fabric of American culture as they joined the fabled "melting pot." Names were Americanised and language and traditions changed. According to Karen Rignall in her study of Arab Immigration in the area of Detroit, "Generally few in number, [early Arab immigrants] tended to establish roots in Anglo-American communities, often through door-to-door sales."
They also built the America that we know today. People like the Lebanese American philosophical essayist, novelist and mystical poet, Khalil Gibran, are a testament to this history. Born in Becgari, Lebanon, a mountain village of Maronite Christians, Gibran's mother took her children to the US and settled first in Boston and then New York. Although Gibran's early works were in Arabic, from 1918 on his work was predominately in English and had a direct influence on developing English poetic style in the 1920s and 1930s.
Another less known, if no less important, example are the working-class members of the Arab American community of Dearborn, in Detroit, Michigan. An industrial zone that once served as the centrepiece of Henry Ford's automobile empire, Dearborn was home to the Ford Rouge Plant, where over 90,000 workers used to produce cars. Because Ford had adopted racist policies against the hiring of African Americans, his plants provided an abundance of relatively high-paying jobs for new immigrants. Of course, Arab immigrants were given the most dangerous jobs. Even today Arab labour at the Ford plant continue to work a disproportionately high percentage of dangerous jobs.
Today, the company has moved factories into the suburbs, across the nation and overseas (the Dearborn factory is down to 11,000 workers) and the Arab American community has felt the loss. In confronting the demise of this era, however, Arab Americans are now more willing to express themselves as a part of American society with a specific identity. Rignall notes that "a more cohesive cultural identity developed and more public assertions of Arab heritage were seen in storefronts, social gatherings and religious practice ... Gradually, the social stigma felt by many Arab Americans of 'being different' gave way to more public and political assertions of a specifically Arab American identity in the 1970s."
The same trend is documented by the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute (AAI). The AAI links this change in attitude to the second wave of Arab immigrants, which began in the '60s (particularly around the time of the 1967 Defeat). This wave was made up of not only Palestinians and Lebanese, but also a large percentage of Egyptians, all of whom were "more ethnically conscious than their assimilated forebears and to some extent more politically vocal."
Omar Khalil, a scientific researcher at a leading pharmaceutical company in Chicago, who travelled to the US on a study grant in 1968, describes the mood as follows: "There was no need for assimilation. I immersed myself in Arab, Islamic and foreign student activities that opened my mind to the unity and diversity of the Arab student population. I experienced the wealth of cultures from all over the world. The American culture was just one of them, which happened to be the predominant culture. In fact, I became more of an Arab and a Muslim in terms of culture and reading than when I was in Egypt."
In celebrating and even discovering the "Arab" in their identity, Arab Americans were not alone. "My Egyptian identity is a state of mind, sometimes to the level of chauvinism. It is not only Egypt, but Al-Beheira, and ultimately Kom Hamada," added Khalil. "This is a cultural and national original identity that is similar to what the Irish, the German and Nordic immigrants here feel and celebrate."
The change in immigrant attitudes can also be attributed to a defensive stance against increasing discrimination. The Arab American Institute has documented that "the 1970s and the 1980s witnessed a uniquely negative atmosphere for Americans of Arab descent, due to the stereotyping, harassment, defamation and exclusion of Arab Americans brought on by the widespread perception of Arabs as immigrants from hostile, enemy lands."
Legal expressions of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the US can be found in recent legislation like Proposition 187, in California, the Omnibus Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 and the Immigration Reform Law of 1997. The American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee cites a national poll conducted in 1993 which indicates that a staggering 60 per cent of Americans believe immigration is bad for the country. This in a country made up of immigrants, as those being polled were probably not native Americans.
Today, as the Arab world continues to suffer violence and upheaval and economic deprivation, people will continue to turn to the "new world" for a lease of life. In 1968 Khalil left Egypt and even though it was not his initial intention to immigrate he recounts that "there were reasons to be disenchanted at the time. I did not decide to leave Egypt. The feelings of our generation -- of disappointment and illusion -- and the nightmare of the heavy-handed police state in 1966, followed by the 1967 disaster, were all factors. I became an accidental immigrant, literally caught here in part because of the spiralling cost of housing in Egypt."
So it should come as no surprise that, for example, since the Gulf War, the Detroit area alone has served as the point of entry into the US for over 3,000 Iraqis a year. Arab Americans already settled in the US, however, must face the challenge of a new kind of hatred that is fuelled by economic depression and, lately, by the dramatic bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Anti-immigrant sentiments are not only painful for those who suffer from them; they also hinder those who convey them from confronting real problems. In the words of the Anti-discrimination Committee, "Unfortunately, scape-goating immigrants for economic and other societal woes distracts from devising real solutions and obscures immigrant contributions."
For all that is exciting and new, hard and problematic about immigration, those who have made the move still feel the pull of the homeland. "The move was tough and exciting," remembers Khalil. "I was excited about the research facilities, the 'working' instruments, the up-to-date library. But by the weekend the feeling of loneliness set in. Sometimes I felt that all I wanted in life was to be back in Alexandria with my friends, walking and laughing and commiserating."
It is the destiny of those who have made the crossing.
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