Trying to bridge two great civilizations

Trying to bridge two great civilizations
Ameen rihani’s legacy of reconciliation is still alive today

Stephanie Saldana
Daily Star staff

22_9_01B.JPG (12284 bytes) Nearly a century ago, the voice of Lebanese-American poet Ameen Rihani emerged from the hills outside Beirut, urging Americans, Arabs and Arab-Americans to create a dialogue of peace between the United States and the Middle East. "For our country is just beginning to speak, and I am her chosen voice" he wrote. "I feel that if I do not respond, if I do not come to her, she will be dumb forever." Now recognized as the father of Arab-American literature, Rihani considered himself to be one citizen with two homelands. Born in Lebanon and raised in New York City, the author of 29 books in English and 26 in Arabic, Rihani spent a lifetime traveling between America and the Middle East, struggling to come to terms with societies that labeled him as “Arab” or “American,” but had little room for an Arab-American identity. “I have always felt that I was after all but an adopted child, an outsider, an alien American at best,” he later wrote. “My birth certificate, I confess to you … has often quarreled with my document of adoption.”
Along with Khalil Gibran and Naimeh, Rihani pioneered a generation of authors who refused to relinquish their identities as Arabs or Americans, but insisted on composing Arab-American literature.
Today, as tensions rise between America and the Middle East, and as Arab-Americans face an increase in anti-Arab sentiments abroad, the work of Rihani demands re-examination. “This is the right time to reinforce a dialogue between cultures,” said Ameen Rihani, nephew of the author, and vice-president of Notre Dame University in Lebanon. “Rihani believed that Arabs need America, and America needs Arabs, a notion that totally goes against what is happening now. He was against a clashing of cultures, and for a dialogue of cultures. He’s important for all those Arabs and Americans interested in buildings strong relationships between Arabs and America.” Born in a house overlooking the hills of Freike in Lebanon in 1876, Rihani immigrated to America at the age of 12. With the streets of Lower Manhattan as his playground, Rihani roamed an almost mythological America of skyscrapers and traffic, bustle and noise.
Working as a bookkeeper in his father’s shop, he embraced not just America but the English language wholeheartedly, acquainting himself with the literature of Victor Hugo and Shakespeare, later adding Darwin, Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson to the list. In 1895 Rihani enrolled in New York Law school, but soon returned to Lebanon to recover from a lung infection. Speaking more English than Arabic, he taught English to Lebanese students in exchange for Arabic classes, forging an identity as a Arab-American in the process.
Rihani returned to New York City in 1899, bringing with him the desire to revolutionize cross-cultural writing, to become an Arab-American writer who would ultimately forge a bridge between East and West. “The footsteps of a pioneer,” he would later write, “ultimately become the pathway of a nation.” Yet the pathway between nations runs both ways, and Rihani recognized that he must write in both Arabic and English, and expand the scope of his writing beyond poetry. Publishing in both languages, he composed essays discussing religion, social traditions, politics and philosophy, consistently endorsing the importance of cross-cultural dialogue. In 1911 Rihani published his philosophical masterpiece, The Book of Khalid, the first novel written in English by an Arab-American. Its plot focuses on the journeys of Khalid from Baalbek to New York City, where he hopes to discover a promised land that combines the romanticism of the East with the prosperity of the West. Yet Rihani, not nearly as naive as his so-called hero, makes no secret that Khalid falls short in achieving his expectations. “Think you inhabitants of the New World are better off than the Old?” he at last calls out. Yet despite his disappointment, Khalid nonetheless recognizes the need for America and the Middle East to engage in a cultural dialogue. “The East and the West are the male and the female of the spirit,” he declares. It was Khalid’s, and Rihani’s, dream that together they could propagate a new world. It is tempting to identify Rihani with Khalid, as the author’s personal quest to merge his Lebanese and American identities also proved both complicated and unromantic. In 1917, in his Letters to Uncle Sam, he wrote a letter to the president in which he admitted that “I have always felt that I was after all but an adopted child, an outsider, an alien American at best … And no matter what provocation I had at times to raise a howl, never was my voice heard in your study or in your parlor.” But Rihani was determined to be heard. He spoke out for an to end World War I, an end to Ottoman occupation, a reduction of arms. In the 1920s, he met Teddy Roosevelt concerning the implications of Zionism and increased Jewish immigration to Palestine. In 1922, Rihani traveled throughout the Arab world, meeting with leaders such as King Faisal of Iraq and King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, discussing politics and advocating his dream of “a dialogue of civilizations.” “Rihani saw himself as an ‘Arab thinker,’ not just a politician or a man of letters,” insists his nephew Ameen. He was the dream architect of intellectual bridges. “Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth always repeats itself,” Rihani wrote in the 1920s. When he died 20 years later at the age of 64, he had no way of knowing that the issues he lobbied, those of Arab-American identity, the need for a positive cultural dialogue between America and the Middle East, the crisis of Palestinian identity and the peaceful resolution of the global military crisis would continue to rage until today. In 1999, The Ameen Rihani Institute was created in Washington DC to continue Rihani’s efforts of strengthening the cultural and political links between the United States and the Arab World. Seeking to rebuild Arab-American relations as well as to highlight Arab-American literature, the institute operates under the prospect identified by Rihani and carried on through the likes of Edward Said; that intellectual discourse can be the basis for political change. On Nov. 2-3, intellectuals from the United States, the Middle East and Europe will convene in Washington for a conference on Ameen Rihani entitled Bridging East and West. While they hope to discuss Arab identity in Arab-American thought, as well as the bridge between Arabia and the US, the main concern will no doubt be the ways in which Rihani’s philosophy can be applied to the current conflict between America and the Middle East, and the rising misconceptions of Arab-Americans. Rihani’s nephew insists: “There is a need to build bridges between East and West, and particularly between Arabs and Americans. Rihani stated this at the beginning of the century. We’re still in need of this now.”