Issue 3 : simplebooklet.com

Mission Statement 0 2 0 2 n i d e d n u Fo Fenjan is the University of Pennsylvania s premiere journal on the Middle East Through non partisan quarterly issues Fenjan is dedicated to increasing empathy for and understanding of the Middle East among the Penn Community Our written and visual work covers countries commonly recognized as part of the MENA region We welcome people of every cultural identifier and background Editorial Board Media Editors Editors in Chief Blake Kernen 22 Zeynep Karadeniz 22 Iman Syed 23 Laila Shadid 23 Copy Editors Marissa Ephron 22 Anika Prakash 23 Managing Editor Ali Osman 22 Editors Maryanne Koussa 21 Design Team Abdel Hubbi 23 Nadia Mokhallalati 23 Advisory Board C Brian Rose James B Pritchard Professor of Archaeology John Ghazvinian Interim Director of the Middle East Center at Penn Feride Hatiboglu Lecturer of Turkish Language Turkish Program Coordinator Alex Norris 22 Ben Winer 23 Yasmine Mezoury 23 Ece Yildirim 23 Brittany Shore 21 Donya Zarrinnegar 22 Robert Vitalis Professor of Political Science Former Director of the Middle East Center Thanks Special thanks to the Middle East Center at Penn for making this publication possible with their funding and support Contact Us upennfenjan gmail com Discover More www fenjanupenn com upennfenjan Fenjan The Middle East Journal upennfenjan Cover design by Abdel Hubbi Family photos courtesy of Editorial Board The views expressed in each individual piece are independent of Fenjan and do not necessarily represent the views of the editorial board or the University of Pennsylvania 1 2

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Letter from a Co Editor Dear Reader Before anything else Laila and I would like to say that we hope you are faring well in these difficult and heavy times As we have fallen into a crisis that has touched every corner of the earth we are cruelly reminded that ours is a world not immune to pandemics to sordid attacks on democracy or to racial injustice Since its founding last summer our team at Fenjan has created content that would help our readers and ourselves understand current events in the Middle East that often lack coverage in western media But we are only amateurs And our understanding of the Middle East is sieved through many filters from the news we watch to the stories we hear from our families living there to the partial history we learn in our classes So how can we begin to understand this misunderstood region We can begin with what we know best our own stories As I am writing this letter to you Fenjan s writers will be unpacking their complex experiences as Middle Eastern college students In this anthology of personal essays the third issue of Fenjan our writers will tell stories of identity loss and hope through their Middle Eastern backgrounds Some will write about finding peace in their identities some have not quite found it yet This issue is an effort to form a more human connection with our readers It is hu man connection that we have been missing as of late connection that cannot be replaced by televisions phones or computers We need new spaces to understand each other in times of confinement and suffering In this issue we write both to understand ourselves and to convey to readers the humanity behind the headlines to show our readers that at Fenjan we write about the Middle East not as onlookers but as participants If Fenjan embodies a personality this issue will put that personality into words Sincerely Zeynep Karadeniz Co Founder Co Editor in Chief 3 Table of Contents 05 07 09 11 13 17 19 21 My Romanticized Ancestry Laila Shadid The Middle East and Me The Jews and the Druze Ben Winer The Flight of a Dearborn Son Ali Osman Poetic Connections in My Mother Tongue Tara Yazdan Panah A Portrait of the Student as Diaspora Ali Hamandi Two Halves Torn Apart Nadia Mokhallalati Palestine and the Exile of Edward Said Bruce Shen Finding My Middle Ground Iranian Muslim Identity in the West Donya Zarrinneger 23 Family Images 26 Endnotes 4

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My Romanticized Ancestry I By Laila Shadid to follow in my father s footsteps as a journalist in the region I feel so deeply about the place and people I come from but why Why is my Lebanese heritage so important to me There are many reasons why I love being Lebanese I love the food the hospitality the craziness the drama the beautiful energy I love being part of a community But what I love most is being my father s daughter Lebanon is our connection that endures beyond death I am writing this on the nine year anniversary of his passing My father died of an asthma attack while reporting in Syria for The New York Times I write and speak this sentence so often that my hands and tongue are numb to its meaning His existence feels like a fever dream each scene bookended by heartbreak I lived in constant fear of him leaving leaving for the Middle East and then for good I was 10 years old when he died on the brink of adolescence and extreme self awareness ready to know my father as a had a conversation with my stepmother the other day about Lebanon I told her how badly I wanted to travel to the country of my heritage and the place it held in my heart I told her how proud I was to be Lebanese and how important it was to my identity I told her that being Lebanese is what I am most proud of Why she asked me Why shouldn t I be proud of my heritage Why shouldn t my Lebanese roots be central to my identity I repeated this out loud But I have come to realize that my Lebanon is not the Lebanon its citizens know I do not know the Lebanon that fails its citizens the Lebanon that does not respect anyone under its control I have learned about Lebanon from my East Coast bubble as a third generation Lebanese American born to a white mother As much as I want it to be Lebanon is not my home it is my romanticized ancestry Recently I have asked myself why I care so much about the Middle East and why I want But being Lebanese does not only mean being my father s daughter While l hope to fulfill his legacy l also hope to create my own 5 other r b r e h d n father a r e h a l i a 2011 L n o n a b e L Marjayoun person to ask him the questions I couldn t verbalize before and to receive the answers I was once too young to understand My father taught me what it means to be Lebanese The country is my father s country the food is my father s food the people are my father s people The more Lebanese I am the closer I feel to him This is why I ve worn my name in Arabic around my neck since I was a child why I am majoring in Middle Eastern studies and why after my father s death I pushed myself to learn the language of my heritage because it would make him proud He lived and died so that I could be proud of my identity I may have been young but I remember how he spoke of the people he reported on It was always about the people not the wars or the bombs or the politics Lebanon to me is fulfilling my father s leg acy of humanizing the dehumanized But being Lebanese does not only mean being my father s daughter While I hope to fulfill his legacy I also hope to create my own one inspired by my own Lebanon the Lebanon that my father instilled in me but that I must discover on my own terms through my own lens and in my own words I often read the final page of my father s memoir House of Stone which reads as an open love letter to his Lebanon and our ancestral home In my mind s eye I saw Laila suddenly grown beside these trees and repeating the Arabic words that I would one day teach her words that would take her back to where the Litani River runs over Marjayoun over what was once our land This is bayt home This is what we imagine This is where my story begins 6

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The Middle East and Me The Jews and the Druze By Ben Winer H ow is it that someone born and raised over 7 000 miles away from a location across the globe can feel so emotionally and personally attached having only been to that place less times than a person has fingers A feeling so strong that at times the place can feel like a second home From a young age and throughout my life my parents and teachers have given me a robust knowledge of the history of Jewish people Beginning with the ancient stories of the Torah Jewish bible and stretching to modern day discussions and classes about Israel and the Jewish diaspora I was surrounded by a tradition and community that emphasized the importance of participation in the Jewish story From my extensive survey of Jewish history I understood that I belonged to a people that had survived the tests of time persevered through the severest of pains and had yet come out relentless and striving The stories of slavery in ancient Egypt the destruction of the Jewish Kingdom and Temple in Judea by the Roman Empire in first century C E the repeated expulsion of Jews from non native countries and the eventual culmination into the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust left me feeling that I was privileged to live today without fear of existential threat due to my cultural and religious identity These stories presented to me the brutal ugly truth of history and established within me a desire to make the world a better place In high school this understanding of my Jewish identity motivated me to initiate my own journey as a participant in history As an American and as a Jew the Middle East has al ways represented the front lines in news headings wars and political involvement I grew up reading and watching the news voraciously there was never a dull moment in this region halfway around the world I was intrigued During the summer between my Junior and Senior years in high school I decided to travel to Daliyat al Karmel a small Druze village in Northern Israel to begin an immersive Arabic language home stay experience Being the only White person in the village I drew strange stares from the local Druze population who were just as bewildered at me as I was at them I had been to Israel countless times on family and class trips and always felt right at home but for the first time I felt like an astronaut on another planet Men walked the streets with long gray kaftans white skull caps with pompoms and curly mustaches while the women wore black head totoe abayas and white veils I thought I had been transported to another century Being around such an unfamiliar culture and people was unsettling but as I grew to understand my host family their community and their culture I realized I had a lot to learn The Druze live throughout the Levant ranging from Lebanon to Syria to Turkey to Israel A separate breakaway religion from Islam in the late 19th century the Druze are well known for their loyalty to their home country My host family barely spoke any English so lacking any Arabic skills I relied on my Jewish school Hebrew education to get me through the first week I learned that the father and all the sons of the family had served in the Israeli military While Israeli Jews were 7 obligated to participate in mandatory military service most Druze enlisted voluntarily And the women were proud that they had served in Sherut Le umi national service an option for those who wished to opt out of military service and commit two years to volunteering During the day I spent the bulk of my time learning Arabic and because I was only there for such a short period of time my teacher Nihaya decided that it was pointless to learn the Arabic alphabet I ended up learning Arabic in Hebrew and writing down English transliterations in my notebook for verb conjugations and common vocabulary By the end of the day my brain was exhausted from all of the lingual gymnastics In my free time I joined my host family for coffee and tea with their distant cousins week long weddings cooking and touring the mountainous region which they call home It was exhilarating and my experience only cemented my desire to learn more about the Middle East Two years later I went back to Israel this time for an extended period of time to explore my religious identity Coming from a fairly observant and traditional Jewish home I decided to take a gap year studying in Yeshiva an all male Jewish learning institution to learn more about Jewish practice and belief While nearly all my other high school friends were starting their Freshmen years in college I was learning Jewish law bible and rabbinical texts for nearly 14 hours a day with few breaks to eat pray exercise and continue learning Arabic Every morning Yeshiva Bochurs students attended morning services by 7 40 A M sharp to wrap Tefillin prayer ornaments on one s arm and head and to pray This was followed by morning classes where students were divided into groups of eight to 15 to study Talmud an ancient discourse of Jewish law written in Aramaic from the sixth century Next we had afternoon prayer services lunch and a two hour break before diving back into studying The order of afternoon and evening classes were bible studies topics in Jewish thought Jewish philosophy and more Talmud study from 8 00 P M to 10 00 P M At times it was exhausting And after one year in Yeshiva I learned more about my religion than I did in 13 years of Jewish dayschool Not only did I gain knowledge of Judaism but my habitual routines became accustomed to Jewish practice Everything from reciting prayers before eating food incorporating time for Jewish learning into my day and making time for the morning afternoon and evening services became staples of a healthy Jewish life during my time in Yeshiva The biggest personal struggle came after I had already finished the year debating how much of the experience I should include in college and future life As a twenty oneyear old sophomore at Penn I continue to feel the tension between a more traditional lifestyle with the exciting spontaneous and energetic college environment around me The most important lesson that I took from my time in Yeshiva was a commitment to values that lead to a more meaningful and thoughtful life as well as dedication to a purpose that provides fulfillment It goes without saying that these experiences have transformed my perspective on nearly every aspect of life From my career ambitions to my personal beliefs and academic interests the rich history and culture of the Middle East has shaped who I am and who I want to become My hope is that these memories passions and experiences will continue to motivate me to create positive change within myself others and the greater community 8

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The Flight of a Dearborn Son T By Ali Osman he flight attendant announced that the cabin door had been locked and that the approximate flight time was a little under two hours My long sleeved Penn shirt was suffocating in the August heat and my anxiety flared as the plane took off from the Detroit tarmac It was the first time I would be flying alone so I had reason to feel such a way Beyond that I was leaving behind a community that had given me nothing but love opportunity and an identity that I would not be as proud to possess had I been born elsewhere I also was leaving behind an irreplaceable family and a twin brother whose continued struggle with cancer made the takeoff incredibly emotional Within a week or two of landing in Philadelphia and beginning my long awaited University career I faced an inordinate feeling of homesickness Although college freshmen often go through such a phase the extent to which I was affected was further exacerbated by the uniqueness of the city I was raised in and the beautiful family of mine that resided there Dearborn Michigan a suburban town bordering Detroit is truly inimitable A North Pole for shawarma lovers the city is well known for having the largest concentration of Arab Americans outside of the Middle East Certain parts of the city feel like a walk down a Beirut souk with signage in Arabic pointing visitors to the best Arab bakeries to hookah lounges packed with people daily until sunrise Beyond its Arabesque nature Dearborn is home to a beautiful melting pot of people diasporas from Lebanon Iraq Yemen Syria Palestine and more It is also home to many children born to parents who have experienced tremendous hardship My father s oldest brother Nabil died when he was fifteen after being injected with an HIV infected syringe during school His other brother Riad died from complications with high blood sugar after living fifteen years of his life blind His oldest sister Naziha passed away after a failed open heart surgery at the age of thirty two The list of those my father has lost goes on such lists are common among the millions of immigrants fleeing countries that hold no regard for public health education or human rights It is these lists that motivate Dearborners to do more than what our parents dreamt of back home dreams that for them were farfetched discouraged and often interrupted by the sounds of gunfire and explosions Put simply Dearborn is a more organized and less corrupt version of a typical Middle Eastern town where people are able to break glass in y l i m a f n a Osm 1949 c n o n a b e Tripoli L 9 ceilings and pursue opportunities that would be absent in home countries of the diaspora Because of the nature of the community I grew up in and my parents constant emphasis on empathy and humility I learned that the pursuit of an education was a blessing in and of itself To Dearborners education is a means of escaping persecution and poverty and a mechanism of achieving social mobility It was my duty to my parents who worked hard to leave a country with no opportunity to do whatever I had to in order to succeed My definition of success of course was not on par with my traditional grandmother s wishes for her grandchildren to become neurosurgeons The path I took studying business at Penn was an unorthodox one for Arab Americans who grow up in homes that view medical school as the highest level of success The intense homesickness that swept in upon arriving at Penn was a direct result of being raised in a community where nobody really leaves Dearborn parents are used to having their children live with them until they are married I was moving away and in the eyes of my parents could easily become corrupted by a culture unlike that of Dearborn Traditionalism and conservatism manifest in Dearborn in a way that anybody who leaves faces a crossroads They can choose to embody the values that their parents instill in them from birth or they can choose to deviate from such values conforming to those more widely accepted as American That a combination of the two was possible was merely an afterthought My parents feared I would lose my love for Arab culture and would not want to return to the beautiful bubble of Dearborn In retrospect I shared this fear It was unbeknownst to me that I could conserve who I was and where I came from in a world so different from my hometown During my first semester at Penn I began to work around the seemingly terrible consequences of being away from home As I met a few Lebanese people who came from similar first generation backgrounds I began to en gage in more and more activities that reminded me of home I made it a tradition to eat a falafel sandwich twice a week and became closer to the Lebanese bros I met along the way I listened to Arabic music while studying and kept in touch with family religiously However I also participated in activities that anyone from Dearborn would consider alien From fraternity parties to karaoke nights to using chopsticks instead of a fork I did it all and I had fun doing it I developed a healthy balance of appreciating my traditional identity and learning to incorporate cultures scenes and communities very different from those to which I was accustomed Gradually I came to realize that conformity was not a requisite for participating in and enjoying traditional Western culture With this realization my homesickness began to fade In the end everybody has the freedom to choose their own path For me it was imperative that I continued to respect and acknowledge where I came from Choosing to adhere to societal standards in spite of one s upbringing risks losing the foundation that allows for such an opportunity in the first place For me the decision was easy It was a decision driven by the inviolable respect I had for my mother and father and for their dream that I continue living a life where I do the opposite of biting the hand that feeds me As I approach my last year at Penn I approach my final first semester flight from Dearborn to Philadelphia I can say with full confidence that my greatest achievement has not been in my academic or professional pursuits but in my understanding of family love and community I have continued to respect the wishes of my family preserve my love for my culture and make decisions consistent with the standards of empathy humility and loyalty that my community ingrained in me My final flight will feature the same longsleeved Penn shirt and August heat This time though my anxiety will have vanished peace and tranquility will take its place in my mind 10

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Poetic Connections in My Mother Tongue By Tara Yazdan Panah Dedicated to Tajmah Assefi Shirazi Professor of Persian Language I May her spirit rest in peace and happiness f you re walking along the street in a major Iranian city it won t be long before you come across a child selling slips of paper with poems written on them to car passengers and pedestrians During my summers in Iran my family would buy these mysterious poems which were often folded carefully in ornate envelopes and read the contents aloud to one another To us these poems were more than just fleeting amusement They were fortunes that all of us took to heart as many other Persians do Poetry permeates almost every aspect of Persian life This isn t surprising considering that Persians owe the preservation of their culture and language to the achievements of their poets Persians revere the legendary Ferdowsi who in the late 10th century wrote the Shahnameh Book of Kings an epic poem over three times the length of Homer s Iliad At the time the Persian language was in danger of extinction due to Arabophone infiltration Yet the Shahnameh s extraordinary legacy ensured that the Persian language would never fall out of use as Ferdowsi worked meticulously to assure that his poems included few words of Arabic origin 1 Other medieval Persian poets such as Hafez Rumi and Sa adi have also had long lasting influences on literature globally and are household names among Persian families Modern poets like Iraj Mirza and Parvin Etesami are renowned figures in Persian culture as well Today the influence of these great poets is obvious to anyone who steps into a Persian home Almost every Persian household contains a copy of Hafez s Divan and during traditional holidays like Shab e Yalda a Zoroastrian holiday on the winter solstice and Norooz Persian New Year families gather and read poetry My family has a tradition in which each of us take turns making a wish opening Hafez s book to a random page and inter preting the poem as a response to said wish Persians do not see poetry merely as a form of literary tradition to us it is a spiritual guide Though my family comes from a Muslim background they are more likely to turn to Khayyam s words than to read from the Quran in times of distress I have always been fascinated with my mother s recitation of long passages from poems she learned in grade school and I wish that I too could recite meaningful beautiful poems from memory One of my greatest joys during my time at Penn has been learning to read and write Persian Farsi as it allows me to better understand and interpret our literature While I grew up speaking Farsi at home I depended on my mother for translations of Persian texts During my freshman year I took Persian for Heritage Speakers with Professor Tajmah Assefi Shirazi who passed away last summer I will always be grateful to Professor Assefi Shirazi for teaching me how to read Persian texts and introducing me to an array of poems I will forever cherish like Sa adi s poem in Bustan about the 13th century famine in Damascus which brought tears to my eyes the first time we read it in class Since engaging in a deeper study of these poems I have felt closer to my culture despite being 8 000 miles away from most of my family Even though I m not the fastest reader and antiquated Persian terms often go over my head every new poem I learn brings me one step closer to better understanding the history and culture of my people As a child of diaspora it is easy to lose touch with one s roots Poetry is a way for me to feel connected to my homeland Most importantly it has taught me lessons to live by and recite when I am in search of answers I will always remember Sa adi s famous words from his poem Bani Adam inscribed on the walls of the United Nations in New York City 2 11 Transliteration Bani aadam aazaye yek digarand ke dar aafarinesh ze yek gooharand cho ozvi be dard aavarad roozegaar degar ozvhaa raa namaanad gharaar to kaz mehnate digaraan bi ghami nashaayad ke naamat nahand aadami m o m r e dh Tara an ran 2016 I n a h a f s I English Translation All human beings are members of one frame Since all at first from the same essence came When time afflicts a limb with pain The other limbs at rest cannot remain If thou feel not for other s misery A human being is no name for thee 12

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A Portrait of the Student as Diaspora By Ali Hamandi Ali s family at the Ja far At Tayar mosque Karak Jor dan 2003 I am not at home at Penn My first semester I thought more about my home and high school friends than I did anything else A leave of absence is how I spent the following semester On my first day back I called my dad to ease my increasing anxiety and my web browser accumulated tabs related to transfer application deadlines and credit equivalencies for universities in Michigan I didn t transfer ultimately There are infinite reasons for my graceless transition to college life One Friday night halfway into my first semester a friend and I lamented the chasm that massive wealth differences create between people Both of us came from modest backgrounds and were not only immigrants but also the children of refugees At the time I was convinced that the av 13 erage Ivy student took their enrollment for granted that to them the possibility of failure only existed in an invisible periphery that their schema of human life excluded the unforeseen convolutions and disasters it unfailingly undergoes whether this judgement of my cohort is true is irrelevant In my late teens I was fearful or anxious about nearly everything in my life even though such feelings were not always rational I went off to college uncertain of my abilities as a student and with a father months away from unemployment convinced that the success of my parents migration rested upon my shoulders I hated Penn because I wanted to find in my classmates a shared outlook on the world and admittedly a shared anxiety and I didn t I could not divorce this alienation on campus from my heritage insofar as my heritage implicated land under American invasion which in turn imposed refugeehood and financial instability This provisional logic is incomplete and abridged I ve met other Muslims and Arabs on campus international students and otherwise who did not share my disaffection So my heritage contributed to my alienation but it didn t exclusively constitute it Somewhat similarly an obvious point there is more to my heritage than how it divorced me from others There was no definitive moment in which I assimilated to Penn or university life At some point absolute cynicism is tempered by friendship and acquaintance with other marginalized students positive relations accumulate and roots develop and proliferate I m eventually cushioned by my academic performance and the guarantee of non failure Over time it becomes possible to compart mentalize friendships forged at university and the student body at large and in turn to separate the student body and educational faculty from Penn as an institution one that is amoral at best and deceivingly immoral at worst inseparably embedded in systems of oppression and masked with a humanist intellectual mythos despite its rabid pre professionalism This assimilation process is something everyone experiences I think I had a harder time than most because of where I hail from and the effects that has on my temperament Those same factors also prevent me from growing to love this university evenin the abstract I can cherish my time at university with individuals tied to it or maybe cherish the possibilities admission to this university promised but I can t cherish Penn the wayone might cherish a favorite sports team or their hometown or their family I was eventually at home here but from a distance This isn t to say that my relationship to Penn is entirely negative My time here on its own is a mark of immense fortune I will forever view the university campus as a place and space for self improvement I ve met people who inspire me to self confidence and optimism people who have comforted me at my lows and shared my perspective and people who augmented my appreciation for the dramatic aspects of human personality people who understand life as fundamentally poetic and scriptural My vantage point from alienation helped me to internalize how little perspective on the world a small city upbringing permits even when 14

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ing humanist vision this is how I understand my life in its freedom for action for as long as I m at Penn In my mind I have this image of a scholar utterly devoted to their practice and study an ideal yes but the sentiment remains I live the connection between education and salvation intellectual moral material more fully than my cohort I believe because of my background I cannot not take my time at Penn seriously The whole endeavor is suffused with meaning and it has moral and religious undertones What I m trying to say with this piece through its non sequiturs and unresolved narratives is that my circumstance bars me from a casual relation towards my life and its obvious mortality That you can read my writing alone admits an immense amount of good luck one most of my family tree is without This sheer alignment of stars denies one agency and invites gratitude and also anxiety and a guarding hypervigilance How I make sense of that as Arab diaspora perhaps molded by a cultural and religious inheritance only half lived due to emigration is through study which aspires to moral edification As a recipient of the sacrifices refugeehood and immigration entail I do not have the luxury to live my life only for myself In essence I ve already lived and died But to live for my parents and their descendants is a minor inconsequential death When I ve died in actuality and when those after me have their turn reckoning with the thrownness of their lives and the paradoxical freedom that arises therefrom I want to have left beyond more reason for optimism In my young adulthood I begin that foremostly with earnest study 15 impacted by immigration and through that I now better understand life both in its thrownness and radical freedom for human action These two things are intertwined thrownness is the idea that everyone comes into life with pre imposed boundaries historical material metaphysical or otherwise and radical freedom for human action comes from realizing that living meaningfully within these boundaries necessitates a sober reckoning with them in the first place This piece isn t a comprehensive account of my university years as Arab diaspora This is maybe more free form The general outline of my situation isn t unique but it s historically recent as is the proliferation of the Arab diaspora Sometime during college it became impossible to understand myself only with the sentimentality of a personal atomized perspective My anxieties about university and outside of it my hopes my relation to my ethnic heritage their very immediacy insists they be foreground But at some point I began to primarily understand my life as the consequence of external factors The material realities and historical developments beginning before my birth that contribute to my temperament and attitudes my parents suffering and those of their relatives and progeny that is my life in its thrownness I owe to Penn insofar as I most clearly saw this during my time here To more earnestly live the role of a university student one particularly at an institution like Penn to take full advantage of the abundance of resources to live and study with purpose and to reconcile my professional curriculum with an overarch ir c a es th f m o i t en d and not i p i o rec geehoo d a I y u l As f i m e a r t e v s fice tion en ry to li lf e u ra s x g y u i l m e rm o th f e hav e only lif 003 2 n a d r o J man m A r e th a f s Ali and hi 16

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Two Halves Torn Apart G rowing up as a Syrian Turkish American in a predominately white area I felt a disconnect between my Middle Eastern background and the American culture that surrounded me I was alienated in the place I grew up I faced bullying from my peers and even from their parents We did not have family in the U S but every few summers I travelled with my family to the Middle East from Istanbul to Aleppo to see both sides of my extended family My most vivid childhood memories are our summer trips to Turkey and Syria filled with bustling bazars in Istanbul and fresh jasmine in the streets of Aleppo Many of my favorite moments were in Mersin a small beach city in Southeast Turkey that my mother has visited since she was a child Most people outside the region have probably never heard of Mersin but it has always been my happy place my mind drifts to its shores whenever I need an escape It served as a midpoint stop during our travels from Istanbul to Aleppo where my two cultures identities and halves met After the horrific bloodshed in Syria began in 2011 millions of refugees turned to their northern neighbor for escape This has posed a significant challenge for both Syrians and Turks with the former forced to settle in a foreign land and 17 By Nadia Mokhallalati the latter adjusting to changes in their home As I continue to visit Mersin every summer I have witnessed the ever evolving and complex relations between the native Turks and the growing Syrian refugee population In my first visit to Mersin after the Syrian conflict began I immediately felt a shift When I was younger even though I was American and spoke little Turkish the community was always quick to welcome me I never had a problem making friends as the other children were fascinated with stories of my life in America The locals were curious to hear about places outside Turkey just as I loved experiencing life in Mersin As they tried to teach me Turkish and I helped them with their English I not only felt accepted but blessed for each part of my identity However as thousands of Syrian refugees increased to millions many Turks became defensive as they felt their cities were being overrun by outsiders While many Turks were less than thrilled to welcome millions of refugees into their country every Syrian was devasted to leave theirs They were forced to uproot their lives settle in a foreign country and struggle to quickly learn a new language Turkey has become home to the largest Syrian refugee population in the world and the rapid increase has brought a sense of competition between Turks and Syrians further fueled by the major language barrier Moreover Turkey continues to struggle internally with its own identity crisis split between conservative and secularist groups and fueled by the rising number of Syrian refugees Consequently there has been a major divide between the Syrians and Turks and Turkey has struggled economically there has been a severe increase in anti Syrian sentiment In my first visit back to Turkey after the crisis I was suddenly labeled Syrian and passively shunned by many of the same people I had known since I was a child Because I spoke Arabic and made Syrian friends it was if my Syrian and Turkish identities were no longer compatible Half my identity was suddenly invalid Alas I was privileged to be a visitor my new Syrian friends escaped violence only to reach a community that did not want them The first few years were chaotic as Turks and Syrians adapted to a new reality of coexistence As if living through war and leaving your country was not difficult enough my friends told me stories of being ridiculed at school and attacked on the streets While I have seen friendships between the two groups many are overshadowed and weakened by this tension In recent years the chaos has calmed but the divide has escalated After spending several months in Mersin this past year I witnessed how Syrians and Turks occupy separate worlds within the same city They sit apart rarely interact barely even speak to one another unless necessary The barrier between the two is more than just that of language or culture it divides ideas experiences and it is fueled by biases Both groups are rooted in their views and are more polarized than ever Syrians are labeled as lazy and second class while Turks are considered privileged and hostile Mersin has come to encompass my heritage and it is heartbreaking to witness my childhood happy place so divided between the two halves of my identity During my trips to Syria and Turkey before the war my experiences not only helped connect me to my heritage but they made me proud of my two cultures Though I could never choose between my Turkish and Syrian identities I feel that the choice has been forced on me Despite spending months in Turkey I feel disconnected from my Turkish background While I wish the two groups could live harmoniously and see the beauty in their differences I will never be able to truly understand the experiences of either But during my time in Mersin every smile kind word or friendship between a Syrian and a Turk gave me hope hope that one day there could be peace and reconciliation between the two halves of my identity 18

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Palestine and the Exile of Edward Said By Bruce Shen I srael s Law of Return gives all non Israeli Jews including converts the right to reside in Israel and receive full citizenship however Palestinians expelled after 1947 are denied property rights and the right to return Generations of Palestinians are thus condemned to perpetual exile Perhaps the person who best symbolizes and articulates the Palestinian struggle is Edward Said 1935 2003 a distinguished literary critic Said was an exile in the sense that the country in which he was born no longer exists Originally from Mandatory Palestine Said and his family were forced to give up their home in Jerusalem when the State of Israel was established in 1947 They settled down in Egypt and eventually the United States Like many other Palestinians Said was stripped of his national identity The place of birth column on his passport simply reads Jerusalem without specifying the country When Said s father and mother registered for their wedding the officer who was a British woman simply tore up his mother s passport and told her that her identity would be given to a Jewish immigrant to Palestine Said told the BBC in 1988 And then she became in the late 50s a Lebanese citizen And of course she s not Lebanese she s Palestinian Said scoffed bitterly After studying at Princeton and Harvard Edward Said became a literature professor at Columbia University in 1963 a position he held for 40 years Outside his academic career Said was a prominent advocate for Palestinian self determination He co founded the Association of Arab American University Graduates AAUG and helped compose the Palestinian National Council s proclamation of an independent state of Palestine in 1988 For all of his outspokenness and activism Said was no extremist Why not have a mutual recognition in which the Israeli and Palestinian people recognize each other Said asked presciently on the Phil Donahue Show in 1986 seven years before the PLO and Israel acknowledged each other s right to exist The predicament of Palestinians he acknowledged was a result of failure from leaderships on both sides After Oslo I Said did not hold back from criticizing Israel for refusing to end violence and compensate Palestinian victims any more than he shied away from berating Yasser Arafat then leader of the Palestinian Authority PA for making too many unilateral concessions he called the negotiation a degrading spectacle In response the PA briefly banned his books in 1995 Zionism s widespread appeal among Europeans and Americans remains at the heart of the question of Palestine Said offered his literary interpretations The first is that the Zionist movement resembles an archetypal phoenix remnants of formerly oppressed communities rising from the ashes and coming together The second is the appeal of building in historic Palestine a new country with a clean slate as Europe once did with the American Experiment Said s analysis is echoed by the two pillars of Zionism conquest of land namely to tame the wilderness of Palestine through Zionist settlements and conquest of labor which entails filling all jobs in the economy with Jews But Palestine was not devoid of inhabitants when new Jewish immigrants arrived in 1882 The presence of Arab natives however disrupted the Zionist imagination of a land without a people and therefore must be deliberately dismissed as an illegitimate political factor if not a demographic one Hence the State of Israel became paradoxically both a decolonizing nation and a colonizer reeling from the shock of the Holocaust on the one hand aggressively dominating the natives on the other This is hardly surprising post colonial states tend to imagine a pre colonial past in which they can start afresh in Israel s case an uninhabited Palestine as Said observed 19 cisco 2007 n ra F n a S id a S Mural of Edward in Culture and Imperialism 1993 Yet he argued that Israel s past sufferings cannot justify its present human rights abuses In the BBC Reith Lecture Said lamented that lessons learned about oppression in one place were often conveniently forgotten in another place or time This was the case for the Boers who imposed apartheid in South Africa after suffering from British imperialism themselves as well as the Israelis who felt entitled to expel the native Palestinians by virtue of their own hardship But universal human rights cannot be conditional warned Said N o power no matter how special or how developed or how strong or how urgent its claims of past victimization is exempt from accusation and judgment if that government practices such things While Said s exile is physical having been forbidden from returning to Palestine until 1998 his exile is also in a sense metaphorical With an Arabic last name a British first name an American passport and no certain identity Said spent most of his life feeling out of place His fierce criticism of US authorities kept him outside the American estab lishment which was dominated by Zionist lobbyists who blocked the broadcast of his documentary in America and by neoconservatives like Samuel Huntington whose clash of civilizations thesis provided the ideological bedrock for the US invasion of Iraq Nonetheless Said was content as an outsider he chose to be one Said saw himself as a public intellectual who must speak truth to power not bound by party affiliations or concerned about material rewards Consequently he has repeatedly declined to work for think tanks and paid consultancies In his mode of being exile is meant for the intellectuals and personal cost is to be damned Said envisioned a binational Israeli Palestinian state in which an equal citizenship transcends ethno religious differences That vision has become elusive with Israel passing over 30 discriminatory laws in 2020 alone But that doesn t have to be the case Both peoples are victims of oppression instead of engaging in rhetoric of blame and difference we must stand in solidarity to end injustice Said s voice of reason is needed now more than ever 20

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Finding My Middle Ground Iranian Muslim Identity in the West By Donya Zarrinnegar 21 O b Farsi for water was my first word From infancy my Persian identity has been the essence of my being By the age of four I had visited Iran six times a result of having family across the globe and my parents commitment to providing me with knowledge of our origins Some images are fixed in my memory my grandparents parakeet in their library the vintage television in the kitchen playing morning cooking programs Remnants of my past are ingrained in my core as I try to comprehend modern day perceptions or misrepresentations of the Middle East One particular memory is etched in my mind at 6 years old I sit on my grandmother s chair in her bedroom in Tehran the sun s auburn glow illuminating her Persian rug In a state of mixed awe and bewilderment I watch my grandmother as she kneels down in Maghrib prayer The light casts a shadow on her floral chador as she softly murmurs lines of prayer with closed eyes Her focus and elevated spiritual state create an unbreakable holy space Alert and curious I long to ask her questions but remain hushed as I realize I have passed into a unique realm of spirituality far beyond my understanding This experience was my first encounter with religion and to this day is my most intimate Growing up in San Francisco in a secular household I was not exposed to the Muslim aspect of my Persian identity My family s immigration several decades ago and their assimilation into Western culture drove them to sacrifice their religious roots While my parents were raised in religious homes they stopped practicing after immigrating a byproduct of the rigid Islamic regime they were raised in and their transition to life as expatriates Although they found new ways to connect with their ethnic identity they avoided becoming members of a Muslim community in America recognizing that it was safer to remain private In this way my parents did not just leave their country when they emigrated they also left their religion Despite the absence of religion my childhood overflowed with Persian culture the sweet melodies that pump blood through the veins of my house melodies which my fingers have swiftly danced over on the piano thousands of times Years of Farsi studies exploring the poetry of Sa adi Shirazi learning the history of the Achaemenid Empire to present day Iran and performing Khabhaye Talayi for Norooz celebrations at our local library bonded me with the Iranian American community of my town and shaped my identity Gradually I gained the ability to use my culture as a language of empathy and to understand the sacrifice and pain my parents endured leaving their lives in Iran as adrift teenagers However religion continues to be a gray area an unresolved tension between the generations of my family Negative misconceptions publicized by the media about Islam and its intrinsic ties to extremism and violence have subconsciously impacted my own perception of the religion As a child I became aware of Islamophobia in subtle ways through my elementary school avoiding the history of Islam and more explicitly through the media linking Muslims to terrorism since the 9 11 attacks My grandmother s roosari headscarf a fascination of mine as a child evolved into a symbol of Middle Eastern women s oppression I distanced myself from this taboo part of my family s identity and avoided answering any questions about our religious background My internalized guilt and shame prevented me from appreciating the beauty of a deeply misconstrued faith and from questioning the credibility of media sources It was only in high school and college environments with cultures of risk taking and open discussion that I felt comfortable to convert my hesitancy into inquiry First I sought knowledge of my cultural and religious heritage by taking Middle Eastern history courses and reading the works of Sufi mystic poets Rumi and Hafez Studying Sufism helped me develop a novel and more approachable perspective of Islam Specifically Attar s The Conference of the Birds allowed me to explore Sufi theories of human mystical love in which love for the Divine Beloved is the only requisite for spiritual union and enlightenment At Penn I met and developed close friendships with practicing Muslims and found commonalities in our upbringings something I had never experienced before I was welcomed with open arms by members of Penn s Muslim Student Association and invited to their Ramadan Iftar My independent quest to engage with my roots intensified my curiosity and pushed me to seek out opportunities to learn more about the history and culture of the Middle East As I reflect on the serene image of my grandmother in prayer I struggle to understand the harmful distortion of Muslim identity that persists in mainstream Western consciousness At times I too have been shackled by exaggerated and discriminatory tropes fabricated by the media however rather than avoiding challenging conversations I now lean into the discomfort and use it as an opportunity to listen and to voice my truth 22

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Endnotes Tara Yazdan Panah 1 Inskeep Steve Abolqasem Ferdowsi The Poet Who Rescued Iran NPR NPR 9 Feb 2009 www npr org templates story story php storyId 100397309 2 Secretary General s Remarks at the School of International Relations United Nations United Nations 30 Aug 2012 www un org sg en content sg statement 2012 08 30 secretary generals remarks school international relations Bruce Shen 1 Sayej Loureen Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return in International Law 15 May 2018 Web 11 Jan 2021 2 Exiles Edward Said Directed by Christopher Sykes BBC 1988 3 Weiner Justus R 1996 Peace and Its Discounts Isreali and Palestinian Intellectuals Who Reject the Current Peace Process Cornell International Law Journal Vol 29 Iss 2 Article 3 4 Said Edward The Morning After London Review of Books London Review of Books 21 Oct 1993 Web 08 Jan 2021 5 Exiles Edward Said Directed by Christopher Sykes BBC 1988 6 Gelvin James L The Origins of the Israeli Palestinian Dispute The Modern Middle East A History New York Oxford UP 2016 Print 7 Said Edward W Resistance and Opposition Culture and Imperialism Vintage USA 1994 269 Print 8 Said Edward W Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay Representations of the Intellectual Vintage 1996 45 Print 9 Said Edward W Memory Inequality and Power Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights Alif Journal of Comparative Poetics no 24 2004 pp 15 33 JSTOR www jstor org stable 4047418 Accessed 8 Jan 2021 10 Said Edward W Reflections on Exile and Other Essays Cambridge MA Harvard UP 2002 556 57 Print 11 An Interview with Edward Said Interview by Cindi Katz and Neil Smith SAGE Publications Web 7 Jan 2021 12 Adem Seifudein Constructing a New Imperial Order The War in Iraq and the Ideology of Clashism Turkish Journal of International Relations 2 2 2003 DergiPark 2003 Web 8 Jan 2021 13 Said Edward W Introduction Representations of the Intellectual Vintage 1996 12 Print 14 Said Edward The One State Solution The New York Times The New York Times 10 Jan 1999 Web 8 Jan 2021 15 Al Jazeera Five Ways Israeli Law Discriminates against Palestinians Conflict News Al Jazeera Al Jazeera 19 July 2018 Web 15 Jan 2021 25 26

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