Who is that talking in the back?

So, this blog just hit me, like that time I ran into a chair. Just BAM! I was watching The movie my group decided to watch, Arranged, which I'm pretty sure I blogged about already...But anyway, I was watching it again, and about twenty minutes in, the main characters are in a classroom together, the Muslim one teaching the students, and the orthodox Jewish asissting a special needs child, when the class is interrupted by talking in the back. The the Muslim teacher asks them what is wrong, the kids just come out and say something to the extent of,

"We were told that you and Ms. Rachel can't be friends because you were from different religions, because you hate each other or something."

Obviously this caught my attention. Continuing, the teacher asks him why he would think that. He says,

"...I heard all the Muslims wanna kill all the Jews. Aren't you Muslim?"

And this perks an ongoing conversation that the Muslims are a massive group of people, and the teacher does not want to kill/hate Ms. Rachel. The thing that interested me the most though about this was that, the kids in this class look to be in about third or fourth grade, which was quite young to me. Even so, I don't think even now I would wonder something like that. It makes me think about what kind of negative press the Middle East is getting, so much so that the kids, perhaps, are picking it up on their evening news, surely they don't get this on their own, or their parents don't talk to them about it, I would guess. This movie is very interesting, not only does it have the influence of the Muslim and the Jewish, but the children too. I'm excited to finish the movie, and I'll try to get the clips up!

I know its there somewhere...

While I had no trouble finding books and movies that fill me in on information about how Western culture is influencing the Middle East, and also vice-versa, finding concrete information is proving to be a feat. I am finding small little tid-bits.
I guess the biggest thing that I could blog about is the movie i have started watching. The movie is called 'Arranged', was made in 2007, and tells the story of two women, one an Orthodox Jew, the other a Muslim. I read a little blurb about the movie, and it shows how the two women meet and their experience with arranged marriages.
So far, The two women have not met. I have seen how they are uncomfortable in social interactons dealing with the subject of 'marriage;' in the opening of the film the women are sitting in a lunchroom of sorts, awkwardly listening to three other american looking women talking about being proposed to and their own marriage.
Perhaps the arranged marriage is a bigger difference between cultures than I realized. I definitely have a fuzzy view of arranged marriages, to me they do not seem fair to either party. I hope the movie will change this.

The Square Moon

I just finished the first two short stories in the book I am reading, The Square Moon. The book is actually a collection of lebanese short fiction stories, taking place, so far in Paris. The stories have a fantasy/maabre twist, which actually makes them more interesting to me.
The stories, collectively, have a sort of Edgar Allen-Poe feel, and I feel that the stories would work well alongside Poe in a high school setting.
The first story was centered between two people, a matchmaker interacting with the main character, and a woman who the main character is infatuated with. The clash comes from the fact that tradition, family, and the matchmaker want him to marry a traditional Lebanese girl, one who is shy, mannered, and uneducated. However the character is in love with a lebanese woman, yes, but one who breaks all stereotypes. She is athletic, educated, and witty, and wants to be a mans equal.
That story actually broadened my thoughts on relationships in the Middle East. Even though the story takes place in (roughly) the 1980's, it was still apparent to my classmates and I that the culture in the Middle East is changing. Women are going to school, and then furthering their education and wanting jobs that they wouldn't have before. The Middle East wants to be more modernized, maybe wants to catch up with our culture in the West.

"Reel Bad Arabs"

After watching and discussing the film "Reel Bad Arabs" I was actually surprised by how many movies I had recently seen had villains that looked like Arab people. It very nearly disgusted me how I had fallen victim to such awful propaganda in 'The Land of the Free". Clearly, 8 years after 9/11, Americans are falling into the trap that, if it looks like an Arab, if it talks like an Arab, fear it. Surely I could rationalize with myself that all Arabs are not awful, horrible terrorists trying to destroy my life, no, this would be falling prey to one of the easiest fallacies ever created (slippery slope).

But, after I started to think about it, that’s exactly how I was when 9/11 happened. I was in fifth grade, sitting in my classroom with the same 30 people I had in my grade every year (small private school) when our teacher was called out of the room. She returned, and told us to go to recess (I remember thinking it was too early, but hey, I was a kid). When we returned from outside, she was sitting at the front of the room. I remember her exact words, "I hope that you are mature enough to handle the news I am about to give you...I have been told and saw on T.V. that two planes crashed into some very important buildings in New York City, and they collapsed. It has been realized that this is a very serious and devastating..," she paused searching for simple terms to put it in, "terrorist attack." After that our parents were called, and I was picked up etc. etc...

Any who, I remember that after seeing the pictures on the news and in magazines for much after that, I was terrified of people that looked to be Arab. I would get uneasy, and look down at my feet for years to come after. Only recently have I been able to not have any problems with people of other nationalities, skin color, looks, etc, simply because I grew up. I realized not everyone is out to get me.

To put it simply, media in general, not just fictitious movies with super-villains who look like Arabs has a massive impact on how the American people view their enemies. In my case, especially being so young, I was lucky to have grown out of it. I know many people, my age and much older, have prejudices that may never subside. But my certain hope is that they do.

Aunt Safiyya Ch. 2

I fell in love with the story after reading chapter 2. I loved how the book did an almost-paradox, it started with the mothers warning of her son going to see Aunt Safiyya (assuming that in the beginning the events of chapter two already happened) then Taher explains why his mother acts the way she does and says the things she does. The 'paradox', is you will, is at the end, when we return to the authors present day, where he visits his Aunt Safiyya.

I was shocked at the amazing dynamics the families of the village, and the village itself, had within the story. Everyone is so loyal and dedicated, both to each other and their religions. I was also shocked again, at the mother. Her choice to keep Safiyya out of school simply because she was beautiful, and also because the mother thought an education would ruin her ability to marry the best, surprised me. I am so used to the world around me where beautiful, hard-working, and educated women are, most often, the ones who are praised highest.

Perhaps the Middle-East is in a place that our own country was, not too long ago either. At one point in our history, women were responsible for the home life, raising children, cooking, keeping husbands happy. Women in our country did not go to school, work the farms, or attend town meetings. This got me thinking to the point that, although the subject of religion differs slightly (as we discussed in class), the Middle East just might not be as historically advanced as my own country. Again though, maybe the Middle East will stay that way. But as for now, my mind is telling me that I have no room to criticize that would be like me being harsh to my younger sibling, for not knowing calculus.

Chapters 1 "Aunt Safiyya"

After I finished the first two chapters of "Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery", I was a little confused. Not confused in the way that I didn't comprehend what I read, I know what had happened to the characters, the storyline, and such. I was more confused about the reason why the events had taken place.
The first chapter describes the actual Monastery, saying that you couldn't see it at all from the village, and was about a half an hour walk away. The reader is then informally introduced to the monks that reside there, and a sentence or two is said about their generosity (The speaker remembers that he was given sugared dates only grown within the Monastery walls, pg. 19)
The speaker then goes on about how every "Coptic Christmas" his mother assembles boxes of treats and sends them on their way to family member houses, and the Monastery.
I realized that only about two pages into the actual story there was already a connection between the Eastern world and my own, here in the 'West'. Is it not uncommon for families to send gifts, or gift-baskets and the like, to family members (and in religious families’ cases, their church, pastor, priest, etc...)? This was a positive thing in my mind, to be able to pick up my first piece of Middle Eastern literature and make an almost immediate connection between the culture and my own.
Then, however, my personal connection faltered. Within the same page (pg. 20-21) it was brought to my attention that a lot of responsibility is put upon the daughters in Middle Eastern families, and yet they are treated the harshest. Taher gives some insight into this 'twisted' (from my point of view) family dynamic, saying that if the responsibility of carrying a tray of cookies down the roads of the village went to one of his sisters, and by some twist of fate they dropped the tray, "The girl would return home with all this [smashed cookies and expensive ghurayyiba], in tears, and my mother would receive her with blows and kicks for her unforgiveable clumsiness, all the while bewailing the bad luck that had cursed her with the birth of such daughters."
This simple, yet harsh, sentence was the first picture painted in my head about the family dynamics in the Middle East. In America, it is very uncommon to actually hit a child as a form of punishment, unless one was talking about a small child getting a light 'spanking'. However the very words 'blows' and 'kicks' don’t exactly give the image of a light punishment. And then, add on top of it the fact that the mother would then go around 'bewailing and cursing' the fact that she was the mother of her children is definitely something that would be unheard of in America. I plan on researching a little more into this, however general knowledge I have gained about the Middle East ( no matter how little it may be) have me thinking that this type of behavior relating mother and daughter would not be uncommon. I know that men are above women in said regions society.
The rest of the chapter talks mainly about The Miqaddis Bishai, (Miqaddis being a formal title). The remainder of chapter one tells of his insight to planting and harvesting, and how he is a familiar face in the village, everyone knows him and he, in return, knows everybody. This is more embellished in the story, but so far the details don't relate back to the story, yet.