Given how I was raised, this is about as shocking as not having done a paint-by-numbers at 25 years old. My parents always fostered an interest in different political and cultural points of view, but for some reason, I cannot for the life of me, remember going to any kind of festival put on by a particular cultural group. No Octoberfest, no St. Patty's Day (though I did enjoy roaming the early morning drunken streets of Ann Arbor a few years back), nada. Maybe I've forgotten, but for the purposes of this exercise, I've determined that forgetting makes it count.
I got invited to join Jihan, Josephine and Jaad at Arab Xpressions on Friday night. Once we got there, I got to meet a few of their friends and see Rasha and Ozzy again. The show is a series of performances, sponsored by the various Arab student groups at UofM. I honestly hadn't heard of it, despite it being put on by my school. I may have missed an e-mail or two, but that's neither here nor there. When they told me what it was, I was really excited. Despite not hitting up the festivals, I have learned a lot about other cultures in my life.
...and by "other cultures" I mean not this...
The show was fantastic. It opened with a parody of Jersey Shore, which is an accomplishment because Jersey Shore is a parody of itself. The next act was an utterly amazing Slam Poet. The woman was gifted. She had these amazing, flowing story lines throughout her poems that were captivating. The first couple lines of any poem its easy to dismiss the cadence as awkward or hard to follow, but hers flowed so quickly into the meat of the poem that there wasn't that moment of being off balance as she started. Most impressive was her imagery though. She had incredible insight into the way of the world. It made her poems amazing to listen to because she was able to relate two seemingly incompatible ideas in a way that drew the audience in to the story she was telling.
After she finished her set there was, to be completely honest, a rather lackluster play. I hate to say that because I don't want anyone to think I didn't enjoy myself. I found the whole show incredibly entertaining. She was a seriously difficult act to follow though and the play ran on a bit long for my tastes. It was a political rundown and history of hip-hop as well as the various Arab communities that the play authors experienced as they grew up. In other words - a really cool premise. By the time they hit 1991, though, I was asking myself if they were going to hit every year. They did.
After intermission we saw a few selections from the Ann Arbor Palestinian Film Festival. That was the part that really pushed my boundaries (in a good way). I don't feel like going to a cultural festival does much unless you're willing to try and see things from a different point of view than before you went. That being said, my stance on the Middle East in general and Israel/Palestine specifically is this: willful ignorance. Now bear with me here - cause I try to stay informed. When I went to research American politics I found books to read - some biased, some not - but plenty with sourced and cited information. Same thing for learning about healthcare, the War in Iraq, welfare programs and education.
That is not the case for a lot of the information on the conflicts in the Middle East. There are so many random pictures and anecdotes flying around that it can be hard to tell what's true. I'm sure there's a way to dig down to the central issue, find the true facts and understand the conflict better - but that is a daunting task. One I will likely take on sometime after law school ends. In the meantime, my stance is the optimistic, but naive one: Pray for peace and accept a lull in the action.
That being said, the film portion of the evening consisted of two short fictional pieces (another had technical difficulties) that highlighted the struggles of Palestinians living in Israel. I was reminded after seeing those pieces that there are two ways to know something. You can know it intellectually and you can know it intuitively. I've always been aware of the fact that there is conflict in that region, but I've not stopped to think about the impact it has on families. The second film in particular was powerful because it didn't try too hard with the political message.
The second film just showed a family - two daughters and a mother - living in Israel. The older daughter had saved up money for a long time to buy a present that she didn't want to tell her mother about - wanted it to be a surprise. She takes the money to the bakery to buy a birthday cake, but discovers that she's short on cash. She spends the rest of the day doing anything and everything she can think of to make the last bit of money. That part was funny and touching. She tried selling gum, but she was too polite. When her sister met her, they walked around pretending she was blind and begging for change. They finally got the cake home in time for the audience to discover it was a birthday cake for her father, who'd been killed.
That, for me, hits home more than any footage of bombs or war or explosions. More importantly - it was universal. I could see the pain that any serious conflict causes to families reflected in the struggles of those little girls and their mom. The show ended on a cheerier note, thank goodness. One of the dance troupes at UofM performed a traditional Arabic line-dance. There are different versions (similar, but different) from different countries and from what I understand, I saw the Lebanese version on Friday.
Then, of course, there was the after party at Pizza House. And by after party I mean that we all went and hung out. And by hung out I mean that I got to eat dinner cause I was starving. I also got to talk at length to Ozzy who is pretty darn cool. Not that I didn't think so before, but it was really nice to get to talk to her a bit more in depth than the last time we met. Overall I had a great time and I was forced to think about things that I often ignore which, quite frankly, is something more people should do more often. Its good to challenge the way you see the world from time to time.
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