Making sense of the journey
No journey truly begins the day you set out for your intended destination, but in the actual preparation for travel. With that said, my journey to the Middle East began, you could say, the day I was born to a Palestinian immigrant mother and an Irish-Catholic-American father.
Growing up with divorced parents in two separate households, one that encompassed the consciousness of rural Indiana and the other of urban Palestine, I was raised in two different environments. These environments, as much as they were unalike, though, shared one thing in common — a tolerant embrace of the beauty and richness that results from cultural “difference” and “diversity.” That envelop, however, seemed relegated to addressing two distinct and static traditions: one Muslim-Arab and the other Catholic-American, both weighed down by years of emotional and experiential baggage.
My continuous interaction with the constructed spaces of two distinctly dissimilar worlds meant that I, as a syncretistic combination of not only the DNA but also traditions of my parents, needed to take on the task of bridging their cultural milieus by creating a “third-space,” a space that allowed me to construct a unique identity that meshed together wholly my father’s “Americaness” and my mother’s “Muslimness.” A third-space that reflects my amalgamated “self” and that is in every respect “Muslim-American.”
Note here, please, that I don’t mean to be essentialist in my discussion of culture, where I claim that one way of life is completely distinct from the next. Making culture monolithic and static is a futile endeavor because it ignores the fact that life, including culture, is not black and white, but shaped by multiple hues of gray — multiple levels of nuance.
But I do know, however, as much as cultures may overlap and give and take from each other, there are clear lines of distinction. For example, my mother does not drink alcohol because it is prohibited in Islam, while my father does and sees no problem with it because of it was consumed at celebrations during his upbringing.
This difference in cultural approach and sensibility is very much a positive force in my life because it exposes me to two understandings of life. Exposure to two worldviews has prevented me from becoming too myopic and intolerant of new ideas and has facilitated my ability to be conversant in more than one tradition. I very much appreciate and cherish this blessing.
But, then again, there are drawbacks to growing up with sometimes-contradictory parental viewpoints. The inconsistencies I encountered caused me much confusion in my early childhood and a feeling of conflicted allegiance. This conflict didn’t necessarily center around my national identity, but, instead, my cultural “self.”
To untangle the confusion and contradictions and find some kind of general concordance with my “selves,” one that is Palestinian-Muslim, the other that is Irish-American, I set out to Amman, Jordan, to study Arabic for five months and live with my mother's family (I can't begin to tell you how much knowing where one came from informs who one is).
While in Jordan I traveled first to the West Bank to catch up with my mother’s family I had not seen for almost 7 years. A few months later, I ended up in Istanbul, Turkey, for a couple of days with my travel companion Cory Eldridge.
Not meaning to abruptly end the above thought, but also not wanting to bore you any further, I have decided not to include specific information about each part of my study and travel through the Middle East via the medium of written letters. I have created then and placed below a photo slide that includes 112 photos, many with captions, from my study in Jordan and travel to the occupied West Bank and Istanbul, Turkey. I also have included side bar links found at the right that include information about each city to which I traveled. If a particular photo cataches your attention, click on it and the caption will be provided.
I have done this so instead of having long, drawn out sections about my time in a particular area such as Istanbul or Jenin, the photos will "do the talking" and help better explain visually the journey to my other “self.”
Please feel free to leave a comment or question about what I have wrote above or what photos are included below. The dialectic of cultural-realization is important in today's age as cultural barriers are continuously being challenged and globalism is thrououghly realized.
I hope you enjoy!
Growing up with divorced parents in two separate households, one that encompassed the consciousness of rural Indiana and the other of urban Palestine, I was raised in two different environments. These environments, as much as they were unalike, though, shared one thing in common — a tolerant embrace of the beauty and richness that results from cultural “difference” and “diversity.” That envelop, however, seemed relegated to addressing two distinct and static traditions: one Muslim-Arab and the other Catholic-American, both weighed down by years of emotional and experiential baggage.
My continuous interaction with the constructed spaces of two distinctly dissimilar worlds meant that I, as a syncretistic combination of not only the DNA but also traditions of my parents, needed to take on the task of bridging their cultural milieus by creating a “third-space,” a space that allowed me to construct a unique identity that meshed together wholly my father’s “Americaness” and my mother’s “Muslimness.” A third-space that reflects my amalgamated “self” and that is in every respect “Muslim-American.”
Note here, please, that I don’t mean to be essentialist in my discussion of culture, where I claim that one way of life is completely distinct from the next. Making culture monolithic and static is a futile endeavor because it ignores the fact that life, including culture, is not black and white, but shaped by multiple hues of gray — multiple levels of nuance.
But I do know, however, as much as cultures may overlap and give and take from each other, there are clear lines of distinction. For example, my mother does not drink alcohol because it is prohibited in Islam, while my father does and sees no problem with it because of it was consumed at celebrations during his upbringing.
This difference in cultural approach and sensibility is very much a positive force in my life because it exposes me to two understandings of life. Exposure to two worldviews has prevented me from becoming too myopic and intolerant of new ideas and has facilitated my ability to be conversant in more than one tradition. I very much appreciate and cherish this blessing.
But, then again, there are drawbacks to growing up with sometimes-contradictory parental viewpoints. The inconsistencies I encountered caused me much confusion in my early childhood and a feeling of conflicted allegiance. This conflict didn’t necessarily center around my national identity, but, instead, my cultural “self.”
To untangle the confusion and contradictions and find some kind of general concordance with my “selves,” one that is Palestinian-Muslim, the other that is Irish-American, I set out to Amman, Jordan, to study Arabic for five months and live with my mother's family (I can't begin to tell you how much knowing where one came from informs who one is).
While in Jordan I traveled first to the West Bank to catch up with my mother’s family I had not seen for almost 7 years. A few months later, I ended up in Istanbul, Turkey, for a couple of days with my travel companion Cory Eldridge.
Not meaning to abruptly end the above thought, but also not wanting to bore you any further, I have decided not to include specific information about each part of my study and travel through the Middle East via the medium of written letters. I have created then and placed below a photo slide that includes 112 photos, many with captions, from my study in Jordan and travel to the occupied West Bank and Istanbul, Turkey. I also have included side bar links found at the right that include information about each city to which I traveled. If a particular photo cataches your attention, click on it and the caption will be provided.
I have done this so instead of having long, drawn out sections about my time in a particular area such as Istanbul or Jenin, the photos will "do the talking" and help better explain visually the journey to my other “self.”
Please feel free to leave a comment or question about what I have wrote above or what photos are included below. The dialectic of cultural-realization is important in today's age as cultural barriers are continuously being challenged and globalism is thrououghly realized.
I hope you enjoy!
