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(Photos by PJW)

First appeared in The Daily Star

SANAA: In his book “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong,” Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf describes identity as complex and fluid, rather than a constant monolith or separate entities acquired at birth and unchanged for life.

“So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course not,” he writes. “Identity can’t be compart-mentalized. You can’t divide it up into halves or thirds … I haven’t got several identities: I’ve just got one, made up of many components in a mixture that is unique to me.”

The question stems from a need to identify others in clear terms – usually falling along national, religious or other affiliations.

Consider how Europe is grappling with the Muslim face-veil. Seen by some to be an assertion of political identity, its adoption by Muslim women is frequently construed as an affirmation of identity in reaction to liberal modernity or Western cultural imperialism.

Yemeni-Americans are not immune to such identity pressures. Deliberately or not, they are at times made to represent themselves in terms of one or the other, instead of being seen as a composite.

“I’m viewed as American among Yemenis,” says Ibrahim Kabire, 30, a Yemeni-American living in Yemen. “My Yemeni friends say: Nothing about you defines you as an Arab. And in America, it’s the other way around. My American friends say: Everything about you defines you as Arabic.

“I’m a first-generation American,” he adds. “I’m Yemeni-American, I feel I belong in America.”

Kabire’s efforts to avoid being pigeonholed correspond with his trying to reconcile his dual nature. He grew up in Yemen and lived in the US for most of his twenties with his father, a US citizen, before returning to Sanaa.

Hakim Almasmari, the 30-year-old publisher and chief editor of the Yemeni weekly Yemen Post, echoes Kabire’s efforts at self-definition.

A third-generation American who reluctantly returned to Yemen at his father’s request, Almasmari chose to stay. Here, he espouses a Yemeni lifestyle, speaks Yemeni Arabic fluently and even “does as Yemenis do when in Yemen.”

At weekend social gatherings he chews qat, the mild stimulant that is to Yemen what coffee is to Lebanon.

“My identity is an American who loves his Arab background,” he says. “An American who was searching for who his parents were. An American who wanted to see the other part of him.”

Yemeni-Americans constitute most of the estimated 72,000 American nationals who live in Yemen.

Almasmari argues that Yemeni-Americans have been alienated by Arabo-phobe post-9/11 America. The media’s portrayal of Arabs as terrorists and the Patriot Act – which gave the state the right to spy on its citizens, Arabs and Muslims in particular – he says, drove many to move back to Yemen.

“After 9/11,” he explains, “… you did not feel you were American. That’s why most Yemenis, and most Arabs, re-thought their ancestral backgrounds as another option.”

Kabire was in the US most of the last decade and, though he agrees that being Arab and speaking Arabic drew unwanted scrutiny, he says he did not see his relationships with his American friends change.

“The initial reaction after 9/11 was … very predictable,” he says. “Educated or not, Americans are still human. But after that I think many people took a step back and got to know the problem and took an interest in knowing what is ‘Arab’ and what is ‘Muslim.’”

Arabs are at fault, he feels, for not better integrating into American society. He speaks of Arab acquaintances who have lived in the US for decades but whose spoken and written English is still weak.

“If you’re not accepted in the neighborhood in America,” he says, “it’s not because people are not accepting you. It’s because you’re not making an effort. But Arabs are governed by their culture. We don’t mix. We don’t integrate with people. Why integrate? Because this is what makes America America: it’s people integrating together.”

Arabs in America appear to be caught in the middle. Fear of an American culture that’s different from their own, as well as language and educational barriers, mean that some Arabs rarely leave their communities and cling to cherished values from the old country.

On the other hand, close scrutiny after the 9/11 attacks may have created new barriers between the two cultures.

While Yemeni Americans might feel estranged from the US, they would receive a hero’s welcome upon returning to Yemen. Despite the anti-Americanism that can be found here, and elsewhere in the Middle East, Yemenis are often quick to separate politics from individuals and usually look up to returning Yemeni migrants.

Having American citizenship is considered prestigious and Yemeni-Americans are seen as accomplished for pursuing an education or a better life in America.

“Every Yemeni, I think, looks at America as a dream,” says Abdul Wahab Abeedee, a Yemeni financial manager who, along with his Yemeni-American wife, studied in the US.

The case of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who appeared this week for the first time in an Al-Qaeda video, further complicates matters for Yemeni-Americans. He’s believed to be hiding in Yemen and is being pursued for his suspected links to the Nigerian Omar Farouq Abdul Mutallab – who attempted to detonate a bomb on an airliner last December – and for his radical, American-accented internet speeches.

Born in New Mexico, where his Yemeni father attended college, the cleric studied Islam in Yemen for a time, but lived in the US for most of his life, obtaining a graduate degree from an American university before returning to Yemen in his thirties. His radicalization raises the question of why one aspect of his identity – his devout conservative Islam – overrode his American upbringing.

Awlaqi’s dual nationality has provoked concerns in some American circles about Yemeni-Americans living in Yemen, who may be recruited by Al-Qaeda and are able to return to America – leaving Yemeni-Americans caught in the middle yet again.

Khaled Alayan, a Yemeni filmmaker and journalist, believes that one way to bridge the cultural divide is for Arabs to be able to visit America in order to change the stereotypes they derive from watching the news and Hollywood movies.

“After visiting America,” he says, “religious scholars who would not be expected to write positively about it came back and wrote: ‘We found Islam in America without Muslims – we found there the values we’d been looking for’ … This is what we hope of the US Embassy here – to facilitate travel to America and that the stereotypes about Arabs change.”

Different reasons brought Almasmari, Kabire and Abeedee back to Yemen, but their sense of belonging to the US, where they either plan to return or regularly visit, remains unchanged. They see themselves as bridges between the two cultures.

“I wouldn’t change anything about America except one thing,” says Almasmari, “the equality of all its citizens.”

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