Oregon Arabs: think different
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Said Fakih (R) and his son Yusuf.Arabs and non Arabs turned out under alternating blue skies and drizzle at Oaks Park for the Arab American festival called Mahrajan on Saturday. Ranked in a circle around a music stage and portable dance floor were 10 commercial vendors and tables for six non-profits. The vendors were representing pan Arab culture as it is found in the Portland metro area. They sold food such as shawarma (meat like a kebab), falafel sandwiches, sticky desserts such as baklava and black coffee. Other vendors sold wares such as hookah smoking paraphernalia or clothing, such as the bedazzled T-shirts of Lovemenation.
Non profits included the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a national organization brings children injured in Palestine to the US for treatment, and the and Syrian American Medical Society helps treat victims of an refugees from the Syrian civil war.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Samar Fakih, 23, just graduated from the University of Portland where she majored in Psychology and Spanish, and is now applying to medical schools. Her family runs Sesame Donuts.Doctors
Samar Fakih, 23, just graduated from the University of Portland where she majored in Psychology and Spanish, and is now applying to medical schools.
She is one of ten volunteer board members of the Arab American Cultural Center of Oregon which organized the festival. Being a board member is not particularly exclusive.
“You don’t have to be Middle eastern but they definitely have to be for our cause, which is just promoting and celebrating the Arab American culture, the beautiful music and food and dancing. As you can see here everything is so colorful and exciting.”
Fakih loves OHSU and has already job shadowed there. But she doesn’t feel like she entirely fits in in Portland, long-term. She was born and raised in Tigard. “I feel more of a Southern California girl.” She visits family there a lot. “I’m not really one of the Keep Portland Weird people,” she says. “I don’t ride a bike and I’ve never been on transit.”
She was wearing a T-shirt that read “Yalla VOTE” which exhorts Arab Americans to register and vote.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – The Lebanese flag with its cedar tree, oddly similar to the Cascadia flag. Said Fakih came to Oregon inspred by a National Geographic article.Donuts
Her father Said Fakih runs Sesame Donuts, which has six locations in the Portland area. He explains that he was one year from graduating college in California. Being the oldest, he had to abandon his studies to take on the donut shop to support his six siblings in 1997.
His path to Portland is unique. His parents were Lebanese. They moved to Sierra Leone in West Africa where he largely grew up. “I went to the British consul in high school and I remember sitting on the floor in the library reading a National Geographic about the Pacific Northwest, about the Redwoods and the Cascades and the ocean, and I told my dad I wanted to go there.’ Dad said no. His grandfather sent his son his bride, a redheaded, freckled Lebanese girl, and their arranged marriage took place in Sierra Leone.
Said and his (arranged) wife made it to relatives in California, and eventually Portland. Said has two girls and two boys. One, Yusef, was working the donut stand Saturday. He changed out of his Nike T-shirt and Nike ball cap to put on his dad’s traditional costume, a sherwel, of harem pants and waistcoat. He is learning the folk dances and gearing up to show off his moves.
Fakih is well known in the Lebanese community but is also known to many new refugees form the Arab diaspora, more recently, Iraqis settling in Beaverton. One of his workers is one, a polite young man who came by to hand over the keys to the truck and take off.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – From the table of Yalla Vote, and Arab American get out the vote campaign.Lawyers
Attorney Hala Gores, former chair of the Arab American Cultural Center of Oregon, is a Palestinian American, born in Nazareth, who came to the US when she was 10. She started the organization with six members meeting around her Portland dining table in 2006.
“What we grew up with was seeing Arabs and Muslims portrayed as they are on the news, in a very negative way, always negative. And it’s become more so after 9-11.”
Gores says the first Arabs in Portland were Christians coming from Syria and Lebanon, who settled in outer southeast from 120th to 160th Avenues. (The Syrian Lebanese American Club is at 11610 SE Holgate Blvd. and the Lebanese restaurant Ya Hala is at 8005 SE Stark St.)
“Our newest immigrants are mostly coming from Iraq and Syria and live in Beaverton and Tigard. We wanted to start a free event where Oregonians could see and meet Arab Americans, see the positive aspect of who we are and what we do. Music, food, dance, lawyers, doctors and business owners.”
She says the Egyptian film industry is the Arab world’s Hollywood so new refugees tend to know the Egyptian accent and also the pop music from there. “People from Palestine and Iraq, and those from Saudi Arabia and the Levant, they’re all interested in that. And we want our younger people to have close ties to their heritage.”
Her friend and fellow lawyer and board member Rima Ghandoul adds that food and music are great uniters because, “They all have their own version of a falafel, and they share pop music and also Algerian music, Berber music…”
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Hired belly dancers Kendra Wolf and Eva Vanderlip (left) do an Egyptian-based dance for the crowd.Belly dancers
Before that there were belly dancers with the not very Arabic names Kendra Wolf and Eva Vanderlip. Vanderlip says the are often hired to perform Egyptian dances as well as other Middle Eastern folk dances at events and weddings.
Some people think of former Oregon Governor Vic Atiyeh or former Reedie and Apple founder Steve Jobs when they think of an American of Arab descent.
Some people think of ISIS.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Revellers sheltered from both hot sun and drizzle at the Portland Arab Festival at Oaks Park Saturday.Ghandoul said the verbal abuse and comments are not as bad in Portland as in some places, but she does not let it get to her. She wants to set a positive example to combat it.
LaNae LaTours, a Native American, came from Milwaukie out of curiosity.
“I just wanted to get a bit of education about the Arabic community,” she said. She does not know any Arabs. “I wanted to see the dancing and singing and be in an environment where I felt comfortable asking questions.”
A massage therapist, LaTours had gotten henna tattoo across her shoulders. “I’m seeing different things, and seeing similarities as well,” she said.
Some of the non-profits were a reminder of the life and death struggles in the Arab world.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Traditional desserts.Non-Profits
Hisham Bismar of the Syrian American Medical Society is orthopedic doctor at Kaiser Permanente. (He appears in the documentary “50 Feet from Syria.”) SAMS began in 2007 as a professional organization – a way for Syrian doctors to network in the US. But with the horrors of the Syrian civil war, where hospitals are blown up and medics targeted by snipers, it has morphed into a relief effort, a mini Doctors Without Borders.
The SAMS Foundation is a nonprofit humanitarian organization established in 2007. Its volunteer physicians deliver direct medical care in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon.
220,000 people in Syria have been killed so far and there are 3.8 million refugees. It sends medics to Syria, and also helps with refugees in surrounding countries, offering physical and mental healthcare and nutritional instruction. Bismar said he is not optimistic about Syria’s recovery. “There used to be rules of war. Now there are no rules there.”
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Lovemenation’s Noor Barghouty and her daughter sell T-shirts with designs in crystal.Bling
Suzan Khouri, a fundraiser and event planner for the Portland chapter of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, was there to raise awareness, and raise money at an upcoming gala. She wore a diamond cross around her neck. “PCPF is for children who have no hope of being helped back where they come from,” she explains, before talking about children who have been fitted for artificial limbs, pro bono, here in the USA and then returned home.
“The local chapter was launched a year and a half ago. It’s a very clean, very transparent organization,” said Khouri, who works in advertising at KUNP-TV Univision & MundoMax. “We’re very proud to have it here.” Khouri’s mother was from Gaza and her father from Nablus. “I was born in Kuwait and baptized in Palestine, then I went from Kuwait to Portland State University for my education.” She has been in the USA for 33 years.
Another Palestinian, Noor Barghouty of Lovemenation, was selling T-shirts with patterns on them in iron-on crystals. One was of a cartoon boy facing away, known as Khandallah. He was the signature of cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, who was killed in 1987. The shirts were a kind of Real Housewives meets the Gaza Strip, and they were popular. Barghouty says they are also available on Etsy.
TRIBUNE PHOTO: JOSEPH GALLIVAN – Khandallah was the signature of cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, who was killed in 1987.