Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream

Coming Home

Coming Home Lara Hamza There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. HENRY DAVID THOREAU Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. ROBERT FROST WHEN MY FAMILY immigrated to the United States from Lebanon in 1979, I was only five years old. We were forced to abandon our lavish high-rise apartment complex in Beirutbecause of the escalating war. Economically we were fine, but emotionally my parents were desolate. The first sign ofthis devastation appeared to me as I watched my mother pack the last of our suitcases on her bed the night before our departure. At the time, I could not understand why she was crying instead of rejoicing like my brothers and me. We were, after all, moving to a new country, and we were eager to meet old friends and relatives who had moved before us. Little did I know the reasons behind her worries and fears. She knew then what has taken me eighteen difficult years to discover. Now, as I continue struggling to find a balance between Arab and American culture, I not only have a deeper understanding of the pain my parents felt, I realize that the notion of assimilation is as false as the possibility of maintaining a pure cultural heritage. After briefly residing in Dearborn, Michigan, within one of the largest Arab communities in the United States, and living comfortably among relatives and schoolmates like myself, my father decided to open a business in Hollywood, in southern Florida. Only when we moved to Florida did I become conscious of my differences. I never thought of myself as a "foreigner" in Dearborn because of the prominent Arab community into which we naturally blended. 391 Life Journeys Unlike Dearborn, however, Hollywood was not a welcoming home away from home; it was a harsh city in which my family struggled to survive. What may seem the simplest of habits, such as eating or worshiping, turned into tremendous ordeals, as they do for many Muslim Arabs who do not live in large ethnic communities like Dearborn. My father opened a restaurant, and, after realizing the significance the sale of alcohol had on profits, he began to sell liquor. This, as far as my mother was concerned, began our "fall" into American culture. Not only was it impractical for our parents to teach us values they were no longer practicing, it was almost impossible for us, as children, to fully comprehend the clashing differences. Although I grew up in an Arab home, learned Arab customs, spoke the Lebanese dialect, and was vaguely conscious of my Muslim religion, I received no reinforcement of my heritage outside the home. The only times I experienced our "ethnicity" was when my dad took me to work with him. I was fascinated by our restaurant, especially by the mysterious music flowing from the band and by the provocative moves of the belly dancers on stage. This was hardly the proper setting for a child to learn anything substantial about her heritage. Though ostensibly an Arab restaurant, it was Arabic only in that its sensual setting pandered to stereotypical perceptions. Despite my parents' attempts to maintain our religion in an area that was predominantly Jewish and Catholic, they had limited resources since not a single mosque existed in our neighborhood. I vividly recall the time my younger brother bought my mom what he considered a "pretty necklace" from the school fund-raising sale. Although this gift was shimmering with gold, it instantly brought her to tears the moment she unwrapped it, because dangling from itwas a crucifix. To my mother, the gift symbolized our growing detachment from our roots; to my brothers and me, it symbolized our growing confusion since we hardly knew what our "roots" were. My emerging divided identity troubled and confused me. My family life increasingly appeared "foreign" to me, and I longed to fit in with the majority, to fully assimilate into the American lifestyle. This displaced loyalty made me resent not only my Arab heritage but, much to my later misfortune, my family life as well. In 1984, after four years of detachment from our cultural roots, and after losing all our wealth in a restaurant wrongly named Beirut, we returned to Dearborn. By then I was ten and already plagued with misconceptions, stereotypes, and ignorance about my Arab identity. Once more I felt awkward and displaced in school; only this time, I 392...