I cannot say that I remember the events that occurred on September 11th 2001, considering I was 3 years old at the time, but I can recall the aftermath and effects of particular day. Growing up in the Middle East, I watched as the region’s culture and society changed; the views of the Arab people altered. Furthermore, I got to see the rest of the world rapidly transform when treating and observing Arabs, unfortunately for the worse. Through my experiences, I can give an account of what it feels like being an Arab suffering from prejudice and stereotypes.

My earliest memory of the 9/11 attacks aftermath is when I was 5 years old and I asked my mother why we were not traveling to Taiwan regularly again and she told me that “we just couldn’t”. Everyone talks about how the United States tightened up airport security checks, but they were not the only ones. I found out much later that the reason why we could not visit Taiwan to see my other relatives was because Jordan’s airport security became extremely strict in order to maintain the good relations between the Jordanian and American governments. After a few years passed since 2001, my family decided to travel to Taiwan, hoping that the atmosphere was a bit calmer, but that was wrong. When entering Taiwan’s airport security and my parents handed the passport check officer our Jordanian passports, we immediately got some odd looks. (except my mother who had passed through with her Taiwanese passport). My father had to be taken for an additional security check because of his passport and his “distinct character”. In that moment, I immediately knew there was a barrier separating Arabians and everyone else.

In my teenage years, I was able to start comprehending what was exactly going on in the world and, especially, in the Middle East. Not only did the rest of the world begin to treat Arabs with contempt, but so did we. If you asked anyone from the Middle East who is the most hated person, the immediate response would be: “Bush.”. President George H.W. Bush is regarded as the man who started the global dislike towards anyone from the Middle Eastern region. The vendetta against him developed into a detestment towards the United States. Even when Barrack Obama won the 2008 election, the damage was already done and the hate towards Americans stayed. In response to this tension, I remember watching as the American Embassy in Jordan built talls walls around itself and had Jordanian soldiers patrolling the outside everyday at all times. The American Embassy was no special case, every other embassy did the same, including the Canadian Embassy. It was very apparent that the relationship between Arabian states and other states were rough.
It is sad to see the world regard the Arabs in an aggressive and discriminatory manner. I hope to see the tensions decrease, but since recent President Donald Trump opened the idea of a ban on people entering the United States from certain Middle Eastern countries, I can only be pessimistic.

A recurring theme in my ASTU class is the importance of the perspective of others. Considering the choices of readings and discussion topics in this course, there is a clear emphasis on learning about how people view events. Personally, I am a big fan of discovering the viewpoints of the individual, because they tell a whole different story than the ones history books tell us. This is why I am enjoying reading about the narratives of others in “Safe Area Gozarde”, a graphic narrative on the Bosnian War, and discussing the infamous “War on Terror”, a campaign that affects me deeply as an Arab, with my classmates.

“Safe Area Gozarde” is a graphic narrative or a journalistic comic book, written by Joe Sacco that describes the Bosnian War and the author’s experience in Gozarde. Sacco delivers to us his conversations he had with Bosniak civilians trapped in the area. These talks show us the views, trauma, stories, and tragedies of multiple interviewees about the Bosnian War that history books cannot compare to. I believe that this type of individual focused storytelling about major events truly give the essence, emotion, and reality to what the world can be like. It is easy to read an excerpt from a history book on World War 2 and to learn about the death tolls, but to plunge into the dark and traumatic experiences of a single person can really hit you hard. This is the exact reason why I found Joe Sacco’s work to be an eye opener to how cruel the world can be through his delivery of another human’s life—a life no different than mine, but one altered by a war.

The topic of the “War on Terror” was one brought up today, a conversation that most people usually would not want to have casually. However, I do not regret having this discussion, because my classmates along with myself were able to speak out on how events like the September 11th terrorist attacks and Charlie Hebdo attacks meant to us as both as human beings and as citizens of different nations. It was interesting to hear about how because we were a younger generation that could only vaguely remember what happened on September 11th attacks, we found more recent terrorist attacks as more impactful to us. It is definitely resourceful to learn more about the way people view the current “War on Terror”, because I was only able to learn about one way of seeing it since I lived in the Middle East all my life—the place where the war seemed to be concentrated in.
To conclude, I cannot deliver the horrors the Bosnian War and the War on Terror has had justice, but I can say that my ASTU class has allowed me to explore these two topics on a different plane that really does hold the idea of university being a melting pot of various opinions true.