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ff4a2ca943ddc8e9f017c15ff388e51c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Fennessey
Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Munjid
Wafa
Location
The location of the interview
Pickerington, Ohio
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
ج: عندي اسئلة عن فلسطين وعن الوضع في فلسطين. كيف الوضع في فلسطين خلال الانتفاضة الأولى، كيف الوضع؟
Wafa: Ok, well, like I said previously the First Intifada was like really something new for all Palestinian people. We used to have like problems ... stuff going on once in a while between, you know, the Israeli people and the Palestinian. But, it wasn't that bad. We were able to go to Jerusalem, to Al-Aqsa Mosque and pray if we want to and almost everyday. Um, Friday prayers was open, but as soon as the intifada started, like I said, a lot of killing, a lot of dead people from both sides; but, Palestinian more because they had no weapons. The only weapon that was available is just rocks. Sometimes, maybe knives in case; but, they never got in like really close contact. So, they had weapons [the Israelis] and they used to just fire against, you know, Palestinian people. They closed, as I said, they closed the schools, universities, transportation between, you know, cities. They would put checkpoints to prevent from going. Like, let's say I have relatives in Nablus or in Hebron, people were not able to communicate or see each other and it kept getting worse and worse. Of course, it's still the same right now; now Jerusalem is blocked. If you carry a Palestinian - if you're carrying a U.S. passport but you're carrying a Palestinian passport, still you're not allowed to enter Jerusalem; it's blocked. If you are under the age of 55, you're not allowed. Yeah, you can't. Even though if you give them your American passport, and show them that 'okay I'm carrying an American passport, can I go?' No, you have a (هوية) or ID , a Palestinian passport so we treat you as Palestinian, not American.But on the other hand, if you are like a U.S. citizen, born here, like my kids, and they don't have an ID, or my husband, he's Jordanian but, he never had a Palestinian ID or a Palestinian passport. When he enters Palestine, he's fine, he's respected, he's welcomed, no issues, no questions asked; you can go to Jerusalem, you can do whatever you want, because of your American passport. But on the other hand, I have a sister who lives there but she has an American passport, but she has a Palestinian passport also. She cannot go to Jerusalem at all, at all! You have to apply for a special permission from the Israeli government in order for you to go and they give you a permission maybe for one day, maybe for three days, maybe for a week. It depends. If they like you or see that you're like okay he's fine okay we give him like three days or no you're rejected you can't. So it's up to them, basically they control everything. They control the borders, they control the airport, and now none of the Palestinian people who have a Palestinian passport allowed to go to Ben Gurion Airport. Which is Tel Aviv. They're not, not allowed. They have to go through like what they call it, something really really horrible because they have to go to Jordan first and then you have to go through all the Jordanian airport and everything and then drive from Jordan, from Amman Airport, to Jericho where the border is and then cross the border and it's like, um, um really really tough because it takes you sometimes six, seven hours just sitting in the buses waiting for them to open up, you ...
Munjid: Very hot. Very hot.
W [continued]: to open and say--. and you know Jericho? how hot it is, very hot there. Sometimes they keep people in the bus for six, seven hours. And they'll be like just sitting there doing nothing. Whatever they feel like they want to let that bus go, they'll let them in and then you have to go through their security, their checkpoints, and then after that you have to go past the Palestinian security, and the Palestinian check-up in Jericho and then go to your destination, where you want to go.
Hanada: So, in spite of all of this, you still go back and visit.
W: Yes. Yes! [enthusiastically]!
H: Why?
W: Because it's my country, it's my land. They will never, they will never take me out from there. They will never delete my roots, this is my roots. That's my country. That's my place. Those are my olive trees, that's my house, my family's house, they will never. Every year when I go to Jordan, I still cross the border and take my kids, my husband, and go. My kids visited Jerusalem every time I go. We go everyday to Jerusalem. They pray in Al-Aqsa. They know their roots. They know my village, where I grew up. They know their dad's village where their dad grew up and they will still, even though we are all American citizen and we carry the American passport, but we are Palestinians and we are proud of our origin and our country because that's our land. They keep saying it is their land. It's not, it's not! And they keep saying Palestinian people are killing Israeli people when they're fighting. How you feel if you are sitting in your house and somebody comes and kick you out and take over your house that you've built and you've been living all your life in it? How would you feel? Right? It's really tough, and the problem is the media all over the world, does not show all this. I have a lot of American friends, a lot of very nice friends, a lot of neighbors that they're really nice. When I moved to this neighborhood, my next door neighbor, she didn't even know anything about Palestine. She knew Israel; she just said Israel. I sat with her for probably at least 4 hours, and I explained to her everything and she was shocked. She was in tears. She was like [incomplete sentence] 'you know what --' - I showed her videos. I showed her a lot of videos, a lot of YouTube, a lot. I was like 'here, just look at this' and she was in tears. She was like 'you know what, we're blocked here, we don't see anything, we don't see the real world'. They think Palestinian people like killing, or like fighting? No, we love peace, we love to live in peace, you know. A lot of people, if you look around and see the whole world, you'll find Palestinian in every single country. Why? Because they're running away. A lot of people they can't, they can't stay there. But still, even if we live like 20, 30, 40 years abroad, we still want to go back to our country. It's our country, it's our land, it's our spot.
H: So moving back and forth in time, you are Palestinian Arab-American at the same time. Could you please talk about the challenges that you've faced as an Arab-American?
ه: [الى منجد] ونفس السؤال: ما هي التحديات التي تواجه العرب الأمريكيين في أمريكا الآن؟
W: Okay, well, since I moved honestly, the first challenge that we faced was the language. Language barrier. You will be like when you come here-- we learn English, we learned English in schools. But, we learned like the British English. You know, like the real real like accent and real English language. And we will come here and say like we will hear somebody say "water" [wad-der] and we will be like 'what is he saying?'
M: (Laugh)
W: You know? Honestly, like what? Water? [wad-der?] We say 'wa-ter', you know, 'Wat-ter' (emphasis on the T in water). Because this is how we learned it. So that was one of like the challenges that we faced, that I faced, when we moved here. I could still understand most of that language but it was kind of really tough at the beginning. But, once you know I got involved with work and started studying and-- I, you know, I got it, so -- it was-- it got easier and easier. Like, the first year, when I moved here absolutely it's not like today, after like 25 years. One of like the biggest challenge that I faced was September 11. We got married, me and him, we got married September 9th, 2001, Sunday.
M: Two days before September 11.
W: And it was in Chicago, our wedding was in Chicago. September 11, of course Tuesday, and I had off work for like three weeks because of the wedding and that week was a horrible week. We, I - I couldn't leave the house, because in Chicago, because it's not like Columbus. I did not have anything in Columbus, but in Chicago because there was a lot of Arabic people, a lot of Muslim committee, they got attacked. Like in Walgreens, at school, in grocery stores-- a lot of Muslim people - ladies, got attacked. Either verbal, or people will snatch their headscarves, call them really nasty words ... so that week was really horrible, because we just stayed home. We didn't want to go anywhere, because we were so scared because people just got the idea that Muslim did it. A Muslim did it, you know what I mean, Muslim. So this is all what they caught, I don't blame them [Americans] for their behavior honestly, because if I was in their spot I would maybe do the same thing, I don't know. So probably they were also scared, worried, that was tough. But honestly, my manager called me to check on me and as soon as I came back to work the head manager came to the counter at the pharmacy and I really appreciate, I will never forget his words. He came and he said, 'Listen Wafa, you are, first of all, you are a human. You are one of our employees and if anybody at work, or any customer, or anybody approach you with any kind of, you know, wording or behavior, please let us know. You are family and you are protected' and I was so happy to hear those words, because it made me feel comfortable and it made me feel that even though I'm a Muslim, but they're accepting me. They're not rejecting me being Muslim.
James Fennessey: Did you have any, like, did you have any other experiences like that during that time like this?
W: No, myself no, but, I know a friend that she got attacked at Walgreens in Chicago, verbally and they snatched her scarf and just left her, you know, um--
Yeah, that was that was awful, that made me really scared that week that I told my husband I was like ok we're not going anywhere, we're just staying home, you know, yeah we stayed home, because it was really tough. It was tough. After that honestly I did not like have anything that made me feel you know, not acceptable maybe at work or with friends, with neighbors, but I know that a lot of friends had really bad experience too so.
ج: منجد؟
(٠:٣٧) م: زي ما حكت وفاء اللغة، يعني لحد الآن نواجه صعوبة اللغة يعني ]يضحك[ أكثر اثنين كانوا مقربين اللي بدي أعتبرهم هم اللي ضرّوني تقريباً. يعني أول ما جيت على شيكاغو أخوي، الله يسهل عليه ويجيبه بالسلامة انشالله، كان يساعدني كثير. نطلع على المحلات، عندي مقابلة، عندي كرت "appointment" يروح معي ويساعدني، ما خلاني ما قالي روح لحالك اعمل دبر حالك اتكلم لطّش، ما فيه وضلينا على هالحالة. ولمّا اتجوزت بعد ثلاث سنين برضو الست وفاء: عندي موعد للدكتور يلا معي! عندي موعد رخصة يلا معي! مافيه يعني ، فلحد الآن أنا يعني الانجليزي بواجه صعوبة بالانكليزي.
W [interjects]: And his employees speak Arabic. so (laughter), so he has to speak Arabic with them too.
م: عندي عمال كمان من العرب ونتكلم دائما بالعربي والحمدلله يعني .زي ما قالت يعني احنا كانت اللغة اللي أخذناها بالبلاد كانت اللغة البريطانية وما عرفنا لمّا جينا هانا "واتس آب" و"هاي" يعني ما كنا نعرف اللغة هذه كلها سبحان الله. بنسلك حالنا بنطلع بنتكلم لكن مش هذيك اللغة.
ج: ليش اللغة البريطانية؟
م: الأردن
W: It's the system ... That's the system in our schools, they teach you the--
J: But, why specifically, why British English over --
W: Ah, because in, before 1948 we had Britain that took over Middle East, like for Jordan, Palestine it was Britain for Lebanon, Syria it was France, so now in Lebanon and Syria the second language is French, but in Palestine and Jordan its English so - yeah that's
Original Format
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MP4 - 720p HD
Duration
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00:15:34
OHMS Object
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview61776.xml
Sort Priority
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0004
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Munjid and Wafa Hinnawi - Part 2, October 7, 2018
Subject
The topic of the resource
Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Description
An account of the resource
Wafa and Munjid speak about the First Intifada and September 11, 2001. The interview was conducted in Pickerington, Ohio
Creator
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Interviewers: Jimmy Fennessey, Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewees: Wafa and Munjid
Source
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<a href="https://youtu.be/x-jjKibiV5A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://youtu.be/x-jjKibiV5A</a>
Publisher
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Denison
Date
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October 7, 2018
Rights
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Arab-American Project by <a href="http://arab-american-project.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://arab-american-project.org</a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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video
Language
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English and Arabic
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Hannah Bennett, filming
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/9fcfb9f49f6baba3d10145a80ad928d5.png
ff4a2ca943ddc8e9f017c15ff388e51c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Publisher
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Denison
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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png
Type
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Digital Still Image
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Fennessey
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Wafa
Munjid
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS SML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Arab-American
Arab American
Arab immigration
Ohio
Central Ohio
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and/or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.2 Interview with Wafa and Munjid - Part 1, October 7, 2018 0:12:00 Arab American Community in Central Ohio Oral History Project Denison University This project was part of the Ohio Five's Digital Scholarship initiative, which was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Arab Americans-Ohio Arab-American Arab American Arab immigration Ohio Central Ohio Wafa Munjid James Fennessey Wafa and Munjid - Part 1.mp4 1:|24(7)|45(9)|64(9)|91(5)|101(15)|113(1)|125(13)|142(3) 1:|27(7)|42(8)|63(8)|93(5)|111(2)|126(1)|143(6)|159(14)|172(3)|190(5)|205(14) Arabic and English 1 https://youtu.be/qwJdILT2xdw YouTube video English and Arabic 0 Project Logistics لوجيستيات المشروع Permission to film 17 35 Wafa & ; Munjid’s educational backgrounds الخلفية التعليمية لوفاء ومنجد Profession 17 139 Project Logistics ; Reaffirmation of Consent لوجيستيات المشروع: إعادة تأكيد الموافقة 17 226 Immigration background Reasons for leaving Palestine خلفية الهجرة أسباب مغادرة فلسطين 17 300 First Intifada الانتفاضة الأولى 17 443 Munjid speaks about how he came to the United States. .منجد يتحدث عن كيف جاء إلى الولايات المتحدة M: Ok, I came, I used to be in the Jordanian army, as I told you and I came for a visit and I went and applied for a tourist visa because I have two brothers in America and I liked to come for a visit because I haven’t seen my brother for about 15 years and he wasn’t able to come to Jordan. So I wanted to come and visit him. So I applied for a visa at the US embassy in Amman and they approved. 17 575 Munjid explains why his brother had not been able to visit Jordan for 15 years. .يوضح منجد لماذا لم يتمكن أخوه من زيارة الأردن لمدة 15 عامًا M: he didn’t get married nor did he finish any paperwork. He had social security and he drove like he has a driver’s license which means he did not need to get any extra documents. He was married, praise be to Allah, we did send him a bride from Jordan to marry and she too did not have any documents [he means citizenship documents] and they both stayed here without official documents for about 19 years since then until [Wafa points to a boy saying they are his mother and father.] the Bush era, when they [officials] told people that they should register in order to get their documentations and I don’t know! So poor him he [his brother] went to register himself but he was arrested there, imprisoned and deported after almost 19 years. Deportation--United States Deportation ; Deportation--United States 17 Oral History Jimmy: Okay, so there' ; s some boring stuff we have to do at the beginning first. Wafa: That' ; s fine J: First thing I want to verify, how do you pronounce your names? W: [Pronounces Name] That' ; s how to pronounce it. Munjid: [Pronounces Name] ج: طيب. هل تفضلون أن تكون المقابلة في اللغة العربية أو في الانجليزية أو كلتاهما؟ W: Both is fine [W smiles and nods] م: اسألها بالانجليزية وأسألني أنا بالعربية [يضحك] J: We' ; ll see how far we can get in Arabic, and then we' ; ll switch back to English. And then, both of you, what degrees do you both hold and what is your specialization or your major? W: I have only about two years of experience back home in chemistry- and biology and chemistry, and I didn' ; t continue because I moved back here. For here, I did pharmacy technician certification and I worked with Myers Pharmacy for about like 15 years. ج: ومنجد؟ م: انا اجيت على امريكا تقريبا ثمانية وتسعين (١٩٩٨) جيت على شيكاغو لي اخوة اثنين موجودين بشيكاغو و اشتغلت يعني تعبت في اولها.أول ما جيت على أميركا تعبنا تعب الله يعلم فيه والحمد لله لكن بعديها الحمدالله كانت الامور اسهل شوية وخصوصاَ بعد ما اتزوجنا احنا تزوجنا تقريبا بالالفين وواحد تزوجت أم عبدالله، أخت وفاء، والحمدالله اجيت هون و عندي مطعم بنعمل " ; شيكن أند فش روستد" ; . وفاء (تقاطع لتذكير منجد) : احكيلهم عن back home شو درست منجد: خلصت Highschool في عمان وبعديها روحت على الجيش الاردني خدمت سبعة عشر سنة في الجيش الاردني، خلصت ملازم أول [ يؤشر على كتفه] مع نجمتين. وفاء (تذكّره): في الاتصالات منجد: Special Communication Commission اسم الوحدة اللي كنت اعمل فيها خلصت في الثمانية والتسعين، على طول طلعت على السفارة الامريكية واخدت فيزا واجيت هون واشتغلنا الحمدلله والامور استقرت تقريبا الحمدالله. Jimmy: Alright, perfect! So the interview process will last about 35-40 minutes. We' ; re going to ask you a bunch of questions, and your answers already have been perfect. [W laughs]. With the consent forms, we had you sign some at the beginning, but after we have the video we' ; ll send it to you, and then after the interview you can watch the video and make sure you' ; re happy with it and then you can sign the post-interview consent form. W: Okay. J: And if at anytime you need to think about an answer, she [referring to the filmmaker Hannah] can work the video- Hannah: I have magic, I have magic! [Room laughs] J: So she can cut out any silences. W: That' ; s fine J: But really thank you because this [work] is really important, you and your stories. (M and Wafa nod their heads) W: Okay. Thank you guys for doing this. I really appreciate it. J: Oh [he remembers] and speak loud [Room laughs] J: Are you okay with us recording the interview and using it for research and such? W: Yes (Wafa and Munjid nod their heads) J: Good to go, alright ج: متى جيتوا على كولمبوس؟ W: I came in 1994. My first time here I came in 1994. My family previously lived here. Um, my oldest brother moved here in 1972, actually. And then my father' ; s first - because we were little- he didn' ; t want to come and move to the United States at that time. My dad moved here in 1981, his first time like coming to the states. And then after that we started coming like one by one, and eventually my turn was in 1994. [W laughs] And I came straight to Columbus because, you know, I had my brother here and my parents used to come back and forth -like, they would live a couple of months here and couple months there. But then after ' ; 94, after we all moved, we just all lived here and stayed. ج: ليش ١٩٩٤؟ W: Well, like I said when we lived there, the situation in Palestine started getting really bad after 1987 for the first Intifada. I was in college, Birzeit University. They closed colleges, they closed schools. We were unable like to transport to the university and continue our school. Unfortunately, a lot of killings, a lot of protesters protested protests and stuff. They arrested my brother like 7 times, um and then my parents decided to send him right away, he was the one brother that was left there [Palestine]. So he moved in 1988, like probably during that year because it was honestly the worst year we had been through.um and after 1988, after he moved back here and started, you know, working and getting his stuff together - because financially the situation back home was really bad because nobody could work, um the only thing that my father could live off was the once a year when we collect the olives and sell the oil, and that' ; s it. so we had to wait till my brother financially you know settled down here, um and then we all moved back here. ج: وانت سكنت في أية مدينة في فلسطين؟ و: بفلسطين في رام الله W: We lived in Ramallah, our whole life, yes. So, we moved here, I came here, my brother was already in Columbus, of course. I had another sister in Virginia, she lived in Virginia, but I felt Columbus was like really quiet, small city and easy to, you know, to do stuff, to go around. So I decided just to stay, ya know, in Columbus with my brother and where my parents were. So, I think that' ; s, that' ; s it. [W smiles and gestures to M] ج: نفس السؤال (٧:٣٥) م: أوكي، أنا اجيت كنت بالجيش الأردني قولتلك وجيت زيارة روحت قدمنا فيزة زيارة لأنه كان لي اخوان اثنين في أميركا وحبيت أجي أزور لأنه أخوي ما كنت شايفه تقريبا من ١٥ سنة ، ما كنت شايفه وهو ما كان يقدر يجي على الأردن، فحبيت آجي أزوره، فقدمت فيزا في السفارة الأميركية في عمان ووافقوا لي، هذا كان ب ال 1996 ، اجيت هون جلست تقريبا ٤٠ يوم مع أخوي وشمينا الهوا الحمدالله بأميركا وانبسطنا يعني، وروّحنا. يعني أعجبتني أميركا فلما كان يعني كان ضايل لي سنتين بالجيش وبخلّص بدري [Wafa says: early retirement] سن التقاعد على طول لما خلصت سن التقاعد قدّمت استقالة من الجيش ووافقوا لي عليها، طلعت على طول عالسفارة وفيّزت اجيت هون ب ال 1998 على شيكاغو. جلست تقريباً ٣ سنوات في شيكاغو، ما كنت متزوج كنت أدوّرعلى بنت حلال. الحمد لله دلّوني قالوا فيه بنت في كولومبوس اللي هيّ وفاء حنّاوي، اجينا هان وشفناها واتفقنا الحمد لله، بس كان شرطها الوحيد أني أسكن في كولومبوس ما برجع على شيكاغو (يضحك منجد ووفاء). شو السبب؟ يعني كان السبب، كانت، يعني السبب انا بفتخر فيه، انها عشان أبوها وأمها، الله يرحمهم طبعاً. ما حبّت (منجد متأثر ويختلط كلامه بالدموع) تفارق كولومبوس ولا تسيب أمها وأبوها ، فالشي هذا أنا بفتخر فيه، انّه الإنسان بتآجر بأمه وأبوه حتى لو كان على حساب سعادته، فالحمد لله يعني اتفقنا وكل شىء تمام وتزوجنا ب الألفين وواحد ورحلت على كولومبس فعلاً. اشتغلت في بعض المحلات لما كونت نفسي. احنا كانت شغلتنا الأساسية اللي هي المطاعم في شيكاغو لكن ما كانش يعني، بدي ادور على " ; لوكيشن" ; على منطقة اللي تكون كويسة، فالحمد لله قعدت تقريبا سنة وأنا أشتغل عند الناس وبعدها الحمد لله فتحنا مطعم وتوفقنا الحمد لله! ج: كنت ضابط في الجيش؟ م: نعم! هنادة: ممكن تحكيلنا ليش اخوك ما قدر يجي على الأردن لمدة ١٥ سنة؟ م: والله هو اجا فيزة زيارة على امريكا [Wafa clarifies: student visa] م: وما تزوج ولاعمل أي أوراق. كان معاه social security وكان يعني يسوق ومعاه Driver' ; s License ما كان يعني بحاجة انو يقدم على أوراق ثانية. وتزوج سبحان الله يعني ودينا له كمان بنت من الأردن اتزوجها وبرضو ما معها أوراق هي الثانية ]يقصد وثائق الجنسية[. فقعدوا هان بدون أوراق قعدوا حوالي ١٩ سنة لما على.. ]وفاء تشير الى ولد وتقول: يعني امه و ابوه لهذا الولد [على عهد بوش لما قالوا ]المسؤولون[ للناس تروح تسجل علشان بدهم يعطوهم أوراق ومش عارف. فراح سجّل المساكين ومسكوه هناك وحبسوه وسفروه عليها بعد ١٩ سنة تقريبا. لا عليه مشاكل ولا عمره عمل مشاكل حتى يعني مخالفة سير أو سرعة ما كان عنده ]وفاء تضيف: عنده بيت و عنده سيارة و business كان وعم بيعبي tax every year وكل شئ.[ يا سبحان الله! خلاص، فروّح والحمدلله بجوز كانت الشغلة لصالحه يعني ممكن الانسان ما بيعرف فين طريق سعادته. روّحوه يعني لو تشوفيه يعني الحمدلله ربنا اعطاه من الدين والحياة الحمدلله هناك يعني. يعني كان يحلم يزور مكة مكنش يقدر يطلع. يعني الحمدلله كل سنة بيروح بيحج غير العمرات وغيرها يعني ربنا الحمدلله بقولك لما الانسان يعني ]الفكرة غير مكتملة[، كان أول ما روحوه من هان ضاقت فيه الدنيا يعني قال كيف شو بدي اروح اسوي هلا. فكر انو هذا شر لكن الحمدلله ربنا ما بيعمل للانسان الا الخير فالحمدلله ربنا وفقه هناك وهسا حتي يعني قريب ان شاء الله يجي هون بيقول مش راح استقر راح ارجع للأردن. وفاء: راح يرجع لأنه his kids ; so they were born here, and they moved back and they grew up and got married now, and they' ; re here. So he just wants to come back just to be around his kids, you know, whenever he wants to come see them. جيمي: طيب، هناك أشياء مملة لازم أن نقوم بها في البداية. وفاء: طبعا، تفضل! ج: أول شيء أريد أن أتحقق منه هو كيفية لفظ اسمائكم؟ وفاء: [تقول اسمها] هكذا تقوله. منجد: [يقول اسمه] ج: طيب. هل تفضلون أن تكون المقابلة في اللغة العربية أو في الانجليزية أو كلتاهما؟ و: كلتاهما جيد [تبتسم ويومئ برأسه] Munjid: You can ask her in English and ask me in Arabic [M laughs] ج: سنرى كيف تسير الأمور باللغة العربية وبعدها سننتقل الى الانجليزية. الان السؤال الموجه لكما، ما هي الشهادات التي تحملانها وما هو تخصصكما؟ و: عندي سنتان خبرة في الكيمياء من بلد المنشأ - وفي مادة الأحياء والكيمياء، ولكني لم أتم دراستي لأني انتقلت الى هنا. فقد حصلت هنا على شهادة فني صيدلي وعملت في صيدلية " ; مايّرز" ; لمدة حوالي ١٥ سنة. J: And Munjid? M: I came to America around 1998 ; I came to Chicago where I have two brothers who were living there. I worked hard and tirelessly at first, when I first came to America, God knows! Thanks to God, and then things got a bit easier, and especially after we married. We got married around 2001, I married Um Abdullah, Mrs. Wafa and thank God, I came here [to Columbus] and I have a restaurant, we make roasted chicken and fish. Wafa [interjects to remind Munjid]: Tell them what you studied back home. M: I finished high school in Amman, after that I served in the Jordanian army for 17 years and concluded as a lieutenant [points to his shoulder] with two stars. W [reminds him]: in Telecommunications M: Special Communication Commission is the name of the unit I was working in. I finished in 89, and immediately after I went to the American Embassy and got a visa and came here [America]. We worked here, thank God, and things settled down, thank God. ج: طيب، تمام. الان سنستمر في المقابلة حوالي ٣٥-٤٠ دقيقة. وسوف نسألكم أسئلة كثيرة، أما أجوبتكم السابقة فقد كانت ممتازة.[تضحك وفاء]. أما بالنسبة للنماذج المرافقة، فقد وقعتم على بعض منها في البداية، ولكن بعد أن ننتهي من اعداد الفيديو سوف نرسله لكم وسوف تستطيعون أن تشاهدوه وتتأكدوا من أنه يعبر عن أفكاركم بدقة. وبعد ذلك سنطلب منكم التوقيع على نموذج النهائي للموافقة على نشر فيديو المقابلة. و: طيب ج: ولا تترددوا في أخذ الوقت الذي تحتاجونه إذا أردتم أن تفكروا بالاجابة, فهي (يشير الى مصورة الفيديو هانا) تستطيع أن تحرر الفيديو -- هانا: عندي السحر عندي السحر. [يضحك كل من في الغرفة] ج: فهي تستطيع أن تقطع مواقع الصمت. و: تمام. ج: في الحقيقة أشكركم جدا لأن هذا (العمل) وقصصكم مهمة جدا. ]وفاء ومنجد يومئون رؤوسهم بالموافقة[ و: طيب. شكرا لكم فأنا أقدر هذا. ج: أه (يتذكر), أرجو أن تكلموا بصوت عالي. [يضحك كل من في الغرفة] (٣:٤٦) ج: هل تسمحوا لنا أن نصور فيديو للمقابلة ونستخدمها في الأبحاث وما الى ذلك؟ و: نعم ]وفاء ومنجد يومئون رؤوسهم بالموافقة[ ج: نحن جاهزون J: When did you arrive in Columbus? و: أنا جيت في عام ١٩٩٤. أول مرة جئت فيها الى هنا كانت في عام ١٩٩٤. سكنت عائلتي هنا [أمريكا]. في الحقيقة, لقد انتقل أخي الكبير الى هنا في عام ١٩٧٢. وبعدها في البداية أبي لم يرد - لأننا كنا صغار- أن ينتقل الى الولايات المتحدة في ذلك الوقت. ولكن أبي انتقل الى هنا في عام ١٩٨١، كانت هذه سنته الأولى في الولايات المتحدة. وبعد ذلك بدأنا أن ننتقل الى هنا الواحد تلو الأخر، وأخيرا جاء دوري في عام ١٩٩٤ [وفاء تضحك]. وأنا جئت مباشرة الى كولومبوس لأنه، كما تعرف، كان عندي أخي هنا وكان والدي ووالدتي يأتون هنا ذهابا وايابا -- يعني كانوا يعيشون شهرين هنا (أمريكا) وشهرين هناك (فلسطين). ولكن بعد ال ٩٤، بعدما انتقلنا جميعا، سكنّا جميعاً هنا وبقينا. ج: ليش ١٩٩٤؟ و: مثلما قلت سابقا، عندما كنا نسكن هناك، بدأت الأوضاع في فلسطين تسوء كثيرا بعد سنة ١٩٨٧ أثناء الانتفاضة الأولى.عندها كنت أنا في الجامعة، جامعة بيرزيت. في ذلك الوقت تم اغلاق الجامعات وتم إغلاق المدارس. ولم يكن باستطاعتنا التنقل والوصول الى الجامعة لكي نكمل دراستنا. للاسف فقد كان هناك الكثير من القتل والكثير من لاحتجاجات والمتظاهرين وما الى ذلك. وقد اعتقلوا أخي ٧ مرات وبعدها قرر والديّ أن يرسلاه إلى السفر فوراً، وقد كان هذا هوالأخ الوحيد الذي بقي هناك (فلسطين). ولذلك فقد انتقل في عام ١٩٨٨، يعني تقريبا في تلك السنة لأنها كانت أسوأ سنة مررنا بها بصراحة. وبعد عام ١٩٨٨، بعد ان انتقل الى هنا وبدأ ، كما تعرف، يعمل ويرتب أموره، - لأن الوضع الاقتصادي في فلسطين كان سيئاً جداً لأنه لم يستطع أحداً أن يعمل. والشيء الوحيد الذي كان أبي يستطيع أن يقوم به هو جمع الزيتون وبيعه فقط، لا غير. لذلك كان يجب علينا أن ننتظر حتى يتمكن أخواني من الاستقرار المادي هنا، وبعد ذلك انتقلنا نحن جميعاً الى هنا. J: What city of Palestine did you live? W: In Ramallah و: سكننا في رام الله، طوال حياتنا نعم! وقد انتقلنا إلى هنا,، أنا جئت إلى هنا، وأخي كان في موجوداً في كولومبوس من قبل طبعاً. وكانت لي أخت أخرى في ولاية فيرجينيا، هي سكنت في فيرجينيا ولكني أنا شعرت أن كولومبوس كانت مدينة فعلاً هادئة جداً ومدينة صغيرة وسهلة -كما تعرف- للتنقل وعمل الأشياء التي أريدها. لذلك أنا قررت أن أبقى -كما تعرف- في كولومبوس حيث يعيش أخي ويعيش والديّ. وهذه هي القصة [وفاء تبتسم وتشير الى منجد] J: same question M: Ok, I came, I used to be in the Jordanian army, as I told you and I came for a visit and I went and applied for a tourist visa because I have two brothers in America and I liked to come for a visit because I haven't seen my brother for about 15 years and he wasn't able to come to Jordan. So I wanted to come and visit him. So I applied for a visa at the US embassy in Amman and they approved. This was in 1996 and I came here and stayed for about 40 days with my brother, and thank God, we had fun and were happy then I went back home. I mean I liked American so when I had two years left in my service before I can get an early retirement [Wafa helps in English and says: early retirement , immediately when I reached the minimum retirement age, I submitted my resignation and they accepted it. Immediately after, I went to the Embassy and got a visa. I came here to Chicago in 1988. I stayed in Chicago for about 3 years. I wasn't married so I was looking for the right woman. Thank God, they told me there was one in Columbus, who is Wafa Hinnawi. I came here [Columbus] and I saw her and we both agreed on marriage thank God! But her only condition was that I live in Columbus and do not return to Chicago [Munjid and Wafa laugh]. What was the reason? The reason was, which I am proud of, was because of her father and mother, may they rest in peace. She did not want to [Munjid gets emotional and his words are mixed with tears] leave her mother and father. This reason, which I am proud of, because the person is ready to give up anything for the happiness of his parents, so thank God, we agreed on everything and we got married in 2001 and I indeed moved to Columbus. I worked in some stores to build myself. Our main occupation in Chicago were restaurants. But here, there wasn't, I mean I had to look for location in a good area, so thank God, I did work for almost a year for other people, after that I opened my own restaurant and thank God things have been good. J: Were you an officer? M: yes! Hanada: Can you tell us why your brothers were not able to visit Jordan for 15 years? M: He came to America on a tourist visa و: ]تأشيرة طالب[ M: He didn't get married nor did he finish any paperwork. He had social security and he drove like he has a driver's license which means he did not need to get any extra documents. He was married, praise be to Allah, we did send him a bride from Jordan to marry and she too did not have any documents [he means citizenship documents] and they both stayed here without official documents for about 19 years since then until [Wafa points to a boy saying they are his mother and father.] the Bush era, when they [officials] told people that they should register in order to get their documentations and I don't know! So poor him, he [his brother] went to register himself but he was arrested there, imprisoned and deported after almost 19 years. He was never a trouble maker, nor did he had any problem in his entire life, not even a speeding or traffic violation. [Wafa adds: He had a house, a car, a business, and he filed his taxes every year and everything]. Praise be to Allah, that was it and he went home, thank God. Maybe this played in his favor for a person might never know where his road to happiness was! So, they deported him and you just wish to see him now, thank God, and if you look now thanks to God, Our Lord gave him religious spirituality and financial prosperity there. That is, it was his dream to visit Mecca if he was able to and praise be to Allah, he is able to perform the Hajj/ pilgrimage every year now, in addition to multiple " ; Umrah" ; or smaller hajj. That is thank God, when Allah tells the person [incomplete thought]. When they first sent him back, he felt like the world got so tight on him, what should I do there now? He thought that this was all evil but, thanks to God, The Lord only does good to mankind. Praise to God, our Lord helped him there. Now he will be here God willing, he says he is not going to settle here but he wants to go back to Jordan. W: He will return because اولاده, هم ولدوا هنا ولكنهم رجعوا وتربوا هناك (الاردن) و وتزوجوا وهم الان هنا (أمريكا). لذلك هو يريد أن يأتي الى هنا لزيارتهم وقضاء الوقت معهم. Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. video This interview may only be used for educational purposes. 0
Location
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Ohio
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview61775.xml
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0003
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Title
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Munjid and Wafa Hinnawi - Part 1, October 7, 2018
Subject
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Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Date
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2018-10-07
Format
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video
Description
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Munjid speaks about how he came to the United States and explains why his brother had not been able to visit Jordan for 15 years. The interview was conducted in Pickerington, Ohio
Creator
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Interviewer: James Fennessey, Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewees: Wafa and Munjid
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
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English
Arabic
Type
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m4v
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/0c7128da92f0446957238768f1ac9595.png
ff4a2ca943ddc8e9f017c15ff388e51c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
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Arab Americans
Description
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The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Alexis Grimm
Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Wafa Hinnawi
Location
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Pickerington, Ohio
Transcription
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Wafa: It's her turn, that's why I didn't ask (laugh)
Alexis Grimm: So, I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned earlier when you were talking about how you identified very strongly as Palestinian-American. You feel a strong connection to the region as well, that's why you identify as Palestinian-American rather than Arab-American.
W: Yes, I do.
A: Can you talk more about that and why you feel such a strong connection to the region?
W: Ah, like I said previously, because of the media here is blocking a lot of stuff about especially Palestine and the Israel conflict that's going on there. Every time or every chance I have to talk to somebody or to answer a question, I like to tell them I'm "Palestinian." And I love for them to ask me questions. And I love to answer questions and show them what "Palestinian" is. What "Jerusalem" is, you know! And why is all this stuff going on around in my country and I show this in my appearance. Like I'm not shy to wear my traditional clothing. If I go out, if I go shopping, I'm fine. I see a lot of people ask me why are you wearing this [gestures to hijab], or sometimes people will see me wearing stuff like this [gestures to embroidery on sleeve of traditional dress], they will ask, you know "Where is this from?" and I will happily answer and explain to them, you know, my country, my origin, everything.
A: You mentioned earlier with your neighbor how you had to educate her about the Palestinian-Israel issue. What would you want us to know about that? Like what misconceptions might we have that you might kind of want to clear up?
W: Yeah, like I said previously, I would love for you guys to do more research. Get on Youtube, on Facebook. Get connected with the Middle Eastern region and see exactly what's going on, and hear. Hear and see what's going on from both sides, you know what I mean. Because there is like a big community of Israeli people who are real Jewish, and they don't like the killing and all this stuff. Because my neighbor's mom, her mom is Jewish. And she specifically told me, she said, "I am Jewish, and I believe in Moses, but I don't believe in killing. I don't believe in somebody coming and take my land or my home or my, you know! So I would love for American people to be more open and educate themselves more. Because, like for us, when we come here, we learn, we try to learn everything you know about American life, about culture, about schools, about everything. And I'm one of the people that I like to get involved in everything. Like I get involved in my son's school, I participate with PTA, with my daughter's school, same thing. Even in Arabic school, I participate with PTA to have a lot of connection with the kids, with the parents. So, I would like - I would love for American people to do the same thing. Like get involved with more Arab people, or with more Muslim people. We do have um a lot of Christian people that live in Palestine and we lived all our lives with, especially like in Ramallah or Bethlehem, we lived like family. We were so close, there is no difference between me and my Christian neighbor. We go to them for their holidays, for their feasts, they go to us. We had a Christian neighbor that they used to fast with us, in Ramallah. I swear, they used to fast with us in Ramadan. Or even if they're not fasting they will never eat or drink in front of us. When they come to visit us, they'll be like "Oh, we're fasting like you guys." They will celebrate our holiday, they will make cookies and stuff for our holiday like it's their holiday. Same thing with us, when it's like Christmas, we'll go to them, we'll bake them cookies, and I do the same thing with my neighbors. Like if it's Christmas, I'll make some something and I'll send it to them. I'll send them gifts, and they'll do the same thing on my holiday. They'll come, they'll bring me cookies, they'll bring me flowers or something to congratulate us for our holiday. So I've tried to keep like in contact with them and let them know, you know "Here we are." That's how Muslims are. Muslims are not terrorists. They don't like killing. They like to live in peace. Why do you think we moved and left our countries and moved here? We moved here to live in peace. And practice peace. It doesn't mean that there is no bad Muslims, there is a lot of bad people in every religion. There is bad Christian people, there is bad Muslim people, there is bad Jewish people, there is bad people everywhere. But you cannot judge all Muslims because one bad Muslim did something wrong, and that's what's happening, unfortunately, here. When they announced on September 11th, that "OK, Osama Bin Laden did this." You think all Muslims agree with that? you think all Muslims liked that? No. There was, I think, I don't remember the number, but there was a lot of Muslim people that got killed that day too, that they worked there and they got killed. Does this mean that you know they are also bad? No. So we want American people and the whole world to identify Muslim as a Muslim, as a person of a religion, as a person of peace. We do not believe in killing. Our prophet, there is a lot of verses in our Holy Book, a lot of verses from our prophet, that says do not kill, do not do this, do not do this. So we don't believe in that. So if somebody, if one bad guy does something, it doesn't mean that you know all Muslims are bad. And same thing, there is a lot of American people that killed tons of Muslim people in their stores, in their places. Like a couple of weeks ago, two people got killed. In Akron, last year, a Muslim guy, 26 years old, in his pizza shop, somebody walked in, stole the money, and killed him. He died. Does this mean all of the - does this give me the right to say, "Oh, all American people are bad because this American guy killed a Muslim man?" No. I can't judge everybody. And that's the biggest thing that's going on here that faces all Muslims. You know they just think Muslims are terrorists. A lot of people, like nowadays, especially after Trump took over, it's it's really horrible. Because now they just say it in front of you, they don't care, they don't care. Like Tuttle Crossing Mall, now. It's not like before [addressing Hanada], it's totally different. If you walk in, you will see all those people looking at you different. The other day, one of my friends said she was at Walmart, and a guy approached her and he said "Oh, What are you doing here? What are you doing here, why are you not going back to your country? That's not your country." All this because she was wearing her hijab and she was shopping. He was like, "Go back to your country, you are Muslim, you're not supposed to be here. You are terrorist." I swear, wallah (والله) she told me yesterday at the mosque. She was like, this is what happened with me. And I was like "What did you say?" And she was like,"I didn't say anything." And I was like, no, if I was you, I would stop by and say, "Ok, did I do something bad to you? What did you see from me? Did I approach you, did I cuss on you, did I do anything bad to you, did I misbehave?" If I did something of that, you can approach me and say something to me. But as long as I'm behaving myself and I know my rights and I know what to do and I'm following the law, there is nothing you can do to me. You know I'm a human being, you're a human being. And everybody makes mistakes, nobody's perfect You know. So that's one of the things that I would love to see all American people look at it in a different way. Not just what the media is putting in their minds. Because I watch American news everyday. I watch Fox News, I watch Channel 10, I watch CNN and everything I see its, shows that Israeli people are the most innocent people in the world. And Palestinian people, Muslim people are the worst people in the world. They're doing this and they're doing that. That's one of the main things that I would love to see American people more open minded, doing more research, and talk about it. And it's not only me. I'm sure that if you approach any Muslim person, and talk to him and ask him any question, he'd be more than happy to introduce himself and talk to you and give you any information that you want. And they will tell you that we are all against killing and You know the killing of all innocent people, that they don't deserve to be dead.
A: So when you come into contact with these negative perceptions in the news, or people and their ignorance, in things like Walmart or shopping centers, things like that, how do you, how do you combat that? If they approach you by yourself or if they approach you with your family.
W: I will stand up for my family, for my beliefs, and I will talk back to them in a nice way. I'm not gonna be rude. If they're rude to me, I'm not gonna be rude too because that's not my religion. Even my religion, even my holy book tells me if somebody is being bad or misbehaves to you have to treat them with dignity and respect. So, I will approach him, I will explain to him that you know I did not do anything bad you and, here you go. But if he's one of the people that you cannot even talk to him, I'll probably, maybe call 911 for him, but I know that are not gonna do anything. But that's what I will do. I will stand up for my family. I'll protect myself, my family in any way I can.
A: I know you mentioned like you'll wear your traditional clothing and things like that and that's how you stay strong and preserve your culture and the way that you identify. Is there anything else that you do ...
W: Like in my house, um, as you've seen it's most traditional. I teach my kids since, I taught them since they were in KG, I taught them the language, I'm teaching them the religion, I'm teaching them the holy book. I'm still making all our traditional food, I hardly make American food, we always eat, you know, Arabic, Palestinian food. So, yeah, we pray five times a day. Um, What else? Everything that we do is based on our culture and the stuff that we, that I was raised of, same thing I'm teaching my kids.
A: So, has it been hard, um, coming to America trying to preserve your culture or has it been easy to teach [inaudible] ...?
W: It is, it is. Because I see, I do see a lot of people, it's really tough on them to keep their, you know, Muslim identity, or Arabic tradition, along with the American life. But I think it's not hard. If you try and you keep trying you can do it. You can do it. Because if you move to live in Jordan, or maybe - you tried it, and I think you had chance to keep your American style, or your American life. But on the other hand, you got involved with life there. So same thing here. It doesn't mean, like my kids won't eat American food, that doesn't mean, you know, I'm not going to let them try American food, or eat American food. They will. We go to American restaurants, we go to Italian restaurants. But the main thing they know, okay, we know we are Arabs, we're Muslim, that's our culture, that's the stuff that we do, that's the stuff we eat, and all this stuff.
Hanada Al-Masri: So obviously, you are maintaining a lot of Arabic tradition within your family and life and I assume you also integrate within the American culture, so if we can ask you to identify some of the contributions that you have for your community, local community her in Columbus, and Arab-American community and American community in general, what would you say?
ونفس السؤال: شو المساهمات اللي ساهمتوها للمجتمع الأميركي. يعني انتو عرب أمريكيين الآن فبتساهموا في المجتمع. يعني محلك او المطعم هو مساهمة منك لخدمة المجتمع. فممكن تحكيلنا عن الموضوع هذا لو سمحت؟
W: Okay, for us as, um, as Arab, as an Arabic community here, first of all we encourage people especially through the Noor Islamic Center and ICC that we have, it's like one of the main Islamic centers here in Columbus, Ohio, we got involved there. We do a lot of meetings with senators, with people from government, we invite them to the mosque, they get to meet us, we do encourage people around voting, we do put it post it on websites and even in the mosques we post flyers. Encourage people to vote, teach people about you know the political here in the United States, and teach them how to get their choice, you know how to pick their choice. Okay, what has this person been doing, what this person is doing, and it's up to you. Like for now, we are waiting for November 6 election, and we are like listening and teaching ourselves about the DeWine-Cordray issue, you know, for our governor, and so we like showing the Muslim community what this person wants to the community, what this person wants to the community, we get a lot of people come in and talk to us in the, especially on Fridays, Friday night they come and they talk, Saturdays. We do have what's called Islam one-on-one on Saturday at NICC, which we have people come from like, schools, churches, um um colleges, they come and it's like about two hour session, they sit down and they have all kinds of questions answered. Whatever question they have about Islam, about Arabic, about religion, about the Muslim community. They're free to come and they are welcome. And I wanna tell you one incident that it was on, actually it was on Facebook over last year around, you know, the voting and all this Trump thing. We had a protester, she was from Lancaster, [addressing Hanada-do you remember Hanada?] She was from Lancaster, and she was one of those like, excuse my language, but she was so ignorant. She hated us so bad, and she stood for about like three hours, holding that sign, you remember in front of the Masjid, and she was like everybody will pass by her and she will cuss him. She was so bad. We do have an American Muslim lady, and she's very active with the Muslim community, and she wears the hijab too, so what she did: she approached that lady, and the first thing she told her, she said: Can I have a hug? Can I give you a hug? That lady gave her that like weird look, like what are you talking about, I'm cussing you and I'm cussing your people, and you want me to give you a hug? So that lady was like, she hesitated for a minute, and then she hugged her and she said, may I welcome to you to our center? why don't you come in for a cup of coffee and some treat? And she was like no, I'm not. And then she finally got in, she sat down for about two more hours, and she had all kind of questions to ask there. She was asking about Muslim people, about Islam, about Arab, all those kinds of questions. She ended up leaving the mosque in tears. She apologized to everybody, and she said "I am so sorry, and I am so sorry for all my behavior, and I did not know how kind and peaceful you are". And that was something that we were so proud of because if we left her there standing and did not approach her, she could have probably had more people come in and you know. And at one point, when all those problems started we had people come and have signs saying "you are our neighbors, we are with you". And that was really heart-warming, you know, when all those things started and they started targeting Islamic centers and stuff. They stood around the NICC holding those signs and that was something deep to us, we did appreciate that, we did love those people. Because we live with them, you know, we live. I live, my whole neighborhood, I have no Muslim people here. All my neighborhood they're American, all my neighbors, they're American. None of them's Arab, none of them's Muslim, but I have perfect communication, perfect relationship with all of them. Like on Halloween, they'd have a party, and they invite me and I take my kids and go, even though they know I don't celebrate Halloween, we don't do anything for Halloween, but because I appreciate my neighbors, I just go and join them for an hour, you know, or so. Just to let them feel, you know, you're my neighbors, I appreciate you, I appreciate your holiday, I appreciate what you're doing, you know. I will go, I won't reject it and say "oh, they're American and I don't wanna go, I don't wanna get involved, I don't celebrate Halloween." Well my kids know we don't celebrate Halloween, we do not believe in Halloween because it's not in our religion, it's not in our beliefs, but I can't prevent my children to participate with their neighbors or with their friends. They know we're not celebrating the holiday, but we're just going out for fun with our neighbors, you know, with our friends. Some people, they don't, some people they say "No, I'm not, I don't believe in it, I'm not sending my kids." That's fine, it's up to you. You can do that. But I wanna maintain good relationships with my neighbors, same thing what we do in Noor Islamic Center, we're trying to maintain perfect and good relationships with all the neighbors around. As I said, we educate Muslim children about Islam, about peace, about the beliefs of us. My son had only like one or two kids in the whole school that were Muslims. He was like the president of the Muslim holiday in school. He picked that, he told his teacher, "okay, we're Muslim, I'm gonna be in charge of Muslim holidays to teach friends about Muslim holidays." Like, last year, he did a project; his social studies teacher, because they learn about Judaism, about Islam, and about like all the old days, and he gave them options for project. Like several options. One of the options was about our Holy Book, which it the Quran, so he did that. He chose to do that, I did not force him, I did not ask him to do that. I was like, well okay here's your option what do you wanna do, and he said I wanna do this, I wanna do this project about Quran. So he did it. So this way they keep, you know, they're proud, alhamdulillah, they're proud to be Muslims. They're not shy to say we're Muslim-Americans, because no one would recognize my daughter as Muslim because she's not wearing the hijab yet. But she's proud to say in school, and tell friends "I'm Muslim.", you know, because she's learned, she's been taught and she was raised to be proud of her identity. Even though, okay, she's American, we're proud to be American, we're proud to be, you know, holding the American passport, we live here, we do our living, we cannot deny that, it's a fact. If we didn't live here, God knows how you know, we established life, we established business, we're living a good life. So we do appreciate that, but on the other hand, we appreciate our religion and our culture. So like all her friends know she's Muslim, she tells them like, when it's lunch, okay, if it's like pizza with pork, "okay, I don't eat that." She goes and plays with my neighbors and sometimes they do you know the fire, and do s'mores. You know what she does? Right away, she comes running home because we don't eat more, and marshmallows have . . . It's made of pork. So she runs, she runs home and picks up a bag of halal marshmallows and takes it back and participates with him. She's having fun, but on the other hand she's not, you know this woman not doing something against her religion even though she's only ten years old. Because she's raised that way. She knows what goes with our religion and what does not go with our religion. She knows what goes with our culture, and what does not go with our culture. And I'm trying, you know we're trying our best to do that (laughs) and keep them educated and up to date and up to time and up to everything, with everything.
H: Thank you very much, this is amazing. Is there anything that you wanted us to ask and we haven't asked you?
W: I guess you did ask me everything. I think I answered more than you asked me! (laughs)
H: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you
W: (Arabic response to shukran). Same thing, thank you so much. Do you have any questions? (laughs)
A: I have another question.
W: تفضلي. Yeah, that's fine, go ahead.
A: I know some people identify as Arab-American and that you identify as Palestinian-American. What for you is the difference between being Palestinian-American and being Arab-American?
W: Like I said previously, I'm proud to be Arab, but I try my best to say Palestinian because I want everybody to know "what is Palestine" or "where is Palestine." Because if we stop saying Palestine, we will look at the map one day and find no Palestine, that's why. That's why. To be an Arab, and I'm proud to be Arab. And I'm from the Middle East. But on the other hand I would love to tell people Palestine because I want everybody to know what is Palestine and where is Palestine.
A: Did you ever get frustrated or overwhelmed because you feel like you have to be a representative for Palestine and a representative for the Muslim community? Do you ever get frustrated?
W: Actually, no. I'm fine. I get frustrated sometimes when people ask me and say "where are you from?" and I say "Palestine" or "Jerusalem" and they will be like, "Where is that?" That gets me really frustrated, because I agree when I say Palestine maybe they don't know what Palestine is, but I think everybody in the world should know what Jerusalem is. What Jerusalem is. You know Jerusalem, it's written in all the holy books.
M: And Jesus was born there.
W: Yeah, it's written in all...
Original Format
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MP4 - 720p HD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:27:01
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
00:00:00 - Identity Formation (Why does Wafa identify as a Palestinian-Arab-American?)
00:01:43 - Clearing up misconceptions
00:11:35 - Wafa speaks about how she preserves her culture
00:14:01 - Wafa speaks about her contributions to the Arab-American community
00:19:54 - Wafa speaks about her good relationships with her American neighbors.
00:24:45 - Conversation/Thanks
00:25:10 - Wafa on Palestinian-American identity
OHMS Object
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview62573.xml
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0005
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Munjid and Wafa Hinnawi - Part 3, October 7, 2018
Subject
The topic of the resource
Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Description
An account of the resource
Wafa speaks about her identify as a Palestinian-Arab-American. The interview was conducted in Pickerington, Ohio
Creator
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Interviewers: Alexis Grimm, Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewees: Wafa and Munjid
Source
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<a href="https://youtu.be/OSjKfO2BrqA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://youtu.be/OSjKfO2BrqA</a>
Publisher
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Denison
Date
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October 7, 2018
Contributor
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Hannah Bennett, filming
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by <a href="http://arab-american-project.org">http://arab-american-project.org</a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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video
Language
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English and Arabic
Type
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Oral History
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/777b6f27622ce8c7689eebacc7d644d5.png
5c07abd972d3d27259194cd77939db41
Dublin Core
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Title
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Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jimmy Fennessey
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lubna
Original Format
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MP4 Video, HD
Duration
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00:40:50
Sort Priority
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0006
OHMS Object
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview97946.xml
Dublin Core
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Title
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Lubna Atif - December 2, 2018
Source
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<a href="https://youtu.be/f-5Q6j3Y2v4">https://youtu.be/f-5Q6j3Y2v4</a>
Publisher
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Denison
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020
Description
An account of the resource
Lubna describes her childhood years growing up in Sudan. She speaks about her professional life and about her volunteer work at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center, which centers around building relationships with the local community. This interview took place in central Ohio
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jimmy Fennessey
Subject
The topic of the resource
Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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video
Relation
A related resource
Additional contextual notes:
Arab Spring - The Arab Spring was a series of popular uprisings that began in late 2010 in Tunisia and continued into 2012 throughout the Arab World. Protests and uprisings took place in nearly every Arab country in response to oppressive regimes and low standards of living.
1989 - On June 30th, 1989, officers in the Sudanese military overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and instituted military rule. This coup was instituted in part due to dissatisfaction in the military with the way in which the Prime Minister was handling the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). Omar al-Bashir, the leader of the coup, was the ruler of Sudan until his displacement in 2019 by another military coup.
1986 - Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi formed a coalition government between various northern and southern Sudanese political parties. This government was rife with issues of corruption and factionalism, so it was dismissed after less than a year and a new coalition was formed. After multiple weak coalitions under al-Mahdi, Omar al-Bashir seized power in 1989.
1964 - In 1964, Sudan returned to civilian rule after the October Revolution after being under a military dictatorship since 1958. The October Revolution was started by students in Khartoum and soon spread to the other major cities throughout Sudan. Following five days of intense protests, Ibrahim Abbud, the leader of Sudan’s military government, announced the dissolution of his military council.
1956 - Sudan became independent on January 1st, 1956 following the creation of Sudan’s declaration of independence. The first government of the Republic of Sudan, under Ismail al-Azhari, was in power until 1958 when it was overthrown in a coup by General Ibrahim Abbud.
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/d406069265c31f98e0ec217f11a862d4.png
a1c287bc39dd71ce30d9aa29088a425b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Olivia Reynolds
Mohamed El Sayed
Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Gehan
Mohamed
Location
The location of the interview
Central Ohio
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Olivia Reynolds: Can you tell us a little bit of how it was like when you first arrived here? Did you have any struggles?
Mohamed: I came here on November 27, 1978 and I arrived in Chicago with $44 in my pocket. I didn’t even know where to go, I know I have relatives in Ohio here, and luckily a person helped me at the airport, I showed him the address and he put me on a plane and I came to Ohio, which my sister and her husband, they were here and it was hard for me at the beginning because I had to go school, and they helped me actually the first quarter, they paid $600 for me to go to school; and at that time $600 for me was too much money for me, I had only $44 in my hand what was I going to do? Then I end up, start going to college and start working; my first job was working at the valet parking at Sheraton Hotel. I was getting $1.78 an hour, and after that I started looking for other things to do, and it happened I was doing a few jobs at the same time, working salesman, working at Sheraton, work in the kitchen; and I used to get sleep—maybe only 3-4 hours of sleep some weeks, I didn’t get much sleep. I wanted to accomplish myself, I wanted to be when I go back to my country, my family I wanted to be proud of me; my mom and dad especially because they were opposed to me coming here as I said before, I had dream I wanted to come to America. So I established myself, I worked very hard. I met the wife in 1985; she was going to school, she spent about 7 years back and forth between here and Egypt, while I was working here. And When she came back, we felt like we are married again, because it was kinda like, ya know we were married but she was distant, and we have been working since. We established ourselves alhamdulillah, great and she has her own dental office and I have my business also, and the kids help me in it. We are in real estate, we do real estate commercial buildings and rent them and we have a car dealer, and we send the kids to school, it was very expensive and I didn’t want them to come out of school with student loans, so we have to pay for the school while they’re going; and it got to the point, when they were going the three of them at the same time, we were playing like a little over $11-12,000 each quarter, it was very difficult for us. But thanks to God they all graduated and the wife graduated and she’s doing good in her dental office, and that's how we started. It was very difficult beginning, very very difficult beginning. You know the first thing, the language was big problem for me, and to know you’re way around it was a little bit of an obstacle. My dream was to have a car and one day to have a house, it was my dream. And then alhamdulillah we achieve all our goals. So there’s nothing impossible, anything is possible if you put your mind to it, you’ll achieve your goals and get there.
Hanada: Dr. Gehan, you have a dentist office, right?
Gehan: Yes, I do.
H: And, of course you have customers who are Americans and Arabs and otherwise?
G: Yes, all.
H: How did that knowing you’re Arab American, did that affect your business at all?
G: I don’t think so. Like you know, people after they come and they get the kind of service that I offer for them, they’re very happy and they appreciate what I do and even where I come from.
M [adds]: Even though, she gets more patients than some other doctors because she’s female, she speaks the languages; and her office is probably is the only office that speaks four languages there.
G: Yes.
M [continues]: so they can in Arabic, Latinos, Somalian and English; so any patient that come in and doesn’t speak English they have a person, you know an assistant, who speaks in a different language, all of them.
G: Yeah, we do that on the spot.
M: So, she’s doing very well, she’s very successful, she’s actually one of the good doctors in Columbus
G: Yeah, ahamdulilah. Like Mohamed said, when I first came here, you know it was really difficult. I was 21, my husband 27 when we got married. We were both working; my first job was at Pizza Hut, I still remember it [laughs]. It was hard [laughs]. And now thinking about it from Pizza Hut to where I’m at right now, I feel blessed. I feel very happy that I was able to accomplish or do what I did, you know, and go to college and raise my kids and put them through school and find me and my husband. I’m feeling very happy, very proud of what I did.
Mohamed El Sayed: So when did you get a chance of meeting all those awesome people that you have the pictures of in your office?
M: That was back in probably, my beginning was of all those things back in ‘94, and that’s when I started getting involved in, you know, in the local governments and things like that. So, throughout the years from ‘94 through those days, and I’m still very active and I represent the community here, we have a very large community in Columbus. I represent to the community on multiple levels, in Washington and lots of times when they have the process and people come from overseas and I’m always invited and get my ticket to be invited. You know actually, I had clearance to the White House, it wasn’t easy to get in so they have to check, You know and so I’ve been there many many many of times. I attend most of the peace meetings in Washington, I was invited to.
MES: So how does your dream evolve from only have a car and a house and maybe someday you’re going to have a house, to like actually being in that position, like being involved in politics and economics and businesses?
M: Determination, when you’re determined. I am also a private pilot, I learned how to fly. I wanted to do too many things I wanted to do. I had so much energy and I never wasted my time. So any opportunity I was thinking about, I will do it. So I start businesses in 1980, which I came here in 1978, so in three years we had the business in Cincinnati. After that I start first business and then moved to other different businesses, and I have probably in total about 12 different categories of business. And thanks to God, we have been very successful, we did not fail in any of them [clears throat]. Now for the last few years, we got out to the retail business we focus on the real estate, which is much more productive for us and easier. And with the age, you just relax and take a little break. And I want to spend time with the family more. I feel like the quality time now is to spend with the family and the kids and just to be able to travel without having that stress in you ‘Where am I gonna come up with that money? How am I gonna pay the bills?’ So uh, as I said the determination that you want to achieve your goal you want to be some important person in your life, you wanna be an important figure, you have to be part of the culture, part of society which you just have to continue going, I mean determination will get you where you wanna get. Even though it was a struggle for me to come up with the money at the beginning, but I was working so many hours I believe from the middle 80s to maybe just last couple of years. I was putting in hours 15, 17 hours per day, that’s seven days a week. I never took a vacation until actually probably 5 years ago when the wife, uh, she started to have her dental office, we start being a little bit more comfortable financially, that's when I started being able to take vacations. For probably 25-30 years I never took a vacation.
H: And it seems through your business you’re offering a lot of job, employment opportunities for younger generations. Can you tell us about your employees, like where are they from basically?
M: Well, it's a-- we hire lots of people. We had too many different hires, local people some of our peoples who come in from overseas. We never made difference between them whether a person local and like, you know, born here, or whoever can do the job we’ll hire him and we treat them well, always I feel like, you know, I’m investing in that person the money I’m giving to him. I treated them with respect, and they were very loyal to us. We never had any issues with employees. Very loyal. We treat them with full respect, pay them on time, treat them with dignity, and they were loyal to us even though at one point I have 12 businesses running at the same time. From Colorado to Ohio to Columbus and Cincinnati, at the same time. So I was just traveling, a lot of times I just do a lot of traveling and at the same time I was going to school, to college. So I was flying sometimes I could be in Colorado and my exam is tomorrow, I just come and take the exam and leave.
MES: So I can see that there’s like a lot of similarities between you and my dad: that both of you, you started from like nothing and you came to like something. But I always hear my dad telling me that he wants me to be not just like him but even better. Do you feel the same for your children? How do you push them towards that goal?
M: The time has changed. What we been through, you’ll never be through. I always try not to let my kids been through what I have been through. But, to be like your dad or a little bit better, take his advice. When he tells you do something, or the way to do it, listen to him and take everything he said in consideration. Take his advice because the only person that wants you to be better than him is your dad. A father always wants to have his kids be successful, and even than him and doing better. We get out of pride, we get security for you and your family in the future, and the father will advise you. He been through this, that's the expertise, the expert. The experience he had before, the obstacles you don’t have to go through it. So you just get the result, he tell you to do it, that's the way it should be done-- listen.
MES: And how do you push your children, your adult children, they’re not children but [laughs].
G: [laughs]
M: I lecture them probably twice a week and sometimes they hate me [laughs] They don’t want no lectures because, you know, every time we sit down and have a few minutes with them I try to always remind them, constant remind them. You do this and you do this and you do this. So the main thing, I want to keep them away from all the troubles, that's one thing. I want them to keep their heritage, where they came from. I want them to be a good citizen of the country here and abroad, and I want them to be very highly educated, not just finish high school. And I want them to be a person the people take them as a role model. When your father remind you on a daily basis of things like that, eventually you’re gonna listen. So the first thing, you wanna finish your school, your education that’s the most important thing. And use your vision, you have to have vision, you cannot just look, you know ‘What are you gonna do today?’ You have to think for like 10 years and 20 years what am I gonna be in 20 years or 30 years and 50 years from now, ‘When am I gonna be retired?’ ‘Am I gonna continue working for somebody?’ The paycheck sometimes, yeah it's great but you wanna be somebody. You want the people to take you as a role model.
OR: Do you have anything final to say about how you got here? Anything else to say about your culture or your homeland that you want Americans to know?
M: I want the Americans to know that, as I said before, they did not have a clue how the people they were living there in third world countries, most of them I think people take for granted they’re living in heaven and how it compared to third world country. I love my country, and I will never [clears throat] wanted to see the people think bad about our country. We have good values, we have family tradition, we have good values, it’s not even found in any society but probably in the Middle East. We’re very warm people, very generous, we’re honest, we look for our neighbors. The lack of information, the lack of knowledge that the American society had before; they always assume what we are, they assume everybody has a camel for example, everyone has an oil well, which is not. We work, we’re very hard working people. We wanted to be like everybody else, and we’re normal people. Years ago before the war in Iraq, they didn’t know anything about the Middle East, if they see somebody wearing the veil they look at them like an uneducated person, no. The women wear the veil, they’re veiled because they choose; no man forces wife. It’s her option, her choice, if she wants to wear it, fine; if she don’t want to wear it, fine. So it's-- as I said it’s you know the wife has the choice to wear-- to practice her religion. My wife, sometimes she wear it, sometime she doesn’t; that’s her choice, I don’t ask, you know. So my advice to the young generation: to look for the best, to be a hard worker, to focus on their school, to stay away from all the troubles and bad friends and all this little crazy stuff going around, and look for future. Think about your future for 20 and 30 and 50 years, where I am going to be. Am I gonna be just another person live and make the living and eat and sleep or I wanna be an important person, to be productive. Each one of us has a responsibility, each one of us should live [inaudible], he leave this Earth and the people say he did some, he left some behind. A legacy; you have to leave some behind for the people who look after you.
G: I agree, you know, you have to have a purpose in life. You have to, in order to be happy I think you have to contribute and not just take, you have to give. You know, for me I try to help younger people also and like students who wants to become a dentist, like my door is always open and they come and they can shadow me, and actually 3 of the people that shadowed me, they actually all got into the dental school [chuckles]. I’m so happy for them. Also, the dental assisting schools they always send people there actually; I have some awards from them because I was helping a lot the dental school and dental assisting school. So I’m always looking for ways to contribute more and more, you know, always come up with an idea, you know “how can I contribute to my community?’ ‘How can I, like my husband said leave a thumbprint?’ you know after you leave, what did you do? Did you have a purpose? Did you do something?
M: You know, when we go travel overseas, like especially in Palestine, we do help whatever we can, it's not a large amount but we can do what we can for the schools, hospital, I sponsor 5 kids from the university. When I was there on trip, they are smart kids but they are short on their fees. We took care of this. So, we try to help as much we can, and always just like the wife said, the doctor said, or Gehan said: contribute. It doesn’t mean you have to contribute, what you can, what you can give. When you give, when you learn how to give, you feel better always.
G: Yes.
M: And the person who gives feels always much better than the person who takes. Whether you give advice, you give knowledge, you give a hand to somebody, you contribute what you can. It doesn’t have to be money all the time, sometime you just don’t have it, but somebody ask you for assistance for help, don’t back down. Just do it.
Original Format
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MP4 Video - 720p HD
Duration
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00:18:22
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
1:34-3:39
Description of their experiences upon first arriving in the United States
3:40-5:32
Gehan speaks about what it is like being Arab-American and reflects on how it was when she first came to the United States.
5:33-6:45
Mohamed speaks about how he met a variety of well-known people.
6:46-9:09
Mohamed speaks about the evolution of his dream.
9:10-10:25
Mohamed speaks about his employees
10:26-11:40
Mohamed speaks about the younger generations
11:41-13:06
Mohamed & Gehan speak motivating their adult children.
13:07-18:22
Mohamed and Gehan share their final thoughts about aspects of their culture and homeland and what they would like Americans to know about their culture.
OHMS Object
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview61635.xml
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0002
Dublin Core
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Title
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Gehan and Mohamed - Part 2, October 28, 2018
Subject
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Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Description
An account of the resource
Gehan and Mohamed speak about the experiences when first arriving in the United States; Gehan speaks about what it is like being Arab-American and the effect that has on her dentist office; Mohamed speaks about the evolution of his goals; Mohamed speaks about younger generations; Gehan and Mohamed share their final thoughts aspects of their culture and homeland they would like Americans to know about. This interview took place in central Ohio.
Creator
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Interviewers: Olivia Reynolds, Mohamed El Sayed, Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewees: Gehan and Mohamed
Source
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<a href="https://youtu.be/grqg74V3e4I" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://youtu.be/grqg74V3e4I</a>
Publisher
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Denison
Date
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October 28, 2018
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Hannah Bennett, filming
Adam Venrick, filming
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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video
Language
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English with Arabic translation
Type
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Oral History
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/8f415e60f9585532834cce8fc68e0c31.png
a1c287bc39dd71ce30d9aa29088a425b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Olivia Reynolds
Mohamed El Sayed
Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Gehan
Mohammed
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS SML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Arab American Community
Central Ohio
Ohio
Arab culture
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and/or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.2 Interview with Gehan and Mohamed - Part 1, October 28, 2018 0:14:11 Arab American Community in Central Ohio Oral History Project Denison University This project was part of the Ohio Five’s Digital Scholarship initiative, which was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Education Immigrants-Ohio Culture Arab Americans-Ohio Arab American Community Central Ohio Ohio Arab culture Gehan Mohammed Olivia Reynolds, Mohamed El Sayed, Hanada Al-Masri Gehan.mp4 1:|5(2)|26(1) 1:|6(1)|32(6)|48(15)|64(2)|76(4)|95(2)|110(10)|126(2)|139(8)|156(3)|171(2)|188(5)|207(5)|224(7) Arabic 1 https://youtu.be/WNJa_Z8xdq4 YouTube video English 0 Project Logistics/Introductions لوجيستيات المشروع / مقدمة OR: This is Olivia Reynolds interviewing Gehan and Mohamed on October 28, 2018 for the Denison University Oral History Digital Collection project on Arab Americans in Central Ohio. Gehan is going to talk about life in the U.S. as an Arab American. أنا &quot ; أوليفيا رينولدز&quot ; وأجري مقابلة مع جيهان ومحمد في ٢٨ أكتوبر في عام ٢٠١٨ لمشروع جامعة دينيسون الرواية التاريخية الشفوية عن العرب الأمريكيين في وسط ولاية أوهايو. ستتكلم جيهان عن حياتها في أمريكا كعربية أمريكية. Permission to film 17 25 What brought them to the United States جيهان ومحمد يشرحان ما الذي احضرهما الى الولايات المتحدة G: Okay, I like life here as an Arab American in this country. I first came here in 1985. I was a student in dental school in Egypt, and then I came here. I had a relative here, my sister. ج: حسناً، أنا أحب العيش في هذا البلد كعربية أمريكية. أنا جئت الى هنا أول مرّة في عام ١٩٨٥. كنت طالبة في جامعة طب الأسنان في مصر ثم جئت الى هنا، كانت عندي قريبة هنا، أختي. Gehan &amp ; Mohamed explain why they came to the US. Coming to America 17 167 Their reasons for remaining in the United States اشباب بقائهم في الولايات المتحدة M: and I’m the same way. I always, when I was a young kid in school, it was my dream to come to America. It’s always been a dream to me. م: وأنا نفس الشيء. فعندما كنت ولداً صغيراً في المدرسة كان حلمي دائماً أن أجيء الى أمريكا. فقد كان هذا دائماً حلمي. Arab immigrants ; Coming to America Arab American families 17 228 Gehan reflects on what she misses about Egypt جيهان تتحدث عما تفتقده في مصر I mean, Thank God, I am very lucky because there is nothing here that I cannot do that I used to do in Egypt. Just merely in like Ramadan, I miss Ramadan in Egypt. ج: هو يعني أنا الحمدلله يعني محظوظة جدا لأنه مفيش أي حاجة هنا يعني مبقدرش أعملها كنت بعملها في مصر. بس مجرد انه في يعني رمضان بفتقد رمضان في مصر. جميل جداً لان المسحراتي و الافطار الجماعي و الحجات دي كلها. بس بنحاول هنا برضو يعني نقدر نعيش بنفس الطريقة يعني نقدر نحافظ على الحاجات اللي اتعلمناها. 17 275 Mohamed answers the question about whether or not he misses something from Palestine. يجيب محمد على السؤال عما إذا كان قد يفتقد شيء من فلسطين أم لا M: You know, it’s, life here is a little bit different because the social life is different. Back in Palestine, it's more of a social life than here ; here, you work, you go to work everyday. م: كما تعرف، فان الحياة هنا مختلفة قليلاً لأن الحياة الاجتماعية مختلفة. هناك في فلسطين الحياة اجتماعية أكثر من هناك؛ كما تعرف أنت هنا تعمل وتذهب الى عملك كل يوم. ويعني نستطيع أن نجتمع بأصدقائنا في بعض المناسبات. 17 327 We have two countries محمد يقول إن لدينا دولتين M: Palestine, it's in the heart, we will never forget our countries. Our countries, it’s great. We are part of it. We feel fortunate to have two countries, we came to this country and this is also is our country. م: فلسطين في القلب ولن ننسى بلادنا. بلادنا ممتازة. نحن جزءاً منها. ونشعر بأننا محظوظين لأننا ننتمي الى بلدين اثنين فنحن جئنا لهذا البلد ونعتبره بلدنا أيضاً. ونبقى على تواصل مع العائلات وكذلك نرجع الى الوطن ونزور الأقارب. أخذ الزوجة والأولاد أحياناً لمدة سنة وأحيانا لمدة ثلاث سنوات. 17 412 The differences between Egypt or Palestine and America الاختلافات بين مصر أو فلسطين وأمريكا You know about that journalist [referring to Jamal Khashoggi] he said that, you know, that he expressed his opinion and we know what happened to him and this is a part of, you know, living in an Arab country you always worry about expressing your opinion and what is going to happen to you. تعرف يعني، عن الصحفي [تقصد جمال خاشقجي] وعما حدث له أنه كان يعبرعن رأيه ونعرف ماذا حدث له وهذا جزء، كما تعرف، من العيش في بلد عربي فإنك تكون قلقاً باستمرار من أن تعبر عن رأيك وماذا يمكن أن يحدث لك بسبب ذلك. 17 522 Gehan speaks about social life differences between the cultures جيهان تتحدث عن اختلافات الحياة الاجتماعية بين الثقافات G: I guess like social life, I think it's really, I miss that. We try here, you know, but I think it's because of the distance between everything here and like the work hours, you don’t get to see people as much as you do over there. ج: اعتقد انها الحياة الاجتماعية، أظن هذا هو فعلاً، فأنا افتقدها. نحن نحاول هنا، كما تعرف، ولكن أظن أن السبب هو المسافة البعيدة بين كل شيء هنا وأيضاً بسبب ساعات العمل فلا تستطيع أن تقابل الناس مثلما تفعل هناك. 17 712 Political, social and cultural changes the couple has noticed as they travel back and forth. التغييرات السياسية والاجتماعية والثقافية التي لاحظها الزوجان أثناء سفرهما ذهابًا وإيابًا M: Palestine, whether in Palestine and Jordan. Things are changing. People now its the struggle to make the living, the life, the current situation over there it’s a little bit difficult. م: فلسطين، في فلسطين والأردن على حد سواء. الأشياء تتغير. فالآن الأشخاص يعانون في سبيل الحصول على لقمة العيش والحياة، الوضع الحالي هناك ليس سهلاً. فالناس هنالك لا يعيشون برخاء مثلما الناس هنا وكل شيء تغير. 17 Oral History Part 1 Olivia: First, how do you prefer to be called? How do you pronounce your names? Mohamed: [Pronounces name] Gehan: [Pronounces name] OR: This is Olivia Reynolds interviewing Gehan and Mohamed on October 28, 2018 for the Denison University Oral History Digital Collection project on Arab Americans in Central Ohio. Gehan is going to talk about life in the U.S. as an Arab American. G: Okay, I like life here as an Arab American in this country. I first came here in 1985. I was a student in dental school in Egypt, and then I came here. I had a relative here, my sister. Then I met my husband, and then I went back to Egypt to finish the dental school, I was commuting back and forth, my husband was here, and I was commuting, ya know, back and forth between here and Egypt. I like a lot living here because like it' ; s the American dream and I wanted to come to the country that I heard a lot about and the quality of life and equality and everything here I like, actually. M: I came here in 1978. I came from Jerusalem, and when I came here, my main concern was to finish school, to go to college, educate myself ; and return and when I came here I was going to find the life, it is very, there' ; s lots of opportunities and the life is different than our countries. There' ; s a lot of inequalities there, people can' ; t work, they can' ; t produce, but there' ; s a lot of productivity here, and there' ; s opportunities here, the land of opportunity. And we enjoy it, we like it a lot, we live comfortable here, and we became part of the system-, we live here for a long time, we should be part of the system, you pay your dues, you do the right things, and nothing is impossible. We achieved our goals and we got married in 1985, me and wife. We have three children, and we enjoy being here. The life is good here. OR: لماذا غادرت مصر؟ ج: لماذا غادرت مصر؟ كنت في اجازة.. اجازة صيفية وكانت أختي عايشة هون. وحبيت أجي أشوف أمريكا. &quot ; يو نو&quot ; يعني البلد اللي سمعت عنها كتيركنت حابة أنه أجي هون أشوفها. M: and I' ; m the same way. I always, when I was a young kid in school, it was my dream to come to America. It' ; s always been a dream to me. And when I came here I find it, as I said the land of opportunity ; you can produce, you can work, you can achieve your goals, and it' ; s safe for us, it' ; s very peaceful, the people are very nice. We enjoy it, we enjoy being here. محمد السيد [يتحدث لجيهان]: ايه حاجة انت دلوقتي بتفتقديها من مصر؟ يعني حاجة كنت بتعمليها زمان ودلوقتي مش قادرة تعمليها او مثلا حاجة زي ritual like العيد؟ ج: هو يعني أنا الحمدلله يعني محظوظة جدا لأنه مفيش أي حاجة هنا يعني مبقدرش أعملها كنت بعملها في مصر. بس مجرد انه في يعني رمضان بفتقد رمضان في مصر. جميل جداً لان المسحراتي و الافطار الجماعي و الحجات دي كلها. بس بنحاول هنا برضو يعني نقدر نعيش بنفس الطريقة يعني نقدر نحافظ على الحاجات اللي اتعلمناها. محمد السيد [يسأل محمد]: وأنت في حاجة انت كنت مفتقدها من فلسطين؟ M: You know, it' ; s, life here is a little bit different because the social life is different. Back in Palestine, it' ; s more of a social life than here ; here, you work, you go to work everyday. And you know, we can meet only in gathering of some occasions. We don' ; t feel much different like in our holidays and Ramadan because we have a very large community here and also we have large family members here. And so we feel, we practice our traditions almost the same, there is not much difference. We can adapt to it, you know. MES: So how do you stay the same, like the same people that were in your native countries, but being a part of the system as you said? How do you keep doing what you used to do or like others close to your heart, but being a part of the system as well? M: Palestine, it' ; s in the heart, we will never forget our countries. Our countries, it' ; s great. We are part of it. We feel fortunate to have two countries, we came to this country and this is also is our country. We keep in touch with the families here and we go back home, we visit the family members. I take the wife and the kids sometimes for a year or sometimes three years. So we keep in touch, we' ; re very close with our families back home. Sometimes I travel twice a year. We' ; ll keep our kids back and forth so they can always maintain the relationship with the motherland, with our countries, and they continue to keep our tradition ; we have a lot of good values which is not found in other societies, so we have lots of good values. We try to incorporate our good values with what we learn from here, we learn a lot from here. To come up with one good value so we always try to be good people. أ: ما هي الاختلافات بين مصر أو فلسطين وأمريكا؟ ج: نقط الاختلاف؟ يعني في بلادنا العربية عموماً، بحس انه فيه يعني شوية عدم نظام &quot ; يو نو&quot ; هون بحس فيه نظام كتير. يعني فيه كتير عدل. ya know, we all hear about, ya know, what' ; s happening right now [laughs]. You know about that journalist [referring to Jamal Khashoggi] he said that, you know, that he expressed his opinion and we know what happened to him and this is a part of, you know, living in an Arab country you always worry about expressing your opinion and what is going to happen to you. But here, like you know, you can say whatever you want to say and you don' ; t feel threatened, you know? I like the freedom here ; freedom of speech, you know, justice and the quality of life M: It' ; s the same way [clears throat]. The difference between here and home countries: the accessibility of things, the availability of things, the judicial system ; there' ; s justice. You can speak your opinion, you can get your message across without being worried whether you' ; re going to be convicted, or slain or something happening to you. And the cleanness of the country ; everything is easy. And if you do the right things, you won' ; t have much issues. MES: What are good things that you miss? Good differences that you miss? G: I guess like social life, I think it' ; s really, I miss that. We try here, you know, but I think it' ; s because of the distance between everything here and like the work hours, you don' ; t get to see people as much as you do over there. Also family ties and stuff like that, this is what I miss about Egypt and our countries, you know the social life [laughs]. M: I miss being with the families. Being in your countries and being raised there, you always want to see your family and friends and all that, so this, we miss this. But we keep up with it, whether it' ; s through social media or calling the phones or go visit them. But, that' ; s the way it is. G: ya, there' ; s a lot of good things, I know that. And back home in our countries, you know, the culture, the food, people are really kind and stuff like that. You know, but over here too, you know, we found same values and things like that. We are able to live, you know, the way we want to, so we didn' ; t lose anything by living here. M: We adopt the culture here, part of the culture. I wouldn' ; t say we adopt everything but part of it. And we have lots of good friends, we communicate with them all the time, we visit with them, and we found out, as I said, if you became an important person in the country, you should do the right things. We work, just like everybody else, we try to go by the law and not do the wrong stuff, and we keep our friends, we visit with them, we join them in their events, we also contribute to public officials and we have a great relationship with the local government even through to Washington, we have you know lots of these important people here also, like the governments, the mayors, we hold events for them all. We focus on keeping the right things for us and our children ; we feel like, to come from that country to this country we should be just like an ambassador and the face of the country. And, you wanna change the image, you know lots of people in the past they have the image of Middle Eastern people, negative stereotyping we' ; re here, just like everybody else. We try to show the best picture of our country. We are human, we have the rights just like everybody else, we' ; re civil people and that' ; s about it. Hanada: So you mentioned that you keep going back and forth between Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. Could you tell us some of the things that you noticed, in terms of the changes that happen back home, on a social level, on a political level, on economic levels? M: There' ; s a lot of changes. When I came back in ' ; 78, you know back in these days we felt that the people there, they were more honest in our countries. H: And that' ; s in Palestine? M: Palestine, whether in Palestine and Jordan. Things are changing. People now its the struggle to make the living, the life, the current situation over there it' ; s a little bit difficult. The people are not living very comfortable like here, and everything has changed. Everything ; I would say there' ; s lots been changed and wish they were kind of like still the same. The honesty of the people, the mentality has changed ; lots of the Middle Eastern people now they want to copy the American mentality especially the new generation and they' ; re doing it in the wrong ways. You know, I wish they kind of like figured it out that it' ; s better, but they' ; re trying to copy other stuff and it' ; s not good. That' ; s some of the stuff I noticed traveling back and forth. هناده: و هل هي نفس التغيرات في مصر؟ G: Uh, yeah I would say yes because there is a lot more people and also the economy is not as good, so people are struggling and, you know, the quality of life I guess is not what it used to be. I guess economy has to do a lot with it. M: I feel that like a lot of people are under pressure, lots of pressure. And when the people come under pressure, they don' ; t have the money to do what they want or to live good and it can create a lot of troubles. Part 1 أوليفيا: أولاً، كيف تفضلون أن ندعوكم؟ كيف تنطقون أسمائكم؟ محمد: [ينطق اسمه] جيهان: [تنطق اسمها] أنا &quot ; أوليفيا رينولدز&quot ; وأجري مقابلة مع جيهان ومحمد في ٢٨ أكتوبر في عام ٢٠١٨ لمشروع جامعة دينيسون الرواية التاريخية الشفوية عن العرب الأمريكيين في وسط ولاية أوهايو. ستتكلم جيهان عن حياتها في أمريكا كعربية أمريكية. ج: حسناً، أنا أحب العيش في هذا البلد كعربية أمريكية. أنا جئت الى هنا أول مرّة في عام ١٩٨٥. كنت طالبة في جامعة طب الأسنان في مصر ثم جئت الى هنا، كانت عندي قريبة هنا، أختي. بعد ذلك قابلت زوجي ورجعت الى مصر لإكمال دراسة طب الأسنان، كنت أسافر بين البلدين: مصر وهنا، وكان زوجي هنا وكنت أسافر ، كما تعرفين، بين هنا ومصر. أنا أحب كثيراً العيش هنا لأنه الحلم الأمريكي وأردت أن أجيء الى البلد الذي سمعت عنه كثيرا وعن جودة المعيشة فيه والمساواة وأحب كل شيء هنا في الحقيقة. م: أنا جئت الى هنا في عام ١٩٧٨. جئت من القدس وعندما جئت الى هنا كان هدفي الأساسي هو اكمال دراستي وأن أدرس في الجامعة وأن أعلم نفسي ثم أعود الى بلدي. وعندما جئت الى هنا وجدت الحياة، الحياة هنا فيها فرص كثيرة والحياة مختلفة عن الحياة في بلادنا. هناك يوجد الكثير من عدم مساواة ولا يستطيع الأشخاص أن يعملوا ولا أن ينتجوا ولكن هنا يوجد الكثير من الإنتاجية والفرص الكثيرة، فهي أرض الفرص. ونحن نستمتع بذلك ونحب هذا البلد كثيراً ونعيش مرتاحين هنا وأصبحنا جزءاً من النظام، فنحن نعيش هنا منذ وقت طويل ويجب أن نصبح جزءاً من النظام ، أنت تقوم بدفع مستحقاتك وتعمل الأعمال الجيدة وليس هناك أي شيء مستحيل. فقد حققنا أهدافنا وتزوجنا في عام ١٩٨٥ أنا وزوجتي وعندنا ثلاث أولاد ونحن نستمتع بوجودنا هنا. فالحياة هنا جيدة. OR: Why did you leave Egypt? G: Why did I leave Egypt? I was on a vacation -- a summer vacation and my sister was living here. I wanted to come to see America. You know, the country which I heard a lot about and I loved to come here to see it. م: وأنا نفس الشيء. فعندما كنت ولداً صغيراً في المدرسة كان حلمي دائماً أن أجيء الى أمريكا. فقد كان هذا دائماً حلمي. وعندما جئت الى هنا، وجدت، كما قلت سابقاً، أن هذه هي أرض الفرص؛ تستطيع أن تنتج وأن تعمل وأن تحقق أهدافك فهذا بلد أمين بالنسبة لنا ونشعر بالطمأنينة فيه والأشخاص جيدون ونحن نستمتع بوجودنا هنا. MS [asks Gehan]: What is something that you, right now, miss about Egypt? Like something that you used to do, but you cannot do now, or something like طقوس like Eid. G: I mean, Thank God, I am very lucky because there is nothing here that I cannot do that I used to do in Egypt. Just merely in like Ramadan, I miss Ramadan in Egypt. It was very beautiful &quot ; Al-Misaharaty&quot ; , communal breaking of the fast, and all of these things. However, we are trying here to be able to live the same way and to preserve the things that we have learned. MES [asks Mohammad]: What about you? Is there anything you miss from Palestine? م: كما تعرف، فان الحياة هنا مختلفة قليلاً لأن الحياة الاجتماعية مختلفة. هناك في فلسطين الحياة اجتماعية أكثر من هناك؛ كما تعرف أنت هنا تعمل وتذهب الى عملك كل يوم. ويعني نستطيع أن نجتمع بأصدقائنا في بعض المناسبات. فنحن لا نشعر باختلافات كبيرة لأننا لا زلنا نجتمع بالأعياد وفي شهر رمضان فالجالية كبيرة جداً هنا ويوجد عندنا أقارب كثيرون كذلك. ولذلك نشعر بأننا نمارس تقاليدنا تقريباً بنفس الطريقة وليس هناك اختلافاً كبيراً ونستطيع أن نتكيف معه كما تعرف. م م: كيف بقيتم نفس الشئ؟ يعني نفس الأشخاص الذين كنتم في بلدكم الأم ولكن في نفس الوقت أصبحتم جزءاً من النظام، كما ذكرت؟ كيف تستمرون في عمل الأشياء التي اعتدتم أن تفعلوها والقريبة من قلوبكم وفي نفس الوقت أصبحتم جزءاً من النظام؟ م: فلسطين في القلب ولن ننسى بلادنا. بلادنا ممتازة. نحن جزءاً منها. ونشعر بأننا محظوظين لأننا ننتمي الى بلدين اثنين فنحن جئنا لهذا البلد ونعتبره بلدنا أيضاً. ونبقى على تواصل مع العائلات وكذلك نرجع الى الوطن ونزور الأقارب. أخذ الزوجة والأولاد أحياناً لمدة سنة وأحيانا لمدة ثلاث سنوات. وهكذا نبقى على تواصل ونحن قريبون جداً من أسرنا في أوطاننا. في بعض الأحيان أسافر مرتين خلال السنة. ونحرص على أن يسافر أولادنا ذهاباً وإياباً من أجل يحافظوا على علاقتهم مع الوطن وبلادنا ويستمرون في المحافظة على تقاليدنا؛ فنحن لدينا الكثير من القيم الجيدة والتي ليست موجودة في مجتمعات أخرى. لدينا الكثير من القيم الجيدة . ونحن نحاول أن ندمج قيمنا الجيدة مع القيم التي نتعلمها هنا فنحن نتعلم الكثير هنا من أجل أن نخرج بقيم موحدة تجعل منا أشخاص جيدون. OR: What are the differences between Egypt or Palestine and America? G: Points of difference? I mean, in our Arab countries in general, I feel that there is a little bit of no order, you know! Here, I feel there is a lot of order. I mean there is justice. يعني كلنا نسمع عما يحدث الآن [تضحك]. تعرف يعني، عن الصحفي [تقصد جمال خاشقجي] وعما حدث له أنه كان يعبرعن رأيه ونعرف ماذا حدث له وهذا جزء، كما تعرف، من العيش في بلد عربي فإنك تكون قلقاً باستمرار من أن تعبر عن رأيك وماذا يمكن أن يحدث لك بسبب ذلك. ولكن هنا أنت تستطيع أن تقول ما تشاء ولا تشعر بالتهديد، كما تعرف. فأنا أحب الحرية هنا؛ حرية الكلام يعني والعدالة وجودة الحياة. م: نفس الشئ [هو يتنحنح]. الاختلاف بين هنا والأوطان: إمكانية الوصول إلى الأشياء بسهولة وتوافر الأشياء والنظام القضائي؛ توجد عدالة. تستطيع أن تقول رأيك وتستطيع أن توصل رسالتك بدون الخوف من الإدانة أو القتل أو شيء آخر يحدث لك. ونظافة البلد؛ كل شيء سهل. وإذا فعلت الأشياء الصحيحة فلن يكون عندك مشاكل. م م: ما هي الأشياء الجيدة التي تفتقدونها؟ الاختلافات الجيدة التي تفتقدونها؟ ج: اعتقد انها الحياة الاجتماعية، أظن هذا هو فعلاً، فأنا افتقدها. نحن نحاول هنا، كما تعرف، ولكن أظن أن السبب هو المسافة البعيدة بين كل شيء هنا وأيضاً بسبب ساعات العمل فلا تستطيع أن تقابل الناس مثلما تفعل هناك. كذلك الروابط العائلية والأشياء المماثلة، فهذا ما أفتقده في مصر وبلادنا، أعني الحياة الاجتماعية. [تضحك] م: أفتقد أن أكون مع الأسر. أن تكون في بلدك التي نشأت فيها هناك وتشعر دائماً أنك تريد أن ترى أفراد أسرتك وأصدقائك وكل ذلك ولذلك نحن نفتقد هذا. ولكننا نحاول أن نستمر بذلك اما عبر وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي أو المكالمات الهاتفية أو الذهاب لزيارتهم. ولكن هكذا هي الدنيا. ج: نعم هناك الكثير من الأشياء الجيدة، أعرف هذا جيداً. وهناك في أوطاننا، كما تعرف، الثقافة والطعام والأشخاص هناك لطفاء جداً وما الى ذلك. ولكن كما تعرف، هنا أيضاً يعني وجدنا قيماً مشابهة وما الى ذلك. ونحن نستطيع أن نعيش يعني بنفس الطريقة التي نريدها ولذلك لم نخسر أي شيء نتيجة العيش هنا. م: نحن نتبنى الثقافة الموجودة هنا، جزءاً من الثقافة. أنا لا أقول اننا نتبنى كل شيء ولكن جزءاً منها. ولدينا العديد من الأصدقاء الجيدين ونتواصل معهم باستمرار ونزورهم. ووجدنا، كما قلت سابقاً، أنه إذا أصبحت شخصاً ذا قيمة في البلد فمن اللازم أن تفعل الأشياء الصحيحة. نحن نعمل مثلنا مثل كل الاشخاص الآخرين ، ونحاول أن نتبع القانون ولا نفعل الأشياء الخاطئة ونحافظ على أصدقائنا و نزورهم ونشاركهم في مناسباتهم . ونساهم أيضاً مع المسؤولين ولدينا علاقات ممتازة مع الحكومة المحلية حتى مع الحكومة الرسمية في واشنطن ولدينا الكثير من الأشخاص المهمين هنا أيضا مثل الحكومات ورؤساء البلديات ونقوم باستضافة مناسباتهم العامة. ونركز على متابعة القيام بالأعمال الجيدة لنا ولأولادنا؛ نحن نشعر بأنه عندما نأتي من ذلك البلد لهذا البلد فإنه من اللازم أن نكون بمثابة سفراء وممثلين لبلادنا. ونريد أن نغير الصورة النمطية يعني هناك أشخاص كثيرون في الماضي كانت يرسمون في مخيلتهم صورة نمطية سلبية عن الأشخاص القادمين من الشرق الأوسط. فها نحن هنا، مثلنا مثل باقي الأشخاص الأخرين. نحاول أن نظهر أحسن صورة لبلدنا. فنحن اناس ولنا حقوق مثل أي شخص اخر ونحن أشخاص متحضرون، وهذه هي حقيقة الأمر. هنادة: أنت ذكرت أنك تسافر ذهاباً واياباً بين الأردن وفلسطين ومصر. هل تستطيع أن تخبرنا عن بعض المستجدات والتغيرات التي لاحظتها في البلاد على المستوى الاجتماعي والسياسي والاقتصادي؟ م: هناك تغييرات كثيرة. عندما جئت هنا في عام ١٩٧٨،كما تعرفين في تلك الأيام، أعتقد أن الأشخاص هناك في بلادنا كانوا أكثر صدقاً. ه: وهذا في فلسطين؟ م: فلسطين، في فلسطين والأردن على حد سواء. الأشياء تتغير. فالآن الأشخاص يعانون في سبيل الحصول على لقمة العيش والحياة، الوضع الحالي هناك ليس سهلاً. فالناس هنالك لا يعيشون برخاء مثلما الناس هنا وكل شيء تغير. كل شيء. ويمكن أن أقول أنه أصبحت هناك تغيرت كثيرة وأتمنى لو أنها بقيت على حالها في السابق. فقد تغيرت الأمانة والصدق عند الأشخاص وتغيرت عقليتهم. فالكثير من الناس في الشرق الأوسط الآن يريدون أن يقلدوا العقلية الأمريكية خصوصاً الجيل الجديد ويطبقون ذلك بطريقة خاطئة. أقصد أنني أتمنى لو أنهم يستطيعون تطبيق ذلك بطريقة واعية أكثر ولكنهم يحاولون أن يقلدوا أشياءً أخرى وهذا ليس جيداً. هذه بعض الأشياء التي لاحظتها في رحلاتي بين هنا وهناك. HM: And are they the same changes in Egypt? ج: نعم أستطيع أن أقول هذا لأنه ازدادت أعداد السكان أكثر ولكن الاقتصاد بقي سيئاً ولذلك فان الناس يعانون وكما تعرفين فإن جودة الحياة أظن أنها لم تعد كالسابق. أظن أن الاقتصاد عامل مهم في ذلك. م: أشعر بأن الكثير من الناس يتعرضون لضغوط، ضغوط كثيرة. وعندما يتعرض الناس لضغوط الحياة ولا يملكون المال اللازم للقيام بما يريدونه أو العيش بشكل جيد فإن هذا يخلق مشاكل كثيرة. Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. video This interview may only be used for educational purposes. 0 http://arab-american-project.org http://arab-american-project.org
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http://arab-american-project.org/education/render.php?cachefile=Interview61496.xml
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This interview took place in central Ohio
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MP4 - 720p HD
Duration
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00:14:12
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0001
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gehan and Mohamed - Part 1, October 28, 2018
Subject
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Immigrants-Arab-Ohio
Culture-Arab
Arab Americans-Ohio
Date
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2018-10-28
Format
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video
Creator
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Interviewers: Olivia Reynolds, Mohamed El Sayed, Hanada Al-Masri
Interviewees: Gehan and Mohamed
Description
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Gehan and Mohamed explain why they came and then decided to remain in the United States. They discuss the differences between Egypt and the U.S. This interview took place in central Ohio
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Type
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Oral History
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/3dca8b162abc7f7ad1e910dfb4a3199d.jpg
4c3a33037b038947de719cff54e2914a
Dublin Core
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Title
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Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
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Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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photo
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4032 × 3024
Dublin Core
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Title
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Denison students with the Hinnawi family
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
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jpg
Type
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Digital Still Image
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/18627fa9e13c3de77739946891f8e9c9.jpg
97b461a8f3bec9752dc16c3326089e93
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
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photo
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
4032 × 3024
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Denison students with Jallaq family
Publisher
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Denison
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
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Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpg
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Digital Still Image
Arab immigrants
Arabs living in central Ohio
-
https://arab-american-project.org/files/original/cccff46912a9b9ed3f3dccaf12946b46.jpg
08365aa20a14f054587b00b90bb72804
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arab Americans in Central Ohio: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Adapting Traditions. <br />An Oral History Project.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Arab Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The purpose of this project is to document the personal history and lives of the Arab-American community in central Ohio by means of creating an oral history digital collection. <br /><br />The overarching goals of this project are to: <br />
<ol>
<li>create an experiential learning opportunity for Denison students of Arabic to engage with Arabic speakers and to further develop their linguistic and cultural skills.</li>
<li>broaden understanding of Arab Americans and bringing visibility to their contributions to and engagement with their local communities.</li>
</ol>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Denison
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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A sweet treat that Souzan served with tea
Creator
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Photo by Hannah Bennett
Date
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November 4, 2018
Type
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Still image
Contributor
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Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, project director
Cheryl A Johnson, online presentation of the digital materials
Publisher
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Denison
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Arab-American Project by http://arab-american-project.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.