THE WOMEN IN BETWEEN

By A’isha Azar

Introduction- This is the opening chapter of a series that I have written for Dance Craft. The series is about the lives of Arab women that I have met who, for diverse reasons, have found themselves living “between cultures’. They come from various locations in the Middle East and North Africa, but are now living in the United States. Some are here permanently and have taken American citizenship. Some are here for a short while. All of them are dealing with the fact that the society and culture in which they now live is very different from the ones from which they originated. Their whole lives are affected by their attempts to live in two cultures simultaneously. In order to protect their privacy, I have changed the names of everyone who has made a contribution to this work, but all of their stories are true.

Installment 1- Two Sisters

I am waiting at the restaurant where we are meeting for dinner. Wedad and Intisar arrive about forty minutes late, in typical Arab fashion. They are not people who are overly concerned with punctuality! When they do arrive, we greet with lots of hugs and kisses and warm hellos. These women are well worth waiting for. They are my dear friends and they have agreed to do something very brave. They are going to share their stories in an effort to help us better understand the lives of women who abide between two very diverse cultures. They are Arab women living in America.

We order dinner and we laugh because we just know we will eat too much. We complain about how fat we are. We scope out the dessert menu and refuse to order anything with fruit, but head straight for the chocolate. They wear their weight well. These women are beautiful, with their dark, expressive eyes, their gorgeous thick hair, and most of all, their spiritual and emotional generosity. They have vestiges of accents that give richness to their words. Their joys and sorrows are always intense. Thank God!! I feel more at home with them than I do just about anyone else.

Intisar and Wedad are sisters who moved with their parents from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan when Intisar was sixteen and Wedad was just eleven. They are two of four children, with an older and younger brother. Their father, Mr. Haddad, told me that their family and many of their relatives left Jordan because of religious persecution. He is a Christian minister who has never been in a position to have his own church since he left his homeland. He and his wife have recently retired from successfully running their own business for many years.

It can be very difficult for Christians in predominantly Muslim countries, just as the reverse is true. Yet, as the women in this series have shared their lives with me, I have begun to see that there are many customs that are the same for both religions. Many things that are thought of as strictly Islamic are actually traditions of Arab culture, regardless of religious affiliation, as will be seen.

The city to which the family eventually moved was not the most culturally diverse place on the planet. They probably saw more different kinds of people in their old hometown of Amman, Jordan. The Haddad family was sponsored as immigrants by their aunt who lived in a small town in Washington State, and their uncle who was a doctor in a metropolitan area in California. Their uncle advised them to move to Washington and they did so, staying for a short time in the home of the aunt. Wedad says, looking back on this advice from her uncle, “He probably sent us to Washington just to keep us out of his hair!”

Shortly after their move, the girls’ older brother, Daoud, and their mother found work in a city close to the town where the aunt lived. The family moved to the city since there were certainly more opportunities for them there than in a rural location. Eventually Mr. Haddad found work with the help of a Christian organization.

Wedad says, “Everything was so different; the language, the food…everything. Here you don’t have a social life and you hardly know your neighbors, which is really different from home. Mom and Dad spoke English but we didn’t. We had studied back home, but what we learned was not at all useful in real life”.

The family was quite astounded at many of the things they came across in their new country. First and foremost was the difference in the social moral codes of the two cultures. They were amazed that Americans were quite relaxed about walking on the streets in shorts and tank tops. They were embarrassed as they noted that many men and women would wear “next to nothing” when they left their homes. Public displays of affection and sexually suggestive advertising were very apparent to them in ways that Americans hardly notice. The girls’ parents were horrified by what they saw as a serious lack of morality on the part of the natives in their new country.

Intisar went into her senior year of high school and struggled with the many aspects of living in a new culture. Language was not the least of her problems. “We had only Americans to talk to and so we had to learn quickly”, she says. Their family at the time were the only Arabic speaking people in their community. In fact, in the area of the city where the family lived, they were they only minority group. The sisters found that they were the only people in their classes who spoke with heavy accents and had darker skin. They presented a problem for the education system as well. In the early 1970s, when they were in school there were as yet no programs for students who were learning English as second language, and certainly no classes specifically for foreign students.

Wedad entered junior high school and the powers that be decided they would simply give her a straight C grade average for her first year, basically for being present in class. She could do the math classes, but was not able to participate at school in any other way for some time. She smiles as she says, “I couldn’t join any sports teams or take gym class because I didn’t understand the games. Since I didn’t speak English, who was going to explain the rules to me?” Wedad was also quite a bit unnerved by the food in the school cafeteria. “ Where was my chicken? Where was my rice? The food made no sense to me!” I explain that school cafeteria food often doesn’t make sense to American children either.

In spite of the fact that she is way above average in intelligence, Wedad started out in remedial classes with students who had learning disabilities. She was very much aware that she was in what she now refers to as “the slow classes”. She hated it for all of the obvious reasons, but for less obvious ones as well. “There were no minorities in the city. I already stuck out like a sore thumb”, she says. “I didn’t want to be different anymore”. Being in special education classes was just one more obstacle among many that separated her from fitting in with the majority of the kids at school.

Before her first year was finished, Wedad had a good enough grasp of the English language that she went to speak with the school authorities about moving her into mainstream classes. They told her that if she could do all the work in her current classes, they would consider moving her. She says, “In the second year I earned all of my grades”. She was moved into regular school curriculum classes.

Once her English was good enough and she was able to talk with other students, Wedad got a lot of teasing. Her classmates would ask if she had camels and oil wells. She laughs, “I have never seen a camel and if I owned oil wells would I be living here and working this hard?”

She would tell the kids at school about the car her family owned in Jordan. Ford and other American motor companies were not selling there at the time. Her family owned a Russian made automobile with the brand name, “Moscowvitch”. Many students were very impressed since they did not know Russian auto manufacturers even existed. The Cold War had left American students with quite a few false impressions about the Soviet Union. Wedad began to realize that perhaps she had a broader worldview than many of her classmates.

After several years the family was well established in their new country and they settled into life. Their mother, Mrs. Haddad, decided she did not want to work outside the home and she attended classes to become a caregiver for retarded children. Their home was large enough for her to have live-in patients, some of whom were bedridden. They workload was heavy, but she preferred to be at home where she could care for her family in the ways that she felt they needed. She did eventually join her husband and work with him in the family business.

Mr. Haddad had gone into a convenience store franchise and was doing very well. The oldest son was working at a nationally known import store and doing well also. He got Intisar a job there. She was attending college and working. She also began to go out on dates.

Intisar dated Americans of course, since there were no Arab young men in the area. Her parents were extremely nervous about it. First, they had raised their daughters even more strictly than many other Arab families because Mr. Haddad was a minister. The girls had to uphold that position of honor as well as protecting the reputation of the family through their good behavior. Intisar’s parents were not at all comfortable with her dating Americans because they considered that much of American culture was very corrupt and promiscuous. (Mrs. Haddad has never quite adjusted to the differences in moral standards. I watch her agonize over the behavior of her granddaughters just as she did her daughters.)

Wedad told about an incident from her teen-age years. “I was never able to dress like the other girls in high school. My mother thought I was shameless because I wanted to wear make-up and clothes like the other girls. Once I wanted to tie my shirt on my stomach like was the fashion then. She had a fit and thought I was just about the most shameful thing around!” Wedad, like many American girls with strict parents, would leave the house wearing what was acceptable to her parents and then change clothes and put on make-up once she was out of their sight.

As they watched their oldest daughter going out with American men and their youngest daughter being attracted to the social freedoms that American girls enjoyed, Mr. and Mrs. Haddad became more and more concerned. As Intisar says, “I was the shy and quiet one and I was doing things they didn’t approve of. What in the world would happen when Wedad got a little bit older, because she really is not a bit shy!” The decision that was made by their parents about what to do with the girls would have a profound effect on the sisters’ lives.

(To be continued.)

ã A’isha Azar (2001)