Joukhadar on Representation, Crisis, and Solidarity

Both Joukhader and Alsutany tackle representation of Arab, Middle Eastern people, particularly with regard to collectivized stories in the US. While both make many points, often going hand in hand, or calling to another understanding of how to break down the stereotypes. Still, Joukhader’s short story is shocking and emotive. While Alsutany’s article helps to contextualize it, the story can reach those without extensive access to data, or varied stories. The horror, the internal conflict, the effort to fit in, and then the great lengths to try to regain control, as Sam endures, is palatable to those who may not identify with her particular struggle or fantastic, outward exacerbation of said struggle. I was left harrowing for her crisis. I took on her pain because the written words allowed for the mindless derailment to one singular phrase repeated as a mantra, a plea, a cry, or a traumatized note be etched into, now, my brain, too. It is an intense breakdown, she is left to continuously verbally claim her ethnicity’s collective struggle and common purpose.

I pictured a strong, carefree, and sometimes abrasive young woman who slowly became town a part by stories connected to her only by blood. The stories of the larger people she could be said to be a part of (that “WE”) ripped, enveloped and crushed her Americanized facade, trying so fully to assimilate. Narrator refers to Samira going as Sam, her sister, Farrah and Dr. Hamsah, each only refer to her in the full name in one instance each, . and the purposeful self-definition away from the collective she did not want to be associated with primarily (if not at all) is noted in the narration: “Sam had cut her hair short three years ago, trimmed her eyebrows every week, avoided contouring her cheekbones with bronzer. She had adopted an American nickname, avoided telling coworkers the full version.” Despite all her efforts, once words like “THEY THINK WE ARE TERRORISTS” come onto her body, along with other markings, she loses her job, not being able to adequately conceal the words for the like of this workplace despite having done nothing but be a diligent worker. This is the same boss who offers the solution of bleaching her skin as her does walls, a blatant reference to support of continued whitewashing, as well as simplification of the issues to be wiped away and objectification of her identity needing to be cleansed, regardless of pain endured like burns. The strong woman is found under attack, and alone in her burden of the collective.

The story’s arc reminded me of theories on ethnic primordialism that claim a timeless bond connecting people by blood, whether or not someone like Sam chose to be, because choice, in such a theory, is not a factor in one’s ethnic identity. This claim seeps in already in the strong and blunt introduction: “The first word was WE.” Against her will, she is first marked with a collective pronoun, and equally significant is the one thing she could not erase: the larger purpose of making a promise to carry on the truth of their struggle, their beauty, their existence. In fact, the group identified on her body includes even pre-existence: unborn children’s stories, religious stories and current stories intersecting at the point of the identity itself. 

Dr. Hamsah helps reveal some exhibition with regard to Sam’s sister, Farrah. Farrah is intentionally taking on the task of finding, collecting, and retelling parts of the story. Instead of traveling through Europe, as an excursion, she takes on the challenge passed to her from a heritage from Syria and connecting her to others. Sam says she is “ ‘interviewing civilians and refugees… filming a documentary.’ ” Why does this fantastical physical embodiment of witnessing and forcing of telling of the stories happen to Sam and not Farrah? My theory comes back to the claiming of the one who tried to reject her past and the hard and painful realization that she is still claimed by it. She too shares the burden of telling the story, not just those who overtly chose to like Farrah.