Author Archives: Arab America

By RUTH BAUM BIGUSSpecial to The Kansas City Star
It’s been a long time since Rashid Khalaf lived in Jerusalem, where he was born. But for the past four years, Khalaf has been bringing the tastes and aromas of that past to his Overland Park establishment, Shahrazad Café & Market. Khalaf describes his cafe’s food as mixing the flavors of the Middle East, Turkey, the Mediterranean and historical Persia.

“I wanted to stay simple,” said Khalaf of the care menu, “but there are the main things that people ask for — hummus, falafel, lamb and taboule.”

The market and cafe have separate entrances but operate in a common space with easy access to both.

“It makes it convenient and helps the business,” Khalaf said.

The market and cafe are open seven days a week; a buffet lunch is offered on weekdays. The market offers fresh vegetables each Wednesday and Halal meats on Thursday. Halal is a designation given to meats that are permitted under Islamic guidelines.

Q: What is your background in the food industry?

Khalaf first came to the United States from Kuwait in 1981. He liked the states so much that Khalaf stayed with a cousin in the Washington area. A visit to Kansas City to see a friend from Kuwait changed the situation from a temporary stay for Khalaf.

“I told my mom it would only be for four years, but I never came back to live there,” he said. “The only thing I don’t like is the cold weather.”

Khalaf’s first jobs were in the grocery business and later at restaurants including the Athena where he served as cook. There were also stints at Jerusalem Café and another restaurant on Bannister Road.

After talking with friends and customers, Khalaf decided to try his hand at owning and operating a combination market and café.

“As you get older you want to invest for the family and kids,” he said.

Q: What did you do to put together your busines?

Khalaf researched his idea by traveling to other cities such as Chicago and Detroit, talking with vendors about supplies, menus and other details. It took a year of planning before Khalaf and a friend put their funds together to open Shahrazad.

“We planned to open the both of them, but the restaurant took a little longer,” Khalaf said.

Though a first-time business owner, Khalaf felt confident that his experience in the food industry would help him overcome hurdles.

“Even though you do it for the first time from scratch … I had an idea of what people wanted,” he said. “It took me six months to decide what to name the place, one that really fit that didn’t alter letters. … It’s like a Persian name, but it had to do with Arabic literature and something I could tell some interesting stories about and a lot of people are familiar with.”

Q: Why did you choose your location?

Prospective customers urged Khalaf to open in Overland Park.

“There are a lot of people out there who are Persian, Pakistani and from other Middle Eastern countries and those who wanted kosher food or Middle Eastern food,” he said.

Khalaf had given some thought to locating in Olathe, “but Overland Park has a little more international people,” he said. Khalaf also liked the West 127th and Metcalf location’s proximity to area highways for easy customer access. He said the location has allowed his business to continue growing.

“Little by little I built a lot of Turkish and Iranian customers, too,” he said.

“I have a lot of Jewish people who come in and a lot of Indians who work over at Sprint, and I do get people who like Halal meat — the Muslim people. And we have Americans who come in get gyros.”

Q: How are the operations set up?

Khalaf is involved in every aspect of Shahrazad’s operation.

“I do custom chicken, meat and poultry — I like cooking. I do the restaurant and managing of the store, and I have a member of the family who helps as a waitress.”

In the beginning, Khalaf had seafood dishes on the menu but said they did not do well, so he took them off. He also thought about putting in his own bakery.

“When I was planning the business I was planning to open a bakery but after I looked at it, it was too much work,” he said. “If it was just a bakery I would be bored. … But the plan is still there.”

Khalaf likes doing lots of different things at Shahrazad.

“I never get bored,” he said.

Q: What does your inventory include and where does it come from?

Shahrazad’s market offers prepackaged sweets, canned foods from overseas, and various dairy items. Baked goods come from several local suppliers.

“We do a lot of business with Chicago and California,” Khalaf said.

The business does little outside advertising other than occasional direct mail coupons and an advertisement through the local Islamic calendar.

“We have an active Facebook,” said Khalaf, along with a website that includes the menu and market items.

Q: What challenges you in running Shahrazad?

“The financial things — the expenses,” Khalaf said. “Sometimes expenses come from nowhere. You have to fix things and you have to keep prices as low as you can to keep up with competition.”

It is a hectic life for Khalaf, but one he seems to enjoy: “I have nice clients and I try to make sure they are happy and that they come back. We try to give them the best service.”

Khalaf considers himself a people person and Shahrazad allows him to mix and mingle.

“I meet different cultures and people, and I like that,” he said.

IN A NUTSHELL
COMPANY: Shahrazad Café & Market

ADDRESS: 12607 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park

TELEPHONE: 913-338-2250

Web site: www.shahrazadcafe.com

Source: www.kansascity.com

Decades after riding his first horse in Cairo’s upscale Maadi neighborhood, Ahmed Zayat became the first Arab owner to win the Kentucky Derby, a race where thousands upon thousands of owners try to register their horses into the “most exciting two minutes in sports.”

American Pharoah, Zayat’s prized thoroughbred, finished first at the prestigious race last week, hurling the Egyptian-American entrepreneur and his stable into euphoria.

“It’s an incredible thrill, an unbelievable privilege,” he told Al Arabiya News from his New York office.

Source: english.alarabiya.net

Amnesty International browbeaten by pro-Israel propaganda outfit (TIP)   Here’s the TIP petition that just landed in my inbox: Amnesty International’s annual conference has rejected a motion to fight the rise of violent anti-Semitism in Britain. Studies show violent anti-Semitic attacks rose 48 per cent in Britain in 2014. The resolution was the only one … Continued

Lecture May 12 will complement photography show DEARBORN, Mich. – Gravestones come to life this month at the Dearborn Public Library with a unique exhibit of photographs and accompanying lecture by Ronald Stockton, Ph.D. Both events take place at the Henry Ford Centennial Library, 16301 Michigan Ave. The professor of political science at the University … Continued

For Suraya Langston the death and destruction of Syria’s civil war feels very personal.

Memories of the magical time I spent in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, 15 years ago have been on my mind recently, given a new clarity by the horror of the civil war there.

One September evening in 2012, I was cooking tea for my family in the kitchen of my Dunedin home.

I heard the news of the bombing and destruction of much of Aleppo’s ancient city and the loss of thousands of lives.

I remember walking towards the television with the frypan still in my hands, tears running down my face as I saw the pain and suffering of the people and the pictures of the ancient souq (marketplace), Al Medina, that I had happily wandered through, now lying in ruins.

I remembered buying glittery belly-dancing belts, enjoying the smells of exotic spices and watching donkeys walking through as my partner and I chatted to any locals who spoke some English.

Sometimes we practised a little of the Arabic language I had grown up with but since this had been mostly based around endearments, expletives and food, I had to supplement it with a little rudimentary ”travel guide Arabic” I had learned from my dear Lebanese Uncle Victor in Dunedin before the journey.

As I looked back at photos of this journey, I remembered the kindness of Jalal, a lovely Muslim man who met us wandering near the citadel in Aleppo and offered to show us around the ancient heritage sites for two or three days.

He wanted nothing from us but to practise his English and for us to send him a photo of our time together once we returned to New Zealand.

We did that.

I wonder where he is now or if he is still alive?I also remember wandering the streets and markets alone and never once being harassed by the local men.

In fact, I was treated with great respect and delight.

They were so happy to have travellers exploring the beauty of their city.

Of course I do recall the near-total absence of women and children on the streets of Aleppo, and an occasional flash of black-veiled women hurrying by reminded me the country was under a dictatorship even in 1999, and that women’s rights were severely curtailed under the al-Assad regime.

My heart ached for their lack of freedom.

Despite this, Syria was enjoying a flowering of interest in its world heritage sites, arts and culture.

Aleppo’s old city was declared a world heritage site in 1986 and it had been enjoying an unprecedented number of tourists and travellers visiting its amazing array of medieval buildings and ancient sites dating back to 5000BC.

Now much of Aleppo lies in ruins, a city still under siege, with more than 20,000 people dead.

No-one is sure how many buildings have been destroyed, but there are brave Syrian people, some students of archeology, risking their lives to sandbag buildings and save artifacts from destruction and looting.

The United Nations estimates more than 220,000 people have been killed in the past four years in the civil war, including more than 6000 women and 10,000 children.

And the situation is worsening.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), a British-based organisation, says 76,000 people were killed in 2014, by far the highest figures in four years of war, a quarter of them civilians.

I shudder to think what the figures might be for disease, mutilation, trauma and abuse of the civilian population.

Not surprisingly, more than three million people have fled from Syria to refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and other places.

Today Lebanon has more refugees per capita than any other country in the world.

How can I hold these awful facts and figures in my mind and equate it with the Syria I saw 15 years ago?

Then I had travelled initially to Lebanon to visit the ancestral village of my great-grandparents in Becharre, a small Maronite Christian village high in the hills of northern Lebanon.

I had grown up in the warm embrace of the Dunedin Lebanese community and had always wanted to see and explore this part of my heritage.

Becharre did not disappoint me.

We were touched by the warmth and hospitality of the local people and had a wonderful time soaking up the beauty and peace of the mountain village my great-grandparents had left 100 years before.

We left Lebanon to begin our overland journey through Syria and Turkey.

I had learned the ancient art of Middle Eastern dance (Raqs Sharqi) or belly dancing in India in 1994 and it had become an important part of my life as I introduced classes in Dunedin.

As well as being a wonderful form of exercise for women, I explored its history and found it is one of the most ancient dance forms in the world, dating back to sacred dance rituals for women, and a way of taking care of and honouring the sacred aspects of fertility and childbirth.

As this dance originated from the Middle East, I decided I would find out if it was still part of life in Syria.

We visited the northern city of Aleppo and marvelled at the beauty of ancient temples, mosques, and souks.

I found many clothes and treasures in the markets and thoroughly enjoyed haggling with the locals to buy a great load to squash into my backpack to take back to New Zealand.

However, with the near-invisible status of women in Syria and the strict code of wearing the burqa from head to toe in public, I was about to give up on seeing any signs of this ancient dance of the Orient.

Then I had some luck.

After a hectic day wandering in the heat and colour of the markets, I found out it was women’s night at the local hammam, a beautiful and ancient bathhouse in central Aleppo.

As tradition dictates women and men can never use the bathhouse together, my partner went back to our hotel room to rest while I ventured forth.

It was fascinating to move through the beautiful marble rooms of the hammam, full of heat and steam, watching the Syrian women and their children bathing, laughing and talking together.

I realised it was quite a social event, during which they could quite literally let their hair down.

I watched with fascination as big strong female masseurs soaped up and scrubbed different women, and I tentatively agreed to join in.

Before I knew it, I was laid out on a cool marble bench to get scrubbed and pummelled by a woman with strong muscular biceps and a lovely (mostly toothless) smile.

It was blissful and just a little painful, so thanking her with a few Arabic words, smiles and some Syrian coins, I washed myself down with cold water and staggered out to a cool rest area to sip on sweet mint tea and rest my bright red pummelled body.

Just as I was calming my shaky limbs, I saw a large woman wearing a one-piece white lingerie outfit walk into the rest area with her two daughters, who looked about 10 and 12 in age.

They were laughing and talking in rapid Arabic when suddenly, after a few sips of mint tea, the mother clicked her fingers at her daughters and started to dance on the marble floor.

They joined in and I watched with amazement as they started to gyrate their hips and shimmy and shake the classic belly-dance movements.

”Y’Allah, Y’Allah!” the mother called as she expertly moved and shook her large body with joy and laughter.

I understood this to mean ”Come on! Come on!” as she urged her daughters into the movements.

Of course the literal meaning of this expression is ”go with God/Allah” and truly they seemed possessed by the gods as they danced with such wonderful abandon.

I must have been watching with my mouth wide open when suddenly the mother spun around and called me on to the floor ”Y’Allah! Y’Allah!”.

How could I possibly stay put with such an invitation?

So I found myself dancing on the floor clutching the white towels covering my wet hair and body, trying to imitate their expert hip drops and shimmies.

The girls giggled and smiled as they realised I had done at least a little of this dance before.

I know I must have looked quite a sight with my bright red cheeks and body and shaky legs still in recovery from the punishing massage by my sweet toothless masseur of half an hour before.

But this was a spontaneous and magical moment when we moved in unison, the dance transcending our lack of ability to speak together.

They knew nothing about me and I knew nothing about them but in that moment we were like Sufis whirling in a divine space together.

”Y’Allah! Y’Allah!” were the only words we could share as my light-headed brain would not allow any other Arabic words or sentences to come to mind.

Suddenly it was over and they whirled out of the room to change, laughing and smiling as they left.

I lay back on a couch to recover, delighted by my discovery of the dance so spontaneously in a bathhouse.

So this was how the dance survived over many thousands of years.

Even though women were not allowed to belly dance in public under the Muslim religion, it was obviously a dance passed from mother to daughter in the privacy of the home or bathhouse.

This was how it survived to give them freedom to be sensuous, alive women!

But there was another moment to this story, as I sipped my mint tea and processed the excitement of what I had witnessed.

I looked up and saw my lady and her two daughters heading out the door into the dark night.

I hardly recognised them at first as the mother was clothed from head to foot in the dark veils of the burqa; only her dark eyes were showing.

Her daughters were also dressed in modest full-length dresses.

They gave me the briefest of waves and headed out into the dark night.

I was amazed to realise this was their normal daily attire and that I had been privileged to see them dancing with such freedom and lack of restriction.

When I got back to our hotel my poor partner was wakened from his peaceful sleep to listen to me burbling excitedly.

I had truly found the dance at last!

 

So how can I hold this wonderful experience of Aleppo, Syria with the horror of what is happening there now?

These innocent and beautiful people who opened their hearts to us have been devastated by civil war and the senseless destruction of their ancient history and buildings.

It is hard to fathom.

It would be easy to say this is the result of extremist madness, but I hold dear the beauty of the innocent men, women and children who are suffering, or have died, for no reason but it being their home.

I hope by sharing a little of the story of my journey to Syria that I will contribute to increasing awareness of the dire situation facing the people in that part of the world.

Yes, it is so far away, and there are so many terrible things happening on the planet, but this is where I wish to focus my energy right now and hope to draw others to join me.

I would like to start by running a dance night in Dunedin that celebrates Middle Eastern music and dance next month to raise money to help the people of Syria.

As well as performance, there will be lots of time to dance for everyone!

I will focus on raising money for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, ensuring the money raised goes to Caritas Lebanon.

It will be a small drop in a vast ocean of suffering but it is a place to start.

Source: www.odt.co.nz

Bassam Saba, a world-renowned nay virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist, will perform on oud, violin, buzuq, saz, and the Western classical flute in a rare appearance on Thursday, May 14 from 8 to 10 p.m. in the Carleton College Concert Hall.

Saba is part of Simon Shaheen’s Near Eastern Music Ensemble and Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road project, and he performs extensively in the United States, Middle East, and Europe. He has worked with some of the most prominent Arab musicians of our time: Fairuz, Marcel Khalife, Ziad Rahbani, Wadi El-Safi, and Kazim al-Saher. Saba has also worked with Western musicians, such as Paul Simon, Alicia Keys, Sting, and Herbie Hancock.

Saba studied nay, oud, and violin at the Lebanon National Conservatory. He is New York’s primary teacher and conductor of Arab music, and is one of the few most sought-after teachers in the United States. He has held numerous Arabic music workshops and lectures around the United States, and has conducted many orchestras and ensembles at educational institutions such as Harvard University and the Arabic Music Retreat, the most prestigious camp for Arabic music in North America.

Saba has his own ensemble, The Bassam Saba Ensemble, which released their debut album, “Wonderful Land” in 2009. Saba records and performs his original compositions with the ensemble. The group’s album is a masterpiece compilation that could only emerge from an artist with breathtaking ability, vast accomplishment, and years of rich life and world experience. For more information, visit www.bassamsaba.com.

This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Middle Eastern Languages. For more information about the event, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-5178.

Source: apps.carleton.edu

In years past, the Cape Cod Film Society’s festival of Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema has mostly centered in Provincetown and Wellfleet. Now in its third year, it’s expanded to screens for the Outer Cape to Dennis.
From Thursday through Sunday, April 30 to May 3, 18 films — 11 features and seven short films — are being shown.
“This year, we are screening at two of our regular venues, Waters Edge Cinema in Provincetown and Wellfleet Preservation Hall,” says Rebecca Alvin, the festival’s director. A filmmaker herself, Alvin is a professor of media studies and film at the New School in New York City and mass communication at Cape Cod Community College when she’s not editing Provincetown Magazine.
“The new venues were mostly places I approached — Cape Cod Museum of Art, Provincetown Public Library, and First Parish Brewster, although the Chatham Orpheum expressed interest in it quite a while ago,” she says.
With so much misperception and tension with Arab countries and the Middle East, a festival like this is important to increasing knowledge and understanding between our often-disparate worlds, she says.
“Absolutely: this is the festival’s primary raison d’être,” she says. “Movies are unique in the ability to viscerally connect audiences to characters, which means that when the characters are of different backgrounds than the audience, there is immense potential for fostering personal and direct understanding of other cultures through those characters. Television can do this, too, somewhat, but it is limited because it is so entrenched in corporate culture — there is no ‘independent television’ in America, for example, but there are many independent filmmakers.”
One of the very special guests at the festival is Shiva Balaghi, a visiting fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Brown University. She will be speaking on Sunday after the 12:15 p.m. showing of “Fifi Howls from Happiness,” a documentary by Mitra Farahani, at the Water’s Edge Cinema in Provincetown
“I’m incredibly excited to be attending the festival for the first time,” Balaghi tells the Banner. “In particular, I’ll be speaking about [the] documentary that explores the life of the great Iranian modern artist, Bahman Mohassess. While highlighting the film, I’ll be speaking more broadly about Iranian art as well as the intersectionality of film and the arts.”
Balaghi says events like this festival are a vital part of bridging gaps in our cultures.
“Programs like the Cape Cod Film [Society’s] Festival are an incredibly important resource on the Middle East,” she says. “I believe filmmakers are important public intellectuals in the region, and film presents an alternative narrative of the contemporary Middle East. It offers a different perspective than what one sees on the evening news.”

Source: provincetown.wickedlocal.com

More than 70 years after his death, the life and work of a Lebanese poet, writer and painter are set to inspire another generation of fans.

This week marks the UAE opening of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, an animated version of one of the classics of 20th century literature, produced by Salma Hayek, who adds her voice to the film along with a host of Hollywood stars, including Liam Neeson, Frank Langella and John Rhys-Davies.

What is it about Gibran’s message that continues to resonate in 2015?

“There is something timeless about his work, especially The Prophet, where anyone and everyone at whatever time in their life can pick it up to read and will connect with his words on some level,” says Dr Tarek Chidiac, president of the Gibran National Committee.

“Gibran wrote about the soul and focused on humanity and what connects us, rather than divides us.”

The man sometimes known as the Arab Shakespeare left a collection of more than 15 works, including two published posthumously – The Wanderer in 1932 and The Garden of the Prophet in 1933 – and hundreds of paintings and sketches.

But it is Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, that remains his greatest legacy.

Since its publication in 1923, The Prophet has never gone out of print or fashion.

Translated into 50 languages, and with worldwide sales in the tens of millions, it has made Gibran the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao Tzu.

Romantic, spiritual, sorrowful and inspirational, The Prophet features 26 themes such as love, marriage, children, joy and sorrow, crime and punishment, reason and passion, pain, time, good and evil, religion and death.

It is hailed by many as a kind of a self-help book that comprises a series of philosophical essays written in English prose.

This newest incarnation has taken more than five years to complete and is written and directed by Roger Allers, director of Disney’s The Lion King.

Co-financed by the Doha Film Institute, Participant Media, and other regional and international organisations, it premiered in Lebanon last week.

The film tells the story of Al Mustafa, believed to be based on Gibran himself, a prophet who awaits passage home on a ship after being away for 12 years.

Emirati animator Mohammed Harib was one of the contributing animators, with his segment combining watercolour elements for the book’s On Good and Evil chapter with a nature-centric montage.

Harib has admitted that he had not read The Prophet before the film project, but after reading it he became one of its millions of fans.

“It’s a really amazing book. It’s not written by human hands, there’s something godly about it.”

To celebrate the coming film, the Dubai International Writers’ Centre at the Shindagha Heritage Village celebrated Gibran’s legacy with a cultural event last month, with guest speakers including Dr Chidiac, and Lebanese TV personality Georges Kordahi, who read lines from Gibran’s work.

Also taking part was Nadim Sawalha whose play based on Gibran’s life, Rest Upon the Wind, was performed in Abu Dhabi and Dubai last month.

Dubai honoured Gibran as far back as 1972 with a postage stamp featuring his portrait.

The UAE will get an extra taste of Gibran this year when 30 of his drawings will be shown at the Sharjah Art Museum in October, at an exhibition organised by the Gibran National Committee and the Sharjah Museum Department.

“People who haven’t visited the Gibran museum will get to see a different side to Gibran, from how he saw himself in his self portraits, how he viewed his family, and how he commented on the world around him through his art,” says Dr Chidiac.

“Gibran’s work keeps coming back again and again, sometimes as quotes used by world leaders, sometimes as plays, sometimes as lyrics in songs, and this time as an animation.”

Pages:12One-page article

Source: www.thenational.ae

On the roof of a concrete building in an impoverished Tunis neighborhood, hip hop beats pound out from a PC hooked up to cheap speakers.

Under graffiti-daubed cloth, young men in sweatpants and baseball caps breakdance, popping and locking robotically to the rhythm thumping around them. Rappers from local hip hop group Zone 5 snarl back and forth lines they’ve just written about police, poverty and smoking pot.

Zone 5 rapper Mohamed Ayari and other Tunisian youth are getting out their message of rage about life on the fringes in post-revolution Tunisia through a perhaps surprising channel: hip hop.

“You see what the system does? We write a graffiti message up on the wall and they call it ‘provocation’ and the police come after us. But why do they call it provocation?” the 23-year-old said during a break in rehearsals for an upcoming show. “It’s because we’re pointing out their faults, their weaknesses. No one wants to hear about their weaknesses.”

Since overthrowing its long-ruling dictator in 2011, Tunisia has had a string of elections and is being hailed as “the success story” of the region. But the new men in charge look very much like the old ones, with an 88-year-old president and ministers that all cut their teeth in previous administrations. Despite spearheading the revolution, Tunisia’s youth are still feeling sidelined, and one of the few ways they are getting their voices heard is through rap — shouting to anyone who will listen that all is not well in Tunisia.

Source: www.mercurynews.com

This week’s most exclusive Bay Area concert takes place behind bars.
Naima Shalhoub will record an album called “Borderlands: Singing Through the Prison Walls” when she performs live for female inmates at San Francisco County Jail #2 on Tuesday.
SF Ice Cream Shop Doles Out Free Scoops for “Today” Show
The show is an extension of the singer’s relationship with this particular audience. Shalhoub, a Lebanese-American who moved to San Francisco nine years ago to earn a masters degree in Postcolonial and Cultural Anthropology, has taught music lessons to many of the women inside County Jail #2 for the past year.
Shalhoub raised over $17,000 on Indiegogo to fund the recording of this project and plans to donate 50% of the album’s profits to help incarcerated women who are re-entering society.

Source: www.nbcbayarea.com

Omar Offendum wears a lot of hats. He describes himself as a Syrian American, a hip-hop artist, designer, poet and peace activist.

Offendum’s debut album, “SyrianamericanA,” was released before the Arab Spring. “It’s hard living in the West when you know the East has got the best of me,” he raps on a track titled “Destiny.”

“It’s about my destiny, but also the destiny of immigrants in general who kind of find themselves with new surroundings and environments,” he says. “Especially this kind of second generation of immigrants. I came over at a very young age. While I do identify as Syrian and as Arab and as Muslim and all these things — I also very much identify as an American.”

Offendum was born in Saudi Arabia but raised in Washington, DC, and has been living in Los Angeles for the last 10 years. Rap is something he grew up listening to, but he really connected to the genre while studying Arabic poetry, which he describes as the backbone of the Arabic language.

“I found parallels between [Arabic poetry] and the hip-hop music I was listening to, just as far as the themes that people were addressing, about their loved ones or loss, even simply battle poetry — who is the ill-er MC,” he says. “That always felt like something I could connect with.”

Offendum first started performing in college, where he began making beats and performing at open mic nights. He started off rapping about the kinds of things any college kid would rap about: partying, smoking and doing whatever you might do in college. But he says he felt he had an opportunity to address bigger issues that were important to him and to his community: political issues, America’s involvement in the Middle East, what it was like growing up as a Muslim and Arab in the West.

Then, halfway through his college career came Sept. 11. The attacks amplified the attention he was getting, but also became the lens through which people watched him. That’s when it hit him.

“All of a sudden I realized that if I’m going to have people’s extra attention, I might as well do some good with it,” he says. “That was where I started to realize how powerful the tool and the medium was in bringing people together — or tearing them apart if you didn’t really use it in that way.”

Then came the Arab Spring in 2011 and with it plenty of unrest — and then disaster — in Syria, where Offendum’s family comes from.

“In the beginning of the Arab Spring there was a lot of hope, idealism and euphoria surrounding these revolutions,” he says. “We were pushing back against the fatalism of our parents’ generation.”

But in the end, he says, their jaded warnings were right.

“I remember then that our parents’ generation [was] saying ‘Give it some time, the way that things go in the Middle East, don’t get too hopeful,'” Offendum says. “We were like ‘No, come on, things are different, things have changed.’ Now, four years later, you kind of understand where they are coming from. Especially in a place where there was so much change in the beginning and now it’s kind of regressed. It took me some time to figure out where I was at with all of that.”

With the war still raging in Syria, people sometimes get a sense of fatalism. But Offendum says the endless reports of death and suffering don’t let us off the hook.

“Absolutely not. Apathy is not an option,” he says. “I think we have privilege here and I try and recognize that as a sense of responsibility. My focus is just to remind people that beneath all the political posturing and all the conspiracy theories and all the proxy wars that are taking place, there’s very real human suffering.”

Source: kosu.org