Caught Between Worlds: An Arab-American Journalist Wonders Who “We” Are

 by Ben Verdi, in response to http://www.raghidadergham.com/archive/arnewsweek10_15_01.html

In the weeks and months after 9/11 journalists were still scrambling to pick up the pieces of what happened on that disastrous day, how to adequately cover and investigate the tragedy, and how to handle all of this challenging work while still adhering to the ethical and moral principles of journalism.  For one Arab-American journalist in particular—Raghida Dergham—the task of balancing hard journalism with one’s own take on the 9/11 tragedy, on the world it happened to, and the response needed to help make amends for it, was as difficult as anything she’d ever faced.  

In an article she wrote and published in Newsweek International on October 15^th, 2001, Dergham decided to start at square one in order to clarify her view of 9/11, and any cultural responses to it, as accurately as she could.  She was born in Lebanon but had lived in New York City for most of her life.  She’d long been utilized by her employers, newspapers, television shows, online news services, as a liaison between the Arab world and culture she inherited at birth, and the American way of life and perspective she helped inform every day as a journalist.  That said, after 9/11, she felt as though the media was taking some disturbing turns for the worst in terms of the ways in which the “Arab world” and Arabs in general were being portrayed and simplified for an impatient and, she thought, vengeful American audience.  

Essentially, her 9/11 response piece detailed the many ways in which she felt the increased visibility of Arabs on the American news was being billed as something healthy and constructive, but felt more like a way of helping Americans learn about their newest “enemy.”  It is interesting to note the keen observation and near prophecy of her words, as this same issue of how negatively Arabs are portrayed in the media in the wake of 9/11 rages today in ways that took most years to recognize, and empathize with.  For Dergham, even a month after 9/11, she felt this kind of mistreatment by the American media was something of a foregone conclusion.  Her informed, journalist’s response to 9/11 as an Arab-American was one more of helplessness than of anger or mistreatment.  

She writes in this same piece of how proud she was to see a taxi driver shortly after 9/11 still brave enough to have verses from the Koran hanging from his rear-view mirror.  She also comments on the changes she notices to her daughter’s nightly prayers following 9/11.  Upon overhearing her daughter pray, requesting: “God, please capture them and bring them to justice so we can have a normal life again,” Dergham wondered who her daughter thought “them” and “we” were exactly.  More somberly, she wondered what informed her daughter’s understanding of “them” and “we.”

Still, despite the relatively helpless and directionless feeling Dergham was left with after 9/11, she responded to the tragedy by doing what it is she has always done best.  She embraced her role as a liaison between American culture and the Arab world, because, for better or worse, her unique role and opportunity to create appropriate responses and cross-cultural discourses in the media is more important now than ever. 

She concludes her piece by addressing her American audience directly, noting that all Arabs do not hate Americans, and the media should not propagate this myth, nor should the American people respond to 9/11 as though it’s true.  Then she addresses her Arab followers by saying ominously that “Americans do not know you.”  They don’t know how similar your culture is to theirs, nor do they know how to solve the problems stemming from 9/11 that allow the two worlds to talk past each other, and remain ignorant to one another’s true characteristics.  She ends on this somber note but there is still a note of hopefulness in her response to the post-9/11 media.  

One can imagine her writing that phrase: “Americans do not know you” and finishing her article with her eyes fixed downward at the sad truth before her.  Yet, as she instructs both Arabs and Americans to do in response to 9/11, she probably lifted her head once more to the world she hopes to heal, to the cultures she hopes to re-unite, and kicked herself for not ending that sentence of hers with the word: “yet.”