Post by dk on Nov 19, 2006 20:09:27 GMT -5
In a Name
by Salma Kahale
April 1, 2002
I was born, imagined to cross boundaries and slide between worlds. My name is a subversive tool of disguise. My father named me Salma, an old Arabic name that is easy to pronounce in the West. No one would mispronounce my name the way they mispronounced his. No one would make a five-minute ordeal of saying it. Salma. Period. I would cross the boundaries he attempted to cross without the hassle of a name that was not Euro-friendly. My father imagined a life for his baby daughter, born in Syria, which would pass the checkpoints and the roadblocks a girl from the East was to expect when she went West.
When. Not if. When. After studying at an American school in Damascus, the heart of Arab and Muslim civilization, I would go places my father imagined for me. When I spoke English better than most Americans, dressed the way they did, saw the same movies, listened to their music, ate the food, when I knew them, I would fly West.
I was born a hybrid. Born to slip through the cracks, I don’t fit your stereotype of an Arab woman. I didn’t fit my own stereotype of an Arab woman. I saw my self as an anomaly. I knew I was a feminist, but I believed much of what I read about Arab women as passive victims. I knew I could one day write scholarly work in academic journals, but somehow other Arab women never did. I never thought that I had believed what I learned about Arabs from Western textbooks and media.
Then I saw a movie about Arab Muslim feminists in Toronto, organizing, going to pro-choice rallies. I was surprised, and my surprise shocked me. I had implicitly believed that feminist and Arab or Muslim were dichotomous, you had to be one or the other. I had to choose. And then I saw that movie. And I wept. I wept with relief knowing that I was not an exception. I wept in joy that others were defying borders like me and in sorrow that it took me so long to feel that I could be whole again. All these pieces were in me because, not in spite, of each other. And when I read an article by an Arab woman, my heart soared. Every citation with an Arabic name made me realize that there was a whole world out there that I had yet to discover.
I have begun to challenge the stereotypes in my head, with which I have bound myself for many years. Yes, I have flown West as my father’s imagination foretold. But I no longer seek the anonymity of an easy-to-pronounce name. What I know, the tongues I speak, the words I use, I use to speak back. And now, I use to put myself back together, to be whole.
Salma Kahale is a fourth year political science and women’s studies student at the University of Victoria. She’s active in feminist, anti-racist organizing on campus and in the community.
by Salma Kahale
April 1, 2002
I was born, imagined to cross boundaries and slide between worlds. My name is a subversive tool of disguise. My father named me Salma, an old Arabic name that is easy to pronounce in the West. No one would mispronounce my name the way they mispronounced his. No one would make a five-minute ordeal of saying it. Salma. Period. I would cross the boundaries he attempted to cross without the hassle of a name that was not Euro-friendly. My father imagined a life for his baby daughter, born in Syria, which would pass the checkpoints and the roadblocks a girl from the East was to expect when she went West.
When. Not if. When. After studying at an American school in Damascus, the heart of Arab and Muslim civilization, I would go places my father imagined for me. When I spoke English better than most Americans, dressed the way they did, saw the same movies, listened to their music, ate the food, when I knew them, I would fly West.
I was born a hybrid. Born to slip through the cracks, I don’t fit your stereotype of an Arab woman. I didn’t fit my own stereotype of an Arab woman. I saw my self as an anomaly. I knew I was a feminist, but I believed much of what I read about Arab women as passive victims. I knew I could one day write scholarly work in academic journals, but somehow other Arab women never did. I never thought that I had believed what I learned about Arabs from Western textbooks and media.
Then I saw a movie about Arab Muslim feminists in Toronto, organizing, going to pro-choice rallies. I was surprised, and my surprise shocked me. I had implicitly believed that feminist and Arab or Muslim were dichotomous, you had to be one or the other. I had to choose. And then I saw that movie. And I wept. I wept with relief knowing that I was not an exception. I wept in joy that others were defying borders like me and in sorrow that it took me so long to feel that I could be whole again. All these pieces were in me because, not in spite, of each other. And when I read an article by an Arab woman, my heart soared. Every citation with an Arabic name made me realize that there was a whole world out there that I had yet to discover.
I have begun to challenge the stereotypes in my head, with which I have bound myself for many years. Yes, I have flown West as my father’s imagination foretold. But I no longer seek the anonymity of an easy-to-pronounce name. What I know, the tongues I speak, the words I use, I use to speak back. And now, I use to put myself back together, to be whole.
Salma Kahale is a fourth year political science and women’s studies student at the University of Victoria. She’s active in feminist, anti-racist organizing on campus and in the community.