The life of a young Arab

The life of a young Arab in Brooklyn was pretty much normal—until being thrown in jail with her family after 9/11 changed her idea of what it means to live here.
By Moustafa Bayoumi Published Aug 3, 2008

Rasha is a petite five foot four. She walks with a feather step and looks at you with penetrating obsidian eyes. Her lips are often lightly glossed in pink, and her serious brown hair is commonly tied in a librarian’s bun. She’s fine-boned, with features as brittle and hard as porcelain: If you drop her, she’ll break, but she’ll cut you, too. She’s tough and tender, enraged and exhausted, withdrawn and outgoing, a pessimist brimming with hope.

She has lived in the United States for more than eighteen years, almost all of them in Brooklyn. Rasha was born in 1983, in Damascus, Syria, but when she was 5 years old, her family was granted a tourist visa to the United States, and they moved from the Fertile Crescent to Avenue U in Gravesend. At the time, Syria under Hafez al-Assad was anything but fertile. Bombings against the regime were frequent, as were mass arrests and torture, culminating in the 1982 massacre of thousands in the city of Hama.

As soon as the family arrived in the United States, Rasha’s father applied for residency. He also began working at a discount clothing store on 14th Street in Manhattan, eventually becoming a partner.

Rasha’s mother taught her how to be a proper Arab Muslim girl in the United States. As her parents were not particularly religious, the lessons revolved less around theology than values: honesty, compassion, and protection of her honor. She had three siblings—Reem, an older sister; Munir, an older brother; and Wassim, a younger brother. None of them was much of a model for Rasha. Reem was five years older, a large differential at that age. The two girls fought often.

The family stayed in the New York area until 1996, still without having adjusted their immigration status. The residency application had been unsuccessful, but Rasha’s father had hired a lawyer and was appealing the decision. Meanwhile, her mother had given birth to two more little brothers. Since they were born in Brooklyn, the two infant boys were, unlike the rest of the family, citizens of the United States. But the immigration proceedings were stalled, and Rasha’s father gave up and moved them back to Syria that year.

Rasha had just finished sixth grade, and she found her new environs hard going. She spoke Arabic but could not read and write in the language, so school was difficult. Outside class, she would repeat to her school friends what she heard at home about Syria’s dear president, and their mouths would drop. “You never, ever, ever say anything about the president,” they whispered. She became even more pro-American, seeing with a teenage girl’s perspective the importance of things like freedom of speech and basic human rights. She realized how much she had taken for granted. She missed her American life.

After a couple of months, Rasha’s father received word from his American lawyer that the family finally had an interview scheduled for their green-card application. They were approved for a visa to visit the United States, which felt like a miracle. Back in Brooklyn, Rasha was again happy. This is what she knew. This was home.

James Madison High School was good for Rasha. The redbrick school, set in a prosperous area of Midwood, with its large houses and green lawns, has an elegant exterior even though the windows are caged and you need to pass through a metal detector to get in. It also has a quote from President Madison carved on its edifice. “Education,” it reads, “is the true foundation of civil liberty.”

At Madison, Rasha met her best friends, Gaby and Nicky. Gaby is from Ecuador, Nicky from Azerbaijan. The three of them became inseparable. When they weren’t in school, they were everywhere else—on the subway to Manhattan, at one another’s houses, at the movies, shopping, or eating. By the spring of 2001, when Rasha graduated from Madison, her father had saved enough money to buy a place in Bay Ridge, with its limestone row houses and numerous Arabs. This was the first property the family had owned, and her parents were very proud of the accomplishment. Two Egyptian tenants lived in their basement apartment. Rasha started college in September 2001.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Rasha was sleeping late. Her mother opened her bedroom door and peeked in. “Rasha,” she said. “You can’t go to school. The subway’s not working.” Half-asleep, Rasha raised her head. “Why?” she asked. “Accident,” her mother explained, shrugging her shoulders. “With a plane.” Rasha went back to sleep.

Several months later, in February 2002, in the middle of the night, Rasha was shaken awake by a woman in a uniform who told her to get dressed. Oh my God, Rasha thought, somebody’s died, and she felt her heart drop and crack. She immediately glanced over to her sister. “What the hell’s going on?” she asked, but Reem just looked frightened. Shock and fear paralyzed Rasha, and her knees locked. “Ma’am, just get up,” repeated the female officer. “Get up and get dressed.” Disoriented, Rasha forced herself to slowly rise. She walked downstairs in her pajamas, a few steps behind her sister.
In the living room, she saw her entire family sitting awkwardly on the couch, and she sighed with relief. But then she noticed that her brother Munir’s legs were shackled. Shock turned to confusion as she realized that about fifteen law-enforcement officers—INS officials, U.S. Marshals, and FBI agents—had taken over their residence. The strangers, some with guns, walked through her house as if they owned it. Out the window she saw that it was the lights from their vehicles that had been shining into the living room.

An FBI agent, the apparent leader of the group, stood in front of the family and told them they were being investigated for possible terrorist connections and that they could be deported, possibly in as little as two or three days. At this point, Rasha’s mother became frantic, crying and screaming out questions. But he just reiterated monotonously that everything would be explained to them at Federal Plaza.

This was no accidental arrest. The man seemed to know everything about the family, including the fact that Rasha’s two youngest brothers, both minors, were U.S. citizens. He told Rasha’s father to arrange custody for them. Rasha’s father suggested his brother, who lives in New York, and asked if he could call him and wait until he arrived. That would take too long, the agent said, and instructed him instead to leave the boys with the tenants below. When they were ready to go, the agent turned to the entire family and said, “We’re going to handcuff you now.”

(Later, Rasha learned why her eldest brother had already been shackled. When an agent went to his downstairs bedroom to wake him, Munir was uncooperative. “Why?” he kept asking. “Come on, get up,” the agent said. “Why?” “Just get up,” the man repeated, and Munir asked why again. “Get up!” the agent yelled. “Get up and put your hands together, like the way you pray!” Munir swore at him and told him to get the hell away. “So they shackled him,” Rasha told me, “you know, to tame him.”)

Outside, the official vehicles had closed off the entire street. The agents shepherded the family into a van. The ride to Manhattan’s Federal Plaza was bumpy and disorienting, affording them no view of the road. When the van stopped and the back doors eventually swung open, they were all pulled from the vehicle into the building, led to a room, and then searched and fingerprinted before being dumped in a holding cell.

Eventually, each family member was taken to a separate room for questioning. The interrogators asked Rasha very specific questions: Where was she on X day? When did she go to Y place? As she gave her answers, she realized that they knew what she was going to say. After a few minutes, they even seemed to be feeding her the answers to their questions.

That night, her father led a prayer, and the women covered their hair as best they could. When the authorities came back in the morning, her father pleaded with them. Enough of this, he said. Just deport us. But the FBI man wouldn’t hear it. We are turning you over to the INS, he said. You have to be investigated, and you will be held in detention in the meantime. Another agent told them in more private tones that they should have expected to be arrested at a time like this and that they would have a better life over there. Rasha glared at him. We’re cleaning out the country, he seemed to be saying, and you’re the dirt.

They learned that they’d all be going to a facility in New Jersey, except for Wassim, who was under 18 and thus bound for a juvenile-detention center in Pennsylvania. Being split up was a fresh horror. Through her own waterlogged eyes, Rasha watched her family collapse in tears.

At the jail in Bergen County, Rasha and her mother and sister were strip-searched and photographed before being taken to a filthy and overcrowded holding area. Everybody seemed nasty or catatonic. This is just like prison on television, Rasha thought. A corrections officer opened the door and told them to get inside. The door locked behind them.

After six hours, they were herded into another holding cell, teeming with even more people, where they would stay for two days. Rasha’s mother raged and yelled until she was able to place a call to her brother-in-law about her youngest sons. Rasha, Reem, and their mother were eventually moved again, to a larger wing of the facility, where they were again strip-searched, then given beige jumpsuits and black-and-white Converse-style shoes and assigned to cells. The INS official who had told them at Federal Plaza that they would be deported within days was clearly wrong. When they joined the general population, Rasha realized with dread, they were going to stay for a while.

American Girl

Rasha and Reem shared a cell: two unhappy beds and a stainless-steel toilet. They were given thick, itchy blankets that didn’t seem to bend. It was like sleeping under hairy cardboard. And they began to live, or at least survive, there. Rasha had had setbacks in the past, but she had never felt this sad, this powerless, this misunderstood. She contemplated hurting herself. She considered suicide. For a while, she stopped eating. She would lie on her bed sometimes for two or three days, finally lugging herself out of bed one day when the cell door opened so she could join the others and eat. Like lab rats, she thought.

Rasha’s depression slowly gave way to anger. Why was she here? For what? Because she had overstayed her visa and was now undocumented? She hadn’t committed a crime, and she was being punished for someone else’s acts. For someone else’s crime. She hadn’t been convicted. She had been abducted. This wasn’t justice. It was revenge.

She began to observe the little things the inmates would do to preserve a sense of autonomy. One woman would swipe the pint-size milk cartons from her meals and store them in the toilet because they stayed colder that way. Her mother slowly begin to mingle with the other inmates, and Rasha was becoming closer to her sister. The two girls held each other’s sanity like a locket, and Rasha felt the life breathing back into her. She and Reem began cracking all kinds of jokes about prison life (jokes that Rasha has since blocked out). They resolved never to wear Converse shoes again.

Over time, they met the rest of the inmates: Pakistani women, Arab women, and other Muslims detained under similar circumstances; Russians and Israelis, usually there for immigration reasons; a smaller group of Asians and a much larger population of Latinas and African-American women held mostly on drug-related charges. Everyone was incarcerated together.

If the holding area reminded Rasha of TV prison, the prison wing was different. On TV, inmates are constantly in your face, goading you into fights, organizing into gangs, carving out turf. But the women at Bergen were kind to one another. Treated by the system like beasts, they cultivated their humanity.

The corrections officers, on the other hand, were ignorant and abusive. They yelled at you. They ignored you. They terrified you. Here the gods were the beasts.

We’re cleaning out the country, the FBI agent seemed to be saying, and you’re the dirt.

Reem soon developed a horrible rash all over her body from those blankets. One night, when everyone was asleep, Reem couldn’t take the itch and pain any longer, and she began knocking on the glass. Two officers were talking on the other side, and Reem began pleading with them to come out. The officers could hear her, but she couldn’t hear them. She kept knocking, louder and louder. “Come here!” she yelled. She opened her jumpsuit to show her rash to the female officers. One officer leaned over and pressed a button. “I’m in the middle of a conversation,” she lectured. “You wait till I’m done.” But Reem just wouldn’t stop banging. She was sobbing. Seeing her older sister desperate for some kind of medical attention, Rasha began crying, too. The officer finally came out to see Reem and began yelling at her. “What the hell is your problem?” she shouted.

After three weeks in New Jersey, they were transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center in the shadow of the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn. Rasha’s brother and father went to the same place, but in the male wing.

MDC was much cleaner than the New Jersey jail and arranged more like a dormitory than lab-rat cages. A simple common kitchen made it easier to commune with others. Maybe life was getting better. But just as at Bergen, time at MDC dragged on, and Rasha began to feel that they were never going to get out, that she wasn’t going to see her friends again, that she was not going to graduate college, get married, and move on to the next phases of her life.

What saved both her and her sister from madness was a feeling of responsibility for their mother. The living arrangements allowed the daughters to look out for her. This usually meant standing up for her to the corrections officers, who often responded to her imperfect English with impatient contempt. The conflict came to a head one day when Rasha’s mother asked a corrections counselor to call her son in Pennsylvania.

Rasha didn’t like this counselor. Some days he would look at you with these large, gentle cat eyes, listen to your problems, and help out in any way he could. But most of the time, he was just lecturing and disrespectful. He didn’t know why the inmates were there, and he didn’t care.
American Girl

Rasha’s mother had the right to call her son regularly, and she always counted down the days until she could hear his voice again. But for reasons that were unclear to Rasha, on this day the counselor brusquely denied the request. Rasha’s mother walked out of his office in tears. Her daughters asked why she was crying, and then returned with her to the counselor’s room. Eventually he relented. But Rasha could feel the acid bubbling in her stomach because of this man who made her mother cry for no reason.

They could receive mail at MDC, and after about a month, Rasha got her first letter from Gaby. She read it over a hundred times, even though she knew it by heart after seventeen readings. Gaby sent more letters, along with pictures of them from high school. Rasha still has all the letters. They gave her “a feeling that I’m being remembered. You can imagine—well, no, you probably can’t imagine—but it was a feeling that somebody knows I’m here.”

Then, as abruptly as they were taken, Rasha and her family were released. One morning in early May, Rasha heard her name called by one of the corrections officers, then her mother’s, and then her sister’s. They were told to collect their belongings. They were free to go. Skeptical but hopeful, Rasha gathered her letters. Once she walked through the metal gate of the women’s section with her mother and sister and saw her father and brother waiting for them, she thought, Oh my God, it really is true. We’re finally out!

The entire family was set free at the same time, including Wassim, who came home from Pennsylvania that day. An immigration official was present at their release. He looked over their file and remarked to Rasha’s father, “You know, you have grounds for a residency petition here.” No one knew how to balance gratitude with resentment.

As soon as they were beyond MDC, Rasha fell to the ground and kissed the pavement. She looked up. She hadn’t seen sky for almost three months. It was the same sky, and it looked gloriously familiar.

They entered their own house like strangers. Everything was just as they had left it, except for the moldy food in the fridge and the dust all over the furniture. Rasha felt numb and dislocated. It was hard to believe that the nightmare was over. She watched Munir disappear downstairs and heard him calling his friends, and then she too began plotting how she would surprise Gaby and Nicky and the rest of her friends. Surprising them became the only thing to look forward to at that moment. She didn’t want to think about the past, only the future.

The family had a quiet night. Rasha’s mother cooked a simple meal. Over the meal, Rasha and her siblings exchanged a few stories about their experiences, but her parents were mostly quiet.

The next morning Gaby ran into some of Munir’s friends on her way to college, and they told her that Rasha’s family was finally home. “You’re lying,” she told them. “You’re lying!” No, it’s true, they said. She blew off her first class and made a beeline for the house, with a pit stop at a corner store for a gift: a potted plant she tucked under her arm.

The sound of the doorbell was bizarre to Rasha. In her pajamas, she opened the door, and standing there behind a pot full of leaves and flowers was Gaby, already crying hysterically. As soon as she saw Gaby, Rasha burst into tears. “Oh, man!” Rasha stomped her foot. “The surprise is ruined!”

“I’m sorry,” Gaby said, sniffling. “I didn’t call first! I’m so sorry!”

“Get in here,” Rasha reprimanded, but the two girls stayed where they were. They just couldn’t stop hugging and crying.

Rasha’s parents sold the house. They were behind on the payments, and Rasha’s mother was convinced that the place was cursed anyway. Rasha also had to deal with the row of F’s on her transcript, having disappeared from the world for three months. She calmly explained her situation to her dean, who listened sympathetically but then asked if she could provide some documentation to prove what she’d just told him. “What kind of sick person would tell you that she’d spent three months in jail to get excused from her grades?” she asked.

“You’d be surprised,” he said.

Right after her release, Rasha felt freer than she ever had in her life. Normal things like riding the subway had never before been so exciting to her. But everywhere around her was the constant talk of 9/11. She bit her tongue repeatedly, wanting to scream at people, “You don’t know what you’re talking about unless you’ve been in a situation like the one I’ve been in!”

No one in her family spoke openly about what they’d been through; Munir in particular seemed deeply injured. After the euphoria of being released, he retreated into silence. Neither he nor their father told the women very much about MDC’s male wing, where later the government’s own internal auditor would expose violent abuses against some of the post–September 11 detainees.

Rasha put her energies into her future. She started thinking about all the lawyers and activists who had helped them. Her growing interest in international relations and human rights eventually led to an internship with a U.N.-affiliated organization concerned with Middle East peace. She was also nominated by her university to be a delegate scholar at an international conference on diplomacy—a huge honor that she had to turn down. Rasha was still undocumented, so she could not leave the country.

Rasha was one of the lucky ones. The family had an attorney, friends and relatives, and a growing chorus of advocates demanding their release. That wasn’t the case with most of the post–September 11 detainees. Hundreds were arbitrarily arrested in the first months after the attacks. One man, a Palestinian legal permanent resident, was stopped for driving four miles over the speed limit in North Carolina and spent four months in jail.

Around the same time that Rasha was freed, in May 2002, Amnesty International released a report that charged the U.S. government with violating “certain basic rights guaranteed under international law. These include the right to humane treatment, as well as rights which are essential to protection from arbitrary detention.” The next year, the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department released a report confirming many of Amnesty International’s charges, as well as other allegations of abuse at MDC. Rasha wouldn’t tell me if any physical abuse had befallen her eldest brother or father, just that they were mostly silent about their experiences after the family was reunited. But by the time they were detained, most of the first wave of people who were arrested had already been deported. We may never know how many were arrested. On November 5, 2001, the Justice Department announced 1,182 had been arrested, then stopped providing a tally. The average length of detention for post–September 11 detainees was 80 days, about the length of time Rasha spent in Bergen and MDC.

The first weekend after getting out, Rasha went with her girlfriends to Times Square to celebrate her release. They went for dinner at Chili’s. Gaby was there, and Nicky too, and a couple of Rasha’s other close friends. They sat a big table, and Rasha savored the luxury of ordering food from a menu.

Halfway through dinner, Rasha got up to go to the bathroom. Coming back to her table, she froze in shock. It was him. All the restaurants in New York City, and he’s at this one. There, at another big table, was the counselor from MDC, the very same man who constantly talked down to her and her sister. The man who’d made her mother cry.

Rasha stood there and waited. She knew what she had to do, but he was with his family and she didn’t want his children around. A couple of minutes later, she tapped his back with her finger. “Hi,” she said. Her voice was ball-bearing steady.

He turned around. “Hi,” he replied. But there wasn’t a hint in his voice that he knew who Rasha was.

“You don’t recognize me?” All the scenes when he’d yelled at her, when he’d made her cry, when he’d made her mother cry, flashed in her mind. His expression didn’t change. “Remember?” she said, her voice rising. “MDC? You don’t remember me?”

And suddenly she realized, Of course he doesn’t remember me. I’m not in a beige jumpsuit.

But then he responded. “Ah, wow,” he said. “See? You cleaned up your act.”

Rasha stared into his eyes, then scolded him for his callousness and how he “needed to learn a thing or two about respecting others.” She could feel her chest rising the whole time. She ended by telling him, “You are a fucking asshole, and you will always be a fucking asshole.” And then twirled deliberately and walked back to her table with a stiff spine and an anxious but triumphant smile growing on her face.

She ran the last steps and was out of breath when she got to her friends. She told them what had happened. She couldn’t wait to tell her parents. It didn’t change anything, but that didn’t matter. Confronting your jailer. On this side of freedom. Such a satisfying moment.
From How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America, by Moustafa Bayoumi (forthcoming from Penguin Press).

Paper sees improved Jordan-Hamas ties as "clever political realism"

Hamas is a legitimate resistance organization and not a terrorist organization. This is the opinion, which the majority of Jordanians hold of the movement. But how has Jordanian public opinion changed towards Hamas throughout the past several years and how has the relationship between the Jordanian state and the movement changed and what are the affects of all that on public opinion?

The percentage of Jordanians, who knew Hamas as a legitimate resistance organization in 2004 was about 87 per cent. This percentage dropped to a low level in June 2008 reaching 59 per cent. And, in the latest survey held during the period 12-14 August 2008, the percentage of those who knew Hamas as a legitimate resistance organization went up to 71 per cent. What is the significance of these changes?

The drop in the percentage of those who knew Hamas as a legitimate resistance organization to 59 per cent in June was the result of an accumulation of several factors that affected Hamas Movement's image before the Jordanian pubic. One of these factors was the failure of the movement to present a good governance model due to its siege by Israel and the world despite its triumph in free and honest elections. Thus, it was not able to reduce the sufferings of the Palestinian people; in other words, it did not succeed in governing due to several reasons, including intrinsic reasons that concern the movement itself. Moreover the movement's involvement in an armed conflict with Fatah leading to its control of Gaza led to an ugly siege of the strip and its population.

Official Jordanian relations with Hamas Movement were not at their best, especially in the last three years. The strong influence of these factors on Jordanian public opinion differ according to the time, the prevalent regional conditions and their effects on the balance of interests and stands.

Only one of these factors changed, which is the improvement in the relations between Jordan and Hamas Movement. This was perhaps the main reason for the rise in the percentage of those who say that Hamas is a legitimate resistance organization from 59 to 71 per cent. But there are other associated reasons, such as that the Palestinian leadership's wager on the negotiations with Israel did away with the remaining credibility in the leaderships of Fatah Movement and the Palestinian [National] Authority, which kept predicting an imminent breakthrough in the peace talks and the achievement of a solution, which turned out not to be the case. In this atmosphere, the Fatah moderate plan lost in favour of the Hamas Movement discourse.

Meanwhile, the confrontation axis won several rounds, including another Hezbollah political victory over Israel by the release of the prisoners, which led partially to raising the percentage of those who say that it is a legitimate resistance organization from 54 per cent in June to 66 per cent in August 2008.

Jordan enjoys a strong relationship with the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization. It also has a peace treaty with Israel, Hamas Movement's enemy number one. Moreover, it opens its lines to Hamas and retains them with Fatah. It also opens up to Iraq without harming its other Arab and regional relations. This is the clever political realism that calls for positive engagements with others who are influential in the region and harmonizing with Jordanian public opinion to guarantee the interests of Jordan and its good people.

Source: Al-Ra'y, Amman, in Arabic 18 Aug 08

Social networks leap the language barrier

Business | Nothing has got lost in translation as the likes of Facebook and MySpace win millions of converts in new countries. By Catherine Holahan

When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to illustrate the impact of his social network, he tells a story about several young religious militants from Lebanon who changed their view of Western culture through Facebook friendships. The subtext to the tale is that free expression of ideas, enabled by the web, bridges deep cultural divides.

But we knew that: it's one of the central concepts behind the Olympics, after all. What we didn't know is that Facebook is in Lebanon.

In fact, it is expanding rapidly in many regions. According to figures released by market research firm comScore last week, the site is the top global social network. Of Facebook's 132 million users, nearly 63 per cent are outside North America. The site, which had already been translated into 20 languages including French, Spanish and Mandarin, has recently added 69 more.

"Now, through translations, we are seeing a lot of growth abroad," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, in a recent interview.

As American sites such as Facebook and News Corporation's MySpace saturate their home markets, they are looking abroad to fuel the audience growth that has made them so attractive to users, advertisers, acquirers and would-be inves-tors. MySpace has expanded to more than 29 countries, including India and Korea, in the past few years.

MySpace is particularly popular with users in Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain and Malaysia, according to a study by Pingdom, a Swedish service that monitors website availability. Pingdom based its findings on the regions where a particular social network is searched for most often via Google. For instance, the countries with the greatest interest in LinkedIn, a network aimed at professionals, are India, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and the US.

But Facebook has been particularly successful in terms of sheer user adoption. Its number of new members was up 153 per cent in June from the same month a year earlier, driven mainly by astronomical growth in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Among specific countries Turkey, Canada, Britain, South Africa and Colombia have the greatest interest, according to Pingdom.

By comparison, Facebook's North American audience grew just 38 per cent in June and MySpace was up only 3 per cent, according to comScore.

Facebook owes its results, in part, to its technology-driven international strategy. Rather than launch local-language versions of Facebook for new markets, complete with a local Facebook bureau, it opted to provide translation tools that let users take the existing site and personalise it in their own tongue.

The tools, which users can tweak to create more accurate translations, helped Facebook roll out in new countries faster than many rivals, giving it an early presence in local markets that grew exponentially as users encouraged their friends to join the site.

MySpace has taken a different tack. It is opening offices in countries where it knows there are advertising dollars, as well as friends, to be made.

The strategy makes the company slower at expanding in new markets, but MySpace believes the approach will ultimately mean that its local offerings are better equipped to reflect the cultures of new countries while also catering to advertisers. The site's non-US audiences will soon account for more than 50 per cent of its revenues, explains Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of sales and marketing.

Hi5 is following a hybrid strategy. In May, the San Francisco-based social network launched tools enabling users to translate the site into any language. Before that, Hi5 had hired a third-party service provider, Lionbridge, to translate it into languages like Japanese and make it reflect the added countries' cultures.

The company's user base has grown to more than 56 million, thanks in large part to those efforts, according to Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore. "Hi5 has really put an emphasis on cultural relevance beyond just the translation," he says.

The site is popular throughout Latin America, home to four of the five countries where it shows up most often in searches, according to Pingdom.

Although Facebook has focused on tools, it isn't ruling out opening local bureaux to help make the site more culturally relevant - and to sell ads. But executives aren't convinced that new offices are necessary. Once there are users, the thinking goes, advertisers will follow.

"The platform is open, and as soon as advertisers find value, they just start creating campaigns," says Mr Olivan. "So it is pretty much universal."

A hidden history

RAMZY BAROUD on the destruction of his family's village in Palestine.

TRACING one's roots is a stimulating activity for people interested in genealogy. It's immensely interesting and meaningful to learn where one's life started.

DNA testing has made it possible to trace one's roots back many generations and there are even free websites that can help users trace their family history based on a few simple clues.

Recent findings in my own personal history have been interesting.

The present task of tracing my family roots was inspired by a book project with Pluto Press, narrating the story of my father, who was a fighter from Gaza who died recently under tragic circumstances in the same refugee camp to which he was expelled, along with his family, 60 years ago.

Just weeks into my research, I found myself stumbling into the details of a massacre, one that is conveniently overshadowed by the dust of the battle, the rigidity of academic research and the lack of media access of those who have survived.

And now, what started as a mere phase of my father's torn childhood in Palestine has morphed into being the core of my book's narrative.

My family came from the village of Beit Daras, one of the hundreds of villages destroyed by zionist Jewish gangs prior to the establishment of the state of Israel.

Growing up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, decades after the destruction of Beit Daras, I heard many stories of our village that now only exists in memory.

The objective behind the story was hardly a calculated intent to ensure that we don't forget what has befallen us. It was a daily narrative that simply defined our internal relationship as a community.

The "Bedrasawis" - the collective name of those originated from Beit Daras - were often stereotyped as "big-headed" and stubborn.

Although we Bedrasawis protested at the recurring accusation, we also shared unspoken pride in it. But that reputation of zeal and prowess was fostered by the dramatic events of 1948, during the zionist drive to evacuate Palestine of its inhabitants.

Israeli historian Benny Morris in his volume The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem makes a couple of references to Beit Daras.

Nothing notable, aside from the fact that a Haganah unit, Givati, had shelled the village on May 10 1948, "promoting the flight of its inhabitants."

But there is more to what took place in Beit Daras than Morris's footnote.

Arab historians Walid Khalidi and Salman Abu Sitta, among others, provide the story within a greater context. Still, documenting the history of anywhere between 400 to 500 destroyed Palestinian villages in one volume is not a simple feat, thus much of Beit Daras's history is lumped together as one of many - the zionists attacked on day such and such, the Arabs resisted, then fled, then the village was blown up to ensure that the inhabitants would not return.

As sinister as the above summation is, much is left untold. Peoples, faces, stories and families were torn apart, often never to meet again, along with the decimated village's 401 homes, two mosques and lone elementary school.

Those people killed in the "massacre of Beit Daras," according to Palestinian accounts, totalled 265, largely women, children and elders. The gender and age groups of the victims were not selective nor coincidental, but related to the nature of the battle, where the fighters of Beit Daras were engaged in fighting against successive zionist army units, first involving militants from a nearby settlement, then Haganah forces and, finally, Givati units.

The battle for Beit Daras was long and arduous and duly mentioned in the writings of Jamal Abd Al-Nasser, the first president of Egypt, during his military service in southern Palestine and in David Ben Gurion's War Diaries (1947-1949).

Morris's chronological research methods discounted the fact that, although Beit Daras was located in southern Palestine approximately 20 miles north of Gaza, the zionist aggression to conquer the once peaceful village began earlier than the Givati's "Operation Lightning" (Mivtza Barak) of early May 1948 and that the village didn't fall for at least another month after the date he sketchily provides.

Indeed, Beit Daras's strategic location near important zionist military hubs - located inside settlements bordering the village - and near the supply routes to the Negev made it a target as early as March 16 and several times more in the same month, then again in April, twice in May and, finally, in June.

Zionist losses were high and their attempts failed time after time. There was much fury that a small village of roughly 2,000 people would not surrender under intense bombardment. A single day of fighting resulted in the death of 50 Arabs, according to Ben Gurion's own account.

Um Adel is a 80-year-old woman who now lives in Gaza. Today she sells food stuffs at a tiny and humble stand to help her family as they struggle to survive the siege on Gaza.

She vividly recalls the events that led to the massacre in 1948. Those people who were killed were members of the families of fighters who insisted on defending the village to the end but hoped to sneak their wives, children and elders to safety before the decisive battle in early June.

It struck me how apolitical she was and how, until this day, she is dumbfounded, not able to comprehend the dramatic events of those short months between March and June of 1948.

Until now, she views the fight for Beit Daras based on a simple equation - they tried to take our land and we fought them off until the end.

"They (the zionist militias) knew well that we Bedrasawis would not go down easily. They knew that their fight for that whole area was one battle, but to take over Beit Daras was another."

As simple as the equation was, her confusion regarding the whole event haunts her until this day and she explained to me that, in those days, the Jewish villages and the residents of Beit Daras had been close friends and neighbours and that, even now decades later, she is still baffled as to what happened and why the people of her village were betrayed in such a way.

Beit Daras lived up to its reputation of hard-headedness and tenacity, but many details remain murky yet incredibly revealing and deserve more than a footnote.

One can only hope that the memory of the village survives without having to wait the authentication of an Israeli historian, which may or may not ever arrive. I know that I will do my part to make that happen.

After all, I owe Beit Daras my big head and the tenacious spirits of my children, who carry the names of those who lived in Beit Daras and died there.

Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com who was born in Gaza. His latest book The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle is out now on Pluto Press.

Heads of Kyrgyz Diasporas in Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Italy, Korea, Germany discuss role of expatriots abroad

The 7th conference of representatives of Kyrgyz Diasporas abroad opened today in Bishkek. The conference is focused on a role of expatriots in socio-economic life of Kyrgyzstan.

“This conference is critical in development of our association and aims to give new perspectives and ideas of such phenomenon like migrant workers,” said Kumarbek Stamkulov, acting chair of the Association of Kyrgyz Diasporas in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyz citizens have overcome regionalism and have managed to unite in Diasporas abroad. “Our compatriots have established and continue opening cultural centers. They make contribution into shaping a positive image of the Kyrgyz people and Kyrgyzstan on the whole. Kyrgyz diaspora has become an integrate part of the local communities all over the world. In future, we plan to undertake such initiatives across the world,” Kumarbek Stamkulov added.

Aigul Riskulova, Chair of the State Committee on Migration and Employment said Medet Sadyrkulov, Chief of President’s Administration met 20 leaders of Kyrgyz Diasporas from abroad.

Medet Sadyrkulov said all problems of compatriots abroad that would be discussed during this conference should be outlined in the memo addressed to the President so that all problems are tackled.

Justice Minister Marat Kaipov, Chair of State Committee on Migration and Employment Aigul Riskulova, Stats Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Talaibek Kadyrov, Ombudsman Tursunbek Akun, parliamentarians attended this conference.AKIpress

Not easy being a Jew in Beirut

It's not easy being Jewish in Beirut where the synagogue is crumbling, the rabbis have left, the community is dwindling and where Jews are commonly branded "Israelis".

The last vestiges of the Jewish community in Lebanon, the Magen Abraham synagogue in the Lebanese capital, reflects a community falling into oblivion.

Built in 1920 in the area of Wadi Abu Jmil, formerly known as Wadi al Yahud (the Jews' Valley), the synagogue is today a place of desolation.

The building is in a state of severe disrepair, the grounds overgrown and the gate shackled with lock and chain.

"Everything was looted during the (civil) war, marble benches and even windows," bemoaned Samuel, a member of the Jewish Community Council in Lebanon, who preferred to use a pseudonym.

Without a synagogue, or even a rabbi, the handful of Jews still left in the country -- about 300 according to official estimates -- are forced to pray at home.

"What we (also) lack is a place to buy locally produced kosher. We have no Jewish schools to teach our children prayer and Hebrew," said the 60-year-old Samuel, sitting in his shop near the seafront.

The seminary near the Beirut synagogue was destroyed during the war and the community has had no rabbi for years.

"We only speak Arabic. We just use Hebrew for prayer," added Samuel.

In the capital, along the former demarcation line between the Muslim and Christian areas, another vestige survives: the Jewish cemetery.

The inscriptions in Hebrew and stars of David on the entryway are covered with dust. "Very few people come," said Samuel.

Efforts are now being made, however, to revive the community, with plans under way to renovate the synagogue and the starting of an online blog called "Jews of Lebanon" (thejewsoflebanon.org).

"We hope that this synagogue, one of the largest in the Arab world, will be renovated later this year or in 2009," said Samuel, adding that the renovations would be funded mainly by expatriate Lebanese Jews.

The blog seeks to raise the awareness of the Jewish community and to make it an active participant in public life.

-- 'They don't understand Israel means nothing to us' --

Judaism is recognized as one of the 18 religious confessions in Lebanon, although the Jewish community has dwindled over the years, in the face of violence and prejudice.

"Before the (1975-1990) civil war, there were about 22,000 of us. It was after the 1982 (Israeli) invasion of Lebanon that our presence became considerably diminished," said Samuel.

For Efraim, also a merchant and a member of the Jewish Council, the community's official authority, one of the annoyances is living in a country where mixing the terms "Jewish" and "Israeli" is common.

Lebanon is technically in a state of war with Israel, which is commonly dubbed "the Zionist enemy."

"People still occasionally ask me if I am Israeli," said Efraim, also speaking under a pseudonym.

To him, "that's exactly as if we used the term Iranians to describe Lebanese Shiites."

"They do not understand that Israel means nothing to us. We consider it an enemy country as do all the Lebanese," he insisted.

"After 1982, very few Jews went to Israel, and those who did, didn't stay long. They felt deeply Lebanese," said Efraim.

Having been in Lebanon for over 2,000 years, Jews began to leave the country during the turmoil.

"There has not been a wave of persecutions, despite some incidents. Those (Jews who left) are like thousands of other Lebanese who fled the country in search of a better future," said Samuel.

"The Jews mostly lived in major cities like Beirut, Baalbek, Tripoli and Sidon, in perfect coexistence with other communities," he said, adding that synagogues in these cities too had fallen into ruin.

"Many (Jewish expatriates) still have land and do not want to sell, because it would be like selling a part of themselves," Samuel said.

The expatriates remain committed to their heritage and some even come back every year for vacation, but not to settle.

"Is it possible (to settle) with the current tensions in Lebanon?" asked Efraim, who travels frequently.

"We have always been neutral in politics and we remain so," he said. "Today, we live peacefully and we want to continue to live like that, in our country."

So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Modern Mexico/Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil

Book Reviews:

Teresa AlfaroVelcamp: So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Modern Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Maps, appendixes, bibliography, index, 272 pp.; paperback $24.95.

John Tofik Karam, Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007. Glossary, bibliography, 214 pp.; hardcover $68.50, paperback $24.95.

Teresa Alfaro-Velcamp introduces us to a world that is a bridge between the Middle East, Mexico, and the United States. Her book is the result not only of extensive research in official documents of the Archivo General de la Nacion but also of many interviews in different municipalities in Mexico, the United States, and even Lebanon, her native country. She also has consulted secondary archives, such as those in the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, one of the most important centers on the Lebanese diaspora in the world; and the archives of different families, municipalities, and libraries, such as that of Mexico's Universidad Iberoamericana.
It was not until 1926 that the process of registering immigrants started in Mexico, meaning that before that year the data from the secretaria de Gobernacion are not very reliable. Deceased immigrants before 1926 do not appear in the archive's documents, and many of the assimilated foreigners did not register when they were illegal. This explains the debate over who was the first Lebanese immigrant to come to Mexico. Alfaro-Velcamp sustains the well-known thesis of Father Boutros Rafoul (who does not appear in the foreigners' archives) as the beginner of Middle Eastern migration to Mexico in 1878. However, the name that appears in the archives is Antonio Budib, who arrived in Mexico the same year and who was not mentioned in previous work on the Lebanese in Mexico. Emphasizing the existence of the Rev. Boutros Rafoul largely reflects the knowledge that most of the Lebanese who came to Mexico were Christians. That a priest initiated the process therefore holds symbolic value.
So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico offers very interesting insights into the history of meso-oriental migration to Mexico. Most of the published works on this topic are pamphlets or very subjective pieces that are limited in their exposition of the Lebanese migration, not scientific studies written under a rigorous methodological apparatus. Alfaro-Velcamp closes her work with an interesting double reflection related to the integration of the Arab community in Mexican society, using the examples of telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim HeIu and her own great-uncle. For Arabs integrated into the national elite, the reference to foreign origin is part of the successful model of the immigrant. This is why Slim HeIu emphasizes his Mexican-Lebanese origins. On the other hand, middleclass Arabs feel completely Mexican, a sentiment the author's great-uncle expresses with no reference to his Middle Eastern origin.
Alfaro-Velcamp's work does contain some mistakes. When she mentions that the Arabic used by nineteenth-century immigrants in their letters cannot be easily read using modern Arabic, she demonstrates some misunderstanding of the language. Unlike many Western languages, Arabic has not been modified in centuries. The language used currently in literary work is the same language in which the Quran was written. In relation to Mexico, the author mentions that the arrival and settlement of immigrants in Torreon stemmed from their interest in being near the Tarahumara zone for commercial purposes. However, La Laguna is far from the Sierra Tarahumara, which is located very near the state capital, Chihuahua. Also, the author mentions the "Tarahumaras and the Rarámuris" when the latter refers to the name Tarahumara; therefore it is the same group.
On the debate regarding the number of immigrants' letters found in the Archivo General, there is actually no great difference of opinion. Alfaro-Velcamp worked with 8,240 letters from immigrants who came from the Middle East (Lebanon, Palestine-Israel, Syria, Iran, the Ottoman Empire-Turkey, etc.). Other published works are based on the use of 7,533 letters from immigrants from all over the Middle East except Iran and Turkey (as they are not Arab countries) and the Palestinian population. Counting the 663 letters from Palestinians, there are really 8,196 letters, a number very close to the 8,240 Alfaro-Velcamp uses, which includes the Iranian and Turkish population.
The second debate is more methodological: the designation "Middle Easterners." Alfaro-Velcamp prefers the term Middle Easterners to avoid the word Arab, which has been the object of many prejudices since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, the term Middle Easterners does not seem very precise, as it includes Iran, Turkey, and the Arab Levant. When the author refers to Armenia, there seems to be a historical mistake: the population she describes could not have come from this country, because it did not exist at the time, but was part of Turkey. The Armenians' arrival after 1920 took place precisely after the massacres during the First World War.
Alfaro-Velcamp worked specifically on the population of Arab origin in the Middle East and not the meso-oriental population in general. The fear of using the word Arab also comes from Lebanese prejudices. The Lebanese population emphasized their "Phoenician" origin to avoid thinking of themselves as Arabs. They even spoke of their language as "Lebanese." Further confusing matters, the term Arab is very ambiguous: it refers to the language and also to the ethnic group, as well as to culture and a political position. On the other hand, it is more accurate when it is used in reference to the populations that have arrived from the Middle East and are Arabic speakers. It is precisely on this basis that the classification of the cards in the General Archive of the Nation is organized.
The title of the book seems unfortunate. When Porfirio Diaz said "so far from God, so near the United States," he was talking about the Mexican population. Immigrants are not "so close to Mexico"; they are in Mexico, in the same country. The term would be more accurate to refer to the Arab population in the United States, not in Mexico. Despite such quibbles, this book is a valuable contribution to the understanding of a community that has consolidated as one of the most influential not only in the economic sphere (this is even more evident since Carlos Slim HeIu became in 2007 the richest man in the world, not only in Latin America) but also in the political sphere, with some governors, cabinet members, and mayors now on duty in Mexico.
The book by John Tofik Karam argues that there was an intensification process in the Syrian-Lebanese ethnic project in neoliberal Brazil from the 1970s on. This was due to the consolidation of this community in the economic, political, social, and cultural contexts of the country. According to the author, second- and third-generation Syrian-Lebanese have been essential in this process because they have achieved a clearer definition of the ethnic project that not only integrates them into the day-to-day context of life, but also places them in relevant positions in the public sphere (individual examples are in politics, business, and the mass media).
That privileged place is what the author deems the characteristic of being "Arabesque" in the Brazilian context. By approaching his investigation from an anthropological perspective, Karam contributes to understanding the Syrian-Lebanese phenomenon through time in Brazil. He also innovates in the use of "open ethnography" or, as he calls it, "ethnography without qualifiers." With this methodology, the author freely interacts with different members of society, including politicians, entrepreneurs, and common people, as he searches for a better understanding of how the Syrian-Lebanese identity conforms in Brazil.
The book contributes to the study of the relationship between ethic identity and nation construction by asking questions that go beyond the explanations derived from colonial logic. The author asks how the changes in the world system have changed the relations between the nation and the ethnic groups in it. He tries to understand how these relations have been modified in a context of change that led Brazil from being a protectionist country to a neoliberal one. Karam argues that ethnic identity was no longer considered a "peripheral" issue in the concept of the nation and that it came to occupy a privileged place.
In the first part of the book, Karam explains the stereotypical image placed on the Middle Eastern immigrants on their arrival and settlement in Brazil. The "Turks" were always seen as well skilled for commerce and trade, an identity that changed and became a more accepted part of Brazilian society as the country became more integrated into global markets. As a result, immigrants and their descendants have come to occupy privileged positions in the social and economic elite of the country.
There are limits, though, as the author notes the role of corruption associated with diverse leaders of Lebanese origin who hold public positions in Säo Paulo. For example, major Syrian-Lebanese political leaders were involved in a scandal in 1999-2000 that included kickbacks and cover-ups among political and business allies. In response to the negative press that followed, leaders proposed a celebration of Lebanese Independence Day. The event would showcase the most important achievements of some prominent Lebanese-most members of the second and third generations-and emphasize the important role that this community plays in Brazil.
Another indicator of the re-emergence of Syrian-Lebanese pride is how the community deals with the common moniker "Turk." Originally, the term had a negative, denigrating connotation: it was used to refer to immigrants from the Middle East who worked as minor-scale traders and had no influence in Brazilian society. This conception changed with the promotion of education in private institutions and later in prestigious universities. Many second- and third-generation Syrian-Lebanese immigrants became professionals in law and medicine, allowing them to position themselves in the circles of political power. Though these descendants are still referred to as Turks, the term has lost its pejorative meaning. Brazilians of Syrian-Lebanese heritage even use the term themselves today as a positive trait.
An acceptance of Arab culture in the Brazilian market has also taken place. The music, food, and diverse products have become an important part of Brazilian daily life, exemplifying the appropriation by one culture of the other. At the beginning, these cultural matters were marginalized, but today they have become popular commodities accepted not only by the elites but by the common masses. More concrete examples include the diverse schools that teach Arab dances, food chains (such as the 150 Habib franchises) or even soap operas (The Clone).
The historical perspective employed by Tofik Karam will interest not only academics seeking to understand an ethnic project in the context of economic openness and how it relates to the concept of nation, but also those readers who are willing to learn about a specific culture from different angles (cultural, political, economic). In addition, this book is organized in such a way that a person who is completely unfamiliar with the topic can explore and analyze it in the context of the current situation. Methodologically, the book provides an ethnographic perspective that proposes new forms of observation and data collection that are very relevant to social studies. As such, it will stand as one of the most useful in the field.
Copyright University of Miami Summer 2008 Zidane Zeraoui Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey