Being Arab: A Lesson in Reclaiming Identity
“Can’t you just wear a t-shirt and jeans?” I whispered. I scanned the sidewalk in case anyone from school passed by. I didn’t want them to see her–Sitti.
She laughed, the whites of her teeth in full view, her molars mocking my embarrassment. With each passing second, I shrunk as her laughter roared louder. In her white thoab with red tatreez that spoke of our ancestry, our land, our village, years of learning and perfecting the stitching, she stood tall. “We are Arab. We will always be Arab.”
But I didn’t want to listen.
Arab.
A-rab.
Aray-be-ian.
I wanted to peel my skin.
Pluck my eyebrows.
I wanted to iron down my thick waves until they were stick straight.
I wanted to exchange my pita-bread, fresh from the bakery, for Wonder bread.
I wanted mayonnaise and mustard not tahini or labna.
I wanted light skin, and thin legs, and hairless arms, and a name like Jessica, or Brittney, or Katie, or Angelica.
Not a no-name-on-a-keychain name.
Not a no-other-name-in-my-school name.
Not a what-is-that-you-just-said? name.
Can-you-repeat-that? name
Can-I-just-call-you-Eve? name.
Na-vee-an
Ni-vy-ien
Nivia
Nuvee
I wanted a land I could point to on a map. Like Italy, or Great Britain, or Spain, or some place people romanticize like France.
I didn’t understand colonization, then.
I didn’t know about the powers-that-be that leave so many power-less.
I just knew I felt less, and I wanted more.
I wanted to see my name in books, and in movies, and in commercials. I wanted to point to a tv, or book, or billboard and say “Hey! That looks like me!”
I didn’t read Edward Said, then. I was unaware of the negative images of Arabs I was already absorbing.
The “camel, riding, terroristic, hook nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization” kind Said said.
I didn’t want to be like them.
I didn’t want to be like Sitti.
I wanted a grandma who wore floral dresses and buttoned up blouses. I wanted her to make casseroles and chocolate chip cookies and play board games. I wanted her to wear reading glasses on the tip of her nose and have coiffed and uncovered hair. I wanted English to flow from her mouth effort-less-ly, because then everything would feel effort-less. And I would not feel…less.
I didn’t want my Sitti.
Sitti whose long salt and pepper braids draped over each shoulder. Sitti, who wore a thoab every day and donned a white veil over her head like the Virgin Mary.
I wished she was different.
I even settled for a jeans-and-t-shirt grandma like Jamie’s. She reeked of cigarettes and beer and had scrunched-up skin like it had been tossed in a dryer for too long. A limp cigarette hung from her mouth as if for safekeeping, and she’d pat her pockets for the lighter she always recovered from the inside pocket of her leather jacket. Her thinning hair was tied back into a tight ponytail, and her boots were too big for her feet, but she wore them anyway.
I wanted a grandma like her.
Jamie’s grandma who laughed in my face when I asked if Jaime could play. Who corrected each of my sentences, smirked at my pronunciations, and treated me like a broken toy who would never operate like the others.
“It’s ppppplay not bbbbblay. You got to speak English, girl. You in America now. And tell your grandmother she don’t got wear that stupid shit here.”
Stupid shit. My grandmother’s thoab.
I wanted to exchange Sitti for Jaime’s grandmother.
Sitti who made bread from scratch. Who could crochet, knit, sow, cook, sing, tell stories, read the entire Quran during Ramadan, who had miracle treatments for every ailment, who held onto faith no matter how hard life tried to shake it out of her…Sitti who married at fourteen, raised eight children, buried three, and who fled from war never to return. My sweet Sitti who told me that divorce doesn’t define me. Who told me to pursue an education she herself was deprived of, who refused to depend on a man even if it was one of her own sons, who always strove to learn and do better.
She dreamt of success like she could pluck it from a tree. She just needed to find the tree. She just needed a path to it. If she could just reach a little higher, walk a little faster, find a map perhaps, if…
I wanted to trade Sitti for Jaime’s grandmother.
What we internalize as children, we can only hope to unlearn as adults. We all have seeds that were planted in us before we had a sense of ourselves and our place in the world. A seed of doubt, a seed of inferiority, a seed of insecurity, planted by the Jamies’ grandmas of the world. We have to find that seed, uproot that plant, and plant new seeds in return.
Ones that nourish us.
Ones that uplift.
Ones that love the land, the people on it, and all the cacophonous and euphonious sounds to every letter of our names.
Ones that do not wait for the tv, or the book, or the song to look or sound like us, but ones who imagine, who strive, who create those representations.
What I would give to have a cup of tea with Sitti. To see her sitting in her thoab in my family room. To see the sunlight beaming down on her long white veil. To hear her laugh. I have so many things I want to say, so many questions I want to ask her:
Tell me about the war of 1967. How did it change your life? What was your experience? What choices did you have? How do you make your flat bread so light and fluffy? Do you think I should knead it by hand? What do all the patterns in your thoab mean? How did you learn these designs? Can you teach me? What are the folk songs you sing? Did your mother teach them to you? What do they mean? Can you tell me stories about Palestine? About how you grew up? About your earliest memory? About your dreams? What was your proudest moment? Your biggest obstacle? Your highest hope? Your biggest surprise? How did you stay so strong and live without fear? How did you learn to forgive? How did you live with all the things you can’t forget? How did you hold onto your culture, and faith, and love, and sustain hope no matter how hard life came at you…
There are so many questions, so many conversations I play in my head for she is the voice in my stories. Hundreds of conversations transpire in each book I write, and in each book is her. I think of the trajectory of her life. I think of all the things she didn’t have, yet she claimed everything she did have with pride and grace — Arab, Palestinian, woman, Muslim, orphan, widow.
There is so much I would have asked, could have asked, dream of asking.
Except one.
I would never ask her why she doesn’t wear a t-shirt and jeans.
She was always enough. More than enough. And in her steadfastness to be who she was, she taught me I can also just be.
Arab
Arabiya
Nevien
Nevien’s written works include her novel Secrets Under the Olive Tree ,(Nortia Press, 2015) and children’s book, Mohamed Salah: Get to Know the Soccer Superstar (Capstone, 2019).
This blog post is part of the #30DaysArabVoices Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Arabs as writers and scholars. Please read yesterday’s entry by Fadi Aboughoush here.
Connect with Nevien:
Website: www.nevienshaabneh.com
