The Invisible Life of an Arab Girl

on being middle eastern, media representation, and... orientalism?

Dear whomever,

So, I guess it’s obvious, that the internet comes in English. The internet is American. White-blue skin, clean suburban. The smell of grass after it’s killed by a lawnmower. Picket fences, wooden swing on the porches. White garage doors that slide upwards, all clean. Bags and bags and bags of groceries. The internet is America: you know, Walmart, Target, Chic-fil-a.

The internet is The American Dream.

And we are so lucky to watch, so lucky to be longing.

Life online has always felt like a one-sided mirror, to me. Through this laptop/phone screen/PC I can see everyone, understand them, study them, but no one can really see me. I’m staring at my reflection, trying to get my face to match the girl on the screen. I’m adjusting my expression so it can fit her round, beautiful face.

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Christina’s World, Andrew Wyeth

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but let me go back to the beginning;

I didn’t understand the severity of our choice, when my family decided that we should move from Tampa, Florida to little Amman, Jordan. I was 6 years old - all I remember was driving to my grandparent’s house in my uncles black SUV, after the long flight from Chicago, that didn’t feel so long, to me, personally. I slept on a plane and woke up in the desert. This was fine.

With no concept of time or geography, I didn’t really prepare for any change. I didn’t understand that there would be change, anyway. Boxes in the house, yes, a handful of suitcases, sure, but I figured we were in the same world, so however far I went from what I knew - it couldn’t possibly be that different. I don’t think I even understood that there would be a language barrier, until I tried to speak with my cousins in the car.

It was very different - our backyard, swing set, and wooden fences were gone and replaced with a small balcony on a third-floor apartment. Our space had shrunk, neighborhood friends gone, public parks disintegrated. Streets so messy, driving so much different, everything so haphazard, compared to the clean, lush, and organized suburbs of America. Despite the fact that, technically, we were poorer in the US, we didn’t feel it as much as we did in the Middle East. It was more potent, the poorness. It was more obvious that we were lower middle class. Hell, there barely is a middle class in this side of the world: you’re either rich, or you’re poor.

My siblings were hit by the culture shock the hardest.

Me? Well, it came on slowly. I’d watch MBC3¹ very curiously, wondering why the fuck SpongeBob was dubbed with an Egyptian accent. Who decided that? Often, in the beginning days, I felt like I was in a dream. Hallucinating. I remember being quite certain that Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out at any moment and exclaim, You’ve been Prank’d!² It felt like the world had been flipped upside down - and surely it all had to be some intricate joke - nothing made sense, and worse, the words people were saying on TV and in real life were nothing but gibberish to my ears.

The Arabic came to me in stages, but it came, at least, much easier than it did my siblings, and with time I learned to handle myself. I was stronger then - more brazen, more confident, less afraid and so much less affected by my emotions. I was okay with making mistakes. I was fine with angering people. So, while my siblings experimented with their depression, I was doing just fine. I was the lucky, out of all of us, everyone kept reminding me. I assimilated the best.

So who was I to complain?

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Old enough, eventually, for Facebook and Instagram and - the star of the show - Tumblr, I began existing online like everyone else did. I coddled my homesickness through the blue webpages. I did not understand my homesickness, for mostly it felt like flashes of jealousy in moments when I’d come across our family friend’s Fifth Grade Banquet³ pictures, or other natural stages of her American School Journey. I felt I was missing out on so many milestones they didn’t offer me here. And I missed so much the lawns of green grass, and 7-11’s ICEES. I wished so much for what I assumed was a normal life: moving classes, long lockers, football games. On Tumblr, I had access to the other people, primarily Americans, and I could pretend I was still part of it. The world made sense online - it felt like home.

So much changed when I started seeing the racist comments, the ISIS jokes, the Al-Qaeda remarks. I’d scroll through Instagram comments on some horrible incident that just so happened to involve a brown person, and feel my heart grow heavy in my chest - in fear. So many people hate me, I’d think. So I would pretend I was American, online. Only a half-lie, that was, no? I knew what time it was there, and in my replies and comments would pretend I was, I don’t know, up late or that I just queued things up for my Tumblr. I’d time my replies to make sense, like, Hey, just woke up for school, when in actuality it was, like, 5 in the afternoon.

When I’d meet people and we’d talk about our lives, they’d speak on Walmart and Target as if I was meant to know them. I did - but it always bothered me - the insinuation that, of course, I would. I realize now, in retrospect, how upset I was by that. That before they knew where I was based, they assumed I was white, assumed I had the same streets as them, assumed everything for me was just as it was for them. Which is why, then, I was more inclined to lie.

I believe Twitter and Instagram and whatever other social media exists all work the same way. Influencers rarely bother to explain what they’re doing to a worldwide audience (when their stats tell them they have worldwide audiences), they just go. We are meant to just know. Or, worse, they assume it’s the same everywhere. That’s a blindness I feel all the time: does the West know things are different? That other people exist? In millions? They’re able to explain Don Quixote megastore for their trip to Japan, we get the quick TL;DR. Of course. But the usual ordinary flagships of America are always meant to be widely known. This is Target. Yes, of course. I know what that is. How could I not? We are all here in this American world.

I’m not saying people based in America are meant to not talk about America. I’m just saying that the internet is not an extension of America - it’s an extension of the world. Why have we allowed it to be American? And why have we allowed this America of ours be so lackluster? So without different ethnicities? Why is it so rare to get real stories about real people that are not white?

I get that it’s because the entertainment industry is primarily American. But America has a lot of different ethnicities - where are we? The Arabs?

Why aren’t the writer’s rooms discussing us more often? Why aren’t they putting in the work to add in a thick-eyebrowed curly haired girl into the main trio? Where are they in the sci-fis, in the dystopia? Surely, we have all noticed that the East is rarely mentioned in the zombie apocalypse movies. Ever seen an Arab in a horror movie?

You may have your arguments ready on your tongue: but in that one movie, there’s one guy. On another, there’s that terrorist group. On one there is a rich Saudi guy. Abed is funny in community! The issue that you may be unaware of is that the Arab/Middle Eastern entities on your screens are so rare and worse, they are often stereotypical caricatures. We seem to go above and beyond to give realistic, nuanced representations of, say, Jewish people, or African Americans, or Asians, and often Christians. So why don’t we do the same for Arabs?

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let’s talk about the “arab” girl on your tv screen

The identifying factor of an Arab girl, to you, I assume, is that she wears a hijab. Which, naturally, makes her Muslim - and puts her in a box which must ensure that she behave a certain way. To deal with Islam (and I’m telling you this as a girl who grew up in Muslim culture) is a very heavy thing, something you must do with care. I understand. Sure, we see hijabis in the mainstream, but she must always navigate her hijab. It is, if not their entire storyline, then a good chunk of it.

Not every girl who celebrates Christmas in movies is given a short scene where she goes to church and prays, or one where she questions her beliefs for a guy. For the Jewish, perhaps there’s Hanukkah, but is navigating their religious beliefs ever offered as a storyline? It’s rare. Perhaps these scenarios exist, but they’re rare. Our TVs have two main religions, anyway: Judaism and Christianity, often so nuanced that you can’t tell who is which until the first holiday, and then, perhaps, if we’re lucky, a hijabi as the final touch of representation - the token Muslim. And that’s if the writers are incredibly woke.

I understand that most show-runners don’t want to make charged commentary on religion. A hijab is just that - it will set them off to the East’s discomfort on how they want to be represented. It is a lot to handle, and perhaps it scares them.

But if you ask them to add in an Arab character, the hijab is always coming in first. It’s almost as if they think Arabs are only extremist Muslims. Women are hijabis. Men are terrorists. Some exist in-between, but they’re usually technically Asian. Or Indian. And sure, I enjoy that representation - it’s closer to my culture. Kim’s Convenience⁴ comes to mind. Ocean Voung’s books⁵ about his mother, too. They feel familiar, I can relate, but it’s not fully what I am. I am not finding characters to which I can fully connect with. I never, ever have.

I used to love Jade from Bratz. I thought she was like me for a long time - I have pitch black hair, so that was my guide. Then, the Bratz Movie dropped, and I realized she was meant to be Asian all along. It felt like a punch to the gut. I guessed perhaps Yasmin was me. But Yasmin was hispanic⁶. So I looked at my Bratz dolls, my utter favorites, and suddenly, I felt so alone.

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The main Bratz crew is, granted, more representative than their competition, Barbie. They follow the colors we will often see in leading groups. A white girl, a black girl, a Latina, and an Asian. I wonder why there is rarely ever effort to add a Middle Eastern face to really round up the representation for children.

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I can’t help it: I long for people like me in mainstream media; Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis. I know from my best friend that Egyptians are not technically Arabs, but fuck it, Egyptians as well. I have seen the nuances of my fellow Arabs, how different we are, how we each walk our lives in our own ways with our own secrets. It would be easy to create a character that is Arab that would also fit into any TV show of your liking. I crave to see us in the books I read - not books I actively seek that I know will contain us, written by one of us. No, I want to be surprised by the naturalness in which an Arab woman or man walks onto the scene. I do not want to see one hijabi amongst 5 other girls and thank the media for their representation and “bold” commentary.

Off the top of my head, I can think of one representation I enjoyed. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, where the sidekick was Muslim. Lebanese. I really liked, I remember, coming across such a familiar name and decided that book would be my favorite for a long time.

I don’t remember much from An Abundance of Katherines, only Hassan. Most of all what I loved about him was that he called Colin (the main white boy) a Kafir. It made me laugh. It was easygoing and light, and most importantly, funny. It’s something me or my siblings would say to our white friends as joke. Realistic. A rare portrayal of something Arab that felt so utterly real. And fine, I’ll accept the Muslim aspect, mostly because it wasn't laid on so thick.

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There was also Sana from SKAM, sure, but she was, at the end, only a Muslim girl “held back” by her religion. It is a slight spoiler, perhaps, but if you haven’t watched SKAM yet - where the fuck have you been?

Sana, a Muslim, has her beliefs tested when she falls for Yousef, who doesn't share her religion. Ugh, always the same storyline.⁷ Always the scene of them kneeling on the prayer mat. Adjusting their hijab. Falling for the wrong person. But surely the mainstream knows that Arabs are not all heavily and perfectly religious?

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Skam Norway’s Sana

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What I’ve always wanted, of course, was a girl like me. Mostly-trying-to-be religious, perhaps not even that, with the dark curly hair, with the brown eyes and olive skin. Arab. Not black, not Asian, not mixed. Arab. Middle Eastern. Jordanian. Palestinian. Lebanese. Iranian. Not half Arab, with a white mother and a weird Arab toxic dad, no, like, Fully Arab. Where are we? Only on the news? Only as characters whose development ends as a human shield, or through falling in love with another one of the white boys?

“Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being. No better instance exists today of what Anwar Abdel Malek calls “the hegemonism of possessing minorities” and anthropocentrism allied with Europocentrism: a white middle-class Westerner believes it his human prerogative not only to manage the nonwhite world but also to own it, just because by definition “it” is not quite as human as “we” are. There is no purer example than this of dehumanized thought.”

― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

The stories are often about refugees. Which is fine. But there are so many non-refugees, so many people who don’t strive to live abroad. And besides - I could argue the refugee stories are dated, and perhaps overdone even, because sure, it is still a struggle, but many of the children of refugees now have families of their own. What of their stories? What of 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation refugees? Hell, what of the people that never left to begin with?

I read Orientalism by Edward Said during my third year of university. One of the definitions Said offered for Orientalism is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” It makes me wonder if our representation is meant to tie us all onto one heavy boulder, to frame us as all the same, to lessen our humanity, so people are able to pull their eyes away from the atrocities that keep happening to us. I wonder if allowing the mainstream to view us as closed-off people, highly religious and easily persuaded by terrorist groups, allows them to easily persuade collectives into not caring about us.

I’ve tried my best to read a lot of pieces about representation, but rarely do I come across Jordanians or Palestinians (both my main heritages), and it makes me feel crazy. I am longing for a movie like Slumdog Millionare, a crack, a fire, a lightening bolt that hurtles realistic portrayals of us in the mainstream.

I guess representation has long ways to go, for everyone. But when we think and talk about representation, could you include us in the discourse? We’re not even on the little survey you fill when you submit a job application:

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Ethnicity (Please select one):

• White

• Black or African American

• Hispanic or Latino

• Asian

• Native American or Alaska Native

• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

• Two or More Races

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Think about it.

With love,
Amal

PS: a penny for your thoughts?

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If you liked this piece, I’d like to recommend some further reading that I feel touched on the similar themes:

Am I writing like a white woman?

1. This is the TV channel equivalent to Disney in Jordan, and from memory most of the Middle East. Dubai, Yemen, etc. They played the shows you’re familiar with, if you grew up in the States, like Dora and Drake and Josh and the likes, but all of them dubbed Arabic to suit their audience. Occasionally, by what I used to feel was stroke of luck, they’d play something in English. But it was rare, at the beginning, in the 2006s.

2. How do I explain the show Prank’d? You either know it, or you don’t.

3. A Fifth Grade Banquet is a celebratory event marking the end of elementary school, where fifth graders, their families, and teachers gather for a formal dinner and festivities to honor the students' achievements and transition to middle school.

4. Kim’s Convenience is a Canadian sitcom that follows the lives of a Korean-Canadian family who run a convenience store in Toronto. The show centers on Mr. Kim and Mrs. Kim, along with their two adult children, Janet and Jung.

5

• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous; – This novel is written as a letter from a son, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother. It’s a raw and poetic exploration of the complexities of family, trauma, and identity, drawing heavily from Vuong’s own experiences as a Vietnamese immigrant in America.

• Time Is a Mother; Vuong’s first major work after his mother’s death. It reflects on grief, loss, and the enduring impact of his mother’s presence in his life.

6. Per Wikipedia, Yasmin is “ethnically ambiguous, though predominantly Middle Eastern or Latina coded”, while the other three girls are clearly represented, and not ambiguous: “Cloe (White), Jade (East Asian), and Sasha (Black)”.

7. https://booksfromnorway.com/books/1342-skam-season-4-sana#:~:text=SKAM%20Season%204%3A%20Sana%20gives,doesn't%20share%20her%20religion.