Like all immigrants, Arab Americans in tough times seek comfort and refuge in the warmth of their ethnic foods. As their nomadic ancestors did in the desert for hundreds of years before them, they carry their food wherever they go to sustain them in an inhospitable terrain.  Commentator Ahmed Tharwat lives in Minnesota now, but he grew up in Egypt.  He says there is one type of food that is particularly important to him. The sizzle of frying falafel. The rich aroma of shaworma. The smooth flavor of BABA GHANNOU and Hummus, the beauty of artfully displayed meza and the heavy sweetness of Baklava -- all take us back to the comfort and security of our home. But no other Middle Eastern food so reflects our ethnicity and identity as feta cheese. We have as many different kinds of feta as nationalities: Egyptian, Greek, Lebanese, Moroccan and Palestinian. We try them all. So if you want to measure the Arab American melting pot in the United States, don't look at the employment or housing index. Look instead at the consumption of feta and its ratio to the consumption of American cheese.

Americans seem to treat cheese as dead food that is wrapped in plastic bags and kept in the refrigerator like corpses, while Arabs like to treat cheese like fresh meat that should be cut before your eyes and kept in the open for everyone to see and smell.  Second generation Arab American children; however, lose this reverence right after their first trip to MacDonald's restaurant and experience the taste of the melted cheese in their happy meal. Egyptians never throw their feta away; there is really no such thing as expiration date. When it gets old, it is just renamed! Cheese starts with a name like Areesh, when it gets mushy it is Creemy, then Brameely, and when you can’t stand its rotten smell, it is Mish. They say that there are more people in Egypt who die from eating bad feta than gun shots.   Feta enjoys a prominent culinary status in our house. Every morning at breakfast I prepare the Egyptian breakfast trio of feta cheese,  pita bread and black olives for my daughter.  At first, she enjoyed eating it as much as listening to stories of my Egyptian boyhood. Then she became a teen and I had to quietly sneak feta into her breakfast sandwich under the cover of American cheese.  I understand her feelings. When I was a youngster growing up in an Egyptian village in the Sixties, our school used to get American aid in the form of a big block of wrapped cheese. I was fascinated by its different taste and color, not to mention its glossy plastic wrapping. Under protest from my resentful parents, I deserted my ethnic feta cheese and in its place I demanded the colorful American cheese, as flashy as American movies. To village attitudes, rejecting your feta was like rejecting your identity.

 Today, my wife and I take care not to bring this culinary conflict into our home. We want to reinforce our daughter's multicultural heritage, so we let American cheese and feta cheese coexist peacefully on our breakfast table. My wife dislikes the smell of feta, but she stops short of charging me with chemical warfare. For my part, I say nothing of her infidel cheese. And as a family we all together enjoy the diversity of all cheeses.  

Landscape   

One Egyptian prisoner was released. Now, how about the rest of Egypt.

The leading Egyptian political dissident, Ayman Nour, was suddenly released by the Egyptian regime after spending almost four years in Egyptian prison.  In 2005, Mr. Nour was the first Egyptian to challenge the 80-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for almost 30 years, thanks to marshal law that was imposed on the Egyptian people during the first year he took office.  Mr. Nour was comically accused of forging signatures while forming his Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party;   he needed only 50 signatures to legally form his new party; he got 50,000. According to the Egyptian prosecutor’s office, “he was released Wednesday for health reasons”.  Now there is a lot of speculation about the Egyptian regime’s sudden humanitarian gesture.  In spite of the fact that Mr. Nour has been suffering from severe diabetes during all his time in jail, he was denied medicine and treatment at time. The Some asked whether Mr. Nour struck a deal with the Mubarak regime to secure his own release. "I swear to God there was no deal" with the government, Nour assured his supporters from the Al-Ghad headquarters in downtown Cairo.  It was well-known that Mubarak was under tremendous pressure from the U.S. and the West to release Mr. Nour; in fact, the former U.S. secretary-of-state Condoleezza Rice refused to meet the Egyptian president demanding the release of Egypt’s most infamous prisoner known to the West. President Mubarak refused claiming that it is up to the Egyptian court, now the whole legal system in Egypt is on trial; Mr. Nour release was a total surprise to everyone even his wife Gamilah Ismail, he was abruptly dropped off at his apartment in Zamalak; an upscale suburb of Cairo, she was according to her doing some earring when Mr. Nour called her asking for the apartment key. “ I thought it was a trick”, she explained, “this regime could surprise you, good or bad”; she explained. In my last visit to Egypt, I tried to meet his wife at the Al Ghad party headquarter, the police was surrounding the building I couldn’t even get into her damaged office of an earlier arsenal.  Earlier this same pressure on the Egyptian regime was applied by the West to release the prominent Egyptian sociologist dissident, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Dr. Ibrahim fled Egypt a few years ago, and as he explained to me in an email conversation,”   “I am  a fugitive now…., continuously  on the  road  between  Qatar  and the  U.S and  any  country  in between  that  does not  have  an extradition treaty  with Egypt.”  Meanwhile, a Washington Post editorial on February 16 argued that President Obama should make any visit by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak conditional upon the release of Ayman Nour and the dropping of charges against exiled human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, while Egyptian government sources have said the decision is "not a result of U.S. pressure."  Dr. Ibrahim himself weighed in with his thoughts, stating that the release and its timing represent a deliberate, timely gesture of goodwill from Egypt to the U.S., and the "health reasons" justification put forth by the General Prosecutor was simply to "save face" from allegations that the Egyptian regime cave in to U.S. pressure.  Ibrahim noted U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Kerry's visit to Egypt last week, stating the possibility that Kerry carried a message from U.S. President Obama in this regard, and that this step will help Egypt insofar as it will allow Obama to "extend a hand to Egypt,"

When it comes to dealing with dictators of Arab and Muslim countries, the West has a way of deciding which regime should be changed and which individual be freed.  But there are many less-known or unknown political prisoners in Egypt.  According to Dr. Alaa Aswani, the Egyptian novelist who wrote The Yacoubian Building, there are “thousands of political prisoners in Egypt”, and “some of them have been imprisoned for more than 15 years without even a trial,” he added. I asked him why they don’t get the same attention from the West, and why no one demands their release?  “Their only crime is they are Islamists,” Dr. Aswani sadly explained to me in a telephone conversation. Did Mr. Mubarak release Ayman Nour to warm up to the new American administration? We don’t know for sure and will never know. If we had made a deal.   President Mubarak feels that the Obama administration doesn’t have any stomach for getting in the regime changing business, and the Obama administration realize that spreading the democracy thing in the Arab/Muslim world proved to be a risky business, Mr. Mubarak feels President Obama may be willing to work with him to support his effort in grooming his son to take over the Egyptian crown. Which is facing a fierce opposition from the Egyptian street, everyone I talked to in my last visit in Egypt feels that; the 80- year old president spend most of his time napping, and his son Gamal is the one running the country”.  As we all should applaud the release of  Mr. Nour and Dr. Ibrahim, for President Obama to gain any creditability in the Arab/Muslim street, he needs to stand for all victims of human rights violation, regardless of their political positions. Victims are victims, and Mr. Obama needs to demonstrate to the Arab/Muslim world some sign of change in the inept US foreign policy in the area. He should ask President Mubarak to release all political prisoners; left the marshal law and stop harassing and arresting political oppositions; he should tell him what Millions of Egyptians have been saying for years: “Kefayah.” Enough.  Mr. Obama shouldn’t meet or visit with Mr. Mubarak until he complies.  One Egyptian prisoner has been released; now how about the rest of Egypt.

Ahmed Tharwat/ Host of the Arab-American TV show BelAhdan

Minnetonka, MN

www.belahdan.com

Holidiversity: dinner with the inspection team

A few years ago and as an Egyptian Muslim living in America, I celebrate the holy month of Ramadan during the winter month of December -- fasting during the shortest days of the year it was a blessing from the sky. As a Muslim who has been married to an American woman for 20 years, I wanted to celebrate Ramadan and Christmas at the same time.  Wow, I thought to myself, what an occasion: our two religious celebrations combined into one magic evening in my house, an evening of transformation that would symbolize our great, diverse life in America. A Ramadan-Christmas dinner would bring a real meaning to our two rich cultures.

Philly: An American Story

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