Pride

As an Egyptian-American living in the post-9/11 United States, I have uneasy feelings about parenting my girls in a society that is largely anti-Arab. I have touched upon this in previous posts (click here to read one) but recently I had a debate with my husband about it. Lily, who is in first grade, was the Giant of the Week at school, which meant the children in her class got to know a little bit about her every day. On Friday, I was asked to read a story to the children, as well as show a talent. I thought it would be fun to write the kids’ names in Arabic and show them how I did it (frankly, I don’t have much talent to speak of other than that). Lily agreed. When Lily’s teacher found out, she expressed her delight as well. “The kids will love it,” she said to me.

Before I heard back from the teacher, I mentioned what I was going to do to my husband. “Are you sure you want to do that?” he said.

“Why?” I asked. I knew where this conversation was headed. I had entertained the exact same thoughts he was mulling over at this moment.

“Well, do we really want to call attention to the fact that she is different?” he said. By “different,” he meant half-Egyptian, as well as Muslim. (My husband, I have mentioned, is a Midwestern WASP. Although he grew up in Tehran, Iran, from age 3 to age 9, and although he lived in Cairo, Egypt, for six years, he still looks and acts 100 percent American to the average man on the street.)

I was overcome by emotion and immediately got tears in my eyes. Moments after the terrorists struck the World Trade Center (I was pregnant with Lily at the time), I knew my life as a Muslim and as an Arab-American would change drastically. Here was my worst fear staring at me in the face: my children would be singled out just because they happened to be my kids.

I wiped my face, blew my nose and said, “You know what? We need to teach our kids to be proud of whom they are. Just because a few morons ruined my culture and religious background doesn’t mean we are part of that group.”

“I know. I feel terrible even thinking these thoughts,” he said. “I just…”

“I know,” I said. “I had the same thoughts. I don’t want other kids to make fun of her for being different or weird, either.”

I explained how I also thought the kids were too young to think being Arab-American or Muslim was strange or uncool. “If they get to know her as their peer, and then discover they like her first, it won’t matter,” I said, perhaps naively.

My dear husband, ever the protector, said, “I just don’t want to give them ammunition to make fun of her later.”

When the teacher called the next day and said she was looking forward to my visit, her words allayed my fears. I told my husband what she said.

“Cool,” he said.

So on Friday, I went in. I had prepared the cards in advance (the ones Aimee accidentally drenched with water on the Bad Mommy day) and printed out several copies of the Arabic alphabet. When I began my presentation, the kids were rapt. I showed them the index cards with their names in English and Arabic and read how different some of the names sounded in Arabic compared to English. The kids loved it! Lily’s teacher was fascinated as well.

“Could you maybe give a demonstration?” she asked, pulling the dry erase board toward me.

“Sure,” I said. They asked me to write a sentence and I showed them how and what I would write. Then I wrote my name and showed them how different it looked in Arabic. I did the same with the numbers.

“Wow!” a few of them said. They giggled a lot. Especially when a name sounded different in Arabic. “Lily, for example, is Leelee in Arabic,” I said. “And David is Daoud.” They thought that was a riot.

When the presentation was over, the kids thanked me and I left feeling elated. I am so happy I didn’t balk when my husband expressed his concerns (concerns I admittedly had myself). I’m also glad I didn’t shy away from a potentially disastrous situation.

I later asked Lily if she enjoyed having me in the class.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “It was fun.”

“Did the kids like it?” I asked.

“Yes, they thought it was funny,” she said.

Funny is good. Considering how the morning could have gone, I will definitely take funny.

Photo by Dani Simmonds, courtesy of stock.xchng