Being Arab In Alaska Part II
Maria Athens
YourAlaskaLink.com
Anchorage, AK- Part II of “Being Arab in Alaska,” features Syrian-American mother and daughter duo Camilla & Salomé Hussein. Camilla Hussein was born in Germany to a Syrian father and German mother, before moving to Syria at 8-years-old. Camilla described, “The Syrian people in general are very open-hearted, probably like the Greek people too; just add a little water to the soup and everybody is welcome kind of deal, it was nice.”
The mother of three who identifies as a Humanist, has lived in Alaska for the last ten years, and reveals how she stays close to her Middle Eastern heritage, here in the Last Frontier. Camilla added, “When they were very young, my father would send gifts to the United States, and I took my oldest daughter to Syria, to get baptized. She was baptized in one of the oldest churches. I cultivated history a lot with my family. They need to know more about the history of the Middle East, to be able to judge accordingly when they view the news and see what’s happening in the world.”
23-year-old Salomé Hussein is pursuing her PhD at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand. The Syrian-American stated of her ethnicity, “My mom would always tell me how she grew up with her cousins being kind of like her siblings; it was a very village mentality. She always told me how social her dad was, and how warm and generous they [family] would be. That’s something I have picked up from her, being warm and compassionate. That’s actually more of what I have affiliated with the Middle Eastern community; kind of very emotional and passionate people; people that talk with their hands and are very enthusiastic about everything.
Salomé has always been proud of her Syrian background. The international student added, “It was always something very unique, you know, I was always kind of proud of it. So when someone mentioned, ‘what’s your background?’ that’s always the first thing I mentioned, ‘oh my mom is half Arabic.’ If someone else mentioned, ‘oh yeah my mom is from Palestine, etc.,’ that was an immediate connection, something unique that we shared.”
In Part III of “Being Arab in Alaska,” all four Middle Eastern Alaskan residents featured in this series, offer their thoughts on the international community’s response, to the Syrian refugee crisis.