American East

Watching this movie was interesting in how many layers kept being revealed with each scene and each character that we saw. It was complex in terms of the emotional baggage that the characters had as well as the highly sensitive political times they were living in after 9/11.

You have Mustafa who is unjustly persecuted at the airport where he is picking up his cousin. They arrest him and interrogate him primarily because of his middle eastern features which are on everyone's red alert after 9/11 but also because he is shouting around the airport. None of these reasons for his arrest are an offense in themselves, especially if you consider that Mustafa is shouting because he is frantic over his son who has gone missing. But when you have a country that has so much animosity and fear because of the events of 9/11, then you see how difficult it can be to have the country that you belong to and believe in turn against you.

This is exactly what is happening to Mustafa, his family and friends. They believe in this country that they came to as immigrants, they are innocents just as any other white American who lived through the twin towers tragedy, but they are now victims of prejudice and hate because of their skin color and Islamic heritage. Even though i can understand the tragedy of 9/11, i can never justify the suffering that Americans of Middle eastern heritage were being subjected to at that time, even though they were not part of 9/11 itself.

It was as if, the FBI was saying, we welcome you as immigrants so long as you contribute to the economy but you are never truly American so if things go wrong we can turn against you. I mean, how more American did they expect Mustafa and his family to be in order to see that they were also victims of 9/11? Mustafa was equally patriotic, he believed in the system even when it was exposing him to racial prejudice, arresting him and tearing apart his family. All those claims of how America believes in diversity and in its people flew out of the window after 9/11 such that it became that America believes in some of its people's diversity with the notable exclusion of those of Arabic heritage and the Islamic faith. As much as we want them to protect the nation, the FBI treated Mustafa and his family like they were not America and in effect was failing in protecting them.

The film also exposes us to the burdens of being an immigrant such as ties from your country of origin. Mustafa is in the land of opportunity and could have been doing better financially had it not been for the debt he had inherited from his father which was the need to repurchase the family lands in Egypt. He is trying to live up to traditions such as his religion, ownership of land and seeing that his sister marries well, but all these obligations end up burdening him. At the same time you have Mustafa's sister who is being forced to follow the tradition of an arranged marriage, yet wants more from life. You also have Mustafa's kids, who have been born American but are suffering under the prejudices surrounding a religion and tradition that they did not choose, such as in Mohammed's case, or that they do not fully understand, as is the case with Mustafa's daughter. All of these 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, experience the difficulties in living within two different cultures and have a hard time of it. This made me question the idea of immigration in America, and whether it is truly worth it given that the country itself doesn't truly accept you, neither does it make it easier for you to adjust to its culture. It is unlike in Germany where immigrants are encouraged to learn the language and take an immersion course, or in Canada where they grant immigration based on the applicant's ability to fit in and adjust. I could not see any evidence that the US is that interested in its immigrants despite it being an immigrant nation. Even Saber, Mustafa's cousin who was visiting from Egypt could not understand why they would want to stay in a country that treated them so badly.

There are a whole lot more insights that i got from the movie such as the whole politics vs religion conflict that was going on between the Jews and the Muslims but i wanted to focus more on the Arabic-American's view of their lives after 9/11 especially since this film was produced by Arabs. The political struggles will always continue whether the reason be that Jerusalem was promised to the Jews in the bible or that there is oil in Iraq, but it is the ordinary people who are caught in the conflict. It is people like Mustafa who are clinging on to the dream that is America even if the dream rejects them, people like Omar who are sacrificed as victims to the conflict, or children like Mohammed who question their identity because it is not in line with the popular trend.